[Quinn 01] - The Cleaner

'Never use your real name, first or last,' Nate said. 'Never talk if I've been told not to. Never visit the scene of an operation unless supervised.' He paused for a moment, then added, 'And never show any initiative unless you tell me I should.'

'You're right. You are smart. Someday you can show all the initiative you want. Someday, your life will depend on it. But now?'

'Both our lives depend on what you decided,' Nate said, repeating a maxim Quinn had been drilling into him since Nate's first day on the job.

Before Quinn could say anything further, his cell

phone rang. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly midnight. Quinn walked over to the end table and picked the phone up from where he'd left it.

'Hello?' he said.

'I need you in D. C It was Peter.

'You're working late.'

'Look, we've got a big operation gearing up and it looks like we could use your help. This is top priority.'

'Something to do with our friend in Colorado?'

'At this point, the details are not your concern. You'll be briefed when you arrive. I have you booked on a plane leaving at seven in the morning. I've e-mailed you the details.'

'I think we've missed a step here. I don't actually work for you. You need to ask me first. We call this the job offer.'

'Technically, you're still on the payroll.'

Quinn's eyes narrowed. Peter was referring to his two-week minimum on the Taggert job, of which Quinn had only really used two days. But there was an unwritten rule that the minimum applied only to the specific job he was hired for. Peter was stretching things.

Apparently taking Quinn's silence for acceptance, Peter said, 'I'll see you in the afternoon.' The line went dead.

'What's up?' Nate asked as Quinn put the phone back down.

Quinn told him the basics, the whole time thinking he definitely had to reconsider the workingfor-one-client thing.

'You're going, then?' Nate asked.

'Yeah.' Quinn drained his drink. 'I'm going.' He glanced over at Nate, who was smiling at Quinn's annoyance. 'And you're driving me to the airport.'

'Come on,' Nate said, his smile gone. 'I just want to go home and go to bed.' 'Sleep on the couch,' Quinn told him. 'We leave at five a.m.'

Quinn was deep in a world of nothingness when he felt a distant shaking. It was accompanied by a voice. 'Quinn. Wake up.'

Quinn pushed himself up, immediately awake. Nate was leaning down beside him, next to the bed. 'What?' Quinn asked.

'Your security alarm just went off,' Nate said, his voice an urgent whisper. 'I think someone's outside.'

Security alarm? Quinn should have heard it. He had an auxiliary panel right in his room.

Getting out of bed, he went to the panel on the wall. A red light was blinking. It was then he realized the throbbing he felt in his head wasn't throbbing at all. It was the low-level pulsing tone of the alarm. He hadn't slept well in Colorado, and the day of investigating and traveling had been a long one. Now that he was home, he'd fallen asleep so deeply the alarm hadn't even registered on him. Sloppy, Quinn, he thought. Really, really sloppy.

'Did you check the monitor upstairs?' Quinn asked. Nate nodded. 'It says, "Rear Fence Breach." I

pulled up the backyard camera, but I didn't see anything. You think it might be a cat or something?'

'Doubtful,' Quinn said. The system had been adjusted to ignore anything so small. 'What time is it?'

'Almost three.'

Quinn needed to go upstairs and check the security monitor himself. He'd been meaning to install an additional screen in his bedroom, but hadn't got around to it yet.

'Are you armed?' Quinn asked.

Nate raised his right hand. In it was a Walther P99 9mm pistol. Quinn's own SIG 9mm was sitting in his safe upstairs in the living room.

Quinn pulled on the pair of black sweatpants he always kept sitting on top of his dresser, then headed for the stairs. When he reached the top, he stopped to listen.

Silence.

The only light in the house came from the muted, flickering television in the living room and from the gibbous moon filtering through the back windows. Otherwise, the entire upper floor was dark.

Quinn padded over to the security panel near the front door and touched the upper right corner of the screen with his left thumb, bringing the monitor to life. The first thing he did was turn the alarm off. Then, in quick succession, he worked through the feeds from the cameras that kept watch over his property. There was no one in the backyard – not by the back fence nor against the house. If someone had hopped the fence, it would be recorded on the system's hard drive. Quinn could go back and review it later if he needed to.

Nate was watching from over his shoulder. 'Maybe it was just a cat,' he suggested.

'Maybe.'

Quinn switched to a view of the front, then tapped the monitor again, zooming the camera in for a tight shot of his house. He began a pan from left to right, moving the camera slowly so that he wouldn't miss anything. About two thirds of the way across he stopped and studied the monitor.