The Pursuit

by Janet Evanovich

  “I get it, don’t worry,” Joe said. “I’ll create fake software interfaces for my computer screen so even if they have a guy sitting next to me in the van, he won’t be clued in to what I am doing.”

  “Smart move,” Nick said. “Because Dragan will probably have someone with you so they can keep an eye on us.”

  “I only have one question,” Joe said. “What are we going to be seeing on the video feed from the fake lab?”

  “The scientists at work,” Nick said, “and the extraordinary precautions they take as they handle and study the viruses.”

  “We’re going to be those scientists?” Boyd asked.

  “You, Willie, Chet, and Tom,” Kate said. “Everybody is doing double duty on this job.”

  “But, Boyd, as the only professional actor among us, this crucial aspect of the con is going to rest on your shoulders,” Nick said. “You need to create the world that we’re breaking into. We need to feel, through the performances of your cast, how dangerous the job is for these scientists and how seriously they take the risks.”

  “Who are the characters?” Boyd asked. “What are their backstories? What do they want out of their lives? What personal dramas are playing out through their lab work?”

  “We’re counting on you to improvise that,” Nick said. “It’s basically a silent movie, so don’t worry about dialogue. But your laboratory technique has to be absolutely accurate. I’ll get you training videos. Everything depends on the authenticity of the performances you create on that set.”

  “It won’t be the first time,” Boyd said. “I was a background doctor on several episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. I silently conferred with nurses and other doctors, comforted the loved ones of critically ill patients, and walked urgently down hallways on my way to save lives while Patrick Dempsey and Ellen Pompeo belabored their dialogue in the foreground.”

  “What am I driving?” Willie asked. “Because you certainly didn’t bring me into this for my acting ability.”

  “Once the fake smallpox is on the move, you’ll be driving or piloting whatever vehicles we need to follow it,” Nick said. “You’ll have cars, a plane, and a boat on tap. Dragan’s lab could be anywhere in Europe.”

  “This is the critical endgame,” Kate said. “If we don’t find Dragan’s lab and retrieve the smallpox, people will die.”

  Conversation stopped at the sound of a car driving up. The engine cut off. A door slammed shut. Footsteps approached.

  Cosmo Uno peered into the barn. “Knock, knock!” he said. “Am I interrupting? What are you doing? Are you making a movie? It looks like you’re making a movie. Like you have movie equipment. Is this a wrap party? Am I too late?”

  “Ommigod,” Kate said.

  Nick looked over at Kate. “Do you know him?”

  “Cosmo Uno,” Kate said. “He works in the cubicle next to me.”

  “What cubicle would that be?” Willie asked. “Pee-wee’s playhouse?”

  “Hah, I get that a lot,” Cosmo said. “I look like Pee-wee Herman, right? Except he has better clothes. I don’t know how he gets his clothes to fit him like that. They’re all so tight. Where does he hide his gun, right?”

  Nick turned his back to Uno and faced Kate. “If he recognizes me I’ll have to kill him.”

  “If you kill him I’ll be your sex slave,” Kate said. “I’ll do anything. I’ll learn how to make an omelet, I swear.”

  “Promises, promises,” Nick said. “Get him out of here.”

  Kate turned Cosmo around and steered him toward the door. “How did you find me?” she asked him.

  “I pinged your cellphone and got lucky. I figured it was the perfect time for us to get together and fill out your GS205.”

  “Are you kidding me? A GS205?”

  “I brought an extra pen.”

  Willie tagged after Kate and Cosmo, draped an arm over Cosmo’s shoulders, and pressed her breast into him. “Honey, what’s a GS205? Do I need one?”

  “It itemizes civilian damages incurred during an active investigation,” Cosmo said.

  “I don’t have any of those,” Kate said.

  “According to accounting you destroyed multiple cars, a fast food burger joint, a multimillion-dollar high-rise condo in London, a couple boats…”

  “I have to itemize that?” Kate asked, mentally going through a laundry list that included the jewelry store, armored police van, a couple private residences, some “borrowed” planes, and the DVR that she still hadn’t replaced.

  “It’s all in the manual,” Cosmo said. “I have a copy in my briefcase here. Do you know there are a bunch of ladies with bald heads in the parking lot? I think they’re smoking dope. One of them said she would give me a tug for five. That’s a good price, right? I think she liked me.”

  “Does our boss know you’re here?” Kate asked.

  “Maybe not here precisely, but he could find me if he wanted to because I came in a company car and they all have transponders.”

  “Damn,” Kate said. “I was never able to get a company car. How’d you get one?”

  “I filled out form BBB704ZX,” Cosmo said.

  “What kind of car is it?” Willie asked.

  “It’s white,” Cosmo said.

  Willie looked toward the open barn door. “Can I drive it?”

  “No,” Cosmo said. “Only people who have filled out the appropriate requisition can drive that car.”

  Willie leaned in, and Cosmo instinctively looked down at the triple-D nipple that was smashed against his chest.

  “I’d really like to see your white car,” Willie said. “I’d be very grateful.”

  “We aren’t allowed to accept gratuities,” Cosmo said, his eyes going a little glazed.

  “Just a look,” Willie said.

  Cosmo was still focused on the nipple. “A look?”

  Willie slipped her hand into Cosmo’s pants pocket, Cosmo gave a gasp, and Willie pulled out his keys.

  “Follow me,” Willie said to Cosmo. “I’m going to take us for a ride.”

  “Maybe a little ride,” Cosmo said, “but you’ll have to fill out pedestrian form WA33.”

  Willie led Cosmo out of the barn, and there was the sound of car doors slamming shut. The engine turned over, and Willie spun the tires, sending gravel flying against the barn wall. The car flew past the open barn door like white lightning, and Kate heard Cosmo screaming.

  “Eeeeee­eeeee­ee!”

  “He’s from Homeland Security, right?” Chet said.

  Kate did a grimace. “Meeting adjourned.”

  Jake O’Hare lived with Kate’s younger sister, Megan, her husband, Roger, and their two kids in a hilltop gated community of Spanish Mediterranean–style homes in Calabasas, California. The community was located about an hour south of Ojai on the southwestern edge of the San Fernando Valley.

  Megan’s house had two detached two-car garages in the front. One of the garages had been converted into a casita for Jake with a bedroom, a bathroom, and a living room with a kitchenette.

  Kate parked her Crown Vic, a used cop car that she bought at a police auction, behind Megan’s new Mercedes C-Class, the Calabasas Corolla. Her arrival excited the family’s Jack Russell terrier, who announced her by barking, jumping, and scratching frantically at the windowed front door.

  Megan scooped up the dog and opened the door as Kate approached. “The peripatetic daughter returns.”

  “ ‘Peripatetic’?” Kate kissed her sister on the cheek, petted the dog’s head, and stepped inside the house. “What’s that mean?”

  “It means you’re constantly traveling and rarely around,” Megan said, closing the door. She was three years younger than Kate, two inches taller, and a few pounds heavier. She wore a long, loose T-shirt with tight leggings and short Ugg sheepskin boots. “Peripatetic is one of Sara’s vocabulary words at school this week. We’re supposed to amalgamate them into our daily conversation to enrich our family discourse.”

  Megan’s daughter, S
ara, was nine years old, and Tyler, her son, was seven. They both went to an elementary school where Megan was president of the PTA.

  “Is amalgamate also one of this week’s words?” Kate asked.

  “And also discourse. Pretty smooth how I worked them all in, isn’t it?” Megan said, leading Kate into the kitchen. “To keep Sara sharp, we’re using all of her vocabulary words in regular conversation until her big test at the end of the month.”

  “You’re a very supportive mother,” Kate said. “Where are the kids?”

  Megan set the dog down. “They’re in the backyard, playing with their grandpa before they do their homework. He’s peripatetic, too. He’s always traveling to some reunion for ex-military guys. But I think it’s just a cover.”

  “For what?” Kate asked, trying to sound innocent.

  “Mercenary work. He comes home way too happy.”

  “Maybe he really enjoys reliving old times with his buddies.”

  “I’m sure he does,” Megan said. “By shooting people and blowing things up in some third-world country. And while we’re on it, you’re looking pretty happy too. Things must be going well with ‘Bob.’ ”

  “ ‘Bob’?”

  “The forbidden office romance you were contemplating last month. You obviously jumped right into it. You have the skin tone of a woman who is getting laid.”

  Kate held her arms out in front of her and examined her skin. “There’s a skin tone for that?”

  Megan held her arm out beside Kate’s. “It’s this one. Ever since I got my tubes tied, Roger and I can’t keep our hands off each other.”

  “I didn’t know you got your tubes tied.”

  “You would if you followed me on Twitter, friended me on Facebook, or kept up with my Instagram. I tweeted, updated my status, and sent out photos on my way to the operating room.”

  “That’s why I’m not on social media. People are way too open about their private lives. I don’t need to see pictures of what somebody had for lunch or hear about how difficult their last bowel movement was or see on a map where they were when either one happened.”

  “In today’s world, if you aren’t on social media, you don’t exist,” Megan said. “You might as well be living in a cave or a monastery.”

  “I prefer to pick up the phone and talk,” Kate said.

  “You don’t do that, either,” Megan said. “Probably because you’re too busy with Bob?”

  “I should say hello to Dad and the kids,” Kate said, heading for the sliding glass door to the backyard.

  “You’re running away from the subject,” Megan said.

  “As fast as I can,” Kate said and stepped outside.

  Megan’s backyard overlooked the Calabasas Country Club golf course and the San Fernando Valley. There was a lap pool, a built-in barbecue, and a brown lawn that was slowly dying under the state-mandated water rationing brought on by the drought.

  Sara and Tyler were splashing around in the pool, and Jake was watching from a lawn chair.

  “Ah,” he said. “Here’s the peripatetic daughter.”

  “Sticks and stones,” Kate said, pulling a chair up next to Jake. “I could use some help.”

  “Does it involve a rocket launcher?”

  “Possibly.”

  “I’m there.”

  Kate gave her father a quick briefing on the con that she and Nick were going to mount in Paris.

  “Nick and I will be on the inside with the Road Runners,” Kate said. “I need someone on the outside, watching our backs and protecting our crew in case things go wrong.”

  “I can get some guys for that,” Jake said. “I’ll need a couple hundred thousand dollars for salaries, weapons, and surveillance equipment.”

  “It’s going to be more than a babysitting job,” Kate said. “The tracking device on the stolen vial of fake virus will lead us to Dragan’s lair and the real virus. But once we find it, we may not have time to wait for Jessup to organize and deploy a strike team. We might have to take down Dragan and the Road Runners ourselves. That won’t be easy. They are Serbian Army Special Forces veterans, and they will be very well-armed.”

  “I’ve been up against worse,” Jake said. “If you want to make it a challenge, ask me to overthrow a country, too, while we’re at it.”

  “You were younger when you were doing that.”

  “You think I’ve lost my edge?”

  She shook her head no. “What I’m saying is that you did your time and came out in one piece. Now you’re free to play golf, teach hand-to-hand combat to your grandchildren, and help your daughter break a thief out of a foreign prison. It’s a dream retirement. You don’t have to go up against a small army of trained killers anymore.”

  “Dragan Kovic intends to attack the United States of America with a biological weapon,” Jake said. “I would be honored to die preventing that bastard from succeeding, and so would the guys I’m going to bring in on this. It’s a much better way to go than sitting in a recliner watching Matlock and waiting for a nurse to change your diaper.”

  “Is that what you’re afraid of?” Kate asked.

  “It’s one of the few things that truly terrify me.”

  “What are the others?”

  “Outliving you.” Jake looked back at Megan, who was wrapping towels around Sara and Tyler. “Or them.” He thought for a beat. “And there’s a lady handing out samples of cocktail wieners at Costco on Saturdays who scares the bejeezus out of me.”

  —

  Kate stayed at Megan’s for the rest of the afternoon but left before dinner. She drove to West Los Angeles to brief Jessup in his office at the Federal Building. It was a twenty-mile trip that took her over an hour in bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic.

  “It’s a good thing we broke Nick out of jail again or we never would have known about this,” Jessup said after listening to Kate’s report.

  “Was that decision weighing on you?”

  “Like an elephant threw a saddle on me, hopped on my back, and told me to giddyup.”

  “That’s a vivid picture.”

  “Not as vivid as thousands of people dying of smallpox on the streets of New York City,” Jessup said. “That one is going to haunt me. We’ll keep an eye out for anyone making significant investments against the market. That way we’ll know if an attack is imminent.”

  “I hope it won’t come to that,” Kate said.

  “Me too. I may have to go to my AA meetings twice a week until this is over to stay sober,” Jessup said. “So recover the smallpox fast, get the hell out, and call me when it’s done. I’ll arrange for the safe pickup or disposal of the virus.”

  “What about Dragan and the Road Runners?” Kate said. “We need to take them down.”

  “Not if it’s going to jeopardize the mission. The priority is stopping the bioweapon from being made or deployed. Anything else can wait.”

  “You can apprehend them at the same time the strike team hits the lab,” Kate said.

  “I can’t convince the Justice Department, the Pentagon, or European authorities to authorize a military or law enforcement strike against the lab, in whatever country it ends up being in, without giving them solid evidence to justify the action,” Jessup said. “I don’t see how I can do that without revealing our covert operation. If I do that, they won’t buy the smallpox story anyway, because the FBI will have zero credibility and I’ll be in jail. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  “The cavalry won’t be coming to our rescue.”

  “I’m sorry, Kate.”

  “Don’t be, sir. I knew before I came here that you’d tell me that,” Kate said. “We’ll work with what we have.”

  “I feel like I’m sending you and Nick on a suicide mission.”

  “Good,” Kate said. “Because if I survive, I’m asking for a raise and a company car.”

  “You’d have to fill out a requisition for the car,” Jessup said. “It isn’t worth it.”

  Kate went to th
e door and peeked outside.

  “Is there a problem?” Jessup asked.

  “Cosmo Uno.”

  “He’s a good man,” Jessup said. “You need him.”

  “Isn’t it bad enough you stuck me with Nick Fox?”

  “This is different. This is about paperwork. You aren’t filing the necessary reports.”

  “I always give you a full report.”

  “About your covert operations with Nick. But you’ve fallen way behind on your routine paperwork as an FBI special agent and that could start drawing unwanted attention. The last thing we need is anyone in D.C. scrutinizing your activity because you’ve become sloppy with your paperwork. Be happy you have Cosmo Uno helping you out. It could keep us both out of prison.”

  “He’s in his cubicle, isn’t he?” Kate asked.

  “Probably.”

  Kate stepped out of the office and very quietly crept down the hall. She took a circuitous route to the elevator and was almost in the clear when she heard Cosmo calling her.

  “Katie! Holy cow, I can’t believe it’s you. I almost missed you. I bet you came in to see me. Am I right?”

  Kate took off at a flat run, bypassed the elevator, and took the stairs three at a time. Cosmo was a flight of stairs behind her.

  “Wait for me!” he yelled. “Did you get an emergency call? Are you gonna use your Kojak light? Do you have one? I can get you one. I can fill out form GS4781 and requisition a light for you.”

  Kate burst out of the stairwell, sprinted the rest of the way to her car, and took off. She stopped at a light and looked around. No Cosmo. She was in the clear.

  I used to be by the book too, she thought. Although she had to admit she was never great with paperwork.

  —

  Boyd, Willie, Joe, Chet, and Tom left for Paris with Nick and Kate on a private jet out of LAX early the next morning. The in-flight entertainment was industrial videos of level-four biocontainment labs that played on the cabin’s various flat screens.

  The first video they watched together was a tour of a lab from the point of view of scientists entering and going to work. The scientists entered the labs through an air lock leading to a locker room, where they undressed. From there they walked naked through another air lock into the dressing room, where they put on cotton scrubs, socks, and surgical gloves. They taped the gloves and socks to their scrubs, then went through another air lock into a room that had a dozen bulky white positive pressure suits hanging from the walls and coiled blue air hoses dangling from the ceiling.