Chasing the White Lion by James Hannibal (mind reading books .TXT) 📕

falling, Talia let go of the ledge and touched his knee. “You didn’t fail Tyler . . . or me. You stumbled. And the team was there to catch you, just like you were there to catch me in Russia. That’s—” Talia blinked at her own words. Was she preaching the very lesson Tyler had been trying to teach her? She smiled. “That’s what families do. They catch each other, and they keep going, no matter what.”

The two watched the clouds move over the trees for a while, until Talia shivered from the cold. Her right arm was going numb from holding herself up on that ledge. “Finn?”

“Yeah?”

“How am I going to get down from here?”

He laughed. “I have no idea.”

CHAPTER

THIRTY-

TWO

MARE’S ORBIT FOREST PRESERVE

RIVER VLTAVA

24 KM SOUTH OF PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC

SITEPREPARATIONSBEGAN at sunrise and continued through the last hour before the rendezvous with Atan.

“If you have the time,” Tyler said, chest deep in the river and holding a shovelful of silt, “nothing sells a con like proper staging.”

Val and Talia had been relegated to simple lift-and-carry tasks, since they had to dress nice later on. Tyler would join them for the rendezvous with Atan, but he claimed men—even con men—didn’t take near as long to clean up. Talia couldn’t argue with his logic.

With a grunt, she set a remote-control submarine on a crate beside Eddie’s fake monitoring station. “Is this ROV as capable as we’re claiming?”

“Are you kidding? I bought that thing on Amazon.” Eddie twirled his fidget spinner. “She’ll dive and send video. The rest is illusion. I stole the sonar feeds from a marine biology site and put them on a loop.” He thrust his chin at his biggest screen. “That’s a school of mackerel off the Florida coast.”

Finn and Tyler had taken on the hardest job—making a slow and shallow river appear deep and dangerous. Tyler had stretched a net supported by floats twenty meters out and was now digging a hole in the riverbed. Finn, wearing a wetsuit pulled up to his waist with the sleeves tied around his midsection, kneeled at the bank to attach a coil of five-inch-diameter hose to an air compressor.

The thief had regained some of his swagger. He nodded to Eddie and Talia. “This compressor looks like one of those blowers treasure hunters use to blow silt off a wreck, right?”

She sensed a but coming and threw it out there. “But . . .”

“Its real purpose is to muddy the water so the mark can’t see what we’re doing. Mac loosened a few bolts to make it rattle. The noise will keep Atan from collecting his thoughts.”

A hundred meters of woods separated the road from the river, which meant long trips to and from the van. Val walked out of the trees, pushing a dolly with oversize tires. She’d saved the worst load for last—a fifty-gallon drum.

Talia put a hand on the front end to take some of the weight. “This thing is heavy. What’s inside?”

“You’re smart, darling. Why don’t you tell me?” The question carried some bite.

Val was clearly still miffed about the gold coin, but Talia wasn’t ready to let her off the hook. She ignored the grifter’s sharpness and assessed the drum. “You filled this with the fake coins from Darcy’s copper-tungsten mint.”

“Good analysis. Several hundred. Enough to wow Atan with the big reveal.”

Once they had the drum in the shallows, Finn attached a pair of inflatable tubes. He pulled on the remainder of his wetsuit and dragged it out to Tyler. Talia watched the two of them position it over the underwater hole Tyler had been digging.

“And what happens after the big reveal?” she asked Val.

“Darcy’s Keystone bit, and then it’s all up to the mark. This con only works if Atan takes control. He has to drive the brushoff and the mulligan.”

“Brush-off. Mulligan. Right.” Talia was still learning grifter jargon. “What if he doesn’t?”

Out in the river, Tyler drew a knife from an ankle sheath and stabbed the floats. The drum vanished into the gloom.

Val shrugged. “Then we’re sunk.”

CHAPTER

THIRTY-

THREE

EN ROUTE TO AN INDUSTRIAL PARK

DISTRICT TWELVE

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC

THEMYSTERIOUSWE from Conrad’s brief video call nettled Talia’s brain as Val drove her and Tyler to the rendezvous. “Who else did you bring in on this?”

“Sorry.” Tyler, seated on the bench behind her, wore a smug mastermind grin. He’d traded his muddy wetsuit for a Ralph Lauren overcoat and flatcap. “I like a mark to see honest reactions whenever possible.”

“You mean you want to surprise me.”

Val added her own interpretation. “He means he wants you to do your annoyed-frustrated-goody-two-shoes look.” She framed Talia’s face with one hand as she drove. “The one you do so well.”

Talia swatted her hand away. “You have to give me something. I hate going in unprepared.”

“How about this?” Tyler said. “Smythe is bringing a guest to the dig site. I want you to object to his presence.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You’ll know when you see him.”

ATAN BROUGHT his own uninvited guest, giving Talia the opportunity to practice the annoyed-frustrated face Val had mentioned.

Val made a face of her own, nodding at the minor giant who followed their mark across the gravel parking lot. “Who’s the beefcake?”

Atan slapped the giant in the chest with the back of his hand. “This is my cousin Janos. He is quite interested in starting a coin collection, so I told him he could come along.”

Cousin. Right. The bulges at Janos’s biceps told Talia he was proud enough of his muscles to wear a suit jacket one size too small. The bulge at his hip told her he was packing a large-caliber handgun—a .45, most likely. The plan didn’t account for a tagalong bodyguard. Extra firepower at the phony dig site would spawn too many variables.

Val seemed to agree. “I don’t remember a plus-one on your RSVP, sweetums. A bodyguard wasn’t part of the deal.”

“Then let us make a new deal, eh? Either Janos joins me, or I walk and you find another