“Yup. And that means she has a pretty good idea what I have in mind. Like I said, Caitlin is one smart woman. She and I are on the exact same wavelength. I know what to do.”
Ryan stared at the words on the page and let out a groan. “She’s either got a lot of faith in me or she’s crazy. Paddy. St. Patrick’s Day, which is on Friday. She’s expecting my package in two days.”
“At four o’clock,” Yoda finished up.
“Yeah, which doesn’t give me much time.” Ryan was already Slacking the team for an immediate meeting. “‘Late four.’ I guess I should be grateful. She’s giving me until four p.m., rather than four in the morning. That gives me a couple of hours overnight, all day tomorrow, and a few hours on the seventeenth. It takes four plus hours to get from Tribeca to Boston by car. Personal cars. We can’t leave a paper trail—no train or plane tickets, and no car rental agreements.”
“I quite agree, Ryan.”
Ryan was already out of his seat. “Call Josh at System76. They’re in Denver, which is Mountain Time, so he’ll still be there. Tell him to get me two Lemur Pro laptops. Whatever they have in stock. Configuration doesn’t matter. Money doesn’t matter. I need it messengered to me now. The fastest service that can fly it here. I don’t care if it arrives at three in the morning. I’ll be waiting.”
Offices of Forensic Instincts
Main Conference Room
Second Floor
Tribeca, Manhattan, New York
Wednesday, March 15, 6:40 p.m.
Ryan barely waited for everyone to be seated before turning to Casey. “I need to talk stat. The clock is ticking.”
“Understood,” she replied. “Go.”
Succinctly, Ryan told the team about the Guinness brownie’s arrival and what the accompanying card said.
“Yoda and I just finished decoding the message Caitlin was sending.” Not even pausing to boast about his accomplishment, Ryan went on to tell them where and when the drop had to be made.
“How can we assist?” Marc asked.
Ryan’s expression was intense as he looked from one teammate to another. “I need you to help me pick out seven convincing destinations—on top of the obvious one—and then to figure out who’s going where on Friday.”
Claire’s shoulders lifted. “Sorry, Ryan. But I think you’ve just lost us all. I don’t even know what it is we’re ‘dropping.’”
“Sorry. My mind is all over the place. Here’s what’s going down: I’m going to be customizing two identical System76 laptops—one for Caitlin and one for me. They’ll each have a built-in satellite phone. The communication will have a proprietary end-to-end encryption that makes it impossible to snoop on the communication. To mask the end points from anyone who could be tracking it, it’ll be bounced through hundreds of different servers.”
Patrick’s brow furrowed, although he was accustomed by now to the extent of Ryan’s capabilities. “So, if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that based upon your magic laptops, you and Caitlin can be in contact with each other via text, telephone, or video undetected?”
“Nice interpreting skills,” Ryan praised him. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. The laptops will be here sometime in the middle of the night.” His features tightened. “I want to give Kennedy the surprise of her life. A St. Patrick’s Day face-to-face talk with her mommy.”
“The timing of all this sounds awfully tight,” Emma said. “I don’t understand computer jargon, but creating two highly customized laptops in less than two days sounds like an overwhelming task, even for you. Can you pull it off?”
“I’ll pull it off,” Ryan stated. “I have to. Caitlin and I will make this virtual meeting with Kennedy happen. Frankly, I think that talking to her daughter is what she had in mind when she determined the date and time of the drop.”
“Hutch’s agents are still watching us like hawks,” Marc reminded him. “You think they won’t notice if you take off for Boston?”
“Of course they will. That’s why I won’t be going there. And that’s where the fun part of this plan comes.”
Ryan lit up like a Christmas tree as he explained. “Friday morning, all of us will drive our personal cars to work and park in the garage on Duane Street. We’ll walk straight here since the FI offices will be everyone’s starting point. At ten thirty—leaving ample time for traffic—we’ll all march out single file en route to the garage. We’ll collect our cars, after which we’ll scatter like cockroaches. Each one of us will be carrying a laptop bag or a briefcase. All but one will be stuffed with a shirt box filled with enough magazines to weigh as much as a laptop—which, given my skills, will be the FBI’s natural assumption as to what we’re toting around. The other bag will hold the real laptop in it. We’ll each be going to a specific destination; we’ll pick those now.”
Casey had listened intently and was now nodding, brows drawn together in thought. “Personal cars mean no paper trail. All we have to do is avoid tolls or pay cash.” A smug grin tugged at her lips. “We’ll drive the Bureau crazy.”
“Brilliant strategy.” Marc was clearly enjoying this, as well. “We’re the good guys, but we get to do a mob impersonation. To ease this along, we have boxes and boxes of those black poly bubble mailers, each laptop size, in the storage room. We’ll use those to hold the magazine-filled shirt boxes, and, in one case, the laptop. Then, we’ll pull them out of our bags and leave them at our respective drop sites.”
“Oh yeah.” Ryan was at the edge of his seat, loving how the momentum was building.
For the first time, Angela spoke up. “I’m the best choice for the actual Boston drop. Not only am I the least likely to be on the FBI’s radar, but I have a sister in Brookline, which is directly adjacent to Boston. I’ll drive straight to the tavern and make the drop. Then I’ll spend the night at my sister’s and drive back on Saturday. Does that work?” Her lips twitched. “Because I’m dying to push the FBI’s buttons.”
