Pros and Cons(6)
“Do you want me to approach Royce or his fiancée?”
“Negative,” Kate said. “I don’t want to take a chance on spooking Fox.”
“It’s going to be a zoo in that building,” Gunter said. “The wedding is tomorrow night. We got an alert on it. It’s going to be a media circus.”
Kate paced for an hour and a half while she waited for Gunter to call back.
“You need to relax,” Cosmo said, looking in on her. “You’re leaking nervous energy, and it’s giving me eczema. You want to know what I do to relax?”
“No! Do not tell me.”
The phone rang, and Kate snatched it up.
“I couldn’t get a positive ID,” Gunter said. “The concierge wasn’t sure. He said the wedding planner is flamboyant and has spiked-up blond hair, and the guy in the photo looks normal. Personally, though, I think you might be on to something. I couldn’t find anything to verify Merrill Stubing or his business. I’ll check around some more tomorrow.”
At five A.M. Kate dragged herself out of bed, got dressed in the clothes she’d worn the day before, and shuffled into the kitchen to make coffee. She’d thrashed around all night, unable to get Fox out of her head.
“I hate him,” she said to her Mr. Coffee machine. “He’s totally corrupt. He has no regard for the law. He’s arrogant. And he’s cute.”
Deep inside, Kate knew that Nick’s cuteness was the single attribute that annoyed her the most. Criminals were not supposed to be attractive. At least, not as attractive as Fox. Fox was the physical embodiment of her dream man. How crapola was that? When she had time, she was going to have to reconstruct her dream man. Change his hair from brown to red. Give him a less than perfect body. And no more dreamy brown eyes. No more smiling, kissable mouth. Her dream man would have to have a mouth like a frog city-facing side of the penthouse 5ppsur’s, thanks to Nicolas Fox.
“Ugh,” Kate said, grabbing the last yogurt out of the fridge. “Nicolas Fox is scum.”
She took her coffee and yogurt to her laptop and pulled up Chicago news. She bypassed the night’s killings and found a gossipy feature on the front page of the Style section.
People will be lining up along Lake Shore Drive tonight for a fireworks show courtesy of Milton Royce, the so-called “King of Hostile Takeovers.” The fireworks, launched from a barge on Lake Michigan, are part of Royce’s extravagant wedding ceremony, which is being held tonight at his twentieth-floor penthouse atop the famed Windsong Building. Controversy still surrounds the city’s unprecedented decision to allow the fireworks over the strenuous objections of residents concerned about the increased noise and traffic.
The article went on to talk about accusations that city officials were too beholden to Royce, a big contributor to local political campaigns, and how the wedding, with its exclusive guest list, was considered the social event of the season.
“This has Nicolas Fox written all over it,” Kate said to herself. “He’s planning something big when the wedding is in full swing. I’m at least seventy percent sure.”
She closed the Chicago news site and went to a travel site. Ten minutes later she was booked on a midmorning flight to Chicago and had a discounted room at the DoubleTree. It was Saturday, and she hadn’t heard back from Jessup about funding an op, so she was on her own. She was going to Chicago on her own time and with her own money. She wasn’t following protocol and it was probably a dumb thing to do, but she was doing it anyway. At the very least, she’d get to see some fireworks.
It was close to six o’clock when Kate checked in to her hotel. There’d been a delay at LAX that stretched the four-hour flight to five hours, there was a two-hour time difference between L.A. and Chicago, and the taxi ride into the city had been interminable.
She tossed her carry-on suitcase onto the bed and unpacked her Kevlar vest and FBI windbreaker. Not that she was planning on raiding Chicago’s wedding of the year, but you never knew when a Kevlar vest would come in handy. And okay, there was a remote possibility that she might raid the wedding.
She realized she hadn’t taken her phone off plane mode, changed her settings, and immediately got a message with photo from Gunter. The photo showed the wedding planner in tight jeans and a fitted silk shirt. His hair was blond and spiked. Caught him helping with a flower delivery, the message read. What do you think?
Kate called Gunter. “It’s him,” she said. She was almost 85 percent sure. “How quickly can you assemble a strike team and get them on scene?”