Hollyanne ended up with Spencer’s gadget. Which was good, because it beeped twice when scanning Amanda. Her jacket had something sewn into a seam that was pinging every ten seconds. That was easy enough to handle.
It was the one in her bra that the boys would have had a hard time dealing with.
Hollyanne let the device rest right in the center, where the two underwires would cross.
“Son of a bitch!” Amanda muttered under her breath as her bosom beeped. “Really?”
Hollyanne shrugged and shared a commiserating smile with the woman.
Somebody had known what they were doing. If you had a good bra, you’d take care of it. Never lose it. Maybe not notice when somebody added a small electronic device in it to track you whenever you went because the fit of every bra constantly evolved over any four-week-period.
Amanda’s jacket was already in the front seat with Nathaniel’s blazer, itself possessed of two transmitters, one in a button and one in the shoulder pad.
Amanda had to squirm a little to reach the hook in back, but Hollyanne wasn’t about to offer to help, nor was Jake from the look in his eyes. Instead, everybody watched the performance as the woman twisted inside her T-shirt, withdrawing first one arm and then the other before her lacy, white bra emerged and got handed forward.
Amanda leaned back and crossed her arms defensively across her chest. Hollyanne didn’t blame her, so she popped off her Abaya and gave it to the stranger to wear. Hollyanne had pants and a thick shirt underneath.
Plus, she still had her armored sports bra underneath.
Amanda had a shirt just barely thick enough to hide anything. Maybe.
“Spencer, just lose those,” Jake ordered. “In that trashcan or something.”
Hollyanne noted the direction Jake was pointing and nodded. Edge of a park, so maybe it would look on a screen like the two lovebirds had taken a bus to the park and were sitting on one of the nearby benches or something.
And lovebirds was absolutely the term Hollyanne would use, even if she was certain they had never done more than hold hands before walking into that ice cream store.
Something about jumping off a ledge together.
“He didn’t trust us at all?” Amanda demanded. Of Nathaniel apparently, because the other three of them might as well have not been in the truck as Rik started driving again.
“Would you?” Nathaniel countered with a shrug. “He’s into his endgame, whatever it is. I’m a newcomer and have asked to go on an unnecessary field trip into the city at a bad time. Even accompanied by his deadliest assassin, he’s got to assume that something might happen to me. To us. Maybe my enemies show up and I’m arrested. Or yours. Maybe no less than Pacific Force itself is suddenly in town and about to ruin everything. The question then is not paranoia, but sufficient paranoia for survival. That’s why I cracked open both phones and pulled the batteries in addition to airplane mode. I would like to vanish off the face of the earth, at least long enough to stop this madman.”
“Which brings me to the next interesting crisis,” Jake broke in before the lovebirds got going. “Nathaniel, I’m assuming that you would like to make us a deal whereby our two sides team up to stop Lord Wraith, after which you’d expect to go free?”
“Yes, Jake,” Nathaniel said, turned as far as he could be with the seat belt holding him. “This is world-shattering in scope. Bring down civilization or at least cause a catastrophe that makes the Great Depression look like ants at a Sunday picnic. I could have stayed silent and watched it happen, but I don’t want men and women like that destroying the world. Do you have any idea how hard it would be to take over everything if they burned it down first?”
Hollyanne suppressed a snort.
Nathaniel had never been about taking over the world, so she presumed he was putting on a performance for Amanda. Playing in the big leagues, when he’d always been more comfortable hiding in the third or fourth tier of villains, making his money from his various scams while not being high enough on anybody’s radar that they sent strike teams or missile drones after him.
Hollyanne didn’t have the heart to tell the man that he might have been better off just founding some tech start-up down in Santa Clara and becoming a billionaire that way. There were a lot of them, and most were far worse psychopaths than Nathaniel ever dreamed of being.
Jake had nailed it earlier. Both Nathaniel and Pacific Force played by rules. Not necessarily laws, but those men in the billionaire class—and they were almost all men—seemed to skirt every law they could sue or ignore to evade.
Part of the reason the world was so fragile now. Too many chiselers. Too many beavers gnawing away at the roots of the system for their own advantage, and screw everybody else.
“Well, we’ve rescued you, so that’s step one,” Jake said. “When we get to the hotel, you’ll need to brain dump everything you have so we can figure out how to stop this guy. Will we need to go in there with heavy firepower? Because we were operating in the dark, and crossing several countries, we didn’t bring hardly anything with us for a tactical assault.”
“I can get you guns,” Amanda spoke up. “Today. Here in Bonn. We’ll have to move quickly, if you want to do that then turn around and attack Lord Wraith, but I have connections we could call.”
“Does he know who they are?” Hollyanne asked the woman.
“I don’t think so,” Amanda replied, turning to face her. “Lord Wraith is mostly charisma and brains running a cult, rather like your President. Folks come to him armed. I have had to make sure I had access to some underworld armorers on the side for my Berettas and other armaments because there was nobody inside who impressed me.”
“You’ll talk to Grant when we get there, then,” Hollyanne decided, glancing over to get a nod from Jake. “He’s the face man of the group, so he’ll know them or will deal with them for arms later.”
Amanda nodded. At least she was acting like a team player, even if she was as close to being under arrest as you could get without handcuffs.
Everybody turned back to Nathaniel now.
“Jake, the man must be stopped,” he said. “I’d rather not go back to prison, but if that’s the trade-off, I’ll deal with it and figure out a way to escape later. Like last time.”
“You feel that strongly, Nathaniel?” Jake asked.
“I do.”
“Then you better have one hell of a good story when we get to the hotel.”