Sins of the Father by Christa Faust Read Free Book Online Page A

the car descended, a sort of euphoria swept over him. The fact that he’d made it out with the loot was like winning the lottery. This time, alone in the elevator with no one to see, his victory dance was on the outside.

Peter had rented three different rooms in three different generic franchise hotels near the airport, using three different names and three different creatively obtained credit-card numbers.
    In each room he’d stashed a go-bag containing a change of clothing, basic toiletries, a gun, a wad of American dollars, a fake passport, a cheap laptop, and a poker hand of clean credit cards. Those were an essential part of his repertoire, and it had taken him years to set up a reliable source.
    He staggered into the first one he reached, and collapsed on the bed for several blank, blissful minutes, just breathing and enjoying not being dead. Once he got his heart rate down to something not too far above normal, he hit the minibar like a typhoon, downing several tiny bottles of booze in a row without bothering to check the labels, and then cracking an ice-cold Singha.
    He raised the bottle, toasting himself and the precious suitcase, and took a deep, heroic swallow. Simple beer had never tasted so good.
    Flopping back down on the bed, he put the bottle onto the nightstand, pulled the last of the disposable cell phones from his pocket, and dialed a number he knew by heart. A woman answered.
    “Hello.”
    “Let me talk to him,” Peter said.
    There was a pause, a muffled exchange, and then the sound of violent, incomprehensible Scottish swearing starting on the other end of the line. It became louder and louder, like the leading edge of a nuclear blast. When it hit, Peter had to hold his phone away from his ear.
    Finally the roar died down.
    “Hello, Eddie,” he said.
    “That Peter Bishop?”
    “Yeah, it’s me,” Peter said, sitting up on the edge of the bed. “I got your money.”
    “Oh, you do , do you?” Eddie’s words became slow and condescending, as if he was talking to a child of questionable intellect. “And why should I believe you now,” he demanded, “as opposed to the forty-seven other times you said you had my money?”
    “Because it’s right here,” Peter said patting the suitcase and putting the phone between his ear and shoulder so he could turn it to face him. “I’m looking right at it.” He unzipped the case.
    There was a momentary silence on the other end.
    “Tell me where you are, and I’ll send someone,” Eddie said. “And you’d best not be talkin’ out your fanny flaps again, because I’m runnin’ out of reasons not to kill you.”
    As he said it, Peter opened the suitcase. Then he stared, slack-jawed and disbelieving, at its contents.
    There were no briefcases.
    “Bishop?” Eddie said, his voice full of suspicion.
    In place of the briefcases full of neatly banded stacks of American greenbacks, there was a custom-cut gray foam liner. It was shaped to cradle a Plexiglas cylinder clearly marked with a red biohazard sticker. Inside of that, there was a single pinkie-sized vial with an orange cap and black hash marks to measure volume.
    It was a little less than a quarter full of cloudy pink liquid.
    “Let me get back to you,” Peter said. He disconnected the call before the Scotsman could launch into another wave of swearing.
    * * *
    Up in the empty suite on the thirtieth floor—the one that had been kicked open—Richard McCoy unbuttoned his stained Hawaiian shirt. Silence had descended on the otherwise empty floor of the hotel.
    Nearby, Jones sat in a modern chair that was more stylish than comfortable. The “police officers” had gone back into the fray, leaving the two Englishmen alone in the room.
    McCoy peeled off the shirt, revealing the squibs stuck to the skin beneath. He used a damp towel to wipe away the sticky fake blood and adhesive. A thin trickle of silver flowed from a slight nick just above his left clavicle.
    “Good thing they didn’t hit you