of people with all kinds of problems…” Mr. Randolph trails off, hoping Luca will say it for him.
“You seem like quite a successful man,” Luca offers.
“I like to think so.”
“What’s your take home? Two hundred thousand?”
“I—um, I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Just doing the math, Mr. Randolph. You’re nearly fifty. Been making good money for awhile now. Probably have a house, stock portfolio. Am I warm?”
A long pause follows, but eventually Randolph answers, “Uncomfortably warm.”
“Don’t push him too fast,” I warn through our comms.
“And you’ve been together more than ten years?” Luca asks. He’s alluding to the length of time a standard prenup lasts. After ten years, a divorced wife gets half of everything.
“Yes.”
“I can help you with your problem. The price is one year of salary. Two hundred thousand dollars.”
“What?” Mr. Randolph says. Clearly, he was expecting a lower fee.
Jack’s voice pipes through the comms, “Oh shit, guys, we have a problem. Cyrus is here. He just pulled into the garage. We have to call it off.”
“Luca?” I ask. Sometimes, all you need is a history. My one-word question says everything it needs to. Only Luca knows if he can get us where we need to be.
“Time?” Luca asks.
The question is for Jack, but Randolph doesn’t know that, so he answers. “Sometime in the next month, I should think. But I can’t do two hundred thousand. I just...can’t.”
“You’ve got sixty seconds, Luca. No more. It can’t be done. If Cyrus thinks anything is off, we’ll never get that data,” Jack reminds him.
“You never know unless you try,” Luca says, putting a hint of sheepish guilt in his voice, so it sounds like he’s still talking to Randolph. “What can I say? I’ll give you my Platinum Elite discount. Fifty thousand. In bearer bonds. The money can’t be traceable.”
A few agonizing seconds crawl by, but eventually Randolph answers, “You can make it look like an accident? It would be better if there’s no investigation.”
“Naturally,” Luca agrees.
“Then we have an agreement,” Randolph says.
I hear a chair creak slightly, followed by footsteps.
“What do you think you’re—urrrkh.”
Faint sounds of struggle spread into the dead silence of our comms. After another few seconds, we hear the sound of a body dropping onto the floor.
“Jesus Christ, Luca. What are you doing?” Jack yells.
“Relax. Randolph’s taking a nap,” Luca says.
“How does that help us?” Jack snaps.
“No time to explain,” Luca says. “Trust my genius, okay?”
Ominous sounding thumps filter through his mic, and I realize he’s hiding the body somewhere. I hear a doorknob turn, and then another.
“Are you in Cyrus’s office?” I guess.
“Yes. Shut up.”
I tear out of Adair’s apartment, and, skipping the elevator in favor of the stairs, run down them as fast as I can. This is why I’m always the point person. Jack is too risk averse, and Luca hasn’t met a kind of trouble he doesn’t want to be in. He just conspired to commit murder, then committed assault, and now he’s throwing in trespassing. If things go any further sideways, we’ll be lucky if we can find a way to stay on American soil, let alone in Nashville.
“You better know what you’re fucking doing, Luca,” I say, a little out of breath. I exit the stairwell near the bank of elevators in the lobby, but see no sign of Cyrus. Either he hasn’t made his way up from the garage yet, or he already headed into the business offices.
“It’s a keypad,” Luca says, relief flooding his usual coolness.
He means he’s found the safe, and that it’s unlocked by keypad, not by using biometrics. It’s the first good news of the day.
“Planting the camera now,” Luca says.
“Ok, your feed is live,” Jack says, monitoring the signal from Luca’s camera. “Now get out.”
There’s a pause of about ten seconds, then Luca hisses almost inaudibly, “I can’t.”
I look around the busy lobby frantically, just in time to see the back of Cyrus’s head disappearing into the hallway behind the reception desk.
“Cyrus, yo!” I bellow.
He stops and spins on his heels, trying to figure out who called him.
I wave energetically and call his name again. He finds me immediately, his brow furrowing. “Sterling” he calls across the lobby, checking his watch. “What’s up? Visiting Adair?”
I freeze up for a moment, unable to reply. I don’t have an excuse ready—because I didn’t plan on being here.
Jack rescues me, though.
“You’re getting drinks from the bar,” says his disembodied voice in my earpiece.
“I thought I’d grab a drink from the bar. We should catch up. What’s your poison?”