Page 12 of Hot Pursuit
“Oh, you’re Leo-ing me, are you?” His partner snorted. Nate could imagine him shaking his head, not bothering to hide a wide smile. The very idea made him wince. “I have to say, I didn’t give thieving little Jolene Carter nearly enough credit if she stole her way under your skin in less than five minutes.”
Just as Nate turned to offer his overly cheerful partner a death glare, the two-way radio sparked to life.
“Parker, Alvarez, update?”
Saved by the boss…
“Carter and Ryder arrived,” Leo spoke seriously into the radio, back to business in a heartbeat. Nate turned around, folding his hands in the space between his knees. “The daughter was waiting for them on the dock. They had a short greeting, but we couldn’t see or hear anything. Within a few minutes, Carter was inside the house, carrying a black leather briefcase with him, likely the one you spotted when they exited the plane in Nassau. Ryder and the daughter lingered for a while. They appeared to be cleaning the boat, and then they disappeared into the house, both holding small rolling suitcases.”
“Did you get anything off the mic?”
Nate resisted the urge to curse under his breath.
Leo didn’t. “Shit.”
“Shit, what?” their boss drawled.
Nate jumped to his feet and reached back to grab the radio from Leo’s hand. “We had some complications, sir.”
“What complications?”
Robert Carter’s private island was immune to FBI penetration. A cleaning woman who came by once a month was the only other person allowed inside the premises, but she wasn’t an American citizen, and there was only so much they could do to try to turn her into an informant. After their failed attempt, it hadn’t gone unnoticed that a couple hundred thousand dollars miraculously appeared in her bank account the following week—a presumed gift for her loyalty. They’d tried bugging food deliveries, but Carter was a magician at locating the devices. With an elite security system run through satellite feeds and a computer genius for a daughter, so far nothing had worked.
If Carter really was using this job as his last hurrah before retirement, they had to nail him before it was too late. Discretion be damned. So, they were going old school. A boat parked outside and a handful of specialized microphones—parabolic mics that could pick up sounds at a distance of one thousand meters and laser mics that could detect sound vibrations off a window. “Agent Alvarez ate a bad batch of jerk chicken before we left the dock this morning, and I didn’t get the laser mic set up in time. All we got through the parabolic was static. Too much wind.”
Leo’s eyes bulged accusingly.
Nate took his thumb off the transmitter. “Do you really want him to think we were distracted by Jolene Carter instead?”
Leo hesitated for a second before relenting.
“Get the mics set up, Parker. All the mics.”
The boss is not amused…“Will do, sir. Immediately.”
“There’s still too much we don’t know. See what you can get. I’m keeping you stationed there until the target leaves for New York. I’ll send a crew out tonight with supplies that should last for a few days. We can send some more if you need it.”
Leo groaned audibly behind him.
The sea hadn’t been kind to him so far.
But Nate thought he had it worse—they were sharing the bathroom. And the only other room downstairs was hot, windowless, and full of all the advanced tech they’d wanted to keep out of plain view.
Guess I’ll be sleeping under the stars. Please, for the love of God, don’t let it rain. Just for a few days. That’s all I ask.
He closed his fingers into a fist, holding back everything except for a quick, “Yes, sir.”
The line went dead.
Nate looked at Leo.
Leo looked at him.
Without speaking, they launched into work, setting the mics up, getting the recording devices together downstairs. The two of them had been partners long enough to do so silently, tossing things back and forth with little more than a sparse word here and there, grunting complete sentences. The afternoon heat gave way to cool twilight before they were done putting the system together.
Nate enviously eyed the sleek yacht bobbing in its slip as he wiped the sweat from his brow, the irony not lost on him. Criminals lived the high life—zipping around on private jets, in luxury cars, on glitzy yachts—while the upstanding citizens trying to bring them to justice were relegated to what by the end of the week would quite literally be a floating pile of shit if his partner didn’t start feeling better soon. The Lord only knew what amount of wealth was sequestered on Robert Carter’s private island, hidden behind those tinted windows and an impenetrable layer of security. But Nate was determined to find and seize every last bit of it, no matter what red-haired, green-eyed woman batted her eyes at him.
Leo disappeared below deck, but Nate remained in the fresh air, used to the salt and the sea, not at all bothered by the rocking motion. He reached for his binoculars again, ready to do one final check before he called it a night.
