“What?” Liz asked.
“Huh? Oh.” Quinn tossed the plate on the ground. “Nothing. Just … nothing.”
She stared at it for a moment. “Mom’s going to need help,” she finally blurted out.
“Is that what you wanted to talk about?”
“I have to go back to Paris tomorrow. I’m already missing too many classes as it is.”
“I can stay for a couple more days,” he told her. “But after that, I have to return to work.”
As far as Liz and his mother knew, Quinn was an international banker. It was a cover he often used on the job, too. It helped explain his extensive travel.
“So I’m supposed to just stay? I’d have to take the term off.”
“Relax,” Quinn said. “Of course you should go back. Uncle Mark and Aunt Carole are going to check on Mom every day. And I’ve spoken to Reverend Hollis. He’s going to have some of the ladies from the congregation help her out until she’s feeling better.”
“That’s your solution? Get others to do it for us? Great.”
“Liz, come on. It’s going to be fine. I’ll be here for—”
Quinn’s phone buzzed. Instinctively he pulled it out and looked at the screen.
David Wills again.
Liz rolled her eyes. “Work, right?”
Quinn sent the call to voicemail and shoved the phone back in his pocket.
“You’re going to have to leave sooner than you thought, aren’t you?”
“I said I’d stay for a couple more days, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
She took a step away, looking deep into the forest. “You know, I used to think … I used to think that maybe …” She paused for several seconds. “You know, never mind, Jake. Just … never mind.”
She turned and started walking back down the path.
“Liz,” he called out.
She didn’t stop.
“Liz!”
But she had already disappeared among the trees.
Quinn ached at the distance between them, but didn’t know what to do about it.
Despite their age gap, they had been close once. Right up until he’d left home. She’d been nine then, and he knew she’d been at an impressionable point. But he’d had no choice.
He had hoped one day she’d understand. One day she’d realize he’d done it for her, and would forgive him. But so far, that day had yet to come.
His phone buzzed again, notifying him he had a message. He listened to it.
“Good news,” Wills’s recorded voice said. “I won’t need you until October third. We’re still firming up your first op location, but at the moment it looks like Los Angeles. I’ll call with more details in a couple days.”
Quinn erased the message, then stuffed the phone back in his pocket.
At least he hadn’t lied to Liz about how long he could stay.
Chapter 4
Their flight out of Newark International Airport, just outside of New York, had been delayed on the tarmac because of bad weather. So by the time they touched down in Los Angeles, Petra was ready to rush down the aisle and rip the aircraft’s door open herself to get out.
The minutes they’d lost had been more than just the hundred and twenty they’d spent sitting on the ground. The delay had caused them to arrive in the late afternoon, when the freeways of Los Angeles turned into parking lots.
She swore under her breath.
“What is it?” Kolya asked from the window seat next to her.
“Not important.”
Because of the near debacle in Hong Kong, and contrary to the precautions they’d taken since they’d left home on their mission, she had decided to keep Kolya close. At least this way he was with her at all times.
She knew it was a huge risk. Dombrovski had been very adamant during their training. “Never give him any means to know who you are. Constantly change your identities. Travel alone. And always assume he is looking for you.”
And looking for them he was. If Dombrovski’s own murder back home hadn’t been enough proof, losing Luka in Bangkok was. Luka had been closing in on one of their targets, Petra just ten minutes behind him. But by the time she reached his position, he was dead. Their team of four suddenly down to three.
She sent up a silent prayer that this break in protocol didn’t lead to a similar disaster.
Taxiing to the terminal at LAX seemed to take as long as the flight, but finally the plane slowed, then stopped. A second before the engines died and the seatbelt tone went off, Petra was up and moving down the aisle, bag in hand. She got to within two rows of the front door before an overweight man in an ugly brown suit stood to open one of the overhead luggage compartments, blocking her way.
She glanced over her shoulder. Kolya hadn’t done as well as she had. The boy was strong and had some useful talents, but, like in Hong Kong, his youth often denied him the experience she desperately needed him to have.
A minute later Petra was walking rapidly through the concourse. Koyla caught up to her just as she reached the escalator to the baggage claim area. As they rode down, they both scanned the crowd standing near the bottom.
“There,” Koyla whispered, looking toward a man holding a sign that read PEGGY ROBERTS.
“You know what to do,” she said.
He nodded, then moved off the escalator in the direction of the nearest carousel.
Petra went to the left through the crowd, her eyes searching for any signs of trouble. They were so close. This had to be it. Here they would uncover the information they needed. She was sure of it.
She found a spot near a group of French tourists. They were slowly gathering their luggage and arguing about the location of the bus to their hotel. She watched as the throngs of recently arrived struggled with one another in attempts to locate their appropriate carousels, then secure spots where they could wait and silently hope their luggage would be the first to come down the chute.
Despite the size of the crowd, Petra did her best to check every face, sometimes taking in several people in one quick scan, sometimes lingering several seconds on a person who, for any number of reasons, required more attention.
The driver holding the ROBERTS sign continued to stand near the base of the escalators, his gaze flicking from one person to the next as passengers descended from the terminals above. He had the bored look of someone who had done this a thousand times before.
Kolya, on the other hand, looked anything but bored or inconspicuous. He had done as instructed, and was standing near one of the carousels, but he seemed more interested in the man with the ROBERTS sign than in the bags circling on the never-ending conveyor belt. The luggage was where his focus should have been, creating the illusion that he was just another generic member of the masses.
Petra swore under her breath, but knew there was little she could do. Kolya had not received the several years’ worth of training that she and Mikhail had. He was new to the art of deception, his only education coming sporadically when Petra or Mikhail found time for a little instruction.
Because of this, she had tried to minimize Kolya’s involvement, keeping him busy with the things he was good at, or at least could handle. Like driving or acting as communications point. Bringing him along on this trip to Los Angeles was taking a chance, she knew, but the alternative would have been to leave him with Mikhail in New York. And while Mikhail liked the kid well enough, his patience level with Kolya had dipped even lower than hers. If things got too involved, she could just stick Kolya in a motel room somewhere, as she had done when she and Mikhail had gone on their unsatisfying hunt for David Thomas.
No, not unsatisfying. Bitterly disappointing.
Mikhail had tracked down Thomas’s last known address to a house in Clifton, New Jersey. But they arrived to find the Englishman had been missing for a week.