have to focus on something memorable.”
“But—”
“Hush for a moment,” I said, holding up my hand. He got into the country. A mousy little engineer with extremely valuable equipment, using a fake passport. He had a gun back at his apartment, but hadn’t ever fired it. How did he get it?
Idiot. “Can you find out when Razon bought that gun?” I asked her. “Gun laws in the state should make it traceable, right?”
“Sure. I’ll look into it when we get to a hotel.”
“Do it now.”
“Now? Do you realize what time it is in the—”
“Do it anyway. Wake people. Get the answers.”
She glared at me, but moved off and made a few phone calls. Some angry conversations followed.
“We should have seen this earlier,” Tobias said, shaking his head.
“I know.”
Eventually, Monica moved back, slapping closed her phone. “There is no record of Razon buying a gun, ever. The one in his apartment isn’t registered anywhere.”
He had help. Of course he had help. He’d been planning this for years, and he had access to all those photos to use in proving that he was legitimate.
He’d found someone to supply him. Protect him. Someone who had given him that gun, some fake identification. They’d helped him sneak into Israel.
So whom had he approached? Who was helping him?
“Ivy,” I said. “We need . . .” I trailed off. “Where’s Ivy?”
“No idea,” Tobias said. Kalyani shrugged.
“You’ve lost one of your hallucinations?” Monica asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, summon her back.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” I said, and poked through the church, looking around. I got some funny looks from clergy until I finally peeked into a nook and stopped flat.
J.C. and Ivy hastily broke apart from their kissing. Her makeup was mussed, and—incredibly—J.C. had set his gun to the side, ignoring it. That was a first.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, raising a hand to my face. “ You two? What are you doing?”
“I wasn’t aware we had to report the nature of our relationship to you,” Ivy said coldly.
J.C. gave me a big thumbs-up and a grin.
“Whatever,” I said. “Time to go. Ivy, I don’t think Razon was working alone. He came into the country on a fake passport, and other factors don’t add up. Could he have had some sort of aid here? Maybe a local organization to help him escape suspicion and move in the city?”
“Possible,” she said, hurrying to keep up. “I would point out it’s not impossible that he’s working alone, but it does seem unlikely, upon consideration. You thought that through on your own? Nice work!”
“Thanks. And your hair is a mess.”
We eventually reached the cars and climbed in, me with Monica, Ivy, and J.C. The two suits and my other aspects took the forward car.
“You could be right on this point,” Monica said as the cars started off.
“Razon is a smart man,” I said. “He would have wanted allies. It could be another company, perhaps an Israeli one. Do any of your rivals know about this technology?”
“Not that we know of.”
“Steve,” Ivy said, sitting between us. She put her lipstick away, her hair fixed. She was obviously trying to ignore what I’d seen between her and J.C.
Damn, I thought. I’d assumed the two hated each other. Think about that later. “Yes?” I asked.
“Ask Monica something for me. Did Razon ever approach her company about a project like this? Taking photos to prove Christianity?”
I relayed the question.
“No,” Monica said. “If he had, I’d have told you. It would have led us here faster. He never came to us.”
“That’s an oddity,” Ivy said. “The more we work on this case, the more we find that Razon went to incredible lengths in order to come here, to Jerusalem. Why not use the resource he already had? Azari Laboratories.”
“Maybe he wanted freedom,” I said. “To use his invention as he wished.”
“If that’s the case,” Ivy said, “he wouldn’t have