San Diego
Early morning
June 29
The sky had turned pewter, a shade lighter than the ocean that still carried the darkness of the night.
Nicole opened one eye, then closed it quickly.
Eyes closed, she tried to process what she’d seen.
A train wreck, that’s what she’d seen.
She opened her eyes each morning to her calm, orderly bedroom, with the four-poster that she’d slept in in seven countries, with its French lace canopy and Frette sheets. The seventeenth-century armoire and eighteenth-century Italian madia. The vases with fresh flowers, the ceramic bowls of potpourri, the big Baccarat crystal vase full of multicolored sand. Her mother’s lovely watercolors and a collection of photographs taken by an old school friend who was now one of the top fashion photographers in the world.
Everything in its place. Cool and quiet and neat, exactly as she liked it.
This room looked like it had been at war, particularly the bed. She looked down at herself, naked, one leg trapped by the powerful, hairy leg of an equally naked man. A man with hormones instead of blood, she’d swear.
Sam Reston did not have an “off” button. He’d finally stopped a few hours ago because she was ready to go into a coma, after too many orgasms to count.
Time out, she’d gasped, and he’d laughed and slowly pulled out of her, the act so sexy she’d mourned the absence of his penis immediately, though she’d been the one to call a halt. He’d disappeared for a moment and come back with two glasses of chilled white wine and a plate of ripe grapes.
Even after dinner, even after the impromptu midnight picnic on the terrace, she’d been ravenous. Nonstop sex, it appeared, was an appetite stimulant, in more ways than one.
As she sipped the wine, she couldn’t help but give an admiring look at him sitting beside her, muscles bulging as he fed her grapes, big, thick, erect penis dark, engorged with blood, twitching when she looked at it.
She’d glanced at his lap then looked away again, but she could feel the flush rising from her breasts to her face. She thought she’d stopped blushing in her teens, but apparently not. Close proximity to Sam Reston made the blood pound through her body, rise to her face, color her nipples deep pink.
He’d looked at her, really looked at her, from her flushed breasts, the left one moving slightly with the hard pulses of her heart, the vein beating in her neck, the pearls of moisture in her pubic hair, a mixture of his semen and her excitement.
His eyes had lifted to hers and her entire body thrummed. But it was like asking a car to start on fumes, after having been pedal-to-the-metal running straight through every molecule of gas in the tank. She was sore all over, particularly her sex, and the desire she felt was only a faint echo of the all-consuming drive to have him in her she’d felt all night in his bed.
There it was. She’d hit her own personal wall. Finally. It had been a night of excess that had astonished her, but she had her limits and she’d reached them.
Sam had moved his free hand to her knee, cupping it, narrowed dark eyes burning into hers. He’d brought his mouth to her ear.
“Nicole?” The deep voice had been like a caress. How incredibly sexy it had sounded in her ear while he’d been moving heavily inside her. Her stomach clenched at the memory.
Oh God, he was ready for another round. How could he? With a sigh, Nicole realized she wasn’t being fair. She’d nearly crawled into his skin up until now, matching him heat for heat. If she’d reached the end of her rope, and he hadn’t, it wasn’t his fault.
“Lie down,” he’d said softly.
Heart pounding, she let her back settle on the mattress. How to do this? Maybe she could psych herself up for another round.
He shifted on the mattress and she controlled a wince. But instead of climbing on top of her, as she expected, he smiled and positioned his glass of wine over her belly and slowly, slowly, poured a thin, cold stream of the fragrant Chardonnay over her.
It felt good on her overheated skin, the fragrant fruity notes rising to her nose.
And then Sam had bent to lick the wine off her stomach, slowly, like a cat lapping cream. She’d tried to rise on her elbows, but he’d simply put a big hand on her chest and gently pushed her back down.
He lifted his head and smiled at her. “No, honey,” he said, his voice a deep, dark whisper. “You don’t do anything at all. You just lie back and let me pleasure you.”
That was good, because her muscles felt like water, incapable of holding her up.
Sam’s tongue moved lower, lower and she gasped as he licked around her sex, gently, as if aware of the fact that she was sore.
“Close your eyes.” The deep voice came from far away.
“Okay.” She closed her eyes, heard the faint click as he turned the bedside lamp off. Her eyelids turned from pink to black.
Sam nuzzled her sex, nose against her clitoris, tongue gently swirling, dipping into her, where his penis had just been. Her breath came out on a sigh, his own murmur of satisfaction echoing hers.
Soft plashing sounds came through the open French windows, gentle and regular, as if the sea were breathing. There were soft gentle sounds coming from down her body as Sam worked her with his mouth.
Such a strange sensation, slowly becoming aroused while the mantle of sleep bore down on her, as she drifted further and further away, to a land of pleasure that grew ever darker…
Unlike the other contractions of orgasm, so sharp at times they poised on the knife-edge of pain, this climax was gentle, dreamy, her body a boat rocking on the soft waves of the sea, rocking, rocking…
It was the last thing she remembered.
The sky was growing lighter by the minute. Soon it would be dawn.
Nicole rose slowly from the bed, wincing at all the sore muscles, making her halting way to the bathroom. She passed a mirror and winced at the sight of the unknown woman in the mirror, clearer by the minute as the world outside lightened, like an image emerging from the fog. Wild, dark hair tangling around her head, huge eyes, swollen lips.
She looked back at the bed, at him. He was so long, his feet hung off the bed. Even his feet were gorgeous, long, lean, high-arched. One thick arm was over his eyes, the other outstretched to her side of the bed. Deeply asleep, completely still except for the expansion of his broad chest with each breath.
Well…he’d made love all night. Literally. She’d had no idea that any male over the age of fifteen would have been capable of that, capable of coming so many times she’d lost count. Even now, in complete repose, in a sleep so deep it could have been a coma, his penis looked full, veins visible, semi-erect on his thigh.
If Sam’s eyes were to open right now, and if he were to see her naked, that penis would swell fully erect in an instant. She’d bet the bank on it.
Something in her seemed to set him off. Certainly, something in him set her off. She looked like she was making love right now. Her breasts were swollen, nipples red and hard. And oh God, just looking at him, like some Greek statue come to life, her thighs trembled.
She had to get out of here. Fast.
For a second, she looked with longing at the bathroom door. A shower. A shower would go a long way toward making her feel like herself again, washing away the smell of him permeating her skin. He’d touched every inch of her last night, marked her irrevocably, inside and out. She wasn’t used to not feeling fresh and she definitely wasn’t used to smelling of someone else.
She stared at herself in the mirror, this face she’d never seen before, eyes wide, pupils dilated.
And then she was aware of something else. Wetness between her legs, running down her thighs. For a moment, she thought she’d unexpectedly got her period, that her body had simply disobeyed the pill and gone ahead and had a period, breaking the hormonal schedule. An entire night of wild sex surely would be enough to knock her for a loop, hormonally speaking.
She looked down at herself, expecting to see drops of blood, but all she saw was a gleaming wetness.
His semen.
Sam had shot a small lake into her during the night. At the memory, her knees wobbled. She gasped for air, the sound loud in the quiet room. Nicole’s head whipped around to see if she’d somehow woken Sam up, but he was out like a light.
The thought of that—of Sam waking up and finding her here, of having to face him after last night’s excesses…Oh no.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t still attracted to him, it was that she was attracted too much. The Nicole Pearce of last night—the woman who had wallowed in sex, who had tuned out the world to focus narrowly on Sam Reston and his luscious, utterly male body—she had to simply put that woman away. That Nicole was an aberration and she had to disappear, right now.
Speaking of disappearing…
She looked around wildly. Her dress was on the floor, crumpled, bra on top. Jacket on the back of a chair. One sandal was toppled on its side next to a big, sleek chest of drawers, and its mate…where the hell was its mate? Walking barefoot out of Sam’s house was too awful to contemplate, but the other sandal was nowhere to be found. Two sweeps of the room and no shoe. Just one place left to look. She crouched and yes, there it was. Under the bed. Under Sam’s very large, very low bed. It took a full minute, but she finally got it.
She couldn’t possibly walk out looking like this, but on the other hand, there was a drumbeat inside her, insistent and loud. Get out now. Get out now. Before he woke up, because she had no clue what she could possibly say to him.
Dress and go, now.
She slipped into the bathroom, leaving the door open, so that a little of the faint morning light could seep in. If she turned the lights on in the white-tiled bathroom, the glare could wake Sam up.
A splash of cold water on her face, a quick wash between her legs—and oh my god, the nap of the washcloth felt incredibly rough against her super-sensitized flesh—a comb hastily pulled through her hair was all she allowed herself time for. Bra and dress went on in under a minute.
Holding her sandals by the straps, she tiptoed her way to the front door. On the floor was a silky mauve slash of material. Her panties. Her beautiful La Perla panties, ripped apart. And how she’d reveled in Sam tearing them off her, because they’d been this unacceptable barrier between her and Sam’s hard flesh.
She closed her eyes for a second, then opened them, intent more than ever on getting out as fast as she could, like someone fleeing from the scene of the crime.
The door. She eyed it warily. Last night, getting in had been like getting into some secret room at the Pentagon. Palm print, keypad, five-digit code. She had no idea what the numbers were. Her mind had been utterly lost in mists of lust.
If she needed a secret code to get out, she was in trouble.
The idea of having to walk back into the bedroom, wake Sam up and ask for a code made her focus, concentrate. She studied the door, narrow eyed. A door had to work both ways, didn’t it? You have to be able to get out, not just in.
There was no security panel. No door handle, either, for that matter. She stared at the door, willing it to yield up its secrets.
Did it open by remote control? Did she have to go back into the bedroom and root through Sam’s pants? That would be the last straw.
There was one button on the wall next to the featureless door. She held out a hesitant finger, hovered over it, then gathered her courage and pressed it, hoping it wasn’t connected to something dangerous, like a siren. Or a bomb.
A crisp click and the lock disengaged, the door sliding open.
Yes!
Nicole tiptoed through, then quietly slid the door closed behind her.
She stood in the hallway, breathing heavily, as if she’d just engineered a jailbreak. Her heart was pounding so hard it was a miracle the sound didn’t echo in the quiet corridor.
It was utterly ridiculous, but she couldn’t do anything about the way she felt—panicky and broken, as if running away from something dangerous.
Mindful of the clickety-clack of her heels on the shiny hardwood floor of the corridor last night, she walked barefoot to the elevator and called it up, wincing at the little ping as it reached Sam’s floor. It sounded so loud in the silence.
In the elevator, she clutched her pochette tightly, like a shield, and stared mindlessly at the elevator doors.
When they opened, she stepped out into the huge, glass-encased lobby. The sky was now a dark pearly gray and she could see the beach not fifty feet away, the small waves curling like lace on the sand.
“Miss?”
Nicole jumped and barely managed to suppress a scream.
“Miss? Can I help you?” The tone more pointed, with a slight Hispanic accent.
A security guard, dressed in some security company’s livery, surrounded by a circular polished-wood barrier with lots of video screens showing empty hallways, looking at her with a frown.
Nicole heroically refrained from looking down at herself in dismay but she knew exactly what he was seeing. A disheveled woman who had obviously been up to no good, tiptoeing away shoeless from a night of excess in one of the apartments.
This was just so unfair. Nicole was the epitome of a proper lady. Even in the midst of a hot affair, she always kept her decorum; it had been drummed into her. She prided herself on the fact that a casual observer would never know what she was thinking, what she was feeling.
Right now, she might as well have had babe after a hot night tattooed on her forehead.
The only thing to do was brazen it out. She straightened, put on her best ambassador’s-daughter polite smile and lifted her head.
“Good morning,” she said evenly. “I wonder if you could call me a taxi?”
“Sure thing, ma’am,” the guard said, punching out a number on the phone keypad without taking his eyes off her. Presumably in case she made off with one of the stone planters that must have weighed three hundred pounds each.
“Thank you,” Nicole said primly, and walked to the front of the lobby, sitting down on one of the long, gleaming oak benches. She carefully put on her sandals and stared out the two-story windows at the beach. The sky was cloudless, pale blue, the ocean light gray. It was going to be a glorious day, as so many days were in San Diego.
She stared out at the ocean, thinking of absolutely nothing, until she heard the guard call out. “Taxi’s here, ma’am.”
She turned her head and sure enough, a cab was coming around the circular driveway. Nicole nodded to the guard and got into the cab. She gave her address to the driver and stared blindly out the window as he took off.
This part of San Diego was beautiful, but she barely noticed the white sand beaches, lush vegetation, the light dancing on wavelets over the ocean, the runners on the beach.
All she could think about was Sam Reston on top of her, nose an inch from hers, staring at her fiercely as he moved in and out of her. And the fact that all last night, she hadn’t thought once about her father.
New York
“Paul Preston for Mr. Mold. I have a ten o’clock appointment.”
Ah. Finally. The last secretary in the gauntlet. She lifted her gaze and gave him a small smile, just a slight baring of beautiful white-capped teeth as large as Chiclets, then her gloss-covered mouth closed tightly. Muhammed had learned that the more powerful the man, the less friendly the secretary.
He’d cycled through three secretaries already, offering smiles in decreasing increments, as he neared the “Holy Presence.” This secretary was the one who held her boss’s schedule. She was powerful beyond measure and she knew it.
Muhammed had asked for this appointment, desperate to get to top financier Richard Mold as fast as possible, knowing that time was vital, yet trying not to press too hard, because Mold would see it as a sign of vulnerability.
These men could smell desperation at a hundred paces, like hyenas can smell blood from miles away. Muhammed was desperate, but not for money. Though he lived in a world that would do anything for money—live for it, die for it, even kill for it—he was indifferent to its lure.
Particularly now, when he—Muhammed Wahed, a child of the camps—was going to change the course of human history. Men would weave stories of his actions for a thousand years. More.
So it was hard for him to keep calm in front of the secretary’s cool gaze as she pressed a button and quietly said, “Mr. Paul Preston to see you, sir. Your ten-o’clock appointment.”
Did she notice the slight sheen of sweat on his forehead? See that he had to work to keep from wringing his hands?
Maybe she did. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe if he were too cool, it would be noted, commented on. Richard Mold commanded an empire and his methods were harsh. In his own world, he was a caliph, a sultan. Anyone asking a favor was meant to be a sweaty, trembling supplicant.
There was a low, calm, deep murmur from the intercom—the tone of command very clear—and the big mahogany and brass door to the right of the desk issued a faint click and slid smoothly into the wall.
The secretary looked at him coolly. “You have until ten fifteen, sir.”
The subtext was that at 10:15, security would be called in.
Well, by 10:15 he’d either have a name, or not. It was in Allah’s hands at this point.
He walked through the door.
Over the past years, Muhammed had been in countless offices of the rich and powerful. Some preferred the English Lord look. Paneled walls, deep leather armchairs, crystal decanters, as if an office on the fortieth floor of a Manhattan skyscraper had been in existence for three hundred years, bequeathed down through the generations, from earl to earl.
Some had offices that looked like they’d time-traveled back from the twenty-second century.
But all of them, all of them exuded a specific aura—look at me. Look at what I’ve accomplished. Look at how powerful I am. Do not mess with me because I will crush you.
Muhammed had been in this office once before, when Mold had just taken over the big hedge fund. It had looked like Versailles then. Now it was all sleek black marble and Lucite.
They said that Mold had spent three million dollars redecorating his office.
And there he was, behind a twelve-foot-long slab of ebony with transparent legs, the desk empty and bare and highly polished, as befitted a Master of the Universe.
Mold stood but didn’t offer his hand. “Preston,” he said. The deep voice wasn’t particularly warm or welcoming. “What can I do for you?”
That was a loaded question, if ever there was one. Muhammed was here only because Mold hoped Muhammed could do something for him. If it was only a favor being asked, Muhammed would be marched out by security the instant Mold pressed the red button that was undoubtedly on the underside of the desk.
All nervousness had gone, sucked away like the stale air into the invisible conditioners.
Muhammed had seen the future.
Mold’s office building was one of the top ones of the list. The instant his martyr brothers could fan out, this building was to be one of the first to be irradiated. The brothers would be freshly barbered, dressed in the uniforms of Wall Street—suits by Armani, Boss, Jil Sanders. They would have ID that would bear up to a security guard’s scrutiny. Muhammed would give the order that one martyr stay in the lobby and another martyr brother come up here, to the fifty-fifth floor, and blow himself up right in front of the snotty secretary’s desk. Mold would die instantly. His company, everything he stood for, would be gone in an instant, everything untouchable for decades.
It calmed Muhammed right down. Mold was giving off the waves of aggression typical of a Wall Street trader turned hedge fund manager. His temper tantrums were famous. He was used to screaming, intimidating underlings to get his way.
Muhammed looked at Mold calmly, at this dead man walking.
Only a few days to go.
He looked around, then chose a chair and sat down just as Mold said, “Have a seat.”
The chair was by a hot new designer and was made of paper. Muhammed had read that it sold for $10,000, enough to feed hundreds of people in the camps for a year.
Richard Mold deserved to burn. They all did.
Muhammed hitched his trousers so as not to ruin the excellent crease, and crossed his legs.
Silence.
It irritated Mold. His deeply tanned face turned tight, his eyes narrowed. “So, Preston, what’s this about?” he asked coldly.
Muhammed waited a beat, then spoke. “I have a piece of information you might find interesting, and in exchange, I want a name and a phone number.”
Mold’s thick gray eyebrows drew together. “What’s the info and what name?”
Muhammed plucked at the crease of his trousers, enjoying the feel of the fine linen. He let a minute go by, two. Oh, he’d learned the subtle ways of power of the West. Mold watched him, face growing even tighter.
Finally, Muhammed gave a small sigh. “A company you invest in, a very well known corporation, has just announced one of its best quarters ever. A double-digit increase in sales. Its stock has risen by almost fifteen percent on the strength of the report. But it’s false. The CEO is hiding almost twenty billion dollars in losses and the FBI will arrest him in four days’ time. If you short that stock, you can make millions. In four days.”
Mold’s face betrayed nothing but Muhammed knew the thoughts going through his mind. Over the past week, several corporations had announced big gains after almost two years of recession. Muhammed could be referring to any one of a number of companies. Guess wrong and you lose a bundle. Guess right, ah. Make millions in an instant. Add to your reputation as a miracle man. To someone like Mold, it was irresistible. He and his kind were born for this kind of challenge.
That tight slash of a mouth opened, cranked the words out. “And what would you want in return for that name?”
Yes! It was a done deal.
“Another name,” Muhammed murmured. “All we both want is a name.”
Mold wasn’t one to utter unnecessary words. He simply stared.
Muhammed leaned forward slightly, lowered his voice. “Some time ago, I heard that there is a man the financial community…uses. When there are problems you can’t buy your way out of. I want the name and contact details of the man who makes problems and people go away.”
Silence. Utter silence.
They were so high no sounds could penetrate and one of the things the woman outside was there for was to prevent noises or distractions. There was no sound at all. Even the air-conditioning was utterly quiet.
Mold watched his eyes for a long moment, then took out a sheet of thick stock, clicked his Cross pen and wrote. The sound of the pen moving across the thick paper was loud in the morning silence. Mold folded the sheet once, twice, then slid it across his desk.
Muhammed had taken his own pen and written out the name of a company on the top of a page torn from the Wall Street Journal.
The name was that of the second-largest corporation in the US. It had just announced record sales after the long slump. As far as Muhammed knew, the figures were correct. Mold would sell short and lose a lot of money.
It wouldn’t matter, because in four days, Mold, his company, the corporation and all of Wall Street would be gone.
Muhammed folded the newspaper page neatly in half and slid it across the half acre of Mold’s desk, pocketing the paper Mold had written on without looking at it.
He rose, briefcase in hand. He didn’t make the mistake of offering his hand. They stared at each other for a moment. Muhammed bowed his head soberly and walked out, feeling Mold’s eyes boring into the back of his head and hearing the slight crinkle of the piece of paper in his pocket with the name of the man who would solve his problem and help him bring down the world.
Georgia
The name was Sean McInerney. He worked undercover often and had had numerous aliases, but Sean McInerney was the name he’d been born with.
It wouldn’t be the name he’d die with.
After the military, starting his new profession, Sean had thought long and hard about his cover name. He wanted it short and snappy. One word, memorable, like Cher or Madonna, only instead of thinking good-looking chick, you had to think lethal.
He’d been listening to Outlaw by Whitesnake, and it came to him. Of course.
He’d had a number of aliases in his time, but “Outlaw” worked real well in his new profession. The name was corny, but his new employers loved it. Made them feel sexy, made them feel tough.
Life after SpecOps was good. Real good.
He’d lucked into a little cohort of bankers, CEOs, hedge fund managers, financiers and money managers who spent their time hunched over computer monitors, thinking they were dangerous dudes.
Outlaw had heard all the macho phrases: Eat what you kill, Put wood behind the arrow, Drink the Kool-aid.
Men in finance liked to think of themselves as real tough dudes, but they were tough only because they had a wall of money behind them. When that wall threatened to fall, they crumbled and showed their true natures—that of pale clerks, not alpha males, as they so fondly imagined themselves.
The only attribute Outlaw recognized of himself in them was utter ruthlessness. Touch their money and they would hire the best to fight for them and give no quarter.
And so his post-military life began. The dishonorable discharge—thrown out of the Army for selling arms when there were fucking warehouses full of them rusting in the desert—stopped him from applying for a white-collar job, not that he had ever wanted one.
No, a freak connection between an old Army buddy and his brother in finance had set him up in his new profession.
The first job couldn’t have been easier. A whistleblower, about ready to send a hot set of documents showing malfeasance to the SEC and blow a fifteen-million-dollar bonus out of the water. The CEO met with Outlaw in a luxury room at the top of a business skyscraper about five blocks from where he worked. The financier might have been a god in the world of finance but he was a fuckhead in real life.
The financier had given a false name and made sure that he employed euphemisms, but it was clear he wanted the whistleblower taken out. Outlaw had showed him the Barrett 95 in its carrying case and watched as the banker’s eyes widened.
It was bullshit, all of it.
Outlaw knew perfectly well who the banker was. Lewis Munro, CEO of the tenth largest corporation in the US. Outlaw had his name, home address and address of the hideaway apartment on Lexington where Munro’s mistress lived. Outlaw knew how much cocaine Munro consumed in a week and how much he paid for it. He knew what private schools the kids were in, how much Mrs. Munro dropped weekly at Hermés and even the amount of taxes Munro had evaded.
Even the Barrett was bullshit. A .50 cal bullet was guaranteed to rain down police attention like nothing else. For the Barrett he used an armor-piercing bullet, the Raufoss Mk.211, containing an incendiary, and very accurate in sniper rifles. He’d lifted three thousand boxes of the stuff from the base warehouse.
It was a military bullet, totally wasted on a civilian target unless you had to snipe at two grand out. Like a big, red fucking sign hung around the dead guy’s neck that this was a hit. Sometimes that was necessary. Most of the time, it wasn’t.
When it went down, it was a perfect street mugging. The whistleblower walking back home alone from a dinner date with friends, the mugger taking all his money, credit cards and even his wedding ring and wristwatch. The police speculated that the whistleblower had resisted and got a knife in the ribs for his pains.
The homicide detective stood over the crumpled body in the alley and shook his head over the mugger’s luck in hitting the heart with one thrust.
It wasn’t luck. Outlaw had practiced that move thousands of times in training and hundreds of times on live bodies on mission.
Had the whistleblower been taken out by a sniper’s bullet, the police would have looked closely at his affairs and would have found material incriminating Munro, who would have had some explaining to do, which would have made pointless the hundred thousand dollars Munro had transferred to Outlaw’s bank in Aruba.
As it was, the police couldn’t track the knife on which there were no prints and after a fruitless two weeks, the whistleblower’s file was already a cold case.
That hit had made him. He became the go-to guy for anyone in the financial sector who had a problem that couldn’t be solved by throwing money at it, including divorcing wives where there was no prenup.
Outlaw had had more than twenty jobs in the past five years, all executed perfectly. A study of the terrain and the subject, a quick in and out, using methods that varied widely, and no one was the wiser. He had even put together a team of former soldiers, good men who, after giving their all to Uncle Sam, were now up for earning real money.
Outlaw had learned from the finance guys, too. Corner a market and charge big. He was up to five hundred grand a pop now, plus expenses.
Outlaw had given Munro a cell phone number on a card, knowing Munro would spread it around. Munro lived in a world of men used to winning, no matter what. And if they didn’t have the necessary set of skills to do specific jobs, they simply hired men who did.
The call came as he was looking out over the hundred acres he’d bought in Georgia, less than an hour from the hub that was Hartsfield International. The land was extensive enough to have firing ranges, a shoot house and endurance courses for his men, while offering complete privacy. The perimeter was surrounded by sensors sensitive enough to detect a jackrabbit, with webcams every five feet.
In essence, Outlaw had his own country.
He’d built an enormous house that offered every comfort he could possibly want. Standing at the huge reinforced plate-glass window sipping a Jack Daniel’s, he answered his cell. It was his business cell phone, never used for anything but clients with jobs.
Well good, he thought. Time to make me some more money.
“Are you the man known as Outlaw?” The voice was soft, not deep, standard American.
“Yeah.” He didn’t ask who was calling. It didn’t make any difference. The guy would lie anyway. If necessary for the job, Outlaw could find out. Otherwise, he didn’t give a shit as long as the money landed in the bank. “What do you need?”
“Ah, a man who comes directly to the point. I like that.”
“Well, since I’ve got myself a rep as a straight shooter, let me tell you straight out I’m not moving until my fee is in my bank.”
“I was told about your…style, Mr. Outlaw. If you check your bank account, you will find your fee. Plus. I will send you the information on the person of interest in ten minutes, once you’ve ascertained this.”
Outlaw didn’t need ten minutes. Inside a minute, he’d logged onto his bank account and yes, there it was, 500K with an extra 100K thrown in for goodwill.
Outlaw knew his employers lived, breathed and died for money. Extra money meant this was extra important.
After ten minutes, a beep from his cell phone. He had a text message.
Nicole Pearce. Translation agency, Wordsmith. Morrison Building, San Diego, California.
Nicole Pearce received data in e-mail sent from Marseilles on June 28. Retrieve hard disk, possible flash drive, search for backups, eliminate computer, eliminate Nicole Pearce. Strict timeline. Job must be completed by July 2.
Okay.
Get a hard disk from a woman, snuff woman. He’d done harder things in his life. He checked the website of this business, Wordsmith. After half an hour, he had a handle on what it did and he’d gotten a good look at Nicole Pearce.
Christ. She was a fucking looker. One of his men, Dalton, was perpetually horny. If Dalton had been on this op, he’d toss Dalton this Pearce babe to play with for a while. Make him grateful.
He checked Vital Statistics and saw that she lived with one Nicholas Pearce, her father, not her husband.
Outlaw purged his search history from his computer, stood up and stretched. He finished his bourbon looking out the window at his little fiefdom.
He loved this life. He loved the heft and feel of it, the money and the power. He loved having hard skills and making soft men pay through the nose for them.
Outlaw stood at the window, watching the planes from Hartfield climb into the sky, one after another, like clockwork. In his own way, he was as precise a technician as any pilot or surgeon.
He’d go down to his state-of-the-art gym and give himself a good workout, get limber, then would have a light lunch with water. No more booze. He was now officially on Op Time, dedicated solely to the mission, and would be until the job was done.
He had a private plane at his disposal. He’d book it for 3 P.M., give him time to research the person, the hit.
His eyes lingered on the lovely face on his computer screen.
Christ, a real beauty. Who was about to be sacrificed to the money men.
Sorry, honey, he thought. I don’t know how you did it, but you just stepped on the wrong toes.