Double Play (Nadia Stafford 3.5)

What the fuck? He'd heard the line connect, hadn't he?

No, he'd heard a click and jumped on it, like a fifteen-year-old calling his crush, praying she'd answer.

A third ring.

He frowned. Nadia never let it ring more than twice.

Yeah, actually, she did . . . if she wasn't there to answer. It had only happened a couple of times before, but it had happened. Once, she'd been putting out a fire--an actual fire. Some moronic guest decided it was a little chilly by the lake and started a blaze he couldn't control. The other time, it'd been a failure of technology.

A fourth ring.

Fuck.

Five.

Jack hung up. Then he paused, his finger over the redial. That was against the rules. His rules, for Nadia's safety. One call per day at the arranged time. If he couldn't place that call or she couldn't answer, then they waited until the next morning.

Still, his finger hovered over the button. The click suggested it just might not have gone through. Another tech-fail. And if he didn't call, she'd worry.

All valid excuses. Which were exactly that: excuses. He put these rules in place to protect her, and the moment he started making exceptions, he'd never stop. Setting limits and sticking to them was the price he paid for his past, and it was a small price, all things considered.

He pocketed the phone, made one last loop around the roof, checking out the scene for tomorrow's meeting. Then he headed down to find something he could tell Nadia tomorrow. Something interesting.

3 - Nadia

No call from Jack, and as much as I knew it almost certainly meant nothing, I couldn't help fearing the worst. I always did. But now I had Diaz standing there, telling me Quinn was missing and that was a big deal.

As a federal agent, Quinn cannot just "take off." When he does a job for Contrapasso out of driving distance, he has to take vacation time and use Felix's gadgets to reroute his calls. Hellishly complicated, which is one reason why, like me, he doesn't pull more than a couple of hits a year.

"Where's he supposed to be?" I asked Diaz.

"On Thursday he was teaching in DC. After that, he'd booked a long weekend."

"He was on a job, then. For you guys?"

Diaz shook his head. "I know he was working something--he has to run all moonlighting past us. He was supposed to call in and talk to us yesterday on a separate matter. He didn't, and we couldn't get in touch. That's when we checked out his tracker. We aren't getting a signal."

Contrapasso implanted trackers in their operatives . . . usually without them knowing it. Luckily, Quinn discovered that before signing on, so he'd refused the implant. Instead, he'd agreed to an external one, attached with waterproof tape. At the time, I'd wholeheartedly agreed with that. Now, though? Now I was realizing the advantage to the implant. If Quinn had it, Diaz and I wouldn't need this conversation.

"Let me go warn my housekeeper I'm busy," I said. "I'll meet you at the gazebo. Head for the lake. Big body of water--you can't miss it."

When I reached the gazebo, I turned the heater on low and served coffee and cinnamon buns.

"So what are you doing on my doorstep?" I aske

d. "If Quinn's missing, I want in on the search, obviously. But telephones work, even up here."

"Your name was on his calendar for Friday morning, along with a flight confirmation number. We thought maybe that's why he'd taken a long weekend, and that he'd just forgotten our call Saturday."

"And the tracker?"

"Either it coincidentally died or he removed it temporarily, not wanting anyone to know where he'd gone, which considering . . ." He cleared his throat. "I know you two had a romantic attachment and that Quinn is convinced your relationship with Jack is . . . temporary."

"So you thought he snuck up here because we're screwing around behind Jack's back?"

"I had to consider that. Or simply that he was attempting to change your mind."

Quinn and I were still friends. Would he come out here unannounced? He can be impulsive, and if he got it into his head that he could fix this "Jack nonsense" by talking to me face to face, he might very well hop on a plane. I highly doubted it, though. Not while Jack was here.