The Chase (5 page)

“Did he sound happy?”

Kate did a small grimace, and Nick gave a bark of laughter.

The call from Duff came through at three
P.M
. Kate and Nick were drinking coffee in a café in Mallaig, checking the Internet for possible flights home. Nick listened to the name Duff gave him, and promised the second payment would be made upon confirmation of the information he’d just received. His voice stayed calm and matter-of-fact with Duff, but Kate could see Nick’s eyes narrow ever so slightly.

“So?” Kate asked when Nick pocketed his phone.

“Carter Grove has the rooster,” Nick said.

“Whoa! I didn’t see that coming. I think we should scrap the operation. I have a rule against stealing from the White House chief of staff.”

“Ex–chief of staff,” Nick said.

“Him too,” she said.

Kate kept the bad news to herself for the twenty or so hours it took her to get back to Los Angeles and meet with Carl Jessup face-to-face. She arrived at LAX at 5
P.M.
and took a shuttle bus to pick up her car at the Parking Spot on Sepulveda Boulevard. She met Jessup at the In-N-Out Burger next door to the parking structure. They ordered fries, shakes, and 3×3s—burgers with three meat patties and three slices of cheese. The 3×3 was an unadvertised delight on In-N-Out’s secret menu. They ate them in the front seat of her car.

“Canceling the operation is out of the question,” Jessup said. “We have to get the rooster back.”

“You will,” Kate said. “Right after you arrest Carter Grove for stealing the damn thing.”

A glob of sauce oozed out of her 3×3 and dripped onto her jeans.

Jessup handed her a napkin. “Even if we could get a search warrant, which is highly unlikely, the last thing we want to do is reveal that not only was the Smithsonian broken into, and that we covered up the crime, but that the man responsible for the theft was the White House chief of staff. It would be an even bigger scandal and embarrassment than the one we’re trying to avoid.”

“Carter Grove isn’t White House chief of staff anymore,” Kate said, dabbing at the sauce on her jeans with the napkin. “He hasn’t been in years.”

“But he was, and if that wasn’t bad enough, now he runs
BlackRhino, the elite private security agency the Pentagon has been using to outsource the ugliest, dirtiest aspects of fighting our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we go after Carter head-on for stealing the rooster, he’ll expose every black op the Pentagon has ever hired him to do, which would only whip up the scandal into a media firestorm of epic proportions. You’ve got to steal the rooster from him. It’s the most expedient option.”

“It’s not a run-of-the-mill break-in we’re talking about here,” Kate said. “Carter Grove’s house is going to be protected by a state-of-the-art alarm system and a bunch of BlackRhino operatives, the best-trained and best-armed mercenaries money can buy. If we’re caught, they’ll torture us to find out who we work for and then feed us into a tree shredder.”

“So don’t get caught. I thought you were a tough cookie.”

“I am. But I’m not suicidal.”

“I’m sure Nick can come up with something,” Jessup said. “You can remind him that this is exactly the kind of situation we broke him out of prison to solve.”

“Uh-huh,” Kate said, slurping up the last of her shake. “And when he talked you into doing that for him, did it ever occur to you that you were being conned?”

“Sure it did,” Jessup said. “That’s why we teamed him up with you.”

A little over an hour after her meeting with Jessup, Kate sat at the kitchen table in her sister Megan’s house in Calabasas, a San Fernando Valley community of guard-gated tract house neighborhoods. The neighborhoods were built around a shopping center with a clock tower that held the biggest Rolex on earth.

Megan shared her chair at the kitchen table with Jack Russell,
her Jack Russell terrier, who’d squeezed himself between her butt and the backrest. The sisters were eating the remaining half of a banana cream pie.

Megan was married, had two kids, and was three years younger and thirty pounds heavier than Kate.

“You should take advantage of all the opportunities that being single, childless, and disgustingly thin give you,” Megan said.

“I am,” Kate said. “I’m eating this pie after having a three-by-three, fries, and a shake at In-N-Out.”

“I hate you, but that’s not what I was referring to.”

“I know what you’re leading up to, and I’m telling you right now that I am not going on a blind date with some guy you met in line at Costco.”

“He’s not
some guy
. He’s an accountant at Roger’s firm, and I’ve thoroughly vetted him. He could be the man of your dreams.”

Roger was Megan’s husband. He was watching
Iron Man 2
in the den with their two kids, four-year-old Tyler and six-year-old Sara.

“Forget it, Megan.”

“He is stable, rational, and dependable.”

“Gee, he sounds thrilling,” Kate said. “I’ve heard cars described in more passionate terms.”

“He’s also a fantastic lover.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he’s an accountant,” Megan said.

Kate scraped up the last of the pie. “I don’t see the connection.”

“They are very tactile. They have amazing fingers from tapping their calculators all day. And they are extremely methodical in their work. So what you get is a man who will tirelessly explore every line item until he can file a strong return and get you a whopping refund.”

The analogy was totally disturbing, and yet it made sense to Kate. “I’m doing fine. I can get my own dates, thank you.”

“The only man in your life is Nicolas Fox, and he’s a criminal that you’re chasing. That’s just sad.”

“Do I look sad to you?”

Megan studied her sister. “No, you don’t, and you should. So what aren’t you telling me?”

Jack Russell suddenly lifted his head and perked up his ears. An instant later Kate heard the front door open, and the dog launched himself off the chair and ran skittering across the tile floor to greet Kate’s dad.

“What a terrific guard dog we have,” Megan said. “He doesn’t bark until the intruder is already in the house hacking us to pieces.”

Jake O’Hare was a stocky, square-shouldered man in his sixties who’d retired from the military years ago but still kept his gray hair buzz-cut to army regs and did a hundred push-ups every morning.

“You don’t need a guard dog,” Kate said. “You’ve got Dad living in the garage.”

“
Casita
,” Jake said. “This is a classy neighborhood.” He looked down at the empty pie pan. “Looks like I’m late to the party.”

“You’re just in time,” Kate said. “I need to talk to you.”

“If this is going to be gun talk you have to take it outside,” Megan said. “We don’t allow gun talk in the house. We’re a hundred percent PC.”

“Sad and pathetic,” Jake said. “This country was founded on guns.”

Kate dropped her fork into the empty pie pan and stood. “We can talk in your
casita
.”

Megan had two detached garages, and she’d turned one of them into an apartment for Jake. The apartment still had faux garage doors in front to conform to the gated community’s rigid architectural guidelines, and while they called it a
casita
, the interior was more Embassy Suites.

Kate sat on her dad’s Naugahyde sofa in his
casita
and told him about the Smithsonian, the bronze rooster, and Carter Grove. She could talk to her father about her secret life because he’d had one, too. Most of his missions for the military were still classified.

“How much do you know about Carter Grove?” Jake asked.

“Just what I read in the newspapers. Plus the scuttlebutt I heard around the FBI water cooler.”

She knew that Carter Grove had been a hatchet man. His relationship with the former president went back to their wildcatting days in the Texas oil fields. Back then, the president was the “vision guy,” the smooth talker who made the big deals. Carter
Grove was the iron fist who hired thugs to blackmail politicians, to strong-arm stubborn landowners into selling their mineral rights, and to silence any discontent among the underpaid workforce. He employed those same techniques in D.C. and used the FBI and the CIA as his thugs. Agents who chafed at doing his dirty work were fired, blackballed in law enforcement, and, if they were lucky, found jobs in shopping mall security.

“Then you know only half the story,” Jake said. “Carter almost single-handedly made BlackRhino the elite international army-for-hire that it is today. While he was chief of staff he threw lucrative defense contracts their way and encouraged the president to wage wars. BlackRhino paid Carter back handsomely by making him their CEO ten minutes after he left the White House.”

“Did you ever work with BlackRhino in your military days?”

“Not directly. I saw them on the fringes, training rebels in countries where the U.S. wasn’t supposed to be involved but had an active interest in the outcome of events.”

“So the Pentagon had BlackRhino do their dirty work.”

“It gave them deniability.”

“With your covert experience, you’d seem like a perfect pick for BlackRhino. Did they try to hire you after you left the military?”

“No, and do you want to know why?”

“Because you don’t play well with others.”

“Because it’s not enough for BlackRhino that you know how to kill. It’s important that you like to do it. If you do, you’re not going to care who lives or who dies as a consequence of your actions. That’s not me. You don’t want to mess with these guys, Kate.”

“I don’t plan to. Whatever plan Nick comes up with to get the rooster, I’m sure it’s going to be a con of some kind, not a straight break-in. We’re not going to confront these guys in battle.”

“You will if the con goes wrong,” Jake said. “And you will lose. I suggest you consider a combat option.”

“Like what?”

Jake got a couple bottles of beer out of his fridge and gave one to Kate. “Like me.”

At ten the next morning, Kate pulled into Nick’s Malibu driveway just as a Bentley convertible was leaving. The Bentley’s driver was a bald Hispanic man with tattoos on his arms and neck. He was accompanied by a beautiful dark-haired, dark-skinned woman.

Kate parked and met Nick at the front door.

“Looks like you had visitors,” Kate said. “Are you serving brunch?”

“That was Enrique Montoya, the new owner of this house.”

“You sold it?”

“It sold itself. It’s spacious, secluded, and the views are spectacular. It was a steal at fifteen million.”

“You’re damn right it’s a steal. It isn’t your house to sell.”

Nick gestured to a bulging gym bag on the floor in the entry hall. “He even left a two-million-dollar cash deposit, which will more than cover the incidental expenses of our heist. How great is that?”

“You aren’t listening to me. We can’t keep that money.”

“Sure we can,” Nick said.

Kate was about to argue the absurdity of his proposal when something else crossed her mind. “Wait a minute. That guy just handed you two million in cash in a gym bag?”

“I know what you’re thinking. How inconsiderate was that? Who wants to lug that much cash around over their shoulder? It weighs a ton. One of those suitcases with wheels would have made
more sense and been a lot more thoughtful.” Nick led her into the kitchen, where there was a fresh pot of coffee and a platter of pastries on the counter. He held the platter out to her. “Bear claw?”

She took one. “He’s a drug dealer, isn’t he?”

“He’s bigger than that,” Nick said, picking out a cinnamon roll for himself. “He’s the point man for the Vibora cartel’s entire Southern California drug distribution network. He’s looking to launder some of his profits in real estate. This is going to be an all-cash deal. The balance is coming on Friday.”

“When you’ll already be long gone with his money.”

“That’s the plan.”

“The Viboras are bloodthirsty, homicidal maniacs. They’ve been known to cut off a man’s arm and beat him to death with it. Aren’t you worried about the Viboras hunting you down?”

Nick waved off her concern. “I’m already on the run from all sorts of mobsters and countless law enforcement agencies. What’s one more? Besides, I’ve got you protecting me.”

“We’re about to take on Carter Grove and BlackRhino. The last thing we need is a Mexican drug cartel chasing us.”

“They won’t be. When Montoya comes back on Friday, one of my associates at the real estate company can be here to handle the sale.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. You tell me. It’ll be whichever FBI agent wants to accept Montoya’s thirteen million dollars in drug money. You could either nail Montoya on the spot for immediate gratification, or you could bug the place, let him live here for a while, and use all the juicy intel you’ll get to bring down the Viboras’ operation.”

Jessup would like that. A fringe benefit of their secret op. “And what about the two-million-dollar deposit?”

“Consider it a donation to our operating capital.”

Jessup would like that, too. She had to admire Nick’s initiative. There was a reason he’d been such a successful con man right up until the moment she’d caught him.