Pimpernel

by Sheralyn Pratt

Or so Margot claimed.

  So many things could go wrong. The list was close to endless.

  What if the dome camera didn’t really fail?

  What if the pocket drive containing her half of the video was somehow incompatible and didn’t load or play?

  What if the partner knew her body language well enough to notice she was acting weird?

  What if…what if…what if… The noise those words made in her mind was deafening, but she had to block them out with Margot’s stern advice and focus her mind on the task at hand.

  First, take a seat and wake up the computer: Done.

  Second, trust that the dome camera was now giving an error message to Mr. SUV and place the USB into the drive: Done.

  Third, establish a link with the fake investor using the private connection: Done.

  He was South Korean. Perfect.

  Fourth, press play and trust everything to play out as is should: In progress.

  What if you key in the numbers wrong?

  That’s why I left time at the end to do two reviews before pressing send.

  What if you go too fast and don’t catch the mistake?

  Then I will have done my best.

  She had to leave it at that. She didn’t have time to get in an argument with her brain. She needed to focus. She had to get everything right the first time. There were no do-overs when it came to making $326 million disappear. Whether this ended seamlessly or as the biggest fail of her life, all Claire could do was exactly what she’d promised she would do: reverse the accounts.

  Her mind panicked when she heard her pre-recorded video start up.

  What if the guy on the other side misses his cue? What if he’s horrible at reading scripts? What if he goes off script? What if—

  Enough! she commanded her mind. The clock has already started. Go, or you’ll fail everyone while worrying that they’re failing you!

  That thought firmly in mind, Claire waited for the timer that generated new passwords to Mr. SUV’s accounts every 10 seconds to reset. He had eleven accounts he used to take funds from the investors, and part of her memorization had been creating recall as to which funds linked to each account. If she did things right, none of the accounts should be overdrawn when she was done.

  Claire logged in and got started.

  Chapter 31

  Jack sat at the computer, the web page updating each time an investor accepted the transfer of funds Claire authorized. Leave it to Margot to negotiate a 5% service fee from each investor for returning their money. It was one of the thousands of reasons he’d made her a partner. She cared deeply about all the things Jack didn’t like to think about.

  Money was so abstract to him, yet his operation was expensive. He needed funds, and Margot made it her business to ensure that pockets were always deep. Today, thanks 100% to Margot, those pockets were about to become $16.3 million heavier. He’d have to look to know exactly where they were sitting financially these days, but the bottom line was that if they needed something, they could pretty much get it.

  That was all Jack cared about.

  Well, maybe not all he cared about. Right now he very much cared that Claire got out of the casino undetected. Ren was set up to clear the way, if necessary, and Margot was in position to lead the way. That put Jack on the computer—not his usual spot, but it was better than being the one who walked Claire through her costume change. Especially after where his thoughts had been just an hour ago.

  Distance was good.

  On the screen in front of him, a new account appeared about every ten seconds or so. The account stayed grey until the investor accepted another transfer, at which point the account turned red and stayed red until they paid their 5%. Then the account turned green, was labeled COMPLETE, and automatically moved to a separate column. In just over twenty minutes, just over one hundred investors had been moved into the Complete column. That was almost five per minute.

  Claire was moving fast, and investors had been alerted to act fast to make sure their money didn’t end up in limbo or get reclaimed by a fast-acting hacker. So far, everyone was doing their part.

  “Keep it going, girl,” Jack muttered. “Do what you do. You’ve got this.”

  When three more accounts turned red then flipped to green in under ten seconds, Jack had the gut sense that the evening was going to go just as everyone had planned. That meant that within the hour, Claire would be moving under his full protection.

  Jack was really looking forward to that.

  Chapter 32

  Claire had done it. She’d reversed all the accounts from memory. Perfectly. Not even a single missed keystroke.

  Mission: Impossible—totally accomplished!

  She wanted to high five someone but settled on slapping her hand on the lock of the room three times before pressing her thumb into the reader. The lock blinked green and let her out. She crossed the threshold feeling a little lightheaded as she started for the elevator.

  Stay calm. Walk calm. Be normal. Don’t dance. Not yet. Get out of here first.

  Per the video script she’d rehearsed with Margot the night before, the mock investor Margot had found had chosen not to invest, which meant Mr. SUV might not be in a hurry to look at the accounts Claire had just drained. He’d definitely notice what she’d done soon enough, but the hope that it wouldn’t be in the next five minutes.

  Doing her best not to run, Claire accessed the private elevator that took her back up to the casino area of the building. She now needed to make it to the hotel room written on her wrist. Jack had written it there so she wouldn’t have to remember yet another number.

  The impulse to run was intense, but she did her best to keep her pace to a mall walk as she weaved between the tourists to get to the hotel elevator that would take her to the second floor. Five tourists stepped in the elevator ahead of her. She forced herself to follow, pressing the button for the second floor with her knuckle before holding her breath to give her mind something to think about that wasn’t focused on the cleanliness of the elevator or how one of the tourists might be a spy who knew exactly what she’d just done. There was such a thing as response time, and by every logic, Claire should still be ahead of any hired gun who might be tasked to bring her in or bring her down.

  In the end, she only needed to hold her breath for seventeen seconds, then she was sprinting to the first door she saw. Luckily for her, the number on it matched the one on her hand. Jack had said that everything happening now was all about speed, which meant the shortest distance between points.

  Grabbing the key card from her pocket, Claire let herself in. The lights were already on and there was a Macy’s bag on the bed.

  “Hello?”

  Margot appeared in the bathroom door. “Get changed.”

  Claire took the bag, noting the outfit and underwear inside. It was all quite…slutty, really. She hesitated, checking the bag for a second wardrobe option. There was only one, along with a wig and some serious makeup.

  Claire pulled out the lace panties. “Into this?”

  “You need to be unrecognizable,” Margot said, looking annoyed that she needed to explain anything at all. “Vegas is like a year-round Halloween when it comes to dressing up. In this, you’ll look just like a hundred other girls here tonight.”

  “Down to the underwear?” Claire pushed.

  Margot shook her head. “There isn’t a single article on your body right now that’s coming with you,” she said. “That’s a security measure, but it’s your choice if you want to go commando under that dress. I don’t care. You just need to get changed now. I’ll dispose of your clothes after I do your makeup.”

  Margot’s tone left zero room for argument, so Claire shut her mouth and did as she was told, reminding herself that she’d been the one to request that Margot be with her during this part. At the time, she’d thought that she’d be more comfortable doing a quick change with another woman.

  But comfortable or uncomfortable, Claire found the woman
in the mirror unrecognizable twenty short minutes later. When she slipped into a town car five minutes after that without drawing a single skeptical look, Claire reminded herself never to doubt Margot’s judgment again.

  Not a single person took more than a passing glance at Claire’s face or silky, black hair. They were all looking at her dress or lower. Claire had never felt so seen and so unseen at the same time. No one recognized her, and if they watched the surveillance videos back, they still wouldn’t recognize her.

  When it came to hiding in plain sight, Margot was a woman who knew what she was doing. Claire would never doubt her again.

  Chapter 33

  Jack walked into Margot’s office, his eyes immediately moving to the wall screen. Margot was leaning against the front of her desk and sent him an odd look.

  “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be working on the locker.”

  On the far right of the screen, Jack spotted a surveillance video of Claire sitting on the bed of the safe room. “I just wanted to check in.”

  Margot tapped her earpiece. “Which is why we have these. I told you she’s safe and sound, and right where she’s supposed to be.” Respect tinged her voice as she added, “She pulled through.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, trying to get a read on Claire’s mood on the screen. “She did. Too bad we can’t celebrate a bit with her.”

  “Some of us are still working. She might be done, but we just got started.”

  “I know,” Jack said, stepping farther into the room so he could have a better view of the screen. The image of Claire sitting on the bed with her arms wrapping around her legs in a self-hugging gesture had him feeling unsettled. He’d seen the same image on his tablet when he started to work on the locker, and he hadn’t been able to concentrate.

  What happened? She’d been happy when she first arrived at the safe house. She’d even done a little dance before she removed her wig and washed off the makeup. Then she’d suddenly grown solemn and walked over to the bed. She’d been thinking ever since.

  He should go in there. He should talk to her. He should see if she needed anything…all of which he could do with a press of a button on his tablet while he worked. But he didn’t want to do that. He wanted to look her in the eye and make sure everything was okay.

  She’d just had a big night and pulled off something nearly impossible. She should be celebrating, not sitting on a bed alone looking like the weight of the world rested on her shoulders alone. It didn’t. She had allies now. She’d done her part, so they were going to do theirs, which meant Jack really didn’t have the time to go down to the safe room and check in with her.

  Yet would he be able to concentrate on anything else if he didn’t?

  “Why are you here?” Margot said, interrupting his thoughts. “You need that locker built and installed in the next twenty hours.”

  Jack nodded. He really needed to get to it, but—

  “And doesn’t ‘Daniel’ need to get home so that Natasha can abduct him?” Margot hinted.

  “It’s barely eight,” he said. “There’s time.”

  “No. There isn’t. Your dance card is full tonight, Jack. You need to get going. I’m on babysitting duty. Not you.”

  She was right. As usual. Yet he couldn’t help but stall. “Did you give her a sedative?”

  Margot let out a sigh to let him know she wasn’t fooled, but she still answered. “Yes. She hasn’t taken it yet. She said she wanted to think through some things first.”

  “She has a lot to think about.”

  “More than most,” Margot agreed, before adding, “So do you.”

  It had been a while since he’d had Margot’s assessing gaze trained on him, but the longer he delayed leaving, the more acute her stare became. He cleared his throat and tried to distract her.

  “Where are things with Natasha?”

  Margot grinned. “She’s flipping out. Still in denial that this is possible and making phone calls to try to reverse the transfers. She won’t sleep a wink tonight.”

  “Has she called her partner?”

  Margot shook her head. “Not yet. No calls, no messages. I think she’s trying to find a fix before she breaks the news.”

  “Good. If she’s going to call Everett, she’ll do it in the next 24 hours. Let me know if that happens.”

  Margot nodded, her eyes very purposefully not looking at Claire on the screen. “And in the meantime, you’ll be where, exactly?”

  He might as well just visit Claire and get it over with. He wasn’t fooling anyone by saying he just wanted to make sure Claire was safely tucked away. Of course she was safe. Margot never failed.

  No, he hadn’t come to Margot’s office to look at the feed. He’d come to see Claire face-to-face, and he had to go through Margot to do that.

  “I’m just going to check in with her,” he said. “So don’t stress when the feed goes black. I’ll turn it back on when I leave.”

  She arched a brow. “It’s like that, is it?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “But I want her to feel comfortable to say anything she needs to say without it being recorded.”

  Margot pursed her lips before pressing them together. “If you say so.”

  He sent her a stern look. “It’s not like that with us.”

  “Does she know that?”

  That got a laugh. “Three days ago she thought I was gay, and now I’m the guy she doesn’t even know if she can trust.”

  Margot pointed at the screen. “Yet my money says that you’re the only person she wants to talk to right now. Don’t pretend that doesn’t mean something.”

  “It means she misses Daniel.”

  “It means something,” Margot said, minimizing the video. “But now that you’re here, you’ve put me in the position of whether I should update you on the latest regarding Natasha Ramsey now, or after you leave your little tête-à-tête.”

  “Now,” he said, stepping toward her desk.

  “Very well.” With a flick of her finger, documents appeared on the wall screen. His eyes skimmed over the side-by-side paternity tests. The first was the negative match to Everett Ramsey, and the second was 99.98% positive match. When Jack saw the name on the positive result, he shouldn’t have been speechless. But he was.

  “Wow,” he breathed. “This just gets messier and messier, doesn’t it?”

  Margot nodded, face grim. “Kali’s guess was right.”

  Those words must have burned on Margot’s lips like acid, yet she’d managed to get them out somehow.

  Jack looked back at the paternity test. “Do you think Claire knows?”

  “No. I would bet money she doesn’t, based on the photos I was able to pull with her and her father.” She brought up the photos for his benefit. “There body language is friendly, but not familial. I would say her biological father knows the situation, but Claire has no idea.”

  Jack looked over the pictures, shaking his head. “She isn’t ready for this news. Not right now.”

  “Isn’t that up to her? She’s done her heavy lifting, and she’s going to have some down time to process.”

  But would she have enough time? That was Jack’s concern.

  “I’m not saying we keep this from her indefinitely,” he said. “But there’s only so much you can lay on a person before she snaps—especially when the haymakers are all coming from her parents.”

  He focused on one of the pictures of Natasha with her baby daddy. The woman might be in her sixties, but she was still bringing her A-game. She was visually stunning, and yet Jack had never seen an uglier woman in his life.

  “You might have to tell her,” Margot advised. “Do you honestly think her mother won’t play this card if she thinks it will leverage Claire into doing what she wants?”

  Natasha Ramsey would definitely stoop that low if things got desperate. And they would.

  “At least let Claire know this card is on the table. Let her decide whether she wants to flip it now or after ev
erything has played out. She deserves that.”

  This was one of the perks of working with strong-minded team members. No one was a yes-man. They all challenged Jack—forcing him to consider all the angles when he grew shortsighted himself.

  “Fair enough,” he agreed.

  “So,” Margot said, her voice a little too innocent. “I guess now you have an official business reason to go talk to her.”

  “I won’t be long,” Jack said, then headed for Margot’s private elevator.

  Chapter 34

  The numbers were still in Claire’s mind but she’d been able to stop the repetitive looping. In theory, that should have been a relief, but all it did was open up a whole lot of real estate in her brain to think about other things.

  Things like who—specifically—she’d just betrayed.

  The only clues she had were from the night she’d been pulled into that SUV and told that if she didn’t fill in for Professor Eastman, he’d take a shiv in prison. Turned out that was a lie and Eastman was happily whistling his time away behind bars, counting down to his civil lawsuit payday.

  Eastman wasn’t scared. At all. That gnawed at Claire, because as scary as it had been to be picked up by two men and thrown into an SUV a month ago, she’d never truly felt like she’d been in danger either. They’d never threatened her personally. Only Professor Eastman.

  In real time, she’d been too stressed to look at the whole situation objectively, but now that everything was behind her, the fog was clearing and everything was pointing in one direction. She couldn’t say the words out loud yet, but she was pretty sure she knew how Professor Eastman had been working with. And the more she thought over the last year, the more hollow she felt.

  Everyone had been lying to her. And she—the self-proclaimed body language expert and face reader—had fallen for every single line they’d thrown at her. Some expert that made her.

  Claire had just settled into a good funk when the security door beeped and the light flashed green.

  Jack? It was the first time she didn’t think Daniel’s name first, but not the first time her heart pounded unevenly at the thought of him walking into the room. Which made her an idiot. But whatever. She’d been an idiot for the past year. Why change her stripes now?