by Greg Cox
Go figure.
She sprinted after him, annoyed at having to blow her cover. Abandoning the crowded aisle, he cut across a large, open booth to the next row over. He knocked over a metal rack, spilling catalogs and flyers onto the carpet. An award-winning Argentinean poet yelped in fright. Parker vaulted over the obstacles strewn in her path. Way too many slow-moving people obstructed her progress. She cursed under her breath. With rare exceptions, she wasn’t a big fan of people. She didn’t have time to go around them.
So she took another route.
An ersatz marble archway, fashioned to resemble a Greek temple, marked the booth’s exit. Getting a running start, Parker leaped for the top of the arch. Her fingers caught hold and she swung up onto the top of the gate, nailing the landing like a gymnast. Seen from her new vantage point, the sprawling trade fair resembled a maze of interconnected booths divided by modular, prefabricated walls. Only the larger exhibits had roofs.
She ran nimbly along the tops of the walls, which were less than four inches in width. Compared to some of the skyscraper ledges she had traversed over the years, this was like a playground balance beam. And, best of all, she had the impromptu walkway all to herself.
All right, she thought. This is more like it.
Granted, her elevated detour wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. Baffled fairgoers shouted and pointed as she raced atop the booths, shaking the walls. Hardcovers and paperbacks toppled from their shelves. A four-foot gap appeared before her and she jumped it without missing a step. She flew over the heads of the strolling booksellers below.
“Holey moley!” Hardison exclaimed in her ear. “What the Ringling Brothers do you think you’re doing, girl?”
“You want me to catch this guy or not?” She glimpsed a security camera out of the corner of her eye. “Say, you can scrub all the video footage, right?”
He sighed wearily. “For you, sure.”
Maybe I should’ve kept the dog mask, she thought.
Doing her best to ignore the tumult her stunt was generating, she zeroed in on the lurker, whom she was quickly gaining on. He was almost to the far end of the hall, approaching the exit, when she jumped back down onto the floor, directly in front of him. She glared at him.
“That’s enough,” she said. “End of the road.”
He stared at her in fear and confusion. He backed up into an unattended information booth containing brochures on local restaurants, hotels, and attractions. She had him cornered.
“Wh-who are you?”
“Polly, the Perky Purple Pup,” she said ominously. “You’re coming with me.”
“No!” Panic was written all over his pasty face. “Leave me alone! I have every right to be here!”
“Tell it to my friends.”
Eliot would have punched him by now, but Parker had her own way of dealing with uncooperative individuals. She retrieved her favorite stun gun from a Velcro pouch on Polly’s belly. Twin electrodes waited to spark.
She grinned in anticipation.
She liked Tasering people. Maybe a little too much.
“Stay back!” the lurker shrieked. He looked around frantically, for help or maybe just a way out. But it looked like he was on his own. “You can’t do this!”
“Pretty sure I can.”
You could practically see the wheels spinning inside his head as he tried to think his way out of this. Inspiration dawned behind a really unflattering pair of glasses.
“Look!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “It’s J. K. Rowling!”
Who? Parker thought.
It was as though he had just offered free samples of the Crown Jewels to all comers. Suddenly everybody at the fair seemed to come charging toward them from all directions. Scores of people poured out of every booth and nearby aisle. A flood of bookish humanity swept over the hall, carrying the lurker away with them. Parker tried to keep him in sight, but there were too many pushy people, all excited about something. Parker shoved back against the turbulent mob. Somebody called her a “Muggle.”
“Hardison!” She cupped a hand over her ear to hear him over the chaos. She was tempted to clear a path through the mob with her Taser, but suspected that Nate wouldn’t approve. “Give me something!”
“Are you kidding, girl? It’s like trying to find Waldo at Woodstock. I can barely spot you in that crush.”
She couldn’t believe her ears. “You lost him? Seriously?”
“You try keeping track of one dude in the middle of Bookapalooza,” he said defensively. “FYI, your little circus act got the attention of the real security staff. They’re on their way and they don’t look happy. If I was you, I’d ditch what’s left of that doggy costume, pronto.”
“Way ahead of you.”
Diving headfirst into an empty information booth, she stripped out of the dog suit, revealing the black slacks and sweater she was wearing underneath. A pair of plain black glasses was tucked safely in a pocket. She slipped them on, and stuffed Polly into a shelf behind the counter, just as the guards arrived on the scene. They were red-faced and out of breath, as though they had run all the way. She stood up inside the booth, which helped to hide her bare feet.
“Excuse me, miss,” a guard asked her. “You see a crazy blonde in a purple costume?”
Who you calling crazy? She pointed randomly. “That way.” For a tense moment, she was acutely aware of her exposed saffron tresses, only to remember she was in Germany. Blondes were more common than bratwurst. “Some kind of wacky publicity stunt, I guess.” She feigned indignation. “The nerve!”
The guard took off on a wild pup chase. Parker calmly adjusted her glasses, put on a pair of slippers, and strolled away from the booth containing the remains of Polly.
Good riddance.
By now, the hordes of disappointed Rowling fans were beginning to disperse, but there was no sign of the lurker. He was in the wind and halfway to wherever by now. Parker frowned. After all that, she figured she deserved a break.
Maybe just one first edition?
| | | | | | FOUR | | | | | |
FRANKFURT
Hardison had christened his German van “Lilli.”
Back in the States, he usually worked out of a tricked-out van nicknamed “Lucille,” of which there had been a couple of incarnations. Shipping Lucille 3.0 all the way to Frankfurt had hardly been feasible, however, so he’d needed to acquire and equip a local version for this job. An impressive array of computers, monitors, communications equipment, and other sophisticated electronics was crammed into a silvery-gray Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. A portable refrigerator held several two-liter bottles of orange soda, aka hacking fuel. He munched on a bowl of gummy bears. At the moment, Lilli was parked on the top floor of the trade fair’s capacious parking garage. Tinted windows provided a necessary degree of privacy.
“Any sign of him?” Nate asked, leaning over Hardison’s shoulder.
“Nope, he’s long gone.” Hardison sat at his console in front of a half-dozen screens offering multiple views of the exhibition halls and grounds. The rest of the crew were packed into the van behind him, impinging on his personal space. “But I managed to capture a couple of good shots of him before Pottermania broke out.” A few deft strokes on the keyboard brought up multiple images of a furtive stranger fleeing across the hall. “That the same guy y’all were chasing?”
“That’s him,” Eliot confirmed, sounding even surlier than usual. He clearly wasn’t happy about the lurker eluding him. “Parker?”
“Looks like him.” She peered at the screens. “Unless he’s twins… or triplets!”
“Let’s not jump to that assumption just yet,” Nate advised. He turned toward Sophie. “And that’s definitely the same guy who was watching us at the bar back in Boston?”
“I think so,” she said. “What do you think this is about, Nate? Who is he?”
“No idea,” he confessed. “And I don’t like not knowing.”
Hardison knew the feeling. The last thing they needed
was an unknown third party snooping around in the middle of a complicated operation. Question marks meant danger in this racket. “You think we ought to call off this job, just to be safe?”
“No way,” Eliot said emphatically. “Denise is counting on us.”
“Whoa, man.” Hardison threw up his hands defensively. “I know Gavin was your bud, and this job is personal and all, but we’ve got one great big X factor running around loose. Who knows what Mr. Peepers is up to… or who he might be working for. Maybe we need to take a time-out while we figure out if we’ve got another target on our backs.”
“What about your fancy facial-recognition programs?” Eliot challenged him. “Can’t they tell us who this joker is?”
“Maybe, if he’s in the right databases.” Hardison selected the best close-up he could find of the lurker’s face and set the program to breaking down its biometric proportions. Green positioning dots isolated the nodal points on his face while sophisticated algorithms compiled a biometric face print based on various measurements, including the distance between the eyes and the width of his nose. Other quantifiable features included the shape of his jawline. “But that could take a while and there’s no guarantee that we’ll get a hit.” He turned away from the screens. “In the meantime, our bespectacled buddy there has the advantage on us.”
“I should have Tasered him,” Parker grumbled. She toyed with her stun gun in a way that made Hardison more than a little uneasy. “Right away, zap!”
“Well, Nate?” Sophie asked. “What’s the verdict? Are we pulling the plug?”
Nate thought it over. The mastermind behind the crew’s operations, he usually had the last word, whether the rest of them agreed or not. He took his time before answering.
“No,” he said finally. “We’re too far in. We back out now and we’ll never get a better chance to fix things for Denise.” He swept his gaze over the team, making eye contact with each of them. “We’ve been under surveillance before—by Latimer, Sterling, and others. That’s never stopped us from getting the job done. We’ll just have to be on the lookout for any unwelcome surprises… and watch each other’s backs. Even more than usual.”
“Okay, Nate,” Hardison said. To be honest, he, too, hated the idea of quitting, especially after all the effort he had put into getting everything set up for this job. “Just wanted to be the voice of reason this time around.”
Eliot snorted. “You? That’ll be the day.”
“Says the guy who likes to take on armed gunmen with his fists.” Hardison placed a hand over his heart, as though mortally wounded by his friend’s insinuation. “I’ll have you know I’m the very soul of prudence when it comes to avoiding unnecessary risks.”
“Uh-huh,” Eliot said. “And who came up with a phony treasure hunt so complicated that the marks caught on before we could lower the boom? And who had to get rescued from Russian mobsters because you couldn’t resist taking credit for Parker’s heists?”
Hardison shifted uncomfortably. “Okay, so I got carried away a couple of times…”
“A couple?” Eliot said. “Seems to me I recall hauling your butt out of the fire more times than a couple. Remember when—”
“I hacked into that plane’s electrical system and kept it from crashing with y’all aboard?” Hardison interrupted. “Why, yes, I do remember that, but no need to thank me. I was just doing what I do best, bro, like that time—”
“Enough of this,” Nate said, taking charge. “Let’s put our mystery man on the back burner for now and get back to Brad.” He glanced at Hardison. “He taken the bait yet?”
“Funny you should ask.” Hardison cleared the lurker from the screens and opened another program. “Looks to me like a certain greedy next of kin couldn’t wait to check out those sample chapters.”
He clicked his mouse and Brad Lee’s porcine countenance filled the central screen. Brad was leaning forward, like he was staring right at them. His flabby lips moved as he perused the bogus chapters. A messy hotel room could be glimpsed in the background. He burped loudly.
“Ugh,” Sophie said, recoiling. “How exactly are you doing this, Hardison?”
“Pure ingenuity.” He welcomed the chance to show off a little. “Not only did I electronically backdate the chapters to make them look as though they were written before Gavin’s death, but I also included a worm that’s letting me hijack Brad’s laptop, including its built-in webcam and mike, without him knowing. From now on, his own hardware is spying on him.”
Sophie shook her head. “You can do that?”
“Not just me,” he admitted. “This sort of spyware has been around for a few years now. Governments in the Middle East and elsewhere have been using it to monitor and crack down on dissidents.”
Sophie shuddered. “Remind me never to undress in front of my laptop again.”
“Oh, the laptop’s just the beginning,” Hardison bragged. “Now that I’m in the back door, I’ll have access to his home computer… and security system.”
That got Parker’s attention. “Nice.”
Her approval gave his ego a boost. He liked looking good in front of his girl.
“Not that I’d need any help breaking into his place,” she added. “Just saying.”
“Good job,” Nate said, doling out a rare tidbit of praise. As bosses went, he could be a tad distant and withholding. “Now we just have to hope that Brad will buy that those chapters were actually written by Gavin before he died.” He glanced over at Eliot. “You think they’re good enough?”
Eliot watched Brad read the counterfeit pages.
“They ought to be.”
A WEEK AGO:
“You can do this,” Eliot said. “You know Gavin’s characters and style better than anyone else.”
He and Denise were holed up in a hotel room in Boston, knocking out the bogus chapters. She sat before her keyboard, staring anxiously at the blank page on the screen while he pulled up a chair beside her. The remains of a room-service dinner waited to be put out in the hall. A fresh pot of coffee was percolating.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Positive. All we need is a couple of dummy chapters, just enough to fool Brad. Not an entire book.”
“Well, I appreciate you collaborating with me on this,” she said. “I can really use your technical expertise.”
“No problem,” he said. “Glad to be of assistance.”
For better or for worse, he knew more than most about shady dealings in dangerous hot spots. Prior to hooking up with Nate’s crew, he had worked as a soldier of fortune and “retrieval specialist” all over the planet, cracking heads and kicking butt everywhere from Myanmar to Syria. He had seen, and taken part in, some pretty brutal stuff over the years. There were times he wished he had never left his hometown.
“You have no idea,” she said. “I’m just a semi-employed office temp. Everything I know about spies and assassins I learned from Gavin’s book.”
Lucky you, Eliot thought. He barely remembered the innocent young soldier he had once been. There had been a lot of water under the bridge since then, most of it dirty. “So, you haven’t heard from this ‘Tarantula’ character since Gavin died?”
“Not a peep,” she said. “I wouldn’t know how to contact him if I wanted to. That’s the way Gavin wanted it. Said it was safer that way.”
Not for the first time, Eliot wondered who Gavin’s shadowy informant was. Maybe the guy who was watching Sophie back at the bar? Or some ruthless black-ops type Eliot might have crossed paths with before?
“Could be just as well,” he said. “Maybe Gavin knew what he was doing.”
Or perhaps he got himself killed.
He didn’t share this latter thought with Denise. She had enough to worry about right now, like getting the chapters finished before the book fair next week. Hardison was waiting to work his computer hoodoo on the files.
“Probably,” she agreed. “And the way things are going, I think I’m glad you’re helping
me and not some anonymous spook.” She gave him a grateful smile. “Seriously, I can’t thank you enough.”
They had been slaving away on the chapters all day now. So far they had worked well together, maybe too much so. As she leaned back in her chair and stretched, he couldn’t help admiring her striking features and graceful contours. The lustrous sheen of her red hair gleamed beneath the hotel lights. A tank top and skinny jeans displayed her athletic figure to advantage, but there was more to her than just her obvious good looks. Denise had turned out to be just as smart and appealing as Gavin had said in his letters and emails. She was good company, despite an understandable air of sadness haunting her, and they had clicked right away. He was acutely aware of her physical presence, only a few inches away. If she wasn’t his dead friend’s girl …
Guilt pricked his conscience.
“Hey, anything for Gavin, you know.”
“It just feels so strange doing this without him. When I think of all the hours we spent poring over every chapter, the endless edits and revisions…” She choked up, unable to finish. “I don’t think I could do this alone.”
“You don’t have to.” He reached out to pat her shoulder, but thought better of it. He got up and poured her a fresh cup of coffee instead. “Now, how about we get going on Chapter Two?”
“Okay.” She reached over and squeezed his hand.
Three hours later, they had a decent first draft in hand. He gave it another read while Denise paced expectantly behind him, awaiting his response. “Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”
“Works for me,” he said. “You did a really good job of impersonating Gavin’s style.”
“You think so?” she asked, a bit nervously.
“It’s a very distinctive style.”
| | | | | | FIVE | | | | | |
LONG ISLAND
“Get on with it, Parker,” Nate said.
“In a second,” she replied. “Just one more page.”
She was hanging upside down from a crystal chandelier twenty feet above the foyer of Brad’s opulent Long Island mansion, reading Assassins Never Forget on the screen of her phone. It was after midnight and all the lights were off, but she could easily read the text on the illuminated screen. Brad had turned in hours ago, after a long night of Internet porn and gambling, often at the same time.
