Into the Crossfire (21 page)

while he can.

Nicole fixed her father whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, happy if

he could enjoy something.

So she let him have Manuela's coffee, and the Calvados he'd learned to love

in France and his Cuban cigars, as often as he wanted, and was happy that they

made him happy.

The trembling was worse. No surprise there. Everything about him was

worse. Day by day. Nicole cupped her father's jaw, briefly, then blinking back

tears, bent to kiss the top of his head. Something she did a thousand times a day. It

was a miracle that there wasn't a shiny spot on the top of his head from all her

kisses.

She straightened and turned to Mike Keillor. He was staring at her with a

peculiar intensity that she couldn't decipher.

"Would you walk me to the car, Nicole?" he asked. He hadn't shifted out of

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his modified parade-rest stance.

She blinked. "Sure."

Outside, at the patrol car, he turned to her. "I'll need for you to embrace me.

Maybe kiss me on the cheeks. I want them to get the message that we're real good

friends."

Oh. That made sense.

Nicole leaned forward and put her arms on his shoulders. Around his

shoulders would have been impossible, they were so wide. It seemed to her that

there was no difference between the hard unyielding feel of the body armor and

the hard unyielding feel of the muscles of his shoulders.

She'd held a man like this in her arms all night long.

Nicole kissed Mike's cheeks and stood for a moment, arms outstretched on

his shoulders.

"I'll stop by again tomorrow morning. You let me know whether they

bother you again. If they so much as look at you, let me know." Mike's voice was

grim, face drawn tight, deep grooves in his cheeks. "And tomorrow, I'm bringing a

can of Mace and a police whistle for you. Burn their eyes out and bust their

eardrums if they try anything."

He was making a real effort for her. She had a feeling Creepy and Creepier

would think twice before bothering her again.

Nicole smiled. "I really appreciate this, Mike. Thanks so much."

His jaws worked. "Like I said, don't thank me, thank Sam. He's the one who

sent me. He's worried about you."

Nicole froze, feeling another wave of heat wash over her. What could she

possibly say? She opened her mouth and closed it, completely incapable of speech.

Sam was watching over her and she was avoiding him because she didn't have the

faintest clue how to deal with him.

With enormous effort, she didn't wring her hands.

Mike stood still, silent, watching her.

"Yes, um," she said finally. Oh God. "Will you--will you thank Sam for

me?"

"No, ma'am, I think you should thank him yourself." He dipped his head,

touched a finger to his forehead in salute, got into the patrol car and drove off.

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Outlaw landed at the General Aviation side of Lindbergh Field Airport at 4

P.M., local time, carrying a small arsenal.

Oh, the joys of working for the Masters of the Universe, even if they'd been

taken down a notch or ten and their plumage was not as bright and as full as

before.

If you were a CEO and earning $170 mil a year instead of $240 mil, it gave

you bitching rights down at the club, but it didn't really make a whole lot of

difference.

Included in the contract was reimbursement for private jets to take him

anywhere he wanted to go. And the good thing about private jets was that no one

was going to ask any questions at all.

He was definitely dressed for the part. He'd studied his clients like it was a

mission and just as he could camouflage himself for a sniping mission in the desert

or a quick infil into the African jungle, he could pass muster among the rich. He'd

learned the camouflage well.

The human eye is overwhelmed by input from the brain. It won't "see" a

sniper in camouflage with mottled, disruptive patterns. It perceives the sniper and

his surroundings as a continuum and can't see the contour around him. A good

sniper becomes invisible, whether in mountain terrain or in forests or in the desert.

The same here. He was dressed in the equivalent of his ghillie suit. A

ghillie suit of the rich. He was dressed from the skin out in silk, Egyptian cotton,

cashmere and new virgin wool. Look the part, be the part. What was underneath

the $8,000 suit, a steel-tough, scarred body, couldn't be seen.

The mission called for speed, otherwise Outlaw would have spent the day at

a spa, to achieve that ruddy, pampered look. But there'd been no time.

It had given him enormous pleasure to put his Remington sniper rifle--he

would use it only if he had to, to complete the mission--and his Kimber 1911,

three magazines, tactical gear, body armor, powerful laser light, lockpick gun, Kbar, karambit knives and vial of acid all in matching Louis Vuitton carry-on hand

luggage and briefcase.

No one would think to question it.

It was simply a different world, the world of the uber-rich.

They were as invisible in their way as the homeless. Outlaw had been both,

under cover. People avert their eyes from the homeless, particularly if you were

smart and pissed on yourself. Eau de bum. But they avert their eyes from the super

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wealthy, too. As if the rich gave off a special glare too bright for the eyes of

ordinary people.

Outlaw had the bearing of the super-rich down, too. God knows he'd

studied his clients enough and he knew the rules. You could never be too arrogant

or act too entitled.

He drew up in a limo, which he exited without giving the driver a second

glance. The pilot was at the top of the stairs and Outlaw passed by him with only a

terse nod.

It was behavior so expected, he was invisible.

The flight was smooth, the weather excellent all the way into Southern

California. He'd spent the entire trip studying the Google Street View of the

Morrison Building, hacking into the blueprints on file in the San Diego County

office and the building management company's files. The office of Wordsmith was

tiny, 500 square feet, and the rent was $2,200 a month. Nicole Pearce had a twoyear lease and had never been late in payment.

Outlaw then hacked into a Keyhole satellite and checked out the roof of the

building. He spent an hour on close-ups of every inch of the roof and had a viable

game plan for getting into and out of Nicole Pearce's ninth-floor office, and a

backup emergency plan, by the time they landed.

He rented a Lexus and drove himself to near the Morrison Building. An

hour after landing, he was parking the Lexus on a side street.

The street view had been astonishingly clear, but the Google cameras hadn't

been able to penetrate the smoked-glass windows of the lobby.

Outlaw watched the entrance for a quarter of an hour from a trendy cafe

across the street. He monitored the ebb and flow of people, timed it and strode into

the expensive glass-and-brushed-steel expanse of the large lobby together with an

intake of men. He wore large wraparound sunglasses and walked with his head

down. There were security cameras all around the walls, but their angle was such

that if you walked straight down the middle of the 11,000-square-foot floor,

chances were they'd only catch his feet. He put himself in the middle of a crowd of

excited business executives who'd just come back from some seminar.

Like many Special Ops soldiers, Outlaw wasn't a big man. He was of

medium height and wiry rather than broad. He placed himself between two big,

beefy executive types, keeping pace with them across the large lobby, wishing

men still wore hats. A wide-brimmed fedora would have been perfect to cover his

face.

No one paid him any attention at all. He was one more businessman who'd

just come from the plane with his carry-on luggage, walking briskly to a meeting

in the building.

The security cameras at the bank of elevators were all tilted at the same

angle, calibrated to cover an area about seven feet from the doors. Which just

proved to Outlaw all over again how incredibly stupid civilians were. Especially

rich civilians. No drug lord or criminal worth their weight in cocaine would have

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set up security cameras like that. The angles would have been staggered to ensure

maximum coverage, to make sure not a fly got past security. But those were hard

men, who paid for lapses in security with their lives.

These rich civilians lived in a soft world, where just the idea of security

cameras and guards was cool, and enough. In a glance, Outlaw had seen the guard

in the big U-shaped desk made of maplewood and brass. Good haircut, goodlooking guy, trim, with an elegant uniform.

Security as fashion accessory.

This was going to be a cakewalk.

Nobody paid him the slightest bit of attention as he rode to the seventh

floor. He walked the floor, head down, just another executive deep in thought

about an upcoming IPO. It was a matter of vibes. When he wanted to, among men

who understood the signals, Outlaw was good at emitting "don't fuck with me or

I'll cut your balls off" vibes. But here it would be like broadcasting radio waves to

a TV station. No, in this kind of environment, the equivalent was I'm too busy and

important to worry about worms like you, so don't bust my balls . With that

attitude, he was invisible.

It was going on 7 P.M. The building was emptying of all the clerical

workers, the secretaries and gophers. Offices would have a skeleton crew, and

only those busy on a big deal or wanting to show off for the boss would still be

working. And most of them would quit by nine.

Outlaw met no one as he walked the length of the building to the fire stairs

at the other end of the hall. Few of the offices had cameras outside their doors, and

most of them were turned off.

Outlaw shook his head as he walked. Jesus Christ. Turning a security

camera off? What the hell was wrong with these people?

In the huge, empty stairwell, he took the stairs two at a time to the ninth

floor, pulling out his laser light, holding it in the cup of his hand.

Office 921 was halfway down. And, he saw at a glance--no security camera

outside the door. So Ms. Pearce hadn't coughed up the extra amount for extra

security. Wonderful.

There was a security company right across the hall, though. Its camera was

definitely on, and it covered half the hallway. Outlaw walked close to the wall on

the other side, and just to be sure, flashed the laser light into the camera as he

walked by. Anyone viewing the tapes afterward would just see a blanked-out

section, like a glitch in the tape.

Okay, he'd reconnoitered; time to go to his hide.

It was twenty-eight floors to the roof, and Outlaw took them at a run. He'd

be sitting immobile for a couple of hours, so the small bite of exercise felt good.

At the top, on the landing, he changed into his tactical Nomex suit, readied

his equipment and hunkered down next to the door leading out onto the roof.

He checked his watch. Seven twenty. Less than two hours to wait. He

wanted to go in at nine. Nine was a perfect time. Almost everyone gone, not so

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late he'd catch the attention of the night security guards.

Waiting was never a problem. He was a sniper and patience was a big part

of it. He was good at waiting. He could slow his breathing, bring his heart rate

down, put himself into a state of vigilant rest, yet remain ready to kill at a

moment's notice.

Outlaw rested his head against the wall and shut down.

The whole afternoon was a washout. Nicole got exactly zero work done.

This was terrible. She had the bank deadline, ten texts to distribute to her network

of collaborators and new texts to look at and quote prices for. She couldn't afford

to take a day off, staring into space, thinking of Sam Reston.

However hard she tried to concentrate, though, his strong features swam

into her monitor, crowding out the description of a new French manufacturing

technology of airplane components, which was the text after the Luxembourg bank

board meeting.

Every cell in her body squeezed tight as his image blossomed in her mind-dark face intent inches above her, focused on her so tightly she felt the lines of

attraction between them could become visible.

Her body tingled with remembered sexual desire, but with a little time and

distance, something else impinged on her consciousness. Something important

about last night. There'd been something elusive, something she hadn't felt in a

long time.

She'd been...happy.

It had been so long since she'd felt that way, it had taken her a whole day to

recognize it. Her entire being had been bathed in joy and, well, sexual delight. The

sex had had a lot to do with it, but something about Sam himself, beyond his

formidable power as a lover, was involved.

She was drowning in problems, up to her neck in them, sinking fast. Her

father was dying, day by day. Piece by piece. When working, Nicole tried to wipe

that thought from her mind but it was there, constantly, this huge dark hole that

sucked everything down into the black pool at the bottom. It was her first thought