Chapter Eighteen #2
“Yeah, someone with mad skills close to mine.” Tyler’s flattened mouth wasn’t quite a smile.
“That should worry you as much as the money does. This isn’t some random guy Brad found on a forum.
This is uber professional-grade concealment that you pay real money for, from someone who does this for people who genuinely cannot afford to get caught. ”
“How much money are we talking about?” Leo asked, though some part of him didn’t want the answer.
Tyler pulled up a document and shared his screen until the numbers filled the frame.
“A little over twenty million dollars, spread across three accounts in a jurisdiction with no extradition treaty with the United States. Deposits go back around ten years, escalating over time. Small at first, then considerably less small over the last two.”
The number dropped into the room like a fifteen-thousand-pound elephant.
“Twenty million.” Leo repeated it because hearing it once hadn’t made it feel real. “On a commission structure that tops out at a significant fraction of that in a good year. He’s driving a sleek European sports car, and his house in Ladue has always seemed richer than his paycheck should support.”
Remi crossed his arms. “I noticed it the first time I checked his background after you mentioned his name. I thought little of it, figuring it came from his wife’s family money.”
“Renee’s family did well,” Leo confirmed, “but nothing like this. Her father ran a regional grocery chain that sold out a decade ago. Comfortable, but not twenty-million-dollars comfortable.”
Anja studied the screen. “Everything he spouted at that wake about Vic’s death not sitting right with him wasn’t concern. It was theater, and he was good enough at it that none of us clocked it.”
“What do we do with this?” Leo wanted to know.
Anja’s answer came fast. “A man moving twenty mill through a country that won’t hand him back to us has an exit strategy. If he thinks we’re closing in, he disappears tonight, and we never see him again.”
“So we watch him and wait for an opening.” Remi’s voice carried a note of grim satisfaction. “See what he does when he thinks nobody’s looking.”
“Tonight.” Anja shrugged on her jacket. “It’s Friday. Let’s see how he handles the start of the weekend.”
“I’m coming,” Leo announced before either of them could suggest otherwise.
“Leo—”
“My arm is good enough to sit in a car and watch a house.” He met Anja’s gaze, daring her to argue. “I’m not staying behind while you two stake out the man who may have killed Vic Shaw. Not after everything he’s already taken from people I know.”
She held his gaze a second longer, then nodded once, some of the fight draining out of her posture. “Fine. But you stay in the vehicle. No heroics. That arm is officially off duty.”
#
Brad Hatton’s house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac in Ladue, brick and stone with a circular drive and professionally maintained landscaping down to the last hedge.
Leo had been there a dozen times for summer barbecues and Super Bowl parties.
Each time he noted, without really registering it, that the place was a little bigger and far nicer than an agent at Brad’s level should have been able to afford.
He’d chalked it up to Renee’s family money and moved on, the same way he’d dismissed a hundred other insignificant details that had turned out to mean something.
They parked two houses down, in the shadow of an oak that hadn’t fully leafed out yet, with a direct sightline to the driveway and garage. Remi killed the engine and adjusted into his seat.
“How long do we give it?” Leo asked.
“As long as it takes.” Anja peered through a pair of binoculars at the house. “Surveillance isn’t glamorous. Mostly it’s a whole lot of nothing but sitting still and being bored while you wait for somebody to make a mistake.”
The garage light came on around eight, spilling yellow across the driveway, and the door rolled up to reveal a low, sleek import Leo recognized from the work lot.
It cost more than most people’s houses. Brad backed out fast and executed a tire-squealing half-spin a NASCAR driver would be proud of.
He turned onto the main road without so much as a glance in either direction.
“He’s in a hurry.” Remi followed at a discreet distance.
“Or he’s had a few before leaving the house,” Leo countered. “Watch how he takes that curve.”
The import swayed wide around the bend, correcting late. Leo’s gut clenched, but Brad made it safely.
They followed him east, away from Ladue and into a stretch of the city Leo rarely had a reason to visit, past strip malls with half their signs dark and gas stations with bars over the windows.
Brad slowed outside a squat cinderblock building with a flickering neon sign that read The Tap Room, missing its last letter, wedged between a check-cashing storefront and an empty lot choked with weeds.
“That’s not his usual scene,” Leo observed, watching Brad climb out of a car worth six figures and walk into a bar that hadn’t been renovated since the Carter administration.
“No,” Anja agreed. “Which is why we’re here.”
“Frankly, I’m surprised he’d leave his car in this area,” Remi remarked as he swung the Escalade into a spot across the street, angled to keep the bar’s entrance in view. “I’m going in.”
“He’s met you before,” Leo pointed out.
“Give me a minute.” Remi retreated to the back of the SUV. He returned wearing faded flannel and a baseball cap with a trucking company’s logo half rubbed off the front. He mussed his hair and donned a set of black-rimmed glasses. By the time he’d finished, his posture had changed too.
“How do you do that?” Leo was genuinely unsettled by the transformation.
“Training.” Remi fitted an earpiece into place, microscopic enough to be undetectable.
Anja handed Leo one of the comm devices, and he positioned it in his ear.
“Anja, you better hop into the driver’s seat. I need you able to move fast if this goes sideways.”
“Define sideways,” Leo requested.
“You’ll know it if it happens. Otherwise, sit tight. This is the boring part.”
Remi checked his weapon, slid it into the waistband of his jeans, and tugged the flannel shirt over it.
Then he glanced in both directions before crossing the street with a loose, unhurried gait, shoulders rounded just enough to read as tired rather than dangerous, and disappeared through the bar’s door without a backward glance.