Steal by James Patterson & Howard Roughan

Author:James Patterson & Howard Roughan [Patterson, James & Roughan, Howard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK

CHAPTER 60

“WELL?” ASKED JULIAN, THE second we got back inside Mr. Fix-It.

“Piece of cake,” I said.

“Very funny.” He smiled, though. Julian had known me for a long time. If I could crack a joke, he already had his answer. “You got it done.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We got it done.”

Elizabeth had distracted our new best friend, Cynthia, while I dug out the transmitter from the coffee cake in the conference room. We thanked Cynthia for her kindness and said good-bye. That was that. Until it wasn’t.

A couple of minutes later, I returned from the lobby after explaining to a guard that my driver’s license must have fallen out of my pocket during my meeting with Laszlo. Silly me, I hadn’t put it back in my wallet after originally going through security. When we returned to Laszlo’s office, Elizabeth again played the decoy by chatting her up while I pretended to look for my license.

“Desk?” asked Julian. Meaning, where I’d placed the transmitter.

“Chair in front of it,” I said. “Underneath.”

“Within ten feet of her?”

“Easily.”

“Good. Well done.”

“No thanks to you, world’s greatest hacker. Give back the shiny medal they gave you, you’re obviously slipping.”

“You wish,” said Julian. “And it’s not a medal, it’s actually a shiny trophy.”

“Any idea what the issue was? Why you were blocked?” I asked.

“Not for sure. I can’t think of a jammer on their end that would block a GPS signal. But if they can firewall that …”

Julian’s voice trailed off. The silence that followed spoke volumes.

“In other words,” Elizabeth said, “all this might have been for nothing?”

“I honestly don’t know. Maybe fifty-fifty at this point,” he said. “But we’re about to find out.”

Julian turned to his laptop, only to stop halfway. “Wait. Where did you say they had the pastries?”

“A conference room,” I said.

He snapped his fingers. “There you have it.”

“Have what?”

“Element 82,” he said. “Pb.”

He was right. He had to be. “Lead-lined sheetrock?”

“Exactly. Installed wall to wall, including the floor and ceiling.”

“Across the entire building?” asked Elizabeth.

Julian shook his head. “Lead linings wouldn’t make sense beyond a conference room. No one would be able to use a cell phone in their office.” He squared up to his laptop. “Our odds just got better.”

A lot better. Julian had only been tapping away a few moments before we heard the crackle of the transmitter coming online, followed by the sound of Laszlo’s voice. It was a bit muffled by the ambient noise of her office. Not for long. He ran the sound through a souped-up audio filter, and suddenly we could hear every word, crystal clear. We were officially in. Julian had done it again.

“Okay, you can keep the damn trophy,” I said.

We listened just long enough to realize that Laszlo wasn’t on the phone telling the prime minister, or one of his key deputies, about her meeting with Elizabeth and me. Instead, she was making an appointment with her hair stylist. Something about a keratin treatment.

Julian hit the space bar, muting the sound. “That’s enough of that,” he said.

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