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But he knew he didn’t actually need to hide behind anything. If he went far enough in and kept near the wall, the darkness would be enough to conceal his presence. He began moving away from the door, careful not to step on any of the trash that was scattered around. As he did, he lowered the zipper on his coveralls enough to pull his gun from its shoulder holster. It was his standard SIG Sauer P226. From one of the pockets, he removed a suppressor, and attached it to the end of the barrel.
    After he’d gone twenty feet, he stepped against the wall and stopped.
    He could hear footsteps. Soft, with no pattern. Whoever was in the hallway was taking a step or two, stopping, then starting again. Cautious.
    Quinn rested his gun against his thigh as he tried to picture what the other person was doing. Whoever it was had to have at least seen Quinn and Nate put the package into the back of the van. There was a good chance he had seen the operations team leave, too.
    If this person was not here by chance, then the only way he could have found the warehouse was by following the ops team in. Quinn was the one who had secured the building, the one who had informed the operations team where it was after they were already en route. No one other than Nate knew about the location, and they had arrived together, without being followed.
    But whatever the reason the intruder was here, he was only one thing to Quinn—a problem.
    Quinn’s job was to cover up the crime scene, and make it so no one would know what had gone down. Sometimes that meant misdirecting someone who’d strayed dangerously close to the job site.
    But this was different. Here was a person who obviously knew that something had happened. By now the still-potent smells emanating from the op room were acting as a guide, drawing the intruder forward. The question was, what should Quinn do about it? Killing was not a normal component of his job.
    In the hallway, the steps stopped right outside the door to the big room.
    Quinn raised his gun and aimed it along the wall.
    A dark shape leaned through the doorway into the room.
    Not a man, Quinn realized. A woman.
    She was maybe five-five or five-six. Age, hair, skin tone, all impossible to tell due to the lack of light.
    She hung in the doorway, unmoving and patient. She was good. If someone other than Quinn had been the one hiding, he might have made a move by now, alerting the woman to his presence.
    So was she a direct threat or not? If yes, all he had to do was pull the trigger and she would be dead. But that would create another mess that would need to be cleaned up, this one without the benefit of any pre-placed plastic. And for all Quinn knew, she might not be alone. A successful cleanup was obtained through knowledge and planning. He had neither with this woman. Who knew what chain of events her death would set off?
    Until he saw a gun in her hand moving in his direction, he would wait and observe. Without shifting the SIG, he removed his finger from the trigger.
    The woman stood in the doorway a few seconds longer, then disappeared back into the hallway. As Quinn lowered his gun, he could hear her steps moving toward the op room.
    Quietly, he made his way back to the door, stopping just short of the jamb. The woman continued down the hall away from him, still unaware of his presence. As soon as he was sure she’d entered the op room, he headed for the rear exit.
    When he reached it, he checked back down the hallway, then stepped outside.
    It was another ten minutes before the intruder exited the building. Quinn watched her from behind a couple of old weather-beaten signs. She moved with caution, but not as much as she’d used entering the building. Quinn could now see she was Caucasian, in decent shape, and probably about ten years older than he was.
    He waited until she had rounded the side of the building out of sight, then crept out from behind the signs. The woman only had two choices: return to the back of the