Wild Justice

CHAPTER 30

We were back at the hotel two hours after we left it. Evelyn and Quinn were still in our room. Evelyn had news.

“Dee,” she said before I even got my shoes off. “You’re the literary expert here.”

“Um, no. I’ve taken a couple of courses—”

“Then let’s try a pop quiz.” She plunked a hotel notepad in front of me. “What does this mean?”

Three words were written on the paper. Inferno. Purgatorio. Paradiso.

She knew the answer. She was amusing herself. Jack would shove the paper back at her and refuse to play along.

“It’s the three books of the Divine Comedy,” I said. “Is that what IPP stands for? A little obscure for a shell company, isn’t it?”

She smiled smugly. “That depends on who sets it up. It was used to hide the rental of a vehicle involved in a murder. Given those intrusion worms, it’s a company that’s very interested in security. A company presumably involved in criminal activities and quite fond of Dante.”

I looked at her and said nothing.

“Really?” she said. “If you can’t guess, Dee—”

“Oh, I can guess. But if you’re telling me what I think you’re telling me, then I’m not sure I trust the source.”

Quinn glanced over, confused.

Jack said, “She’s right. Helluva coincidence.”

“Well, then, it’s a helluva coincidence,” she said. “Dee’s life is in danger, and I would never use that to further my own agenda.”

“No?” Jack said.

Evelyn’s eyes blazed. “No, Jack. I would not.”

“What’s going on?” Quinn said.

Evelyn opened her mouth, but I beat her to it. “She’s saying that IPP is a shell company for . . .”

I glanced at Jack. He dipped his chin, telling me to go on. There was nothing else to be done, no matter how awkward this was about to get.

“For the Contrapasso Fellowship,” I said.

“The what?”

“It’s—”

“I know what it is,” Quinn said. “But it’s not real. Believe me, I’ve gone looking, like I told you . . .” He studied my expression. “It is real. And you knew that. When I told you a few months ago that I checked into it and you said . . .”

Yep, wouldn’t it be cool if the Contrapasso Fellowship was real? Too bad it isn’t.

“Not her fault,” Jack said. “Evelyn’s.”

“Excuse me?” Evelyn said.

Jack gave her a hard look, one that said, You owe us and you’ll go along with whatever I say to fix this particular mess.

“Evelyn had a lead on it,” Jack said. “Wanted to track it down. For Dee. We didn’t believe her. Just wooing a student.”

“You mean that Evelyn offered to find the Contrapasso Fellowship for Dee. When Dee wasn’t interested, no one”—his gaze met mine—“said I might be.”

“Dee did,” Evelyn said. “And I chose not to pursue it. I won’t apologize for that, Quinn. I don’t know you as well as I know her, and you aren’t—”

“—the one who interests you,” he finished.

Which was true, but Evelyn had the grace to soften it by saying, “You aren’t in the market for a mentor and even if you were, we’d be a poor fit.”

“Dee’s not in the market, either,” Quinn said. “She’s got . . .” A thumb-hook in Jack’s direction.

“I believe I could add to her education,” Evelyn said.

Jack had a rebuttal to that, and Evelyn had one to his. They argued—diverting Quinn’s attention.

What they’d said about the Contrapasso situation was close to the truth. I had suggested she take the offer to Quinn, and she’d refused. I’d chosen not to tell Quinn because I knew it was useless—Evelyn wouldn’t help him get in the club.

“So you think IPP is a shell company for the Contrapasso Fellowship,” I said when Jack and Evelyn finished sparring.

“One of my contacts had heard the rumor, and I followed it up with my Contrapasso contact, who confirmed it. IPP is Contrapasso. The man who killed Drew Aldrich was driving a car rented by them. The hit must have been theirs.”

I thought about that. “Presumably, then, they’d been on Aldrich for a while. They set that guy on him, probably pretending he was interested in teenage girls, too. Then Aldrich sees me, calls his new buddy in a panic, and the Fellowship steps up their game. Pulls the hit. Leaves the suicide note to get justice for at least one victim.”

“Only to turn around and order a hit on the other girl he kidnapped?” Quinn said. “That doesn’t make sense. If you believe in justice, you don’t kill victims.”

“Depends on the victim,” Jack said. “What they think she saw.”

“You think they might have made me at the scene,” I said. “That the killer had backup who spotted me coming or going. Or a cleanup crew that went in later and found something.”

“We were careful. Covered our tracks. But didn’t know the situation. Anything’s possible. These guys? Better equipped. Better connected. Better organized.”

“So Aldrich says he thinks he saw me, and they find a sign that someone else was at Aldrich’s townhouse. They don’t want to handle it themselves because that’s not their mandate. They need to distance themselves from the hit. So they hire Roland to send a pro, confirm Aldrich saw me and if so, get rid of the problem.”

Quinn shook his head. “I’m not buying it. These guys aren’t going to put out a hit on a victim, no matter what she saw.”

“No?” Jack said. “If it endangers them? Sure they are.”

“Your faith in humanity is overwhelming.”

Jack snorted. “Fuck faith. They get caught? Whole system goes down. Won’t risk that.”

“So if some innocent bystander sees a hit, it’s okay to off them, too? Is that how it works in your world, Jack?”

“Not talking about me.”

“Why not?”

“Irrelevant.”

“I don’t think it is. Have you ever done this? Killed an innocent bystander to protect yourself? Because that’s not someone—”

“Not someone you want to work with? Bullshit. You already think I would. Think you know what I am. What I’ve done. What I’d do. Pretty fucking hard for me to sink lower. Not talking about a pro offing a bystander anyway. This is an organization. Risk is bigger. Stakes are higher.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “The risk seems low. It might be worth it to kill one witness if she endangers the organization, but the fact they hired Roland could suggest it’s not the Contrapasso Fellowship ordering the hit. It could be one member whose concern for himself outweighs his concern for victims and innocent bystanders.”

“That I’ll buy,” Quinn said. “Someone orders the hit without group approval. So what’s the next step? Evelyn has a contact, right? If she can still get Dee an interview—”

“Yes, that’d be the best plan,” Evelyn said. “Let Dee gather information from the inside, while giving her a chance to see if she’s interested in what the Fellowship has to offer. Two birds with one stone.”

“Um, you’re suggesting sending me into a group that might have a bounty on my head?”

“We’ll use a disguise. A very good disguise. And, as you and Quinn have reasoned, it’s unlikely the group itself—”

“No,” Jack said.

Evelyn looked at him.

“Absolutely fucking not,” he said.

“I believe Dee is quite capable of making her own decision.”

“Yes, she is,” I said. “And she says absolutely fucking not. The solution is obvious. You set up the interview for Quinn. He’s perfect. He can go in as himself—well, his Quinn self. He’s already got the professional reputation for doing exactly the kind of work the society undertakes. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a file on him as a potential recruit.”

“They don’t recruit.”

“Then I bet they still have that file, in hopes he figures out how to contact them.”

“Dee’s right,” Jack said. “Quinn’s a lousy actor. But this isn’t acting. He is interested. He likes it? He can sign up. He brings us what we need for Dee’s problem. We handle it. No connection to him.”

Evelyn grumbled, but it was the perfect solution and ultimately she had no choice but to make the call. The Boy Scout was about to apply for membership in the Contrapasso Fellowship.

Evelyn’s contact at Contrapasso worked fast—I suspect Evelyn had carried on laying the groundwork for an eventual interview for me. Whatever she’d told them likely fit Quinn, too, since she wouldn’t have mentioned my gender. Now that she’d given them the professional name of this potential recruit, she’d gotten a call back within the hour. They wanted to meet Quinn. The interview was set for first thing tomorrow morning in New York.

Quinn left the moment we suspected an interview was forthcoming. He was going to swing by the office in Virginia first, putting in an appearance, which would help if he needed more time off.

Evelyn left as soon as that interview was confirmed. She’d fly to New York, where she’d meet Quinn first thing in the morning and support him through the interview process. And me? Jack and I were going back to the lodge. The Shannon Broadhurst lead had been a dead end, and it looked as if Aldrich’s killer came from a whole other direction, unconnected to our “like-minded friend” theory. There was nothing for us to do but wait.