“I just plug into my cable box,” said Lynch.

Jenks shrugged. “OK, so anyway, I start poking around, just looking at recent files, IP addresses, shit like that, and one of the things I get is this.” Jenks popped up a series of pictures of Hardin in Chicago: the traffic cam shot Lynch had seen on Columbus, Hardin in front of the Hyatt on Wacker, Hardin’s rental in the Grant Park Garage.

“Can you tell when he pulled those?” said Lynch.

“First one, the shot of the car? That was the morning after the Stein shooting.”

Couple days before we started looking for it, thought Lynch.

“You know how he got them?”

“Watch this,” said Jenks. He hammered at some keys. Kid had fast hands. A video feed popped open. Columbus Street – same angle as one of the Hardin shots they’d been using. It had to be the same camera, except on this screen the cars were moving, people were walking.

“Tell me that’s not live,” said Lynch.

“Oh,” said Jenks. “It’s live.”

CHAPTER 50

Husam al Din clicked off the television in his hotel room. The shootings in Downers Grove were quite the sensation on the local news stations, which identified the dead men as functionaries of the Hernandez drug cartel.

Strangely, neither Wilson nor Hardin were mentioned on any of the newscasts. The story was being pitched as some mysterious fall out among the Mexican cartels with considerable nervous handwringing about the violence that had been escalating in Mexico for the past several years spilling over onto America’s streets. Yet, surely by now the local police knew who Wilson was, knew where she lived, and knew that two cartel members had been killed immediately outside of her door. Surely witnesses had seen Wilson on the street, shooting a young man dead and leaving with Hardin. And surely they had also seen Hardin killing the driver of the large black vehicle. While neither those witnesses or, possibly, even the local authorities might know who Hardin is, they would have seen Wilson leaving with him.

Yet the news coverage included none of that. Which meant that the authorities were suppressing that information. Interesting.

Clearly, the DEA agent, Wilson, was allied with Hardin in some fashion. Al Din could think of no reason why. He had no immediate intelligence he could use to track either of them, but having two people to hunt instead of one doubled the odds of them being spotted. Al Din summarized the data he had on Wilson and e-mailed it to his Tokyo contact, along with her picture. He also instructed the man in Tokyo to research them both in order to uncover the nature of their relationship.

Meanwhile, al Din had another issue.

He had been close to Hardin twice. First, he had been interrupted by criminals working for the American mafia boss Corsco. Today, he had nearly been killed by criminals working for the Mexican drug lord Hernandez. Since both were also looking for Hardin, that made them his competitors.

While al Din had cut off one source of their intelligence, both organizations would be far more familiar with the area. Both would have many other sources of local information. Both had considerable manpower at their disposal.

From Lee, al Din knew that Hernandez wanted Hardin for vengeance. But he had no idea what Corsco’s interest was. It was always best to know one’s enemies. Corsco himself would be too difficult to approach, would have too much security. Al Din started Googling, looking for a weak link.

In many of the pictures attached to news stories about Corsco, he was accompanied by a short, overweight man identified as his attorney. The lawyer would be more approachable.

Al Din’s phone peeped. A daily alarm he had programmed in. He hit a number on his speed dial, waited for the tone that told him the call had connected, and then hung up. Then he started to research Gerry Ringwald.

CHAPTER 51

Hardin and Wilson had been driving the Honda north for better than six hours. Hardin figured a little space was what they needed right now. They’d also been listening to the radio. The Downers Grove shootout was getting some play, but their names were out of it so far, the whole thing going down as a drug turf battle.

It was almost 8pm and they were cruising a neighborhood in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. Lots of bed and breakfasts up here. They figured, with the economy the way it was, nobody was going to get real picky about IDs with someone paying cash.

“That looks nice,” said Wilson, pointing at a big, dark green Victorian on the next corner.

“Always wanted to see Door County,” said Hardin.

“Secretary at work went her for her honeymoon, always going on about it,” Wilson said.

“Might be all the honeymoon we get.”

Wilson went quiet, Hardin catching a little swallow out of the corner of his eye.

“It is, isn’t it?” she said finally, sounding a little choked. “Our honeymoon?”

Hardin thought about it. No priest, no wedding, no I dos, but he couldn’t think of anything that could tie them closer than they already were.

“Yeah. I guess it is.”

He turned and smiled at her and she smiled back. First smile he’d seen from her that didn’t have a ghost behind it.

CHAPTER 52

“This Wilson throws a wrench in things,” said Hickman. “We don’t know what the deal with her and Hardin is yet, but Jablonski tells me she knew we were going to bag him.”

Bahram Lafitpour stirred his coffee. He, Hickman and Munroe were back at Lafitpour’s condo. They’d waited at Lafitpour’s office until 10pm, raid assets in place, just in case Hardin showed. He didn’t.

“So we have to assume that Hardin knows I betrayed him,” said Lafitpour.

Munroe nodded. “You worried he’s going to make a run at you?”

Lafitpour shook his head. “People have been making runs at me for thirty years. My security is excellent. Besides, Hardin isn’t an ideologue. He’s just trying to sell the diamonds. There is no margin in making a move on me. The question becomes whether we still have a play with him.”

“So we took a shot,” Munroe said. “He’s a big boy. He knows all about Plan Bs. And he still needs a buyer. Get word back to his contact that we’ll still play ball. Probably gonna cost us though.”

“We can’t make a deal with Hardin,” said Hickman. “We don’t just need the diamonds, we need him. We’ve promised his scalp to the Feds and the DEA, and I’ve already got the press rubbing the bottle on this. We don’t get a genie to pop out of it soon, they’re going to get pissed and start asking the wrong kind of questions.”

“Yeah,” said Munroe. “And with the Feds inside the tent, we started the clock on this thing. We got a couple of days at the outside.” Looking at Hickman now. “This Wilson, she was with Hardin?”

“Yeah,” Hickman said.

“And she was at your briefing?”

“Yeah,” Hickman said.

“So she knows about al Din,” said Munroe.

“Yeah.”

“What do we know about her?” asked Lafitpour.

“Jablonski’s pulling apart her file. Should have word soon.”

Silence around the table for a moment, tension tightening.

“So,” said Lafitpour, “we need still need Hardin and the diamonds.”

“Don’t need him alive,” said Munroe.

Hickman and Lafitpour looked at him. Munroe wasn’t worried about Lafitpour, but this thing was getting sloppy and taking too long. Dead or alive, he needed it done, and dead was always faster and usually easier. Quiet around the table for a minute, Munroe watching Hickman’s face. They weren’t just talking about a little legal three-card Monte anymore, playing fast and loose with the facts to frame some bad guys. Now, killing people was on the table.

Finally, Hickman shrugged. “OK. But we still need to throw the Feds a bone. If they don’t get to make a bust on Hardin, they’re going to want something else.”