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She nodded, smiled back. “People will remember the hats not the people wearing them.”
Pierce looked like he was moving normally, but like he said, he’d lengthened his stride. She lengthened hers as well. Her legs weren’t as long as his, but she managed to keep up, barely, without looking like she was running.
They looked like any other couple in the lobby—happy, carefree, dressed casually.
Pierce kept his face tilted down to her as though they were chatting—which had the effect of shielding most of his face under the baseball cap’s brim. But his eyes behind the sunglasses were constantly roaming around the immense lobby. She was sure he clocked everyone there. If they’d been followed by operators, they weren’t anywhere in sight. Nobody looked remotely like an operator. Too old, too unfit, dressed wrong.
Made sense. The Watergate hotel was expensive and frequented by politically powerful people and the rich. The kind who paid other people to do things for them.
When they got to the big lobby doors, Pierce muttered, “To the right.”
She followed him out, pivoted to the right with him, following a deep hedge.
Suddenly, Pierce plunged into the hedge and she followed, picking up some leaves and twigs. They came out on the other side onto some small building, an upscale mall and a big parking area.
Pierce rushed around the area, looking for something. She could see he was absorbed and said nothing, just following him. Whatever he was looking for was something that would help them and that she probably wouldn’t understand.
What he was looking for, apparently, was a car to steal.
But not a new car. He gave a soft sound of satisfaction when he came upon a junker – body paint reduced to primer in places and with an old-fashioned look to it. Riley knew nothing about cars and makes and models, but even she could see that it was ancient.
And apparently, without an alarm. Pierce placed her by his side to shield what he was doing from view and in the time it would take to open the junker’s driver’s side door, he picked the lock. It was amazing, watching a virtuoso doing his thing.
He was already in the driver’s seat when she reached the passenger seat and in the time it took her to stretch the unwieldy safety belt around her, he’d hot- wired it. The engine started up.
“Is it okay to compliment someone on his skills as a thief?” she asked. “That was really smooth.”
“The Navy trained me well.” His face had been tight with concentration, but he suddenly lifted his head and grinned at her, losing about ten years. He looked like a kid who had unexpectedly scored the winning basket. Then he got back that focused expressionless face.
“Hang on,” he said.
Riley knew the score by then and got a good tight hold on the overhead hand grip as he pulled out of the parking spot with squealing, smoking tires, wrenching the wheel as he illegally U-turned into a busy street.
Without killing anyone.
Honestly, she had no idea how he did it.
“Here.” Pierce handed her a new cell, not his. A burner. “Can you find Parker Road 132? It’s in a part of town called Kalorama. Are you familiar with it?”
“Yeah. I know where it is.” Riley input the address and found it immediately. “Very upscale. Very pricey. The Obamas live there. Your friend must be rich.”
“He’s in finance.”
They were making good time, and Pierce was leaving a lot of shaking fists and impolite words behind.
“Can you take your eye off the road to look at the route or do you want me to navigate?”
“Navigate. Please.”
“Okay. A right hand turn at the third street. Then straight for a mile.”
She talked him to Kalorama, a mix of historical buildings, attractive new ones, bars and art galleries and upscale eateries.
“Have us stop two blocks from the address.”
“Okay. Then stop … here.”
He pulled in immediately into a tiny parking spot it would have taken her fifteen minutes to fit in. He turned to her. “Can you kill local security cams? Particularly all of them at Parker Road 132?”
