[Quinn 04] - The Silenced

There was a sound from deep in the apartment. Quinn pointed at his ear, then at the opening, telling Nate someone was inside. Standing up, he pushed the door open several more inches and slipped through the gap.

A small entryway led into a living room. He eased to the end of the foyer and peered around the corner. The living room contained a mishmash of furniture. A cloth-covered couch, a matching chair, an ornate coffee table, and two bookcases filled but not overstuffed.

Quinn glanced at the metal-framed windows, half covered by white sheer curtains. Through them he could see the building across the street.

Everything within his view looked normal. So normal, in fact, that he began to doubt himself. Perhaps Liz had made the sound. Perhaps there was another explanation for the scratch. Perhaps she had left her door unlocked by accident, or maybe she was expecting someone. Perhaps she was only seconds away from walking into the living room and seeing him standing there.

Then what?

Before he could retrace his steps, he heard a drawer being yanked out, then slammed back into place. It had come from the left, toward the bedroom.

Quinn slipped his backpack off his shoulders and placed it on the floor in the entryway. He motioned for Nate to come inside and wait by the door. Once his apprentice was in position, Quinn crossed the living room, stepping carefully so as not to cause any of the floorboards beneath the carpet to creak. If it was Liz in the bedroom, he could sneak back out. If it wasn’t, he’d let his instincts take over.

At the hallway, he paused again. Like elsewhere in the apartment, the lights were off. Would his sister be moving around in the semidarkness?

The hallway was only five feet long. At the other end, an open door led into the bathroom. To the right, another door, also open, led to the bedroom.

From his position he could only see a narrow swath of the room, from the middle of the bed to the wall on the other side. It was dim, but not dark.

Another drawer yanked open.

Unconsciously, Quinn’s hand moved toward where his gun would have been if he’d had one. He stopped himself halfway there, annoyed.

He scanned the surrounding area for anything he could use as a weapon. A paperweight, a letter opener, or even an ashtray—though he would have given Liz hell about that later if he’d found one. But he saw nothing he could use.

In the bedroom, the drawer moved back into place, this time with less force. Then the floor creaked. Once, twice, a third time, each wooden groan moving closer to the doorway.

Quinn pressed himself against the wall just inside the living room.

Another creak. This time in the hallway, not the bedroom.

He tensed, ready to move, but instead of heading toward the living room, the unseen person entered the bathroom.

A sudden splash of illumination spilled into the hall as the bathroom light came on. Quinn could hear the person going through the cabinet and drawers. Then there was the thunk of porcelain, and a second later the sound of water hitting water. From a distance.

Definitely not Liz.

The intruder was male.

Quinn moved into the hallway, anger bubbling just below the surface of his skin at this intrusion on his sister’s life.

When he reached the bathroom, he peeked between the door and the jamb. Two feet on the other side was the back right shoulder of a large man in a dark coat. Quinn estimated the guy was at least six foot three. His hair was covered by the kind of stocking cap favored by the reggae set from the seventies and eighties—loose and baggy, falling against the nape of his neck. The man was staring at the wall above the toilet in the time-honored tradition of males around the world.

The torrent of water began to slow, then finally stop. After a last push to clean out the pipes, the man bent down to zip himself up.

Without another thought, Quinn slammed the door into the man’s back.

A pained grunt was followed by the sound of the porcelain lid to the toilet’s water tank being jarred loose.

Quinn slammed again, harder.

Another grunt.

As he was about to go for a third time, the door smashed back into him, sending him flying against the door frame. His left arm flailed out, looking for something solid to hold on to, but found only the light switch and inadvertently flipped it off, plunging the room into darkness.

The intruder roared as he tried to get around the door. But the cramped space and his massive size slowed his efforts. When he finally shoved past it, Quinn unleashed a right hook to his jaw.

“Merde!” the man yelled.

Quinn hit him again, this time in the soft spot just below the ribs. The intruder doubled over, and Quinn grabbed him by the shoulders, pulling him out into the hall.

The man stumbled for a few feet, then fell to his knees. Quinn jumped on his back, pushing him all the way to the ground, then began releasing punch after punch to the man’s kidneys and ribs.

Suddenly someone grabbed his arm. It was Nate.