St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

they’re seriously stupid.
    Give a hundred to the concierge. Use the rest for gas and food on the road.
    The alert function on the PDA is muted. Do visual checks every ten minutes or so. If you have local cellular service, you can text-message me. My IM is the first address stored. Zach’s is second. The BlackBerry is bugged—locater and voice activated, just like the opposition’s bug on your satellite phone.
    If things really head south, scream.
    Mary is wired in as your friend/contact on your sat phone. Use my number, then hit #. The call will be forwarded to her. Be sure to use the protocol you and Zach talked about last night.
    Jill smiled, remembering what else they had done while discussing “protocol.”
    Check in at least every two hours on the sat phone. Every hour would be better. They’ll be listening, but they expect you to use some kind of cut-out to release the second half of the paintings.
    We’ll be with you all the way. Zach will be above, the others will be on the ground no more than four minutes away.
    When the opposition makes contact, message me if you can. Or talk to yourself near the BlackBerry. Either will work.
    Drop this paper in the toilet and flush. Remember, the opposition may be watching you from the moment you leave your room, so stay in role.
    —JF
    Jill reread the note and dropped it in the toilet. The paper melted like the water was acid. She flushed and went to finish packing.
    When she was done, she checked the PDA. No messages had arrived. Quickly she finished filling her backpack, eased the gun and spare magazine into her belly bag, added the BlackBerry, and was ready to go.
    Or as ready as she ever would be.
    Same as the river. You watch, you weigh, you decide. You like the adrenaline, remember?
    Yeah, but only when I’m the one on the oars. Right now I’m up a dirty river and there’s not an oar in sight.
    She didn’t like the feeling.
    And there was nothing she could do about it except quit.
    She wasn’t a quitter.
    Taking a deep, slow breath, she put the sat phone on the luggage cart before she wheeled it out the door and into an elevator. A moment later she was in front of the concierge’s desk. The desk was run by a handsome man whose name tag said eduardo and listed his hometown as Bogotá, Colombia.
    “Do you have a piece of paper, a pen, and an envelope I can seal?” she asked.
    “But of course.”
    “Thank you.”
    She wrote quickly on the paper, stuffed it into the envelope, sealed it, and gave it to the concierge. “This is for the head of security.”
    Eduardo nodded.
    “You look like you handle requests like this all the time,” Jill said.
    He gave the liquid shrug of a man born well south of the Mexican border. “In my homeland, such precautions are business as usual.”
    “Seems as if the world really is getting smaller every day,” she said with a feral smile.
    “The receipts for your luggage are already in the hands of the Golden Fleece’s head of security,” the concierge said.
    “Good. When I call, the person I describe in this”—she tapped the envelope in his hand—“will present credentials to the head of security, and the cases will be turned over. Nothing happens until I call.”
    Eduardo nodded.
    “If I call you and tell you to change the plans in any way,” she said, “hang up immediately and call the Las Vegas police.”
    “Of course. If you could fill in your driver’s license number and sign the rental agreement, all will be in order.”
    She took her thin cloth wallet out of her belly bag, found her license, filled in the number, and signed.
    “Thank you, Ms. Breck,” he said, handing over the rental agreement. “Your car is in front, waiting for you. Would you like assistance with your luggage?”
    “No, thanks.” She pulled a hundred-dollar bill from her belly bag and said, “I appreciate your trouble.”
    “It is no trouble at all,” Eduardo said, smiling and pocketing the bill. “Have a safe trip.”
    Jill laughed, a hard sound that owed nothing to humor. “Yeah, that would be nice.”
    But she didn’t expect it would turn out that way.

76
    OVER NEVADA
SEPT 17
6:15 P.M.
    Z ach sat in the right-hand seat of the orbiting aircraft, binoculars against his eyes. Ten thousand feet below, he saw the glint of water and slash of green that was the Indian Springs oasis. The glare of slanting sunlight on the metal roof of the gas station was like a fire.
    The pilot had taken up station about a mile west of