BY JANET EVANOVICH

The Fox and O’Hare Novels with Lee Goldberg

The Heist

The Chase

The Job

The Stephanie Plum Novels

One for the Money

Two for the Dough

Three to Get Deadly

Four to Score

High Five

Hot Six

Seven Up

Hard Eight

To the Nines

Ten Big Ones

Eleven on Top

Twelve Sharp

Lean Mean Thirteen

Fearless Fourteen

Finger Lickin’ Fifteen

Sizzling Sixteen

Smokin’ Seventeen

Explosive Eighteen

Notorious Nineteen

Takedown Twenty

Top Secret Twenty-One

The Between the Numbers Stories

Visions of Sugar Plums

Plum Lovin’

Plum Lucky

Plum Spooky

The Lizzy and Diesel Novels

Wicked Appetite

Wicked Business

The Alexandra Barnaby Novels

Metro Girl

Motor Mouth

Troublemaker (graphic novel)

Nonfiction

How I Write

The Shell Game is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

A Bantam Books eBook Original

Copyright © 2014 by The Gus Group LLC

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

BANTAM BOOKS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-8081-8

Cover design: Carlos Beltrán

Cover photograph: Claudio Marinesco

www.bantamdell.com

v3.1

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

First Page

About the Authors

Garson Klepper liked going to black-tie events. Wearing a tuxedo made him feel suave and debonair. It made no difference that he looked like Homer Simpson, and made his living manufacturing fish meal for cattle. He always walked in as if he was the most important person in the ballroom, which he usually was. His sizable donation, made possible by his fish meal fortune, often made whatever charity event he was attending possible. Like the night’s soiree at the Cleveland Ritz-Carlton.

Klepper wasn’t sure what calamity he was raising money for tonight. War, famine, homelessness, illiteracy. It didn’t matter to Klepper. He wrote the checks for the tax deductions and attended the events because he could always count on leaving with a smoking-hot twenty-something gold digger on his arm.

He was walking away from the bar with a lemon drop martini in each hand, one for him and one for the lucky gold digger at his table, when a man crossed his path, cutting him off.

The man was in his early thirties, with impeccably cut, casually styled brown hair and a warm smile. He wore his custom-tailored tuxedo with a devil-may-care savoir faire that Klepper wished he could manage for himself.

“Excuse me, Mr. Klepper,” the man said. “I just have to tell you how impressed I am by your generous donation.”

“It’s a horrible tragedy when a kid steps on a land mine,” Klepper said. When he saw the confusion on the man’s face, he quickly added, “Especially if he has a cleft palate.”

“Or suffers from malnutrition,” the man said, “like the children we’re raising money for tonight.”

“Exactly. I’m just doing my small part to make the world a better place.” And if it got him laid, even better. That wouldn’t happen if he didn’t get back to the gold digger, a platinum blonde in a gold lamé halter-top evening dress that left nothing to the imagination. Klepper tried to edge past the guy, who cut him off again.

“I’m sure that’s also why you share your amazing collection of Peruvian antiquities with the public at the Cleveland Museum of Art.”

Klepper did his philanthropic work to gain prestige. The kind of prestige he couldn’t get from making food for cows that were destined to become Big Macs. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew this guy was sucking up to him for a reason.

“Let’s skip the ass-kissing, shall we?” Klepper said. “Who are you and what do you want?”

He was Nicolas Fox, international con man and thief, and what he wanted was to clean Klepper out.

Fox smiled at Klepper and gave him a small nod of approval for his bluntness. “My name is John Drake. I’m with Intertect Security. We understand you’re lending your entire collection of Peruvian artifacts to the Getty in Los Angeles. We’d like to make sure your collection gets there safely.”

“I’ve already got people for that.”

“They aren’t up to the task. The artifacts were looted from sacred tombs. The Peruvian government would love to get their treasures back. This move from Cleveland to L.A. is the perfect opportunity. You’re going to need world-class security.”

“I’m covered. The company I’m using hires ex-soldiers, ex-cops, and ex-spies who know every trick,” Klepper said. “They put the same cutting-edge alarm system in my house that’s in the Louvre. Nothing gets past these guys. I think they can handle a simple delivery.”

“You’re probably right. But if you change your mind, I gave your friend my card.”

Nick gestured to Klepper’s table, where the gold digger was sitting.

Klepper looked over at the woman and had a moment of confusion before he fully realized what he was seeing. She’d had long, straight unadorned blond hair when he left the table, and she was now wearing a crescent-shaped headdress of elaborately hammered gold. Klepper recognized the headdress. It was a one-of-a-kind treasure worth millions of dollars, and it had been looted from a royal crypt inside a pyramid in Peru. Until this very instant, Klepper thought the headdress was safely locked in a vault in his mansion, protected by an impassable alarm system, constant video surveillance, and armed guards on patrol. But this guy had managed to steal it without even wrinkling his tux. It was frightening. And damn impressive.

Klepper took a big slurp from one of his lemon drop martinis and turned to Nick.

“You’re hired.”

FBI Special Agent Kate O’Hare was slumped in her chair in her cubicle on the fifteenth floor of the Wilshire Federal Building in West Los Angeles. She had thick auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail, and blue eyes that were glazed over in stupefied boredom. She wore a sensible navy Ann Taylor blazer over skinny tan slacks and a stretchy white T-shirt. The blazer nicely covered the Glock on her hip. A pile of bulging files sat on one side of her computer monitor, and a dozen Oreos were stacked like poker chips on the other.

Her cubicle was five feet wide, five feet deep, and framed on three sides by five-foot-high partitions that doubled as bulletin boards. She was sure that federal prisoners would be delighted to know their cells were roomier than the offices of the agents who’d arrested them. Not that she’d put anyone away yet.

Kate was twenty-eight years old and had graduated from the FBI Academy in Quantico just six months earlier. So far she’d only been assigned basic fieldwork, such as running background checks and interviewing witnesses on cases other agents were investigating. She was currently wading through low-level clearance applications, and when she felt herself nodding off, she snapped herself back with an Oreo.

“I bet that’s better than eating bugs,” said Cosmo Uno, popping up on the other side of the partition like a hyperactive mole.

Uno was 5′4″ and had to stand on a file box to peer over at her. His voice had the same pitch as a squealing smoke alarm, and when he started talking, almost nothing could stop him.

“I heard that when you were a Navy commando you were dropped into the Nicaragua rain forest and had to live on beetles and rainwater for two weeks while tracking drug smugglers,” Uno said. “Is that why you quit and joined the FBI? I don’t think I could eat a bug unless it was a Squiggly-Wiggly, which aren’t really bugs but jelly candy shaped like bugs. Have you ever had a Squiggly-Wiggly? Do they taste like bugs? I bet bugs are more crunchy than chewy, but you tell me.”

He rested his chin on the top of the partition, waiting for an answer.

Kate would have gladly spent a week in the rain forest, munching on beetles, rather than endure another minute in a cubicle beside Special Agent Cosmo Uno.

“Go away,” she said. “I’m busy on a very important case.”

She stared at her computer and pretended to be enthralled by someone’s job application for a State Department janitorial position.

“Is it true you’re trained to kill a man using any object within reach?” Uno asked. “I can see how you could kill me with those scissors or a pen, but could you kill me with a file folder? With an Oreo? With one of those Dr. Scholl’s inserts in your shoes? Is that how you got blood on your shirt?”

Kate glanced at her shirt. Sure enough, there was a red stain on her chest.

“It’s barbecue sauce,” Kate said.

“That’s what happens when you eat McNuggets for lunch. I told you not to eat McNuggets. Who really knows what’s in a McNugget? Could you kill me with a McNugget?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but I’m willing to try.”

Something caught Uno’s attention. He lifted his head to look past her, gave a gasp, and abruptly dropped behind the partition. Kate turned to see Carl Jessup, the special agent in charge, striding toward them on his way to his office. He was a lanky, weather-beaten Kentuckian in his fifties who looked like he’d be more comfortable on a horse.

She bolted up from her seat and covered the stain on her shirt with her hand.

“May I have a word with you, sir?”

“Of course,” he said. “How are you settling in?”

“To be honest, I’ve been doing background checks for so long I feel like I’m a personnel director and not a special agent.”

“Security clearances are important work, Kate.”

“I know that, sir, and I mean no disrespect, but isn’t it time to put my FBI training and military experience to use on a real case? I’m ready and I promise I won’t let you down.”

He glanced at her hand on her chest. “It’s not necessary to take a pledge.”

She dropped her hand. “I was hiding a stain on my shirt.”

“Relax. Stains are okay. They give you character.”

“I don’t want to be a character. I want to be the best special agent you’ve got.”

“I know you do. I haven’t forgotten about you. I’m just waiting for the right case to come along.”

Nicolas Fox was heading north on the 405 in a rented Mustang convertible at precisely fifty-five miles per hour. The soft top was down, Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” played on the speakers, and the wind whipped Fox’s hair. He wore Ray-Bans and a charcoal gray Tom Ford suit with a bright white shirt open at the collar. There was a Bluetooth mike in his ear, allowing him to make hands-free calls. He looked like a young Hollywood agent on his way to close a big deal, and that wasn’t too far off the mark.

“I’m approaching the Marina Freeway overpass,” Fox said to the three people he was conferenced into via his cellphone.

He clicked his stopwatch. The Jefferson Boulevard ramp onto the 405 freeway was a quarter mile away, which was about sixteen seconds. The timing was very important. It was the first of three consecutive on-ramps feeding into the northbound 405 from the Marina Freeway interchange.

Nick drove underneath the overpass and, as he emerged into the sunlight again, he glanced to his right where a blue Toyota Camry raced down the Jefferson on-ramp. The car was driven by an Asian woman in her thirties, wearing a straw porkpie hat and big sunglasses. She yawned at Nick and merged into the traffic behind him. He glanced at the stopwatch. Sixteen seconds. Perfect. He clicked the stopwatch again.

“Right on time,” Nick said.

“This is so boring,” the Asian woman said.

Her name was Wendy Rhee, and she was the best getaway driver in Seoul, maybe in all of Asia. Now she was ready to conquer America.

“It’s no fun driving if someone isn’t chasing you,” Wendy said. “Cars need gasoline, and I need adrenaline. I’m tempted to rear-end someone and speed away just to stay awake.”

“You have eight seconds, Artie,” Nick said as he approached the on-ramp where traffic from the westbound Marina Freeway funneled cars onto the northbound 405.

“Out of my way!” Artie Sondel yelled in his thick Bronx accent, not at Nick but at the car in front of him. “You’re driving a car, not sitting on the can.”

Artie leaned on his horn. Nick looked to his right and saw the silver Ford Explorer Artie was driving. It was stuck on the on-ramp behind two slow-moving cars.

Artie swore, veered onto the weedy embankment, and sped past the two cars with his Explorer tipped at a precarious angle. It was typical Artie. He’d spent twenty years driving a taxi in Manhattan, so he was an expert at urban guerilla driving.

Nick looked ahead. The on-ramp channeling the eastbound Marina Freeway traffic to the northbound 405 was coming up almost immediately. Evaristo Suarez’s black Lincoln Town Car was in sight, and Nick didn’t have to use the stopwatch to know Evaristo was going to hit his mark to the split second. Evaristo had learned to drive in the U.S. Army, transporting arms and supplies through Iraq on roads mined with improvised explosive devices. Precision timing and hair-trigger reflexes had kept him alive. The problem was, when he came back stateside, nothing else gave him the same thrill as driving those land-mined roads … except crime.

As Nick passed the on-ramp, the Lincoln merged into place behind him and in front of Wendy’s Camry. Artie’s SUV was two cars behind her. Nick led them off the 405 at the Wilshire Boulevard exit, turned right onto Wilshire, and then into the parking lot of the Federal Building. They parked side by side, got out of their cars, and gathered around Nick’s Mustang to talk.

Evaristo had a buzz cut and wore GI-issue desert cammies. Muscular and fit, he was a sharp contrast to the pudgy Artie, who wore an untucked aloha shirt for comfort and because he thought it hid his bulging belly. Wendy was small and dressed in a pink miniskirt, reminding Nick of a Hello Kitty doll come to life.

“Not bad for the first go-round,” Nick said, “but I want you all to keep practicing. We don’t have much time to get it right.”

“Two of us got it perfect,” Wendy said and hooked a thumb at Artie. “He’s the one who didn’t.”

“It could just as easily have been you who got stuck behind those two altacockers,” Artie said.

“Don’t nobody get a big head, because that’s what’ll get you killed,” Evaristo said. “Boom. You’re meat and applesauce.”

Wendy grimaced. “That’s gross.”

“That’s life,” Evaristo said. “People die.”

“Nobody is going to die on this job,” Nick said. “I have a strict no-bloodshed policy. We aren’t going to be carrying any loaded weapons.”

“The other guys will be,” Artie said.

“We aren’t going to give them any reason to use their guns. That’s why it’s important you keep practicing.” Nick nodded toward the Federal Building, which looked like an enormous tombstone with windows. “I’ve got to go. I have an important meeting.”

“You’re walking into the lion’s den,” Wendy said.

Nick shrugged into his suit jacket. “It’s the best way to know what all the lions are thinking. Klepper panicked the Getty, and the Getty asked for the FBI’s assistance. I need to know their plans, so I’m going to be a helpful team member.

Kate was working at erasing her shirt stain with a Tide to Go stick when her phone rang. It was Jessup, summoning her to his corner office.

“I have a case for you,” he said.

Kate hung up and did a fist pump. “Yes!”

Cosmo popped up on the other side of the partition. “What?”

“I got a case.”

“Does that mean you aren’t going to eat any more of those cookies?”

“It means I’m going to put them in my top drawer and save them for later. And I’ve counted them so don’t get any ideas.”

Kate put the Tide stick away and hurried across the long cubicle-crammed bull pen to Jessup’s office.

He was sitting behind his desk, and the view behind him was incredible. To the west, she could see the Santa Monica high-rises and the Pacific Ocean. To the northwest, she could see the 405 freeway snaking through Sepulveda Pass below the hilltop Getty museum.

“Thank you, sir, for this opportunity,” she said, practically standing at attention in front of his desk. “I won’t let you down.”

Jessup slid a file across the desk to her. “A fifty-million-dollar collection of golden Peruvian antiquities is being loaned to the Getty.” Jessup aimed his thumb over his shoulder at the marble-clad museum on the hill behind him. “It arrives at LAX on Monday and I want you riding shotgun on the delivery.”

“Not to sound unappreciative, because I really, really do appreciate getting this case,” Kate said. “But what makes this FBI business?”

“That’s a good question. The antiquities were looted from Peruvian tombs in the late 1980s and sold to Garson Klepper, a collector in Cleveland. An archaeologist specializing in Peruvian antiquities saw the golden masks on display in Cleveland a few years ago, recognized them as coming from the Sipán tomb, and reported it to the FBI. We confiscated the artifacts and arrested Klepper, who admitted they were stolen, but said they were taken from another tomb elsewhere in Peru. It was a very cunning maneuver on his part. Under the National Stolen Property Act, establishing the site where a piece is taken is the key requirement for making a case for possession of stolen artifacts. Unfortunately, neither the Justice Department nor the Peruvian government could prove which site the antiquities actually came from. So the judge ruled we had to return it all to Klepper. He got away with the crime. The Peruvians were furious, and we got egg on our face. We can’t take the risk that the antiquities will be stolen, that would just add insult to injury. So you’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Now the case was a lot more interesting to her. It wasn’t just a glorified security guard job. She was being entrusted with protecting the FBI’s reputation.

“What makes you think there’s a risk of theft?” Kate asked.

“To be perfectly honest, I think the risk of theft is small to none, but Klepper is worried, and he has the Getty worried. Klepper has hired Intertect, a private security firm. They’re going to oversee the transport of the antiquities. I wanted to brief you in private before you met the Intertect agent in charge of the operation.” Jessup hit a button on his intercom and buzzed the receptionist. “Send in John Drake.”

John Drake was hard, lean muscle packaged up in a custom-tailored suit. He had beach-bum hair, a 007 attitude, and brown eyes that gave nothing away. Kate thought he was the hottest guy she’d ever seen up close.

“Explain to Special Agent O’Hare why you think the collection is in danger,” Jessup said to Drake.

“Mr. Klepper fears that Nicolas Fox has been hired by the Peruvian government to steal the collection. Apparently Mr. Klepper has an associate who was relieved of a great deal of money and believes Fox was behind it.”

“Why did this associate think it was Fox?” Jessup asked.

“It was a very clever robbery and Fox is known for being very clever.”

Drake stated all this with authority since he was Nicolas Fox.

Kate turned to Jessup. “What do we have on Fox?”

“Nothing. Not a photo or a fingerprint. We know he’s out there, but he targets wealthy, powerful people who don’t say anything when he’s swindled or robbed them because they’re afraid they’ll look like idiots.”

“The risk is minimal,” Drake said. “We feel confident we can protect the Klepper collection. There’s nothing beyond my client’s paranoia to indicate that Fox is planning something.”

“I agree,” Jessup said. “I don’t think the collection is in any real danger, but the Getty has made a request and we’re glad to help our friends at the Getty. Agent O’Hare will work with you on the security arrangements and provide you with the appropriate resources.”

Kate figured that appropriate resources was Jessup’s way of saying as little as possible. This meant she’d probably be the only resource the FBI was willing to provide.

“I’d like to brief you on the security details, but I’m running late for another appointment,” Drake said to Kate. “I’m staying at Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica. If you haven’t other plans we could have dinner at the hotel and run through the operation.”

“Perfect,” Kate said. “I have a stack of files I need to clear this afternoon and then I’m free. I’ll meet you at seven.”

Kate thought her blue jacket and tan slacks were perfect for every occasion. The shirt with the barbecue sauce on it, not so much. She made a fast stop at her apartment to change her shirt, slip her feet into dressy flats, swipe on some lip gloss, and she was good to go.

The Bureau motor pool had assigned her a dented silver Crown Vic with three hundred thousand miles on the odometer. It wasn’t pretty, but it got her to Shutters. The hotel was built to look like a Nantucket estate. Kate loved the massive, rambling gray shingle building, but she thought it fit in with Santa Monica about as well as a Taco Bell in Chinatown. She took the elevator up to Drake’s sixth-floor suite, and restrained herself from gushing over the room. It was about the same size as her apartment. Unlike her apartment, though, it was beautifully furnished and it had a view.

“Nice room,” Kate said. “The presidential suite wasn’t available?”

“I didn’t want to overindulge myself.”

She walked to the open veranda window and looked out at the Santa Monica Pier and the Ferris wheel. She listened to the ocean swells break on the sandbar, and she breathed in the sea breeze. She knew that on the beach below her there were piles of dog poop and signs warning swimmers to stay out of the polluted water, but in the encroaching darkness it was magical.

The table was set for two and looked suspiciously romantic to Kate. Candles, champagne in an ice bucket, a small vase of fresh flowers.

“Am I interrupting something?” she asked. “I don’t want to put a crimp in your date plans.”

“No date plans,” he said. “Just a working dinner.”

“My idea of a working dinner is a Domino’s Pizza, buffalo wings, and a six-pack of Coke served in a windowless conference room.”

Drake opened the champagne and poured two glasses. “I asked for a windowless conference room when I checked in, but they didn’t have any available.”

Kate took a glass of champagne from him and chugged it down.

Drake grinned and refilled her glass. “I like a woman with a healthy appetite.”

“Yep, that’s me,” Kate said. “I’m all about appetite.” She took a sip of champagne. “And the job.”

“You take your work seriously,” Drake said, settling the champagne bottle back into the ice bucket.

“I do. I was an army brat, and I inherited a sense of pride in a job well done from my dad. I firmly believe in the American flag, apple pie, and upholding the law of the land.”

“Good to know,” Drake said, picking up an iPad up from the coffee table. “Let me show you the route we’ve planned.” He tapped the iPad and brought up a satellite map of L.A.’s west side. “The antiquities are arriving at LAX on a private jet. They’ll get in at eleven A.M. on Monday at one of the freight terminals along the Imperial Highway.” He pointed to a line of warehouses along LAX’s southern runway and the road that paralleled it. “We’ll transfer the crates under armed guard to an armored truck. The armored truck will travel east on the Imperial Highway and up the northbound 405 freeway to the Getty. Once we’re on the Getty property, their security team takes over. The Getty is basically a hilltop fortress, minus the cannons, so I don’t have any worries at that point.”

“Sounds good to me,” Kate said. “But I’d like to check out the route for myself and think about how I’d take the shipment from you.”

He set the iPad down. “You can think like a thief?”

“I can think like a soldier.”

“They don’t think alike.”

“What’s the difference?”

“A soldier’s strategy is all about achieving the mission objective, using blunt force and cold precision. But for a con man and thief like Nicolas Fox, it’s also about expressing himself through the cleverness and audacity of his technique. The value of the prize itself is almost secondary.”

“Theft as performance art? Who’s the audience?”

“You are,” Drake said.

There was a knock at the door, and Drake let the room service waiter into the suite. Conversation stopped while the food was set out. Kate was relieved to see steak and french fries. She’d been worried that a guy looking like Drake might have ordered raw fish or snails or duck liver.

“This looks great,” she said to him, taking a seat. “Tell me about your company, Intertect.”

“We’re very good at what we do. If I told you more than that I’d have to kill you.”

Kate paused with her fork in her hand. “That’s usually just a clever thing to say.”

Nick refilled her champagne flute. “In the case of Intertect it would be death by boredom. We’re not a flashy company.”

Nick watched Kate march off to the elevator. She was cute, he thought. Earnest, refreshingly unpretentious, full of energy, too determined to be professional to flirt with him. And she was as dedicated to upholding the law as he was to breaking it. She was exactly what he needed in his life. She was going to be fun. He returned to his suite and phoned his three drivers to confirm that the evening’s activity was a go.

An hour later, Nick and his crew gathered outside the chain-link fence that surrounded the parking lot of Picture Car Universe Inc. Picture Car was in an industrial area of Sylmar in the San Fernando Valley. The fence was topped with razor wire, and the lot was filled with hundreds of vehicles of all kinds.

Wendy squinted into the dimly lit lot. “What is this place?”

Nick opened a utility box attached to the chain-link fence and pulled a couple wires. “It’s where Hollywood studios go to rent vehicles for their shows. Fake taxis, police cars, hearses, school buses, ambulances, anything on wheels. You name it, they’ve got it.” Nick closed the box and nodded to Evaristo. “The alarm is deactivated.”

Evaristo put his bolt cutter to the fence and went to work. “The security is pathetic.”

“That’s because most of these vehicles are props, cheaply dressed up to look like the real thing,” Nick said. “The rest are retired vehicles on their last legs that were bought on the cheap. They don’t have any value unless you’re a movie maker putting on a production.”

“Or a con man trying to trick somebody,” Artie said.

“Still, they could have made an effort,” Evaristo said. “A few armed guards or even a couple vicious dogs would have been nice.”

Artie gave him a look. “You enjoy fighting for your life?”

“How else do you know you’re alive?”

“Try breathing,” Artie said. “That’s usually a good sign.”

Evaristo made the last cut, a big chunk of fence fell onto the ground, and everyone stepped through the opening and into the parking lot.

Nick led them past ice cream trucks, army jeeps, gasoline tankers, and fake Model Ts.

Wendy stopped to admire three identical space-age cars with sleek, aerodynamic lines, bubble-topped cabins, gull wing doors, rear fins with propulsion rockets, and two elaborate laser cannons mounted on their front grills. They were prop cars from Future Spies, a short-lived science-fiction TV series.

“Let’s take these,” she said.

“Not going to happen,” Nick said. “We’re after the four armored trucks that are lined up in front of you.”

Nick had two mechanics waiting in a Culver City warehouse to modify the fake armored trucks to meet his special requirements. The mechanics would then pretend to be Intertect agents on the day of the heist.

“You’re no fun,” Wendy said. “Can we at least take the laser cannons?”

“You know they’re fake, right?” Nick asked her.

“Yeah, but they’re cool.”

“True,” Nick said. “You can take one. Just one.”

On Monday, Kate pulled her Crown Vic into the LAX terminal lot and saw that the armored truck was already in place. The sky was bright blue and cloudless, and the morning sun was quickly burning off the remnants of a marine layer. Kate was wearing a field uniform of running shoes, jeans, white T-shirt, and Kevlar vest. And she’d proudly accessorized the outfit with her brand-new navy-with-yellow-lettering FBI windbreaker.

Drake was beside the armored truck, waiting for her. He was dressed in a dark suit and dark dress shirt and tie, and was flanked by two men who looked like agents from Men in Black. The two men wore black suits, impenetrably dark sunglasses, and matching Bluetooth earpieces.

Kate parked and approached Drake. “Looks like we’re good to go.”

“All we need is the plane.” He smiled at her. “We appreciate the FBI’s support.”

“Thank you, but I doubt you’ll need it. Your team looks competent.”

Kate understood that her presence was symbolic rather than critical. Klepper had his own crack security team, and it was hard for her to get worked up over this mysterious Nick Fox. She’d even had a brief thought that she was getting punked, but she’d immediately discarded it. She didn’t think she was important enough for the FBI to waste their time playing a joke on her. Even knowing all this, she felt a twinge of nervous excitement. This was the first time she’d been out of her cubicle for something more important than a coffee run. On the off chance that Nicolas Fox was real and stupid enough to make a move on the armored truck, she didn’t want to screw up.

Everyone turned and watched the midsize private plane touch down and taxi to a stop in front of the terminal. Drake climbed behind the wheel of the armored truck and drove it to the plane while his men in black kept their eyes on the ground crew.

The back door to the armored truck opened, and two more men in black came out. They exchanged a few words with Drake, and helped to form a security perimeter around the back of the plane. The ground crew opened the cargo hold and unloaded metal cases, not much larger than suitcases, into the rear of the armored truck. The last of the cases went in, two of the men in black climbed into the back of the vehicle with the antiquities, and the doors were closed and locked.

“Showtime,” Drake said to Kate, as he climbed back behind the wheel of the armored truck. “See you on the other side.”

Kate ran for her Crown Vic and followed Drake out of the lot, heading east on Imperial Highway. They took the on-ramp to the eastbound 105 freeway. Traffic was light for the next two miles, and the transition to the northbound 405 freeway was easy. There were six lanes on the 405. Drake and Kate stayed in the fifth lane, the one to the left of the slow lane, keeping their speed at a leisurely fifty-five miles per hour.

An armored truck merged from the Jefferson Boulevard on-ramp into the right lane. The armored truck was identical in every way to the one in front of her, including the license plate.

A shot of adrenaline burned through Kate’s chest. It would be weird enough to have two identical armored trucks in front of her. Two identical armored trucks with identical license plates were impossible. The intel had been true. There was going to be a robbery attempt on the armored truck carrying the Peruvian antiquities. The second armored truck was going to be used to switch and confuse. She grabbed her phone and called for backup.

“Agent needs assistance,” she said, and she gave her location.

Nick swerved into the next lane, as Wendy Rhee, in the second armored truck, took his former position in front of Kate. They were now at the merge point where the traffic from the westbound Marina Freeway spilled onto the 405, and Nick could see that Artie Sondel was right on time.

Artie merged into the slow lane and quickly took his position beside the other armored trucks. There were now three identical armored trucks traveling side by side in front of Kate on the northbound 405.

Kate looked at the armored trucks in front of her and knew there were two possible scenarios here. The first was that Drake was being boxed in by the identical armored trucks. The second was that Drake was part of the crew. Either way, she needed to do something to mark Drake’s armored truck before it was lost in the shell game.

She lowered her driver’s side window, pulled out her Glock, held it as steadily as she could in her left hand, and opened fire on Drake’s armored truck. Her aim wasn’t great with her left hand, but that was okay, the armored truck was a big target, and she accomplished her goal. She’d shot out a taillight and put some pocks in the body of Drake’s armored truck, marking it so she could tell it apart from the two decoys.

She dropped the gun onto her lap and made a second call to dispatch.

“Robbery in progress on the northbound 405 freeway at the Marina Freeway interchange. Suspects are driving three armored trucks.”

A fourth armored truck sped onto the freeway from the eastbound Marina Freeway on-ramp and joined the armored truck herd.

“Make that four,” Kate said to dispatch. “Agent in pursuit.”

Nick and the drivers of the three other armored trucks began to weave so that they straddled multiple lanes, creating a traffic blockade. It was a carefully choreographed maneuver. In a quarter mile, or about sixteen seconds, they would hit the Culver Boulevard exit, and then in another three-quarters of a mile, or about fifty seconds, they would hit the Washington Boulevard exit. And then it would all be over.

Nick called the other drivers.

“Give me smoke,” he said.

Wendy, Artie, Evaristo, and Nick flipped the switches that had been installed the night before, and thick billows of gray smoke poured out from beneath the four armored trucks.

Blinded by the smoke, Kate reflexively hit her brakes for fear of rear-ending the armored truck in front of her. She could hear cars all around her coming to screeching halts and the metallic crunch of multiple fender benders.

She lifted her foot off the brake and moved forward cautiously. There were flows to the smoke, which briefly cleared in spots and gave her fleeting, hazy glimpses of the armored trucks and the road ahead. The armored trucks were weaving, switching lanes with one another.

The shell game had begun.

An armored truck broke from behind the cloud and took the Culver Boulevard exit, but Kate ignored it. It wasn’t the armored truck marked by her bullets. Drake’s armored truck was still on the freeway. The three remaining armored trucks continued weaving and putting out smoke, but Kate continued to dog the truck driven by Drake. Even with the smoke hanging over the road, she could pick out the truck with the broken taillight.

Nick had a fix on Kate in his side mirror. He suspected he’d underestimated the junior agent. He’d know for sure in thirty seconds if she followed him off the freeway at the Washington Boulevard exit. If that happened, he had a backup plan. He always did.

He called Artie. “Are you in position?”

“Almost,” Artie said. “Are you gonna need me?”

“I think so,” Nick said. “But be gentle.”

Kate watched as two of the armored trucks abruptly peeled off the 405 freeway at the Washington Boulevard exit. One of them was Drake’s. She followed him, letting the third armored truck go because she knew it was a decoy.

When the two armored trucks hit Sepulveda, they split up. One armored truck went north toward Venice Boulevard and Drake’s went south, toward Washington Boulevard.

Kate stayed on Drake’s tail and called in her new location to dispatch, all the time listening for sirens or a chopper. She should have backup soon, but she’d take Drake or Fox or whoever down without assistance if it was necessary. She didn’t want to fail on her very first assignment.

The armored truck carrying the antiquities sped south to Washington Boulevard, made a sharp right, and continued west underneath the freeway overpass. Kate followed it, closing in, feeling confident she could catch it. Her Crown Vic was a piece of junk, but it could still outrun an armored truck.

Her attention was so focused on the armored truck that she didn’t see the other armored truck that burst out of a cross street. She caught movement in her peripheral vision seconds before she was T-boned on her passenger side. The force of the impact rolled her car over, shattered the windows, and exploded the airbags.

Nick pulled over in front of a panel van that he’d parked on the street the day before. He swung out of the armored truck and ran back to Kate’s overturned Crown Vic. He’d needed Artie to disable the car, not kill the driver. The thought that Kate might be hurt gave him a pain in his heart.

“That’s what I call perfect timing,” Artie said, climbing out of his armored truck.

“I told you to be gentle,” Nick said.

“That’s gentle in New York,” Artie said.

Nick rushed to the driver’s side of Kate’s car, and looked inside. Kate was hanging upside down, strapped in place by her seat belt. Her nose was bleeding from the impact of the airbag and she was dazed, but otherwise she appeared to be fine.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Peachy,” she said, blinking hard in an attempt to clear her vision. “You’re under arrest.”

Nick glanced back at his armored truck. His crew was just about done unloading the collection into the paneled van. “I don’t think so, Kate. Not today.”

“I just wanted you to hear your future, whoever the heck you are. I guarantee you I’ll be the one who takes you down.”

He grinned. “I’m Nick Fox, and if I ever get taken down by someone … I hope it’s you.”

Three hours later Kate was in Jessup’s office. She had a Band-Aid across her nose and an ice pack in her hand. She’d just given Jessup her full report on the robbery, and she was wishing she’d taken the painkiller the EMS guy had offered her. She had a massive headache, not from the crash, but because she’d just totally screwed up her first real assignment. Her career was in the toilet. She’d be stuck in her cubicle, doing clearance reports, for the rest of her life. She thought the best she could hope for was to eventually graduate to doing Starbucks runs for the other special agents.

“I’m impressed with how you reacted to the situation,” Jessup said.

Kate blinked her left eye. Her right eye was swollen shut. “You are?”

“Hell yes. It’s when things go bad that you see what an agent is really capable of doing. You stayed cool, you improvised, and, most important of all, you didn’t let up.”

“So you’re not going to transfer me to clerical duty in the FBI field office in Guam?”

“Why would I? This is on me, not you,” he said. “I assigned you to work with him. He fooled me first. Your career won’t take the hit.”

“But he got away from me.”

“That happens,” Jessup said. “You’ll have better luck next time.”

Kate was dizzy with relief. There was going to be a next time. She wasn’t getting kicked out of the Bureau.

“We didn’t know who Nicolas Fox was before this,” Jessup said. “Now we do. As long as I’m SAC here, catching Fox is going to be your primary case.”

Crap on a cracker, Kate thought. He was giving her Fox. She could barely breathe.

“There isn’t another agent in the Bureau who knows him better than you do or has a stronger motivation to hunt him down,” Jessup said. “That makes you uniquely qualified.”

“Thank you, sir.” She rotated her head slightly so she could see him with her one good eye. “You won’t have any regrets.”

Kate left his office and rushed to the ladies’ room. She pressed the ice pack to her eye and sucked in air. She told herself she was a tough FBI agent and she wasn’t going to throw up or faint. She took the ice pack off her eye and looked at herself in the mirror. It wasn’t her first black eye, and probably not her last, but it was ugly all the same. And it was all because of Nick Fox. And she was going to make him pay. She wanted to punch him in the face and kick him down a flight of stairs. She wouldn’t do that, of course, because she was a professional. She was a special agent. She would simply track him to the ends of the earth, arrest him, and see him rot in jail.

She pulled herself up tall, and sashayed out of the ladies’ room and down the hall to her cubicle.

Cosmo was looking over the partition at her. “Boy, you look terrible,” he said. “Did Nick Fox do that to you? I heard he got away with the Klepper collection. I heard he’s real slick. I guess you must feel pretty dumb, huh? Is that why someone sent you the gift basket? Is it so you won’t feel so dumb? Or is it some special occasion? I know it’s not your birthday because I know your birthday and it’s not today.”

Kate looked at her desk. Cosmo was right. Someone had left a gift basket there. It was stuffed with packages of Oreos.

“It was delivered to the reception desk for you,” Cosmo said. “It’s been x-rayed, sniffed for explosives by dogs, and sampled for poison.”

“Sampled?” Kate focused her eye on a package that was open and missing a few cookies. “You had some of my cookies?”

“It was risky, but I thought someone needed to do it. No need to thank me. We’re cubicle mates. That’s what cubicle mates do for each other.”

Kate opened the tiny envelope on the basket and read the handwritten card inside.

I hope it was as good for you as it was for me. Let’s do this again sometime. Nick.

About the Authors

Janet Evanovich is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Stephanie Plum series, the Fox and O’Hare series with co-author Lee Goldberg, the Lizzy and Diesel series, twelve romance novels, the Alexandra Barnaby novels and Troublemaker graphic novel, and How I Write: Secrets of a Bestselling Author.

www.evanovich.com

Facebook.com/JanetEvanovich

@JanetEvanovich

Lee Goldberg is a screenwriter, TV producer, and the author of several books, including King City, The Walk, and the bestselling Monk series of mysteries. He has earned two Edgar Award nominations and was the 2012 recipient of the Poirot Award from Malice Domestic.

www.leegoldberg.com

Facebook.com/AuthorLeeGoldberg

@LeeGoldberg