A Brilliant Deception (23 page)

 

E
than stepped out of the elevator on the fifty-fifth floor of the middle pillar of the Marina Bay Sands and strolled down the corridor. He walked straight up to the security guard who was seated at the counter, keeping a pleasant expression on his face and one hand in his pocket. He sized the guard up as he approached. Tall, but not overly muscular. Eyes sharpish, but not laser.

“Okay, Ethan, you’re dark,” Gladys said, in his ear. “You’ve got one minute, then the cameras are back on.”

Ethan knew any longer than that and people would investigate. A minute of lost connection, especially one that spontaneously went back online with nothing amiss, would be quickly forgotten.

“I’m looking for the bar,” Ethan said. “Is it around here somewhere?”

“Buddy, you’re way off,” the guard said. “What you have to do is go back the way you came, take the elevator back down to—”

The instant the guard looked away to point down the hallway, Ethan fired a silent tranq gun into the man’s neck. It took about 1.2 seconds to do it. The guard stopped talking, and put a hand to his neck, turning on Ethan. But Ethan had already put the tranq gun back in his pocket.

The guard’s eyes narrowed. “Did you—”

Ethan knew there would be nothing for the man to feel on his skin. No blood or bullet hole. The tranq was contained within a tiny pellet lodged in his skin. Ethan gazed at him innocently. The guard’s eyes clouded with confusion, not sure if he’d felt what he thought he’d felt.

And then, just as he seemed to be on the verge of contacting someone for backup, the guard’s eyes rolled into his head, and he slumped forward on the desk.

Forty-five seconds to go. Ethan bolted down the hall and opened up a pop-up screen. He slid a flash drive into the side of the projector and pushed a few buttons in a precise order.

A perfectly reflected version of the hallway flickered into view.

“A little to the left,” Gladys said. Ethan made the adjustment. “Okay, that’s perfect.”

He’d created a false wall—but only from the point of view of the CCTV camera. If you were there in person, you’d see immediately that it was fake. To a camera, however, it would look like nothing was wrong.

With twenty-five seconds to go, Ethan hopped over the desk in a single leap. He dragged the guard into the small room to the side. It was a brief tranquilizer that would wear off after thirty minutes, with total amnesia for the few minutes before he went down. The guard would assume he simply fell asleep.

Ethan removed his own clothes to reveal a guard’s uniform underneath. He grabbed the guard’s glasses and hat and popped them on, then tied the guard up—in case he were to wake early—locked the door, and slid into the desk chair.

“Okay, Ethan, back in four seconds . . .” Gladys counted down. “Three, two, one, you’re on.”

Ethan slowed his breathing and did his best impression of a bored security guard. He’d done his part. Next, Montgomery would have to do hers.

I
sat in the surveillance van with Gladys, parked in front of the Marina Bay Sands. We were glued to our bank of CCTV feeds, watching Templeton on one of our screens as he strode down a hallway with ramrod posture, carrying a tray of coffee cups. He knocked on a door, and was promptly admitted entry.

He disappeared from that screen, but reappeared in the next—within the security offices.

“Sir? Your coffee,” he said to the night security supervisor, with the perfect smoothness of an experienced waiter. Our audio feed came from the mike he wore under his uniform. We had managed to pull some strings and get Templeton registered with the dining staff.

We knew the core alarms and doors were calibrated to whichever supervisor was on duty that night. Tonight the supervisor was a man named Thomas Lum. We needed his prints.

Mr. Lum looked at Templeton and took the proffered coffee, waving away the cream and sugar.

Templeton walked through the control room, tidying dishware. He stalled, taking coffee orders from the staff and wiping down counters. I saw him check his watch subtly once or twice.

And then he returned to Mr. Lum’s desk. As he arrived, Mr. Lum’s assistant started to reach for the empty coffee cup.

“Stop!” he shouted, perhaps too stridently for the situation. I cringed but Templeton covered quickly. “Don’t trouble yourself,” he said, grabbing the mug with a white-gloved hand. “It’s my job, after all.”

He placed the mug on his tray and walked briskly from the office. In the service elevator, Templeton turned with his back to the CCTV but I knew he was tucking the precious mug into a Baggie and sliding it inside his jacket. Five minutes later, he arrived beside the van, swinging the door open and climbing in with a grin that covered his face.

“Well, that was highly satisfying,” he said. “It’s been years since I’ve been in the field. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it.”

While Templeton mused about the delights of active duty, I grabbed the mug and quickly brushed for prints. Within minutes I had replicated them using a fingerprint kit and created a reproduction hand film with fake prints.

Just like that, we were through the first layer of security.

Felix came through my earpiece. “Got a problem here, Cat.”

Gladys pointed to the CCTV screen that showed the room where Felix was stationed: the high-stakes poker room. Felix’s task in our operation was to monitor Chips Walker. The man was supposed to be in the middle of his late-night poker tournament, and all Felix needed to do was make sure Walker didn’t leave, say to spontaneously do a spot check of the fifty-fifth floor of the middle pillar, the location of the vault.

We knew his habit was to play poker in the late evening and drink single malt, his little bedtime routine. But we also knew he occasionally strolled around the resort complex before tucking himself into bed.

“What is it?” I said to Felix through the communicator.

“He seems to be getting bored.”

I frowned. To keep him well away from the vault I was about to break into, we needed to know he was occupied with a riveting game of poker. “What? Why?”

“He doesn’t have any worthy adversaries.”

Shit.
“He has to stay there. If he leaves, he might very well come up to do a check on the vault.” This exact activity had been recorded in the security log Gladys had hacked into, once last week, twice the week before. Usually, it wasn’t until much later, after he’d played poker for a nice length of time.

We needed some way to keep him there.

“I predict he’ll stay for another hand and then he’ll be out,” Felix said.

We needed to find him a better opponent. Someone to keep things interesting.

“Felix, can you play poker?” I asked.

After a brief hesitation, Felix said, “Well, yes. Although remind me: which is higher, full house or four of a kind?”

I clenched my jaw. That was not a good question.

I ran through the options in my head. Jack was a very good player, but I couldn’t pull him from his task. Same for Ethan. I wasn’t stellar at poker, but I couldn’t do it anyway because I had to crack into the safe.

I looked at Templeton and opened my mouth to ask the question. He straightened himself to his full height. “I have many talents, Petal. Poker is not one of them.”

“Can you operate a computer?” Gladys suddenly chirped, looking at Templeton.

“Madam! Of course.”

“Good,” she said, nodding briskly. She pushed him down to sit in the chair she’d previously occupied. “Do this, this, and this.” She showed him a few items on the screen in front of him, and scribbled a note on a piece of paper. “Most importantly, this is how you block the CCTV for one minute, in Ethan’s wing. When he goes to collapse the screen, you’ll need to do this.”

I watched Gladys stand, straighten her velour hoodie tracksuit, and move toward the van door.

“Gladys, what the hell are you doing?”

“I happen to be a fairly decent poker player, if I do say so myself.” She snapped open her sewing purse and pulled out a card. A laminated wallet-sized certificate:
Gladys Fitzsimmons
,
Silver Aces Poker Club Member—Seattle Chapter
.

My mouth dropped open. With that, she swiped on some lipstick and pinched her cheeks, left the van, and strode into the casino.

Why I continued to be surprised about the various talents Gladys had tucked up her sleeve, I had no idea. She might have looked like a banana bread–baking grandmother who enjoyed shuffleboard at the beach, but her skills were in a whole other class. Templeton and I stared at the screens as she walked in. She showed the same card to the guard at the high-stakes entry. It seemed Gladys was quite literally a card-carrying poker player.

They granted her entry, and within minutes had seated her at the table with Chips Walker. The others glanced at her. One man raised an eyebrow; another hid a smirk. Walker stayed, perhaps just for the entertainment value.

Twelve minutes later, she’d won the first hand.

J
ack sat in the Moluccas Room lounge, amid dark wood and gilded lanterns, his drink—an amber Manhattan in an old-fashioned glass—resting on a napkin on the table in front of him. Brooke Sinclair sat opposite him, sipping a dirty martini. Jack kept his eyes forward, resisting the urge to glance over his left shoulder, where he knew a lone figure was stationed, watching and listening to them from the other side of a thick bamboo border. Hendrickx.

Truth was, it was a three-way standoff.

Brooke, presumably, thought she was keeping an eye on Jack for her employer, Caliga. Hendrickx almost certainly thought he was the one in control, staking them both out. And they were each right in a sense. But the greater truth was that as long as Jack didn’t make a move, he was keeping both Brooke and Hendrickx pinned in one spot, as surely as if he’d bound and gagged them.

And that, for the next hour, was Jack’s entire goal in this enterprise.

Immediately after meeting with the team, as soon as Jack had learned of Brooke’s arrival, he’d called her. He’d said they had some business to discuss. He’d chosen his words carefully, making it sound as though he needed her expert help in some way.

Stroking Brooke’s ego was always a sure way to get her to cooperate.

To get Hendrickx to bite, he’d made the “rookie” mistake of calling Brooke on an unsecure line. Dropping a few key words into the conversation—
Lionheart
,
vault
,
operation
—ensured the call would get picked up by Interpol. He set the meet time with enough of an interval to allow Interpol to flag it, process the identification of the caller, and contact Hendrickx.

Brooke would have assumed Jack had used an encrypted line, of course. Keeping her unaware of the surveillance was the key to keeping her neutralized in the Moluccas Room. But really, Hendrickx was doing all the work on that front.

The Interpol agent’s surveillance technique was excellent—subtle, seamless, and accomplished. Jack had let Hendrickx catch a glimpse of him, just enough to hook him. And then he’d allowed Hendrickx to follow him here. Hendrickx had selected the perfect stakeout spot and now he wasn’t missing a thing. Jack was impressed. Hendrickx was a seasoned investigator.

Too bad he had latched on to the wrong suspect, though, for the evening.

Because while the three of them were locked in their little stalemate game, Cat would soon be high above them, breaking into the vault that contained the Lionheart.

Tonight, Jack was acting as a decoy, taking a rival thief out of play, and canceling Interpol’s effect. Not too shabby for merely sitting in a restaurant having a drink or two. Maybe this job—working with the crooks—wasn’t so bad, after all.

Jack lifted his Manhattan and took a sip. The perfect mingling of sweet, bitter, and smoky tingled his tongue.

“So, Brooke, listen. We’re working on this assignment, I know you know that. But the reason I called you is because . . . well, I’ve got my doubts. I’m not sure Cat is up for it. She doesn’t know I’m asking you this, but . . . would you consider joining the team? We’ve got a few days to pull it all together. With your help and expertise, we’ll be ready.”

He had worked hard to make it sound, subtly, like he was in charge. Like he was calling the shots on this op. One reason for that was to keep Hendrickx’s interest.

Brooke rolled the stem of her glass between her fingers and watched him carefully.

“What’s your time frame?” she asked. “When are you planning to do it?”

“In three days.”

It sounded plausible, Jack thought. Neither Caliga nor Interpol would even dream that they might be going in
tonight
. And truly, it was a ridiculous thing they were attempting. But
ridiculous
seemed to be Cat’s standard operating mode.

A waiter came by and took their order. It was late, almost midnight, so Jack ordered nibbles for them from the late supper menu: steamed dumplings and chicken satay. Things were going well, as far as Jack could tell, with his little game. He hoped he could keep it up.

“So, Brooke, are you interested in joining us?”

Brooke paused and sighed, slightly. “I don’t know,” she said, looking away. “I’m going to need to think about it.”

Jack’s eyebrows lifted momentarily, but he neutralized his expression before she looked back at him. Jack had expected Brooke to flat-out refuse to join them. But she hadn’t said no. Was she playing him in some way?

He gazed more closely into her eyes. There was something new there. Doubt? Was she having second thoughts about her decision to join Caliga’s side? Jack had never known Brooke to have qualms when it came to morality. But . . . perhaps there was a first time for everything.

“Are they treating you well over there, Brooke? Caliga, I mean?”

It was a stupid question, and Jack knew it. Caliga was a ruthless organization, everyone knew that. But he needed to tread carefully here.

Brooke said nothing. She took another sip of her drink. “They’re paying me well, if that’s what you mean.”

Jack shrugged. “It’s not.”

Then he remembered Cat had said she’d seen Brooke’s face right after they killed Esmerelda. Brooke had witnessed the cruelty of Caliga with her own eyes. Maybe that had changed things. Surely she knew Caliga killed people if they got in the way. But knowing something and seeing it firsthand were entirely different things.

Jack watched Brooke thoughtfully. He could tell nothing was certain in her mind. She wasn’t ready to leave Caliga, but she wasn’t completely on board with them, either. Her commitment was wavering.

Then she said, “I can’t help you, Jack. But . . . I won’t work against you. This conversation won’t leave this table.”

Again, Jack forced his face into a neutral mask. If he looked too shocked at her response, he’d reveal that this was all a ploy. That he never really expected her to go along with it.

The trouble, now, was that she had effectively sealed off that line of discussion. Which was way ahead of schedule. He needed to keep both Brooke and Hendrickx’s attention awhile longer. They would need something new to talk about.

But it was Brooke who raised a new subject. “So, Jack, tell me. Are you . . . attached to anyone, now that you and Cat are no longer together?”

Shit
. That wasn’t the subject he’d have chosen. He really didn’t want to talk to Brooke about his personal life.

“No,” he said. “Not attached.”

She sipped her drink and raised an eyebrow. “Interesting.”

He plucked his glass off the table and took a swig.

Brooke said, “And you’re not still . . . how should I say this . . . emotionally invested in her?”

He swirled his drink, staring into it. “Cat? Nope. It’s over.”

“You’re not much of a liar, Jack.”

He frowned. Brooke was grinning, entirely comfortable in their new topic, and Jack was itching to get out of there. Which wouldn’t help anyone, of course. “Brooke, can we discuss something else?”

She smiled. “Yes, there it is. A bit too touchy. Your heart still belongs to her. Clearly.”

“It doesn’t.”

“So you’re either lying to me, or lying to yourself. Either way, it doesn’t really help your cause.”

“I don’t have a cause.”

“Here’s an idea—why don’t you just propose? Ask her to marry you.”

Jack cast her a bewildered look. Was she insane? “What the hell are you talking about?”

Brooke rolled her eyes. “Cat. Ask her to marry you. Women love that stuff. If you could get the cojones to ask her, she’d be yours.”

“Forgive me, Brooke, but I don’t particularly feel like taking dating advice from you.”

“It’s not dating advice. It’s more than that. And—trust me. You only have to ask her. It will change everything.”

He tried to ignore her words; she was obviously trying to throw him off his game. But goddamn it, he was supposed to be in charge of this conversation, not Brooke.

And she was not supposed to be planting fool ideas in his head about proposing. It was ridiculous. It was the sort of crazy thing that only happened in movies.

And then, against his best intentions, he found himself visualizing it, like he was watching it on a big screen. He was there in grainy black and white, on a beach somewhere, down on one knee, waves crashing in the background, proposing to Cat.

A full, bright feeling entered his heart. Maybe . . . was Brooke right? He wondered . . .

No
. That was not where they were going in this head game. He had to gain control of this conversation again. Jack glanced at his watch and was relieved when the waiter came by with their food. He still had forty-five minutes to go.