One-Knight Stand (White Knights #3) - Julie Moffett Page 0,85

drawn in confusion, as if he couldn’t wrap his head around what I was saying. “Wait. You want one of us to pose as a Target employee and sell him a loaded burner phone?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” I said. “We go into Target and keep the real electronics associate busy somewhere else. We get Remington to purchase the phones we want, and we fake ring him up. As soon as he uses one of them to text or contact Sampson, we control the communications. We can then text Sampson from the same burner phone number, asking him to go check on the bird. Then, boom, we follow him to my mom.”

“Pretty clever, Red,” Jax said.

I shrugged but was secretly pleased by his compliment. “I like to think I’m just taking Professor Allard’s lectures to heart. She said that in order for the mission to work, sometimes the agent has to make the scenario they want happen. I want this scenario. So, how do we get it to work?”

“Just playing the devil’s advocate here, but what if he doesn’t buy them at Target like he did last time?” Bo asked.

“We’d have to regroup,” I admitted. “But we can assume he’s comfortable buying them there. The location is near his house, and he doesn’t strike me as the type to buy things in a gas station or a 7-Eleven. It’s not a given, but at this point, we have to go with our best guess. He told Sampson he’s going to buy burner phones in the morning on the way to work. That Target is on his route. I think it’s a good bet that’s where he’ll go.”

“So, what’s the plan, Mastermind?” Mike asked.

I rolled my eyes but smiled. “We catch some sleep in shifts, but we have to get a plan in place before seven thirty a.m., since that’s when the Target opens. Our recent surveillance indicates that Remington heads into work around eight thirty a.m. If we presume that Remington will stop into Target, he may leave as early as eight a.m. to buy the phones in order to get to work on time.”

“Fair enough,” Jax said. “So, how do you want to break it down from here?”

I leaned back against the couch cushion from my spot on the floor and considered. “Kira, Frankie, Bo, and Hala, you guys take the first sleep shift. Determine how much time you’ll need to get your things done and set alarms accordingly. Kira, you’re going to be our Target employee. I don’t think Remington will recognize you, but just in case, try to disguise yourself or make yourself look different, okay?”

“Of course,” she said. “No problem.”

“Does anyone have a red T-shirt?” I asked. “We need Kira to look like she’s part of the Target team.”

Frankie raised her hand. “I do.”

“Perfect. Frankie, I’ll also need you to make a Target name tag for Kira.” She nodded in the affirmative, so I continued. “Mike and Jax, you two are handling the electronics piece of this plan. Purchase two burner phones. Plant a listening device in one of the burner phones, and disable the other one.”

“Why?” Jax asked.

“We want to limit Remington to one phone for the time being. But we’re offering him a deal—two phones for the price of one—to make an offer too sweet to pass up. This will give us full control of the communications and ensure he doesn’t use a different phone until we’re ready.”

“Okay. Buy two phones, kill one of them, and you or Wally will load up the software to monitor and control his phone?” Mike repeated. “Do you know if he favors Android or iOS phones?”

I froze. Such a simple question, but I hadn’t considered the complications of having to prepare for either possibility. We just didn’t have time to do both. I’d have to guess, and if I guessed wrong, we’d lose the opportunity, and perhaps my mom. What type of phone did he use?

As I tried to picture him with a phone, I suddenly had a visual image of the burner phone sitting on his desk in his office as I was retrieving my backpack from the kneehole under the desk. It was a very cheap, flip phone style with little more capabilities than phone, text, and GPS.

I turned back to Mike. “Get on the Target website and look for the most basic burner phones that they sell. There isn’t a big market for them. The style he was using looks like an open flip phone.