Chasing the White Lion

by James R. Hannibal

  Val’s hard expression cracked. Her lips parted, speechless. She spun around and stormed off to the clothing racks.

  On the sidelines, Tyler raised his newspaper. Talia felt sure he was using it to hide a grin. “And you,” she said, pointing. “How much of this did you know before I walked unprepared into an Albanian mobster’s office?”

  “Do you really have to ask?”

  She took a breath to fire off a rebuke. “Wait. Where’s Finn?”

  “Off comms.” Eddie glanced back from his bank of computers. “He went dark after he botched the switch.”

  The look Talia gave Tyler was a question and an accusation rolled into one.

  He raised his hands. “I’m giving him space. Finn is a big boy. He can take care of himself.”

  “Send Mac out to look for him.”

  “To what end?”

  He had a point. If Finn didn’t want to be found, Mac stood no chance. Talia returned to the problem of being left in the dark. “You could have told me you and Val had a plan B. Since when did keeping crew members in the dark become a good idea?”

  “Depends on the job.”

  He was up to something, teaching her some unwelcome lesson. “I don’t follow.”

  “You keep claiming you can handle things on your own.” Tyler inclined his head toward the clothing racks, where Mac was helping Val select another Jersey Shore outfit.

  When Talia looked their way, Val crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. No surprise there. But Mac crossed his arms as well.

  She let out a breath. She wished Finn were there. After all the princess and your highness talk, he’d have wanted to see Talia eat a little humble pie. “I get it. I need you all. And I know a large part of this is about stopping the person trying to kill me. I’m grateful for the help.”

  Mac nodded.

  So did Tyler. “Good. The occasional tête-à-tête is healthy for a team—a set of checks and balances.”

  Val kept her expression hard, unmoved, and Talia narrowed her eyes. “I’m still keeping the coin.”

  The grifter huffed and turned back to the clothes.

  The gold coin was only part of the whole keep-Talia-in-the-dark game Tyler had been playing. She fell in step behind him on the way to Eddie’s computer bank. “What about this second mark, Malcom Smythe? Is he some kind of collateral damage?”

  “Does it matter?” Val held a gold blouse and a rhinestone-studded jacket up to her shoulders. “A mark is a mark. As long as we get the job done, right?”

  “Wrong.” Talia caught up to Tyler. “Tell her she’s wrong.”

  “I never tell Val she’s wrong. It’s counterproductive. But don’t worry. I think you’ll like our Mr. Smythe.” Tyler thrust his chin toward the main screen. “Go ahead, Eddie. Call him.”

  A blue globe spun at the center of the screen, and a ringtone pulsed in the speakers. When the call went through, a white-haired man materialized. He wore a waxy mustache and goatee. Talia recognized him anyway. “Conrad?”

  “Mr. Smythe, thank you very much.” The cook added more pretension than usual to his accent.

  Talia had trouble taking her focus off the plum waistcoat. Atan had mentioned Smythe’s preference for outlandish colors. “You told me you wore that to celebrate my homecoming.”

  “As I did, child. But I was also trying it out, getting comfortable. I am . . . unused to pushing the boundaries of fashion.” He held a royal blue bow tie to his neck and wiggled it.

  Talia giggled.

  Tyler brought conversation back to business. “Are you all set, Mr. Smythe?”

  “Set and ready. We’ll see you at the dig site tomorrow morning.”

  “Good. Until then.” The screen returned to the blue globe. Tyler glanced at Talia. “Happy?”

  “Not until we find those kids.”

  The groan of the garage door stopped Talia from asking why Conrad was bunking apart from the rest of the team, or what he had meant by the we in We’ll see you tomorrow. Finn ducked in. He pressed the button to send the door down again the moment his head was clear.

  Mac shoved the clothes he’d been holding into Val’s arms and strode off to greet his friend. The two had grown closer in the months following the Gryphon heist. He clasped Finn’s hand and bent close to his ear, muttering. The thief nodded and gave him a sad smile.

  Talia wanted to do the same—to go to him and say something encouraging. But what?

  Eddie made an attempt of his own. When Finn sank into the couch beside his computer bank, the geek swiveled around and laid a hand on his arm. “Next time I’ll build you one of those boxes that hacks the code.”

  Finn gave him a you can’t be serious stare.

  “No. Really. I built one last year for fun. Worked great.”

  “Psst.” Talia leaned into Eddie’s line of sight, running a hand across her throat.

  He didn’t notice. “I learned how to build it from this guy on YouTube.”

  Finn dropped his forehead into his palm. “Someone shoot me.”

  Val sat on the couch beside the thief. “Are we feeling sad because we couldn’t get the job done?”

  “Valkyrie,” Tyler said.

  She ignored the warning. “A cat burglar defeated by a stuck door—as if you have no clue what you’re doing. Don’t worry. I covered your slack. Come to think of it, you only got in the way.”

  No one breathed. The only sound in the garage was the hum of halogen lights. After a few heartbeats, Finn got up and walked out, slamming the old iron dock gate behind him.

  Misguided helpfulness was one thing. A direct attack was another. Talia gave Val a death stare. “You don’t care who you hurt, do you?” She hurried after Finn.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-

  ONE

  VILLA VÁCLAV

  RIVER VLTAVA

  PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC

  FINN COULDN’T BROOD LIKE A NORMAL GUY, by moping on the mossy steps cut into the riverbank. Talia had to search for several seconds before she found him, perched on a decorative ledge between the second and third stories, a good twenty feet above the basement dock.

  To the best she could figure, he’d climbed a tree, balance-walked across a branch to the wall, and scaled the rest using cracks and uneven stones. “You wouldn’t want to come down and talk, would you?”

  Silence.

  “Right. Of course not.” Talia hated heights, and she hated climbing. She gave it a shot anyway.

  The old oak proved no challenge. But to reach the wall, she had to walk across a gnarled branch with no suitable handholds for balance. “I’m doing this.” She stepped out from the root of the branch, wobbling the moment she let go of the trunk. “I’ll probably fall and break my collarbone. Not that you care.”

  After three terrifying steps, she flattened her body against the wall, cheek pressed into the cold, wet stone. “I’m not dead. I didn’t fall. Feel free to stop me at any time . . . Please.”

  “Don’t come up. I came out here to be alone, not to watch you embarrass yourself.”

  Progress. He’d spoken. She dug her fingers into the first handhold, a fissure running through a stone.

  Urgency banished the sarcasm from Finn’s tone. “Oi. I said don’t come up, yeah? I’m serious. You’ll fall.”

  “I’m serious too. Either I’m coming up or you’re coming down. Your choice.” Her foot found purchase on the eyebrow of a first-floor window, and she pushed upward. Her fingertips barely fit the second handhold, an uneven block. It hurt to let them take her bodyweight.

  “Don’t do this to me, Talia. Tyler will blame me if you fall, fair dinkum.”

  “Yes, he will. Fair dinkum.” She let out an indelicate grunt and kicked a toe into another crack. “And then the team will have two funerals on their hands.”

  She heard him moving above, grumbling to himself as he worked closer. “Of all the pigheaded, obstinate little dingbat . . .” He stopped complaining and started coaching. “Right. Here we go. Move your righ
t inward. No. Farther inward. Up a little. There. That’s the one.”

  So it went. Talia navigated two more handholds and two more footholds before the ledge and Finn were within arm’s reach. Except they weren’t. Her fingernails scraped the stone a full inch below her goal.

  “Close. Give it another go. You’ve gotta really commit.”

  “Like I’m not fully committed already.” She tried again, and in the effort, her right foot slipped. “Finn!”

  He caught her wrist. “Gotcha.”

  His strength surprised her, despite everything she’d seen him do in the past. Kneeling on a lip of stone less than twice the width of his knee, the thief lifted Talia to the ledge. She sat beside him, back pressed into the wall, breathing hard.

  “That was stupid.” Finn turned to sit beside her.

  “No argument here.”

  “Then why take the risk?”

  “You looked like you needed some company.”

  Neither spoke for a long while. Finn seemed to have no inclination. Talia needed the time to lower her heart rate. Frogs chirped in the reeds below. A fish splashed in the river.

  When she finally spoke, Talia kept her eyes forward. Any movement might spoil her balance. “It could have happened to any of us.”

  “But it happened to me. I should’ve listened to Tyler’s warning. I wasn’t prepared for everything the job could throw at me.”

  “None of us are ever fully prepared. Wasn’t that his point? That’s why we have each other. And don’t listen to Val. She’s only trying to get under your skin—the whole grifter–cat-burglar rivalry. You’ll have the next laugh.”

  Finn laid his head back. “You only got in the way. Those words. They . . .”

  “They what?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  Men. The Farm had given Talia the world’s best training in information extraction, whether through coercion or conversation. Yet here, she was at a loss. “Look. I almost fell to my death getting up to this ledge. The least you can do is tell me why you’re taking this so hard.”

  “The problem isn’t Val, okay? It’s Tyler and this whole do-gooder plan of his.”

  Talia took the risk of rolling her head to look at him. “You don’t like doing good?”

  “No . . . Yes.” Finn sighed. “You don’t understand.”

  “Then help me get there. Draw me a map.”

  He closed his eyes. “I’m afraid.”

  What an insane thing to say while sitting two stories up on a ten-inch ledge. “A week ago you fought a bar full of Russians. A few days after we met, you jumped from a weather balloon in the middle of a mesospheric electrical storm with rockets strapped to your legs.” Both to keep me safe, she didn’t say. “You’re not afraid of anything.”

  “Heights and explosions become commonplace with enough practice. Other fears aren’t so easy to bury.” He paused for a few heartbeats. “My dad died when I was young, like yours. I never told you. Know what he died of?”

  She expected him to say a parachuting accident or in a shootout with the police.

  “Shame, Talia. My old man died of shame. Night guard. Janitor. Bricklayer. He couldn’t hold a job. We wound up in a trailer park on the south side of Melbourne. He drank. So did Mom. At ten years old I started shoplifting to help put food and booze on the table.”

  Ouch. “I’m sorry, Finn.”

  “The cops came to the house once a week. Dad and Mom fought like tazzies about it, until one night she didn’t come home. I ran off too. Did my first B’n’E. A condo in a rich beach neighborhood.” Finn lowered his head, bending so far forward Talia worried he might fall. “I filled my pockets with every scrap of coin, cash, and ice I could lay my hands on and brought it home to Dad the next night to show him my big score.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Mom was still gone, out with the super, I think. The lights wouldn’t come on, so I grabbed the electric torch from the kitchen drawer . . .”

  “And your dad?”

  “I found him in the tub, wearing his bathrobe and holding the toaster in his lap.” Finn sat back again. “I can still smell the burning hair. The man couldn’t keep his job or his wife. He’d fathered a little thief. Like I said, he died of shame. I’m the one who pushed him over the edge.”

  “You can’t blame yourself, Finn.”

  He didn’t answer, and Talia bit her lip. She sensed there was more he needed to get out. “Help me understand. What does your dad’s suicide have to do with Tyler?”

  “Don’t you get it? Dad gave up. Mom had her boyfriends. I was on my own.” He pounded his chest. “Just me. If I died jumping from a mountainside, I died. If I went to prison for a heist, no big deal. No one would care. No one would be hurt.”

  “Until Tyler made you part of a family again.”

  His eyes were glossy in the moonlight. “Tyler is a new kind of father, in this Fabian-became-a-preacher-man sort of way. But I’m afraid of failing him like I failed my dad. And if I’m honest, I’m afraid of failing you too. That’s what all the princess and your highness stuff is really about.” Finn shook his head. “Today I failed you both.”

  Her mind spun. For months, from the moment she’d first seen him signing autographs for snow bunnies, Finn had been this two-dimensional person—always cocky, wearing his You must be thrilled to be in my presence smirk. But in the last week Talia had met a new version of him.

  Trembling, mostly from her fear of falling, Talia let go of the ledge and touched his knee. “You didn’t fail Tyler . . . or me. You stumbled. And the team was there to catch you, just like you were there to catch me in Russia. That’s—” Talia blinked at her own words. Was she preaching the very lesson Tyler had been trying to teach her? She smiled. “That’s what families do. They catch each other, and they keep going, no matter what.”

  The two watched the clouds move over the trees for a while, until Talia shivered from the cold. Her right arm was going numb from holding herself up on that ledge. “Finn?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How am I going to get down from here?”

  He laughed. “I have no idea.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-

  TWO

  MARE’S ORBIT FOREST PRESERVE

  RIVER VLTAVA

  24 KM SOUTH OF PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC

  SITE PREPARATIONS BEGAN at sunrise and continued through the last hour before the rendezvous with Atan.

  “If you have the time,” Tyler said, chest deep in the river and holding a shovelful of silt, “nothing sells a con like proper staging.”

  Val and Talia had been relegated to simple lift-and-carry tasks, since they had to dress nice later on. Tyler would join them for the rendezvous with Atan, but he claimed men—even con men—didn’t take near as long to clean up. Talia couldn’t argue with his logic.

  With a grunt, she set a remote-control submarine on a crate beside Eddie’s fake monitoring station. “Is this ROV as capable as we’re claiming?”

  “Are you kidding? I bought that thing on Amazon.” Eddie twirled his fidget spinner. “She’ll dive and send video. The rest is illusion. I stole the sonar feeds from a marine biology site and put them on a loop.” He thrust his chin at his biggest screen. “That’s a school of mackerel off the Florida coast.”

  Finn and Tyler had taken on the hardest job—making a slow and shallow river appear deep and dangerous. Tyler had stretched a net supported by floats twenty meters out and was now digging a hole in the riverbed. Finn, wearing a wetsuit pulled up to his waist with the sleeves tied around his midsection, kneeled at the bank to attach a coil of five-inch-diameter hose to an air compressor.

  The thief had regained some of his swagger. He nodded to Eddie and Talia. “This compressor looks like one of those blowers treasure hunters use to blow silt off a wreck, right?”

  She sensed a but coming and threw it out there. “But . . .”

  “Its real purpose is to muddy the water so the mark can’t see what we’re
doing. Mac loosened a few bolts to make it rattle. The noise will keep Atan from collecting his thoughts.”

  A hundred meters of woods separated the road from the river, which meant long trips to and from the van. Val walked out of the trees, pushing a dolly with oversize tires. She’d saved the worst load for last—a fifty-gallon drum.

  Talia put a hand on the front end to take some of the weight. “This thing is heavy. What’s inside?”

  “You’re smart, darling. Why don’t you tell me?” The question carried some bite.

  Val was clearly still miffed about the gold coin, but Talia wasn’t ready to let her off the hook. She ignored the grifter’s sharpness and assessed the drum. “You filled this with the fake coins from Darcy’s copper-tungsten mint.”

  “Good analysis. Several hundred. Enough to wow Atan with the big reveal.”

  Once they had the drum in the shallows, Finn attached a pair of inflatable tubes. He pulled on the remainder of his wetsuit and dragged it out to Tyler. Talia watched the two of them position it over the underwater hole Tyler had been digging.

  “And what happens after the big reveal?” she asked Val.

  “Darcy’s Keystone bit, and then it’s all up to the mark. This con only works if Atan takes control. He has to drive the brushoff and the mulligan.”

  “Brush-off. Mulligan. Right.” Talia was still learning grifter jargon. “What if he doesn’t?”

  Out in the river, Tyler drew a knife from an ankle sheath and stabbed the floats. The drum vanished into the gloom.

  Val shrugged. “Then we’re sunk.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-

  THREE

  EN ROUTE TO AN INDUSTRIAL PARK

  DISTRICT TWELVE

  PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC

  THE MYSTERIOUS WE from Conrad’s brief video call nettled Talia’s brain as Val drove her and Tyler to the rendezvous. “Who else did you bring in on this?”

  “Sorry.” Tyler, seated on the bench behind her, wore a smug mastermind grin. He’d traded his muddy wetsuit for a Ralph Lauren overcoat and flatcap. “I like a mark to see honest reactions whenever possible.”