The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(78)

“How did that happen?”

“A hit-and-run in Vegas. The car had been stolen two days earlier and was found at the bottom of a lake.”

“I’m sorry.”

“These men have not done the work they do for this long without being extremely good at it. If they’re in Seattle to clean up somebody’s mess, that’s exactly what they’ll do until they are stopped irrevocably and conclusively. They are motivated by money and money alone. They charge a very high fee but get the job done—whatever the job happens to be.”

“Thank you for this, Mr. Kamen. I’ll wait for the file.”

Kamen paused for a moment. “You speaking to Brown much?” he said.

“Some. Saw him, too.”

She didn’t know whether Kamen was aware of the failed test, and it wasn’t Madison’s truth to give.

“Keep an eye on him,” Kamen said.

“I will,” she replied.


Madison walked back into the small room. The detectives were silent. Through the glass, they watched Jennifer Takemoto sitting on the gray carpeted floor opposite Vincent, who stared straight at the detectives as if he could see them.

“Anything?” Madison whispered to Spencer.

He shook his head.

“We just got a break,” she said, and she motioned for them to join her in the corridor.





Chapter 35





Nathan Quinn sat on the edge of the bed in his hospital room and waited. The results would be ready soon: blood tests, MRSA swabs, what have you. In the last few hours he had been checked every which way—the partial splenectomy scar had been examined by the surgeon and judged “satisfactory within the parameters,” whatever that meant in the real world. And now, all being well, he would finally be discharged and allowed to go home. Dr. Toyne would have preferred to keep him in for another few days, but as long as he continued a steady increase of physical activity, there was no reason he could not finish his recovery at home.

He looked around the room. He wouldn’t miss being here; he wouldn’t miss the weeks spent attached to monitors and IV fluids. The only thing he would miss, among the depths of pain, was that the morphine had temporarily given David back to him in brief hallucinations had been as real to him as the soft satin bedspread under his fingers.

His bags were packed, and Carl Doyle would arrive anytime now. Soon Dr. Toyne would give him his blessing, and he would get to breathe fresh air for the first time since December. He was almost out of there; next it would be Jack’s turn.


Nathan Quinn left the hospital with very little fuss compared to his arrival there. He thanked the doctors and nurses who had managed to save his life every day for the first two weeks and was taken to the exit in a standard wheelchair. Outside, he stood up, and his skin tingled in the sudden chill: he felt weak and insubstantial in the February cold but also exhilarated—dangerously so. Given what he had survived, anything now seemed possible, and as the truth gradually revealed itself, Nathan Quinn felt he could almost reach into the past and wrap his hand around the throat of the man who had ordered the abduction of the boys.

All in good time, he thought, reminding himself that the doctor had said his energy and his moods would be “up and down like the tide” for the next few weeks and had suggested he speak to a counselor about the trauma of his injuries. They both knew that wasn’t going to happen, but the poor man had felt obliged to say it.

The chauffeur-driven Lexus pulled up to Quinn and Doyle, and Quinn was soon on his way home to Seward Park. He leaned back with his head against the seat and watched the city go past. A part of him hoped that the dangerous clarity he was experiencing was simply a consequence of all that his body and his mind had endured; a part of him knew that it might not be.


The ride home had been pleasant, because any time spent out of a hospital room would be, even a dreary car ride under overcast skies.

The house was a beautifully kept wood and stone building with a deck in the style common in the Pacific Northwest. The exterior paint had started as flinty gray, but rain and salt air had weathered it into washed-out pewter.

The driver brought his bags to the door as Quinn turned the key in the lock, and the alarm beeps told him he was finally home.

Doyle had been coming in once a week or so to keep an eye on things and check his mail; he had even stocked the fridge the last time he was there; nevertheless, when Quinn reached for the alarm box in the half gloom to punch in the code, the familiar gesture felt alien, and a gust of icy wind swept into the darkened house.

The driver left, and Doyle closed the door.

Quinn leaned on the walking stick in his right hand and took in the space he knew so well. He had expected to feel relief, and yet there was something not quite right. A long time in a space awash with chemical scents had left him very sensitive to the delicate balance of smells in his own home. There was something rancid and sour in the stale air, something that did not belong.