Fool Me Twice (Riley Wolfe 2)

“It isn’t important what. Impossible, though—that’s what Riley Wolfe does. He will do it—and then he’ll deliver it to Bailey Stone.”

“But you can find out what Stone wants, right? So we can watch it, put a tracer on it, all that?”

Delgado shook his head. “No,” he said. “Whatever it is, we won’t see it coming.” He frowned. “It doesn’t matter.”

Finn thought for a moment, then leaned back in his chair. “Frank, don’t fuck around,” he said. “You want Riley Wolfe.” Delgado nodded. “But you think catching him will help us get Bailey Stone, so you’re willing to go along with the task force mandate.”

Ignoring the obvious sarcasm, Delgado just nodded again.

“And you really think we can turn a hard case like Wolfe, and make him give up Stone?”

“Yes,” Delgado said, with no trace of doubt in his voice.

Finn thought about it. It didn’t take long. If Delgado was right, they’d get Stone. And if they got Riley Wolfe at the same time—shit. He’d probably get a citation for steering Delgado back to normal. “All right,” he said. “But if we don’t know what he’s going after—and we don’t really even know what he looks like—how do we catch Riley Wolfe?”

Delgado smiled again. It looked a little odd, like his face might not have done that more than once before. “Same way we turn him,” he said. He opened his folder again and took out one last piece of paper. “We catch him,” he said, holding up the paper, “when he goes here. And he always does,” he said. The smile grew a little. “And,” he said, sliding the paper onto Finn’s desk, “it will also give us the leverage to flip him.”

Finn looked dubiously at Delgado, then glanced at the paper—and then frowned and read it through. For the first time he smiled. “No shit,” he said. He looked up and locked eyes with Delgado. “All right,” he said softly. “Make it happen, Frank.”

13

The flight home was long and boring. On top of that, I was already tired when I got on the plane. I had been a very busy guy, what with being shot with a tranq gun, kidnapped twice, chained to a wall, getting a finger broken by a psycho, threatened by several different really bad people—it wears on a man. And on top of that, the impalement. Surprising how much that takes out of you. I mean, hoisting all that deadweight up into the air—and without being seen, too. And then putting on the lube—that was just nasty. And getting him onto the spear just right—it was hard work, all of it. Of course, it might have been a little harder on Arvid when he woke up, but he didn’t have to deal with the airlines afterward, and a really long flight on top of that.

And then, of course, it was not really “the long flight” home. It was a bunch of them. I mean, in the first place, try getting a direct flight from Stockholm to Fayetteville, Arkansas. And anyway, even if there was a direct flight, I didn’t want it. I didn’t think it would help hide me from either Boniface or Stone, but it’s always a good idea for somebody like me to leave a messy trail. So I flew to Heathrow, then from there to Atlanta and then to Dallas.

I got rid of good old Hervé Thierry in Dallas. Just threw the passport and all the other stuff into a messy trash can, one in the middle of restaurant row, so there’d be a lot of half-eaten food, leftover coffee, and other nasty slop on top to discourage anybody from fishing it out.

Then I took a DART bus into downtown Dallas. I got off in midtown and walked toward the public library. I found a drugstore on the way and bought a couple of things—a little bit of makeup, a hoodie, hair dye, like that. There was a burger joint a few blocks away, and I used the restroom to change my appearance.

Now I was ready for my real destination—the library. Not just because they have a first folio of Shakespeare, although they do, and I did plan to pay my respects. And who knows, maybe someday I’d come back and see that it had a better home—mine.

For now, though, I had something else in mind. Some people think libraries are dinosaurs, totally useless in the age of the Internet. I disagree. In the first place, I like books—real books, printed on paper, and not so-called e-books. And in the second place—

Okay, maybe this sounds two-faced, but libraries have computers, too. And you can use them anonymously, which is pretty handy now and then. So I strolled in, found the row of desktops, and sat down at one. It took me a few minutes to get it to do what I wanted, but I managed. I got onto the dark web, fished around a little, and found what I needed. Some Bitcoins moved over the web, and two hours later I was riding back to the airport in a cab, with a brand-new driver’s license and credit card in my pocket. They all agreed that I was Gerald Hunt, thirty-two, an investment banker from Arlington.

Back at DFW, I booked a flight to O’Hare, flew to Charlotte from there, and finally to the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport at Little Rock. Gerald Hunt disappeared into another sloppy trash can in the terminal, and I headed out to long-term parking. I’d left my truck there, and I had another identity or two stashed in a hidden compartment. I fished around and pulled out a New Me. Now I was B. J. Lambeth, and I had a matching set of papers for the truck. I wasn’t ready to lose it yet.

The truck was kind of special. I’d fixed it up just for my Ozark hideaway. It was a dirty and battered-looking ten-year-old Ford pickup, and anybody seeing it in the parking garage, or on the road, would see something that looked just like ten thousand other trucks in Arkansas. But I’d stuck in a bigger gas tank, a more powerful engine, stiffer suspension, all the stuff that made an old pickup faster, nimbler, and more durable. And also, I’d put in a state-of-the-art sound system. Naturally. I’ve got to have my tunes.

And as I pulled out of the airport and got onto I-40, I had them. I started with Blondie, moved on to REO Speedwagon and then Elvis—Costello, not the corny old one in the purple jumpsuit. That got me charged up enough to make it through the three-hour drive to Fayetteville. It’s a college town, so it has more sophisticated stores and services than you might think—including a really good extended-care facility. Probably meant for retired professors, but it had top-notch care, and that’s where I’d stashed Mom.

I didn’t fart around trying to be sneaky or clever. There was no point to that. After all, Boniface had given me a ticket to Little Rock. He’d know about Mom, too. He knew this place would be my first stop, and he’d have somebody watching it. That pissed me off. A lot. Mom is important, and I hate like hell when anybody gets close to her. She’s been in a persistent vegetative state for years, and maybe she comes out of it someday, and maybe she doesn’t. That doesn’t matter. She’s my mother. I’d be nothing without her. She took care of me when I needed it, and I sure as shit meant to do the same for her.

This wasn’t the first time some hard-ass shit-pig had tracked her down, and I had to believe it wouldn’t be the last, but I wasn’t going to pull the plug, not on Mom. I’d kept her safe a long time, and I tried to keep her where nobody could find her. It cost a ton of money, sure, but fuck that. If there’s something better to spend money on, I’m waiting to hear it. So far, I’m hearing crickets.

But yeah, she was a weakness, something unfriendly acquaintances could use to get at me. I get that. So I worked overtime to keep her location private. Like I said, it hadn’t worked this time. I don’t know where the fail was, but Boniface knew, and I had to assume Stone did, too. Long term, I would have to find some way to deal with both of them, or whichever one of them survived. The squeeze the two of them had put on me was about as bad as any I’d ever had. They both had a clamp on me that was just short of killing. Worse, I knew damn well it wasn’t going to stay short. It could only end one way, even if I managed to do all the crazy shit they wanted me to do. People like them don’t let go once they have a hold on you. They use you until you turn into more of a liability than an asset, and then they put a neat little bullet hole in your skull and lay you to rest in a nice quiet bed of wet concrete.

And they knew about Mom. So on top of stealing a fucking wall from the fucking Vatican, which just plain can’t be done, I would have to think of some way to shake free of the weapons-distribution community. Something permanent, which was totally . . . shit. Let’s call it challenging. Permanently discouraging a couple of guys who had their own private armies, practically unlimited resources, and more firepower than most countries smaller than Turkey— Yeah. That was a really good word for it. Challenging.

And that was only one small piece of it. When you add in the whole picture, it was just plain fucking stupid. But what the hell. Impossible is what I do. And I do it really well, too. I’m known for it. Of course, that’s what got me into this fuckwad mess I was in now, but I had to believe that it would get me out of it, too. How? Fucked if I know. But there’s always a way—and I always find it. Always.

In the meantime, I had some hard scrambling to do. And first, I had to get Mom and move her someplace safer.

I parked at the facility and went on inside. I spent a few minutes charming the nurses, then told them why I was there. While they collected all the necessary forms, I made a few phone calls and got a bed for Mom in a good place I had scouted out already. I also lined up a couple of medical transports, with security, and arranged for a few blind switches along the way, transferring her to a different transport, with a different guard. At the third transfer spot, I arranged a small surprise, a guy I’d worked with before who knew which end was up and would keep his mouth shut and do the job. Hopefully, better than Arvid had done. He’d do an electronic sweep and get rid of any little gadgets that might have been sneaked onto Mom’s person or property to help track her. Then he’d make sure nobody was following—and if somebody was, he’d discourage them. Hard.

After that, he’d escort Mom to another transfer point, where a medevac chopper was waiting. The whole thing would cost two tons of money, but I have plenty, and like I said—what’s money for? Riley’s Twelfth Law: Money isn’t important! The lack of it is.

It took a couple more hours to finish the paperwork and see Mom off on the first leg of her trip. I schmoozed the nurses a little more, said good-bye, and then got myself back on the road.