Page 90 of Born for Starlight

"Always." I shook the dry hand. "Let's walk it one more time before your guest arrives."

He liked that. Guest. Like Angelica was coming by to visit him specifically for tea or some shit.

Deke and I went in. The comm bud sat warm in my ear. The net was quiet but alert, everybody listening, nobody talking.

Beto held the car at the front, engine warm, my way out if everything turned to shit and I needed a man I trusted to get Angelica gone.

Fast.

Simon and Billy were on a rooftop two hundred meters out with the perfect equipment for two former Navy SEALs with sniper training. They had eyes sweeping the property perimeter, the outbuildings, the docking bay where the container sat, and the courtyard.

Jase was at the front gate, out on the street, unseen, watching every way in and out of the front. He'd see every person who walked through, every van, and all the pomp and circumstance at the red carpet before it ever reached me.

Bruno had the back gate, and the back gate was harder. No crowd to disappear into, no press, no red carpet. Just a service road, a chain-link gate, and a handful of locals who'd set up along the wall to sell to the drivers and the kitchen staff. A woman with a charcoal grill and cheese on skewers. A man with a cooler of coconut water and cold cans. A kid selling cigarettes and phone credit off a folding table.

Bruno had bought a plate of something from the woman, found a piece of wall to lean on, and turned himself into one more big local killing an afternoon. Nobody looked at him twice. And every car that rolled up to that gate rolled past him, close enough to read the plate and the face behind the glass.

Nobody was expecting the container to move. The box wouldn't load in daylight, not during a charity visit with press on the stairs. The box loaded at the end, when the auction was done and the product had been sold, and that was later. What we watched for this afternoon was the auction waking up behind the scenes. Cars at the rear gate that didn't belong to caterers. Faces at the west wing that weren't staff. Part of the complex starting to do its real business while Angelica did the pretend one out front.

I walked the route with Deke and Ferraz. The gates, where she'd step out into the cameras at five. The steps, where she'd hand over the check. The corridor to the courtyard, where the children would sing and forty-five minutes of magic would happen under a hundred lenses.

The west wing was still chained. Somewhere behind it, I was betting my life and hers, was a seven-year-old named Luzia.

And I couldn't touch a door of it. Not yet. A rescue that started early got those children killed faster than the network ever would, and I'd said as much to every man on the net until they hated the sound of it.

"Rear gate," Bruno said in my ear, voice dry as sand. "Black sedan, two up, no catering markings. Parked, didn't unload. That's one."

It had begun. Out front, cameras. Out back, arrivals. Same compound.

"Copy," I said, to the room and the net both, and Ferraz took it for something I'd said to him.

I frowned as a cab came up the drive twenty minutes ahead of the press call, and a man climbed out of it wrong. Every man moved a way that told you what he was, and I'd read a thousand of them. Cops moved like cops. Reporters moved like reporters, half of them looking for the bar. This one moved like a man arriving at his own surprise party, chin up, grinning at a crowd that wasn't there yet.

What the hell?

He had a phone already recording in one hand and a lanyard that didn’t look right. He came straight for the steps like he owned the place.

Julian Harmon.

Fuck!

"Julian Harmon," Simon said, flat. "Facial hit off the pool list. The podcaster. He's not due for another twenty."

The man who'd needled Angelica on his show. The reason she was here. I hated the little prick.

Ferraz stepped to intercept, polite and immovable, the same wall he'd have put in front of me if I hadn't been expected today. Julian never even slowed down.

"It's fine, it's fine, I'm cleared." He waved the lanyard like a badge. He had press credentials attached to it. Actual press credentials, but then he had something totally handmade, that said VIP Press Pass. There was no such thing as a fucking VIP Press Pass. What a knucklehead.

He was still busy talking to Ferraz. "Angelica cleared me herself. We go way back. She'd want me here early, trust me, she'd be upset if you kept me at the gate like everybody else."

He hadn't been cleared by anybody. Angelica would never in her life have handed this man early access, and I'd have bet my reputation on it.

Ferraz looked at me.

That was the moment. Ferraz only knew Julian because of the famous podcast, but he was playing his position. He would only let him in on my say so.

Damn, did I let the little shit pass, or not? If I didn’t Julian would raise a stink to high heaven, and we did not need an additional spotlight on our event.