Page 42 of Nobody's Hero

‘Maybe,’ Koenig said.

‘Spit it out, Koenig. What do you think that I don’t?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘I’ll call Bernice and get one of our tactical teams over. We’ll grab her when she comes for the passports.’

‘No outside help,’ Koenig said.

‘Can youpleasecheck your ego for one second? We can’t do this on our own; it’s too important.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with ego,’ Koenig replied. ‘The woman I knew was tactically aware and braver than a honey badger. If we try to take her on the street, she’ll disappear like butter on crumpets.’

‘Not if we do it right.’

‘I know this woman, Jen, and I’m telling you – if there’s a tactical team on-site, wewilllose her.’

‘She won’t be expecting us.’

‘She’llabsolutelybe expecting us.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Once she’s inside the net, she won’t get back out.’

Koenig took a moment, then said, ‘How would you manage a dead drop in a denied area of operation?’

Draper considered this in silence. ‘Damn,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t turn up in person. I’d pay someone a couple of hundred bucks to dress up like me. Send them in my place.’

‘Then what?’

‘Well . . . if I was being uber-cautious, I’d have at least one more cutout. Have the parcel handed off to another mule. Get the package handed over in some place she’s in control of. Might be a hundred yards away from the store, might be a hundred miles. If she knows what she’s doing, there are half a dozen ways of getting those passports safely.’

‘Exactly.’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘I have an idea,’ Koenig said.

He told her what it was.

She said, ‘And you’re sure this will work?’

‘No. But I can’t think of any other way of doing it.’

‘I guess you’d better make that phone call then.’

Chapter 40

A lot can happen in three days, and on the other side of the Atlantic, Stillwell Hobbs and Harper Nash, the father-anddaughter contract killers, had a new target, a woman called Louise Durose. Louise was a senior sanitation engineer for the city of San Diego but advised departments up and down the West Coast. Her specialty was landfill construction and management. She was currently in New Jersey, having delivered a series of well-attended lectures on the most modern and innovative ways of layering and venting landfills.

Hobbs and Nash planned a variation of the Hank Reynolds murder, the guy whose suicide-by-hanging they’d staged in Coos County, Oregon. This time they were aiming for an overdose. Prescription pills. Louise had lost a vicious custody battle over the dog she and her ex jointly owned. Dexter, a chocolate Labrador, had been the love of Louise’s life. She’d fed Dexter, she’d walked Dexter, and she’d taken care of Dexter’s veterinary bills. Her ex hadn’t given a rat’s ass about the dog, but as is the case in many breakups, the object of custody disputes was more about hurting your ex than protecting your own interests. And somehow, her ex, a dull-eyed wannabe actor from Delaware, had convinced the family court judge that shared custody of Dexter was only fair. Hobbs thought Louise’s friends would be shocked but not surprised by her suicide. People were weird about their pets.

But for the first time in a while, they’d made a mistake.

Harper had slipped into Louise’s hotel room while she was lecturing and readied it for her father. There was no fruit bowl, so no bananas to worry about this time. But therewasa mass-production print on the hotel wall:Van Gogh’s Chair. That couldn’t stay. The painting was of a rustic chair with a simple woven rush seat. The floor was tiled, and Van Gogh had painted a pipe and tobacco pouch on the seat. He didn’t always sign his work, but in this painting an onion box in the background had the word ‘Vincent’ stencilled on the side. Like it was the firm’s name. Harper wasn’t sure what to do with it. She couldn’t turn it around. It would be suspicious – to Louise, but more importantly to the investigators as well. She could try replacing it with a more suitable print, but that would mean breaking into another room. She dismissed that option immediately. It was likely the hotel had boughtVan Gogh’s Chairin bulk. It might be in every room. In the end, she decided to remove it completely. Hope neither Louise nor the investigating officers noticed it was missing.

She took it off the wall and removed the print from the cheap frame. She folded it up and put it into her bag. Next, she pushed out the glass and tapped it with the butt of her Ruger LCP II pocket pistol. The glass broke into six pieces, all small enough to fit into the bag. The frame came apart easily, and the backboard snapped in two without much effort.

Harper left the room as quietly as she’d entered. When she was out of the hotel grounds, she sent her father an encrypted message: ‘ROOM CLEAR.’ Hobbs had been in the conference centre lobby, ready to warn his daughter if Louise left early. He waited for her, and without exchanging so much as a look, they swapped places. Harper would wait at the conference centre and send Hobbs a message when Louise left. She would then trail her back to her hotel. Hobbs would be waiting for her in her room. And fifteen minutes later Louise Durose would be dead.

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