“Oh, hello.” She smiled at the cat, who immediately butted his head under her chin. “I remember you. Still as sweet and adorable as ever, I see.”
Fisher snorted. “I doubt your friend Cesar would agree with that.”
“Why?” Hannah looked sharply around the conference table. “Did something happen?”
“Let’s just say there was an incident with a wig,” Sam admitted with a grimace.
“Oh, no.” She winced. “Not the Cher hair. That’s his favorite.”
“He assured us it could be salvaged. Now, tell us what sort of trouble you’re in so we can figure out how to get you out of it.”
She kissed Peanut before beginning her tale. And Sam didnotrelive the moment when her mouth was pressed against the side of his neck.
No he did not.
12
Southpark Hotel, Austin, Texas
“The D.O.D woman has escaped.”
Vinny’s fingers hovered over his keyboard as he glanced at his lit phone screen, unsure if he’d heard his contact correctly. Yang had a thick Chinese accent, after all, making his consonants sharp and his vowels staccato.
“She escaped from theFBI?” If his tone sounded incredulous, it was because he was fucking-Aincredulous.
The answer that came through his phone’s speaker was a clipped and succinct, “Yes.”
Astonished, he leaned back in the rolling chair. “You’re telling me a cyber rat like myself somehow slipped the noose of the Federal Bureau of Investigations?”
Again, the answer was one word. “Yes.” And then Yang added, “She is gone. No longer in custody.”
Vinny stared out the window at the cars rushing past on the freeway outside. So many people going about their daily routine, oblivious to the dark dealings and dangers all around them.
“How does a desk jockey pull one over on the feds?” he said to himself.
Even still, Yang answered, “You Americans give too much credit to your police forces. Your movies have made them into heroes when the truth is, they underperform more often than not. And when theydosolve a big case, it is usually through luck or confession. I am told the woman simply walked out the back door.”
Walked out the back door,Vinny thought with a shake of his head.Just that easy.
Vincent Romano had been fourteen years old when he’d dipped his toes into a life of crime. It’d been a simple scam, an SIRF—stolen identity refund fraud. He’d filched the identities of his friends’ parents by snatching their business mail straight out of their mailboxes. Then he’d filed tax returns using their pilfered information and pocketed the refunds the IRS mailed to them.
Four grand. That’s what he made that year. And even though his nanna, who’d raised him after his parents died, would never condone such behavior, he’d been hooked on easy money ever since.
After that first SIRF scheme, he’d set about teaching himself to code and hack. Sitting at a desk to do his deeds was far more pleasant than getting his hands dirty in the trades, like so many of the boys from his neighborhood were forced to do. Plus, unlike his first victims, his online prey were always strangers. Faceless, sometimes nameless entities that didn’t seem all that real. Only a list of digits or a few lines of code.
With a fundamental grasp of the finer points of cybercrime, he’d embarked on a career of credit card fraud, online wire transfer fraud, and banking fraud. He’d even spent a year in his early twenties as a “romance scammer,” creating fake dating profiles and establishing online relationships with women where, after a little wooing, he’d coerced his targets into sending him money or reloading his digital wallet.
But he’d soured on that avenue of income pretty quickly. For one, the ROI was shit. He’d had to invest a ridiculous amount of time on each target for a payout that sometimes only netted him a few hundred dollars. Plus, it’d feltwrongto take the money of desperate women. Especially after he’d spent weeks getting to know them.
So he’d gone back to concentrating on his other endeavors. Purposefully keeping himself humble, keeping his jobs small to avoid the laser-focused eyes of the feds.
Or so Iassumedtheir eyes were laser-focused.
Given how they’d just let the D.O.D. woman slip through their fingers, maybe he’d been playing it too safe, worrying too much about their cunning and reach.
Of course, his current plot wasfarfrom small. In fact, if everything went according to plan, two million smackaroonies were headed his way. Two million bones to help pay off the mortgage on his nanna’s third-floor walkup in Queens and buy him that suit he’d been eyeing at Brooklyn Tailors.
He cast his mind back to where it’d all started, in his favorite deli two blocks down from his nanna’s place. He’d been enjoying pastrami on rye with mustard and a sour pickle when a little man with a soft smile but hard eyes slid into the seat across from him.
