The Shell Game: A Fox and O'Hare Short Story (Kindle Single) by Janet Evanovich, Lee Goldberg Page B

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 wheretraffic 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