Page 7 of Undercover Billionaire

I thanked her profusely, and we hung up.

Relieved, I took a bite of my tikka masala. Serena had been right. Ashley would take care of me.

* * *

Adam

My morningat the DC Field Office had been monotonous—no call outs to break up the video watching. My partner, Neil Boxer, and I had just finished lunch.

I relaunched the video player on my machine. “I’m at T minus eleven days.”

“I’m still on minus eight,” he replied.

He had the even days, and I was doing the odd ones as we made our way through the bank surveillance video, combing for a glimpse of the man who’d become our masked robber. “The Fawkes Crew” we called him and his partner because of the Guy Fawkes masks they wore.

It was the second bank job in a month by the same pair who’d shot up the bank in Gaithersburg, Maryland. This one had gone down in Falls Church, Virginia. The woman drove and stayed in the car. The man had gone inside, fired two shots into the ceiling, and was out in less than a minute. No one had gotten hurt, but a robbery with someone recklessly firing off rounds was a dangerous situation. An itchy trigger finger meant anything could happen on their next job.

The man wore a mask during the heist, but he had a limp. We hoped to use that and his general body type to ID him casing the location. Even your average bank robber wasn’t stupid enough to rob a bank he’d never been inside before.

Television shows made it look simple, but that was far from the truth. We were doing the grunt work. An hour in, I caught my eyelids closing for more than a blink, and I stood to stretch. My knee cracked again.

Fucking ACL.

I twisted my ring. It was a constant reminder of what could have been—what should have been.

I started for the coffee machine. “I need another cup.”

Neil hit pause and leaned back in his chair to stretch. “Knock yourself out.”

Two other guys from the floor below were ahead of me when I arrived at the machine. I’d bought the expensive machine on my own dime, and now a lot of the agents in the office made the trip to our floor for the good stuff. Each of the other floors had a government-issue coffee maker that dispensed brown liquid that could hardly be called coffee.

The double shot I’d programmed in was brewing when our ASAC, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Jarvis Dempsey yelled for me and Boxer to join him.

At last, something to break up the video scrolling. I headed for his office and Neil followed.

“Close the door,” he barked as we entered. Something had riled him today.

I did and took the second seat across from him.

“I hate getting these calls,” he complained. He passed us each a copy of a typewritten note.

I looked at Neil, who didn’t seem to have a clue either.

“AD Donnelly just called. We have to drop everything for some hotshot in Boston.”

Dempsey didn’t often get anything straight from the Assistant Director, so it didn’t pay to take it lightly.

He punched the hold button on his speakerphone. “I’ve got Boxer and Cartwright here with me now.”

A woman’s voice came over the box. “Did you get the note I sent?”

“Yes,” Neil said.

“This was received this morning by an employee at the Smithsonian. The Brooks mentioned on the note is Melinda Brooks, the second of two Smithsonian employees who’ve been abducted and murdered in the last year.”

“We know,” Dempsey said. “They’re our cases.”

I recalled the Brooks murder. Neil and I hadn’t been on it, but a lot of agents in the office had. The trail had quickly gone cold, and it was unsolved so far.

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