The Heist

hard time keeping his hands off her, torn as he was between wanting to wring her neck and wanting to sweet-talk her out of her Kevlar vest.
    Kate woke up with a stiff back. She stood and stretched and checked to make sure her cuffs and gun were still in her pockets. Nick was at the fireplace, stirring a big pot suspended over the fire.
    He glanced at her over his shoulder. “You were expecting me to steal your gun?”
    “You’re a thief,” she said. “I expect you to steal everything. What are you making?”
    “Hermit’s stew. Basically, a lentil soup. I’ve also got some fresh bread, some salted fish, and red wine, all produced here on Athos.”
    “Wine for breakfast?”
    “It’s what the monks drink.”
    Jessup and Bolton joined them. Bolton looked like he’d spent the last few hours in cryogenic freeze. There wasn’t a wrinkle onhis clothes and his hair was perfect. Jessup looked like an unmade bed.
    “Have you reached a decision, Agent O’Hare?” Bolton asked.
    Kate gave him a single nod. “I’m in. But I want a few things clear from the get-go. I’m in charge of this partnership.”
    “You obviously don’t understand the meaning of ‘partnership,’ ” Nick said.
    “I’m the cop, you’re the crook,” Kate said to Nick. “If I think something is too risky, or too crooked, or too anything, I can shut it down.” She turned to Bolton. “That goes for you, too, sir. Once we have an assignment, I have the absolute authority to change the play or call the whole thing off.”
    “I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that,” Bolton said.
    “It’s not your comfort I’m worried about,” she said. “I’m the one who could end up dead or in a prison cell if one of our operations falls apart. This is nonnegotiable.”
    Jessup looked at Bolton. “I have to back O’Hare on this. I’ve been undercover. I know what it’s like being out there on your knees in the muck, with your neck on a chopping block over an open latrine while a psycho in overalls stands over you with a roaring chainsaw.”
    Bolton mentally chewed on that for a moment. “Very well.”
    Nick smiled, poured four glasses of wine, and held his up for a toast. “To our grand adventure.”
    “This is not an adventure,” Kate said. “It’s a job. We aren’t doing it for fun or for profit.”
    “Speak for yourself,” Nick said.
    “I am speaking for both of us,” she said.
    Nick glanced at Jessup. “Is she always this irritable in the morning?”
    “I wouldn’t know,” Jessup said.
    “Okay, let’s try this again,” Nick said, and raised his glass for a new toast. “To a long and fruitful relationship.”
    “This isn’t a relationship,” Kate said. “It’s strictly professional. Don’t you forget that for one second.”
    Nick sighed and held up his glass again, eyeing her warily as he said, “May misfortune follow us the rest of our lives, but never catch up.”
    Before Kate could object, he tapped her glass with his and the other men jumped in to do the same and everyone chugged their wine.
    “Now that we’ve settled that,” Bolton said, setting down his glass, “here’s the protocol. Jessup will be your primary. He will release the funds necessary to complete each mission to an off-shore account that we’ve set up in O’Hare’s name.”
    “Yadda-yadda-yadda,” Nick said. “Save the bureaucracy for the bureaucrats. Just tell me who we’re going after.”
    Bolton smiled. “Derek Griffin.”
    Griffin was a high-flying, charming playboy investment banker whose name was mentioned as often in
Vanity Fair
, for the lavish parties he attended and the charities he supported, as it was in
Forbes
, for the audacious deals he made and the big money he earned for his elite clients. He got even more headlines when he abruptly disappeared with $500 million of his company’s money mere hours before he was about to be arrested by the FBI for running a massive pyramid scheme.
    Nick whistled. “Not bad. I have to hand it to you, Bolt, you think big.”
    “It’s ‘Bolton.’ Or ‘sir.’ ”
    “There’s been an FBI task force looking for him for almost ayear,” Kate said. “Nick is a con man and a thief, not a fugitive tracker. What can he do for us?”
    “There’s one person who knows where Griffin is, and perhaps all of that money, and that’s Neal Burnside, his lawyer,” Bolton said. “He’s protected by attorney-client privilege from being forced to talk.”
    “I know about