“What about darts?” Nate asked.

  “No, just the syr­inges.”

  “For­get about the Beta-Som­nol for now,” Quinn said. “It would take too long to get it. Nate, you should stay on St. Amand, since that’s why you’re here.”

  “Yeah, I agree,” Nate said.

  “Jar, you’ll stay with him.”

  “Copy,” Jar said.

  “The rest of us will fol­low Sand­strom and see where he’s go­ing. If he heads to the air­port, ACORT can call in a fa­vor and have him de­tained be­fore he gets on his plane. If it’s some­where else, then it will be on us to deal with him. How does that sound?”

  “Good by me,” Or­lando said. “So, what do we have for trans­port­a­tion?”

  “Jar and I have scoot­ers,” Daeng said. “But we’ll need to leave one for her and Nate.”

  “Two of us will have to take a taxi, then,” Quinn said.

  Nate shoved a hand in his pocket. “Oh, hold on.” When he pulled it out again, he was hold­ing a busi­ness card. “I had this cab­bie earlier who doesn’t mind winging it.”

  “Call him and see if he’s nearby,” Quinn said. “Daeng, come on down. You and Steve can ride the scooter. Or­lando and I will—”

  He stopped when he no­ticed Or­lando grim­acing at her phone.

  “Everything okay?”

  She glanced at him. “There’s been an­other change of plans.”

  “We’re not grabbing Sand­strom?”

  “Oh, no. We’re still do­ing that.”

  “Then what’s the change?”

  “Ac­tu­ally, it’s more of an ad­di­tion.”

  *

  Misty’s com­puter dinged, sig­nal­ing the ar­rival of an email. The sender’s ad­dress was a string of num­bers and let­ters in no ob­vi­ous pat­tern. It was the sub­ject line that caught her at­ten­tion: OR­LANDO WANTED ME TO SEND YOU THIS. At­tached to the email was an au­dio file. From the size it had to be at least thirty minutes long. Writ­ten in the mes­sage sec­tion of the email was a time code and the words: The good stuff be­gins here.

  It must be from the Sand­strom-St. Amand meet­ing that was tak­ing place. Misty ran the file through her virus-de­tec­tion app be­fore play­ing it, start­ing at the point in­dic­ated.

  Within forty-five seconds, she hit Pause. Right there, in clear Eng­lish, was an of­fer by Sand­strom to pay fifty mil­lion dol­lars for God only knew how much weaponry. As much as she wanted to con­tinue listen­ing, she couldn’t sit on this.

  She com­posed an email to Otero at ACORT, not­ing the same time code, and sent off the au­dio file. She re­sumed play­ing, and made it to where dessert was about to be served when her phone rang.

  “Mr. Otero,” she said upon an­swer­ing. “I take it you’ve sampled the file.”

  “Your team de­serves a raise,” he said.

  “I’ll be sure not to tell them that.”

  “Has this meet­ing ended?”

  “As far as I know, it’s still go­ing on.”

  “I take it you’ve listened to this.”

  “Not much more than the part I flagged for you.”

  “Then I’m sure you will agree this is a clear and present danger to our coun­try and our mis­sion has es­cal­ated far bey­ond just grabbing Sand­strom.”

  “If you’re say­ing we need to hold off on tak­ing Sand­strom, I need to con­tact my team im­me­di­ately.”

  “No. That is still on.” He paused. “How good are your people?”

  “They’re my best. I would trust them for any­thing I needed done. They are well re­spec­ted, highly ac­com­plished, and com­pletely de­pend­able.”

  He paused. “Your people are in a unique po­s­i­tion to stop this whole thing in its tracks, and pre­vent the count­less deaths a pro­trac­ted FBI in­vest­ig­a­tion might in­cur.”

  “Isn’t that what tak­ing Sand­strom would do?”

  “Likely, but to guar­an­tee suc­cess, we would like your team to ob­tain his sup­plier, too.”

  “St. Amand?”

  “Yes. Can they do it?”

  “Of course they can. But I want to make sure we’re clear on the fact that the US gov­ern­ment is sanc­tion­ing the kid­nap­ping of an Amer­ican cit­izen and a for­eign na­tional on for­eign soil?”

  “What the US gov­ern­ment is tak­ing ac­tion on is an im­min­ent threat to our na­tion.”

  “I need writ­ten au­thor­iz­a­tion for my files be­fore I in­form my team.”

  “Check your in­box.”

  She looked back at her com­puter as it dinged again. The mes­sage was from Otero, a full au­thor­iz­a­tion for the rendi­tion of Wil­liam Sand­strom, Chris­tophe St. Amand, and any as­so­ci­ates picked up due to the ac­tion.

  She saved a copy in a se­cured file and said, “We’ll get right on it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Misty’s new or­ders meant Quinn’s ini­tial plan of hav­ing every­one but Nate and Jar go after Sand­strom had to be ad­jus­ted. It was de­cided Quinn would stay with them, while Or­lando, Daeng, and Howard dealt with Sand­strom.

  Nate’s cab­bie friend had in­deed been nearby. When he ar­rived, Nate leaned into the pas­sen­ger-side win­dow.

  “Thanks for com­ing,” Nate said.

  “I knew you would call,” the taxi driver said. His smile faltered a bit upon see­ing the oth­ers on the side­walk. “I can­not fit all of you.”

  “Not all of us. Just three of my friends.”

  “You, no?”

  Nate shook his head. “Don’t worry, though. You’ll have just as much fun as we had earlier.” He turned to the oth­ers. “All yours.”

  The cab­bie’s look of dis­ap­point­ment van­ished when Or­lando climbed into the front pas­sen­ger seat.

  “What’s your name?” she asked in Italian.

  “Fla­vio,” he replied, grin­ning. “Where can I take you?”

  “Just down the street for now. We’re wait­ing for someone else.”

  “An­other pas­sen­ger?”

  “No. Someone we’re go­ing to fol­low.”

  His face brightened even more. “Okay!”

  Dur­ing the ex­change, Daeng and Howard had in­stalled them­selves in the back. Fla­vio drove off, leav­ing Quinn and Nate on the side­walk.

  “Jar, status?” Quinn said.

  “Sounds like they’re fin­ish­ing up dessert.”

  “Time to come down.”

  “Copy.”

  He looked over at Nate. “So, where are the scoot­ers?”

  *

  The tiram­isu was con­sumed with pleas­ure by every­one ex­cept Laz­zari, who once again was not par­tak­ing.

  When they were through, St. Amand said, “Is there any­thing else we can do for you?”

  “At the mo­ment, I can think of noth­ing, but I’m sure that will change,” Sand­strom said.

  “When it does, con­tact Mr. Drake. He’ll pass everything on to us.”

  “Okay, then. I guess that’s everything but the trans­fer. If you give me your ac­count in­form­a­tion, I can get things mov­ing.”

  In less than ten minutes, St. Amand re­ceived con­firm­a­tion of the fifty mil­lion sit­ting in his Cay­man Is­land ac­count.

  “Thank you for the meal and your time.” Sand­strom pushed back his chair.

  Within seconds, every­one was on their feet.

  Laz­zari said, “I’m so glad you were able to join us. Let us know when you are in Rome again.”

  “Thank you,” Sand­strom said. “Though I doubt it will be for some time. There’s much work to do.”

  Laz­zari came around the table and walked with Sand­strom across the room. “Yes, I ima­gine you will be quite busy.” When they reached the door, the double said, “I’ll leave you here. Have a pleas­ant trip home. You’ll be hear­ing from us soon.”

  Sand­strom held out his hand. “I look for­ward to it.”

  The two men shook, and Drake said, “One of my men will walk you out.” He opened the door and called down the hall, “Man­fred, please see Mr. Sand­strom out.”

  Man­fred came up the stairs and over to the door­way. “Right this way.”

  Drake waited un­til Sand­strom and his men had des­cen­ded out of sight be­fore clos­ing the door.

  Now that the three men were alone, Laz­zari said, “How was I?”

  “You were ex­cel­lent as al­ways,” St. Amand said.

  “Oh, good. I’m so glad to hear that. I al­ways won­der, you know.”

  “We’ll be leav­ing soon. If you’re go­ing to eat, you should do it now.”

  Laz­zari’s eyes lit up. “I’m starving.” He re­trieved a covered plate of food from the serving table and car­ried it to where he’d sat dur­ing the meet­ing. After re­mov­ing the scarf, he dug in.

  St. Amand and Drake sat at the other end of the table. “I need you to fig­ure out the lo­gist­ics for their first ship­ment and have it to me by noon to­mor­row.”

  “No prob­lem.”

  “And if they’re will­ing to part with fifty mil­lion dol­lars so quickly, then there should be a lot more we can pull out of them. I’d like to see some ideas on that, too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  *

  “Okay, Fla­vio, get ready,” Or­lando said.

  She was mon­it­or­ing the feed from the cam­era fo­cused on the out­side of De Luca’s, and had just wit­nessed Sand­strom and his two com­pan­ions be­ing es­cor­ted to a wait­ing SUV.

  As the vehicle pulled into the street, Or­lando said, “Re­mem­ber what we talked about. Close but not too close. And no sud­den moves.”

  “I un­der­stand,” Fla­vio said. He looked at his side-view mir­ror. “Is that them?”

  Or­lando glanced over her shoulder and saw the black SUV head­ing their way. “That’s them.”

  When the cab­bie reached to shift the trans­mis­sion, Or­lando touched his arm.

  “Let them go by first,” she said.

  “Oh, um, all right.” He moved his hand back to the steer­ing wheel, grip­ping it.

  “Fla­vio, take a breath.”

  His chest ex­pan­ded as he sucked in air. If the ex­er­cise re­laxed him, it wasn’t by much.

  The SUV drove by.

  “Okay, now,” Or­lando said.

  Fla­vio veered into the road.

  Or­lando had told him they were private in­vest­ig­at­ors from Amer­ica, fol­low­ing someone sus­pec­ted of com­mit­ting a crime. When he asked what the crime was, she had told him she wasn’t at liberty to say spe­cific­ally, but im­plied it was scan­dal­ous. This had so­lid­i­fied his de­sire to help.

  The SUV headed east through the neigh­bor­hood, be­fore switch­ing onto one of the ma­jor roads head­ing north.

  Though Or­lando knew the an­swer, she asked Fla­vio, “Is there any reason they’d be go­ing this way if they were headed to the air­port?”

  “Fi­umicino? No. This is not the way.”

  She glanced back at Daeng, said, “Let Quinn know,” and re­turned her gaze to the SUV.

  She was pleas­antly sur­prised by Fla­vio’s shad­ow­ing abil­it­ies. She’d had to tell him only a couple of times to ad­just his po­s­i­tion. The ten­sion he’d been wear­ing was gone, too, re­placed by a wide smile and a glint of ex­cite­ment in his eyes.

  Not long after they passed the Co­los­seum, they turned east again.

  “They could be head­ing to Roma Ter­mini,” the cab­bie said. Roma Ter­mini was Rome’s main train sta­tion.

  That would be per­fect, Or­lando thought. The sta­tion would be chaotic and provide plenty of chances to nab Sand­strom. And if for some reason they didn’t get the op­por­tun­ity there, they could fol­low him onto a train and take him wherever he got off.

  But it soon be­came clear the SUV’s des­tin­a­tion was not Roma Ter­mini, when the SUV stopped in front of the St. Re­gis Hotel, north­w­est of the sta­tion.

  “Pull over right here,” Or­lando ordered.

  Fla­vio whipped the cab to the curb.

  “You guys stay here. I’ll be right back,” she said and grabbed her back­pack.

  “I can­not stay here,” Fla­vio shot back. “No park­ing.”

  “Okay, then drive around the block un­til you hear from me.”

  She climbed out and shut the door.

  At the hotel, the SUV’s driver had opened the pas­sen­ger doors, and Sand­strom and the other two men were climb­ing out. The mo­ment they walked into the build­ing, Or­lando headed after them.

  Front­ing the hotel were three gi­ant open doors that led to an en­closed area, where no more than three cars could be parked. Bey­ond this were steps lead­ing up to a re­volving door into the hotel. As Or­lando passed through the nearest street-side door, Sand­strom’s group reached the re­volving one. She slowed her pace un­til they were in­side, and then in­creased it again.

  By the time she was through the re­volving door, Sand­strom was be­ing led to a re­cep­tion desk by a smil­ing hotel em­ployee.

  Or­lando took a seat on one of the couches in the lobby area, to the left of the cent­ral walk­way, and pulled out her laptop. In mo­ments, she’d broken into St. Re­gis’s net­work and worked her way into the re­gis­tra­tion re­cords, where she found no re­ser­va­tion for any­one named Sand­strom.

  At least he was smart enough not to travel un­der his own name, she thought.

  Find­ing out his alias would have been a pain in the ass if he hadn’t been check­ing in right at that mo­ment. All she had to do was mon­itor which names were be­ing switched from pending to guest.

  Three names, two rooms. Owen Miller and Jared Jones would be shar­ing a room, while Charles Wright would be alone in the one next door. Or­lando noted the room num­bers, brought up a lay­out of the hotel, and found where they were loc­ated.

  Across the lobby, Sand­strom and his col­leagues fin­ished up at the desk and were es­cor­ted to an el­ev­ator. Or­lando waited un­til they’d star­ted up be­fore she in­ser­ted the guest names Noah and Anna Perry into the St. Re­gis sys­tem, as­signed them the room closest to Sand­strom’s, and marked them as already checked in.

  Next, she called Daeng. “Send Steve in here, then go get the gear bag. Call me when you’re head­ing back and I’ll tell you where to find us.”

  “On it.”

  She stood as Howard entered the lobby and met him halfway. She had already texted him her plan, so he was pre­pared when she frowned at him and said, “Did you find it?”

  “I don’t know what happened to it,” he said in a very con­vin­cing, de­fens­ive hus­band-esque tone. “I’m sorry, all right?”

  The at­tend­ant ap­proached them. “Is there any­thing I can help you with?”

  An­noyed, Or­lando said, “My hus­band here lost our key.”

  “I must have left it in the res­taur­ant,” Howard said.

  “That’s not a prob­lem at all,” the at­tend­ant said. “What room?”

  “Three twenty-seven,” Or­lando replied.

  They walked over to the re­cep­tion desk, where the at­tend­ant ex­plained the situ­ation to the clerk, who keyed the room num­ber into a ter­minal. “Mrs. Perry?”

  “Cor­rect.”

  “May I see your ID, please.”

  “Of course.” Or­lando set her back­pack on the counter and made a show of hunt­ing around in­side. Her false pass­ports were all in the same spe­cial pocket, five sets, each from a dif­fer­ent coun­try with a dif­fer­ent alias. She grabbed her Anna Perry Amer­ican pass­port and handed it to the wo­man.

  The re­cep­tion­ist checked the pass­port against the hotel re­cords and handed it back.

  “Could we get two more keys? You know, just in case he loses his again.”

  “Of course.”

  *

  As Quinn, Nate, and Jar waited for St. Amand to leave, Jar said, “There’s some­thing you should hear.”

  She min­im­ized the video feed from in­side the res­taur­ant, mak­ing it a small box in the corner, and, since no one was around them, played on speak­erphone the au­dio from the bug.

  “You’ll be hear­ing from us soon,” a male voice said.

  Jar paused it. “That is the one we thought was St. Amand.”

  “Thought?” Quinn said.

  “Just listen.” She hit Play again.

  A dif­fer­ent voice. “I look for­ward to it.”

  “Sand­strom,” Jar whispered.

  On the re­cord­ing a third voice said, “Man­fred, please see Mr. Sand­strom out.”

  “The man speak­ing is St. Amand’s driver,” Jar said.

  The clos­ing of a door was fol­lowed by sev­eral seconds of si­lence, then the first voice they’d heard spoke again. “How was I?”

  “You were ex­cel­lent as al­ways.”

  Jar hit Pause. “This is the man who did most of the talk­ing dur­ing the meet­ing.”

  “The guy with the high cheekbones?” Nate asked.

  “Yes, I be­lieve so.”

  Quinn mo­tioned for her to re­sume the play­back.

  “Oh, good. I’m so glad to hear that. I al­ways won­der, you know.”

  “We’ll be leav­ing soon. If you’re go­ing to eat, you should do it now.”

  “I’m starving.”

  More mov­ing around, then High Cheekbones began talk­ing in Bul­garian, some­thing about a ship­ment and noon to­mor­row.

  Jar hit Pause.

  “Keep play­ing,” Quinn told her.

  “You un­der­stand this part?”

  “A little bit,” Quinn replied.

  “What lan­guage is that?”

  “Bul­garian.”

  She let it play.

  The con­ver­sa­tion was between High Cheekbones and the driver, and seemed to be about the deal St. Amand had made with Sand­strom. Quinn gleaned noth­ing new from it.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Quinn said.

  Jar stopped the play­back and en­larged the feed from in­side the res­taur­ant’s up­per hall­way. It had re­mained empty the en­tire time they’d been listen­ing.

 

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