“Freaking fudge!” Kate said. “Damn. Mother fornicator.”
She scrambled to her feet and limped into the short hall that led to the master suite. Smoke was spilling out from under the closed and locked mahogany doors. Kate kicked the doors open, saw the scorched wall and the blown-open safe, and knew why Nick had planned a finale of fireworks. It was genius, Kate thought. You had to admire the man’s style.
French doors opened off the master suite onto a balcony on which Kate could see Nick Fox facing her. He was sitting on the four-foot-high masonry balcony wall, his back to the city skyline. He smiled at Kate and gestured to her shirt.
“I see you tried the canapés,” he said. “I made them myself.”
Kate looked down at her splattered jacket and shirt, swiped up a glob of green and white goo and tasted it.
“Avocado and spinach dip,” she said. “Needs salt.”
“You’ll have to let me cook you dinner sometime.”
“I’ll pass on that. I’m not crazy about prison ingredients.”
“Neither am I.” He glanced over his shoulder at the twenty-story drop to the ground.
Kate didn’t like what the glance implied. “Don’t do it, Nick.”
“Would you miss me?”
“Yes!”
“How much would you miss me?” he asked her. “A lot?”
“Don’t push it.”
“Admit it, deep down inside you like me. You think I’m cute.”
Kate narrowed her eyes. “Are you going to jump, or what?”
Nick smiled, sent her a little wave, swung his legs over the wall, and disappeared from view.
Kate felt her heart give a painful contraction. “No!” she shouted. “You idiot! I didn’t really want you to jump!”
She crossed the balcony to the wall and peered over at Nick in time to see his customized handheld parachute open. She watched him for a minute as he glided toward the skyscraper canyons of downtown Chicago, ate a meatball that was stuck to her jacket, and then called Gunter. Next in line was a call to Jessup.
“I tried calling you,” Jessup said, “but you weren’t picking up.”
Kate filled him in. “Gunter is coordinating a chase with cooperating local law enforcement,” she said.
“If you need help with follow-up, I can send someone,” Jessup said. “Cosmo, maybe.”
“No! Not Cosmo.”
The FBI, the Chicago Police Department, and the Cook County Sheriff’s Office all put choppers in the air, but they couldn’t find any sign of Nick or his parachute. Kate led a search of the surrounding neighborhood, but she knew it was futile. There was too much ground to cover, and Nick had a head start. So she armed a bunch of agents with copies of The Complete Directory of Episodic Television Shows and sent them off to look for TV characters trying to leave town by planes, trains, or automobiles.
Somehow all of Nick’s crew had managed to slip out of the building, but a third of the golden idols were left behind on the loading dock, so it wasn’t a complete loss. And Kate had the satisfaction of knowing that her instincts had been 100 percent right.
She straggled back to her hotel just as the sun was coming up. She was exhausted, and done with smelling like cocktail meatballs. She wanted to shuck her food-stained clothes, take a hot shower, and wash the spinach dip out of her hair.
She unlocked her door, stepped into the room, and froze. There were Toblerone wrappers on the bed, room service dishes on the table, a bouquet of roses, and an unopened bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket of ice. Her first thought in her sleep-deprived state was that she’d walked into the wrong room. She was about to double-check the number on the door when she realized that a pink handkerchief was tied like a ribbon around the champagne bottle. She’d seen the handkerchief before … in the breast pocket of Nick’s white tuxedo.
Un-freaking-believable, she thought. While she’d been dragging her butt all over town looking for him, the jerk had been in her room ordering room service and raiding her minibar. She had to give credit where credit was due. The man had Volkswagen-size cojones. Really big brass ones.
She drew her gun and looked under the bed, in the closet, and in the bathroom. No Nick. But he’d for sure been there. She sat on her bed and plucked a card off her pillow. In a masculine scrawl she’d come to recognize, Nick Fox had written Looking forward to next time.
Don’t miss the new blockbuster series from #1 New York Times bestselling author
and bestselling author
LEE GOLDBERG
featuring Kate O’Hare, an FBI agent who always gets her man, and Nicolas Fox, a fearless con artist who lives for the chase.
Visit Evanovich.com for updates, excerpts, and much more!
BY JANET EVANOVICH
THE STEPHANIE PLUM NOVELS
One for the Money
Two for the Dough
Three to Get Deadly
Four to Score
High Five
Hot Six
Seven Up
Hard Eight
To the Nines
Ten Big Ones
Eleven on Top
Twelve Sharp
Lean Mean Thirteen
Fearless Fourteen
Finger Lickin’ Fifteen
Sizzling Sixteen
Smokin’ Seventeen
Explosive Eighteen
Notorious Nineteen
Takedown Twenty
Top Secret Twenty-One
THE FOX AND O’HARE NOVELS
with Lee Goldberg
The Heist
The Chase
THE BETWEEN THE NUMBERS STORIES
Visions of Sugar Plums
Plum Lovin’
Plum Lucky
Plum Spooky
THE LIZZY AND DIESEL NOVELS
Wicked Appetite
Wicked Business
THE ALEXANDRA BARNABY NOVELS
Metro Girl
Motor Mouth
Trouble Maker (graphic novel)
NONFICTION
How I Write
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JANET EVANOVICH is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Stephanie Plum series, the Fox and O’Hare series with co-author Lee Goldberg, the Lizzy and Diesel series, twelve romance novels, the Alexandra Barnaby novels and Trouble Maker graphic novel, and How I Write: Secrets of a Bestselling Author.
www.evanovich.com
Facebook.com/JanetEvanovich
@JanetEvanovich
Top Secret Twenty-One Page 25
