Shadow of Betrayal

“Not exactly nothing,” Chang said. “There is another camera. Parking lot security. Whatever type of jammer they were using, it looks like it had to be within thirty feet or so of a camera for it to work.”

“So you got them on the parking lot camera?”

“Yes. It’s from a distance, and not very clear, but it’s something.”

“Send it to me.”

“Should be in your email now.”

“Thanks,” Tucker said, then hung up.

His laptop was in a shoulder bag next to his desk. He pulled it out and booted it up. Mr. Rose’s technicians had installed a wireless system that worked throughout the facility, so as soon as his desktop appeared, he activated his email. The message from Chang was there, complete with two attachments. He highlighted both and opened them.

The first showed a grainy nighttime shot of a parking lot. There were dozens of cars parked in neat rows. Though the photo was black-and-white, he thought one of the cars parked next to the motel building looked very much like the car he had followed in Montreal. Beside it were three people. The two closest had their backs to the camera and were opening the doors on the passenger side of the vehicle. One was the woman. She was short and thin, but other than that she was unidentifiable. On the other side, facing the camera, was the second man. But his head was lowered in preparation to climb into the car, leaving only the top visible. He could have been anywhere from eighteen to sixty.

Tucker brought the second image forward. Same angle only a few seconds later, he guessed. The woman who had been climbing into the back seat was just a shape through the rear window now. The driver had also disappeared.

But the man who’d been getting into the front passenger seat was still there. It looked like he was just about to slide in, but in doing so he had turned and given the camera his profile.

Tucker leaned in toward the computer screen. There was something about the man. Something familiar.

He knew if he just concentrated for a minute, it would come to him. He switched back to the first shot, looking at the man’s back. Nothing special there. Lean, but not thin. A little under six feet tall. He looked strong—not rippling-muscle strong, but useful strong. Like he was the kind of guy who could do a lot of things.

Tucker clicked on the second picture. It confirmed what he’d seen in the first. A man of action. He flipped between the photos, letting the images dance on the screen in front of him.

Back.

Profile.

Back.

Profile.

Back.

Profile.

Stop.

All of a sudden he was remembering snow. Not the snow that capped the peaks just outside the entrance to Yellowhammer. German snow. Berlin snow.

Jonathan Quinn.

That’s who he was looking at. Jonathan-fucking-Quinn. Tucker had last seen him on a sidewalk in Tiergarten in the middle of Berlin almost a year and a half earlier. They’d made a deal. Tucker had given up his boss’s whereabouts, and Quinn had let him walk away alive.

Jonathan Quinn. Goddammit.

He looked back at the first picture, this time concentrating on the woman getting into the back seat. Like before, he could only see her back, but now that he knew what to look for, her hair and her height gave her away.

Dark, probably black, and a little longer than it had been in Berlin. As for her height, she didn’t even look like she cleared the top of the Jetta.

Orlando. She’d been on that sidewalk with Quinn and Tucker. There had been murder in her eyes. His murder if she had had her way. Couldn’t really blame her. He’d been involved in the abduction of her son, after all. But a deal was a deal, and Quinn had made her keep it.

If Tucker’s and Quinn’s roles had been reversed, he wasn’t so sure he would have been as honorable as the cleaner had been. Honor, he knew, was mostly bullshit anyway.

The other man had to be Quinn’s assistant. What the fuck was his name? Tucker realized he wasn’t sure he had ever heard it. Didn’t matter anyway. Quinn was the important one.

But in reality, their presence didn’t change anything. Tucker seriously doubted Quinn and his team even knew about Yellowhammer. How could they? Even if they had been able to get to Marion and talk to her, they would have learned nothing, because she knew nothing. Tucker was sure of that now. He believed her story about the African girl. Playing the part of the good Samaritan, she had unintentionally gotten in the way. That had been all there was to it.

They’d been hunting her not so much to get the child back, but because they were worried she’d known more than she did. She’d been a potential leak that needed to be stopped. Tucker’s fault, really. He knew that. The army colonel he’d hired in Côte d’Ivoire had been too heavy-handed. Tucker had told him a less direct approach was best. Fewer questions that way. And much more cooperation. But the man had gone in with a whole squad, acting all tough and demanding. Stupid.