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“It must mean something,” he said, his mouth twitching to indicate exactly what he thought it meant.
“It means I’m going to kill you one of these days,” she snapped. Then she sighed and sagged again. “If I live long enough. And if somebody else doesn’t kill you first.”
“Always possible,” Riley said. “Especially right now. But, Monique—this really is the best odds to get out of this whole thing in one piece.” She said nothing, just looked down and sighed again. “It’s exactly the kind of thing I do—the kind of thing I’ve been doing for years!” he said, trying to sound confident. Monique just shook her head.
Riley took a step closer and lowered his voice. “I can’t do it without you, Monique. And if I don’t do it—yeah, they’ll kill me. But they’ll come after you, too. I don’t want that.”
“I don’t, either,” she mumbled. She felt his hand on her shoulder and looked up.
“Monique,” he said, and there was a pleading note in his voice. “This is really and truly the only way. And it will work! I know it will!”
“You always say that,” she said.
“When was I ever wrong?” he said with a trace of his usual cockiness.
Monique pushed his hand off and sank down onto the battered old couch she kept in her work area. “I don’t know if I can do it, Riley,” she said. “I’m not like you.”
“Thank God for that,” he said.
She ignored him again. “I’ve never done anything like this, and it’s— I mean, I make one simple, stupid mistake, and we’re dead and fucked, both of us. And it would be on me, because I couldn’t— No. No, I can’t. I can’t do this, Riley. It’s just too much . . .”
The old couch shifted under Riley’s weight as he sat next to her and took her hand. “You can do this, Monique.
All you have to do is what you always do—”
“But with the whole fucking world watching me!” she said, pulling her hand away. “And I’m not even me anymore!”
“You can do this, Monique,” he said. “I know you can, or I wouldn’t ask you.”
“Shit,” she said. “What choice have I got?”
He picked up both her hands from where she’d dropped them in her lap, and this time she didn’t pull away. “None at all,” he said.
“Shit,” she said again.
29
Arthur Kondor stood in the dark at a pull-off on an old state road. The wind whipped at his jacket and he smelled rain coming. He didn’t care. Weather meant nothing to him, except in how it might affect a schedule. This time, there could be a tropical cloudburst, and it wouldn’t matter. This was the last changeover, and it would be done before the rain came, before it could possibly affect his plans.
The last changeover. There had been a lot of them over the last two days and nights. Each time, the comatose woman was transferred from one vehicle to another under Kondor’s watchful eyes. Each time, the transfer was made with no problem, and when it was complete, Kondor would climb into the front seat and nod to the driver. None of the drivers knew where they were going, of course. Kondor gave them step-by-step instructions until they reached the next transfer point, and then the process repeated. The same each time.
Until this final changeover. This time, Kondor’s instructions were a little different. That didn’t matter to Kondor. He didn’t care if he was told to enter a Walmart and paint every clerk red. It would not occur to him to ask why anyone wanted the clerks painted, why at Walmart, why it had to be red—he didn’t care. None of his business. He did exactly what he was told without thinking too much, and he did it very, very well. That’s why people like Riley Wolfe hired him, and why they paid him so much.
Kondor saw a glow on the horizon. His hand went inside his jacket, where a Heckler and Koch MP7 snuggled up against his belt. It was just automatic caution. He didn’t expect any trouble. He didn’t get any, either. As he expected, the glow turned into headlights, and a minute later a medical transport van turned into the pull-off, followed immediately by a second.
The driver’s window of the first van rolled down and a man stuck his head out. “Seen any coyotes?” the driver asked.
It was the pass phrase. Kondor stepped forward and gave the counter. “No, but I heard them howl,” he said.
The driver nodded. He gave three short beeps on the horn and climbed out of his vehicle. The driver of the second vehicle joined him a moment later. “Okay,” the first driver said. “Let’s get ’er done.”
It took only a few minutes to transfer the comatose woman to the new van. When it was done, Kondor paid off the driver of the vehicle he’d arrived in and sent him on his way. Then he did a final electronic sweep. He’d done one already, several times. But the Feds thought they were clever. And they had some new tracers that stayed dormant, turning on several days later, precisely to avoid sweeps like Kondor was doing.
He found only the three tracers he’d found earlier. As instructed, he removed two of them and tossed them into a ditch beside the road. The third tracer, the one that had been hidden extra carefully, he put into his pocket. He walked back to the second van and opened the back door. He stepped up into the interior and looked down at the woman lying there. The life support machinery beeped and whispered softly.
Kondor took the tracer from his pocket. He leaned over and placed it exactly as it had been when he removed it from the other woman. Same location, same position. Then he climbed out and closed the door.
The rain had started at last. Kondor turned up the collar of his jacket and walked back to the two drivers. To one of them, he handed an envelope. “Take her to this address,” he said. “She’s preregistered. You get paid when she arrives safely.”
