The Job by Janet Evanovich, Lee Goldberg Read Free Book Online Page A

and a team of amateurs steal the dagger and replace it with a fake. It’s the perfect crime, brilliantly conceived and executed, but they’re foiled by a tiny twist of fate. I wanted to see if it was possible, despite all the high-tech security measures available today, to actually pull off the heist. Guess what? It is.”
    “How did you do it?”
    Nick shook his head. “I’ll never tell.”
    “I’m not sure I believe that story. But I
do
believe you pulled off a job here that isn’t widely known.”
    Nick selected a piece of salted fish and ate it with bread. “Thanks for the warning last night. I was able to escape with my passports and the complimentary bottle of L’Occitane body lotion in the bathroom.” He took the little bottle of L’Occitane out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Kate. “I thought you might like it.”
    “Thank you. I do like it.”
    “So what’s our next move?” he asked.
    “I don’t have a next move. Do you have a next move?”
    “I’m going to continue to chase the imposter. If the pattern continues, there should be another theft soon that will be attributed to me. This person is sending a message and eventually we’ll figure it out.”
    Kate met Atalay in the police station lobby. The modern five-story glass-cube building might have been impressive had it not been dwarfed by the skyscrapers of Istanbul’s New City. Atalay was pacing when Kate walked in, and it was obvious thathe’d spent the night in his office. He was in the same clothes he’d worn the day before, his eyes were bloodshot, and his hair looked like a bird’s nest.
    “I’m guessing you’ve had a rough night,” Kate said. “Has Ceren Demirkan called you yet?”
    “She unleashed her fury on the director general,” he said. “He wants to see me in his office in ten minutes. I don’t think it’s to give me a promotion. Not that it matters, because Fox isn’t my problem anymore. He has not only eluded us, he’s managed to slip out of Istanbul.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “He broke into a billionaire shipping mogul’s tenth-floor pied-à-terre in Cologne, Germany, last night and stole a Vermeer out of the man’s bedroom while he was sleeping.”
    “That’s not possible,” she said.
    “A surveillance camera outside a bank across the street got a picture of him leaving the building with the painting tucked under his arm.”
    “But he couldn’t have been there,” she said. “We both know he was right here, in the Old City, at six o’clock last night. We saw him with our own eyes.”
    “If he slipped into a taxi before we were able to seal off the streets, then he could have made it to the airport in time to take a commercial jet to Düsseldorf,” Atalay said. “It’s only about a three-hour flight, and from there it’s only a forty-minute drive to Cologne. Finding Fox is a matter for the Bundeskriminalamt in Germany and Interpol now.”
    “This shipping mogul?” Kate said. “Was his name Heiko Balz, by any chance? From Berlin?”
    “Yes, how did you know?”
    “Four years ago, Fox swindled Balz out of a few million euros by selling him a stolen Vermeer that wasn’t actually a stolen Vermeer. Or even a Vermeer. Ever since then, Balz has been waiting for Fox to step into Germany so he can get his hands on him.”
    “Now Fox has a real Vermeer, taken right from under Balz’s nose,” Atalay said. “Fox has guts, I’ll give him that.”
    That was true, but she couldn’t see the reasoning behind any of it. First the fake Nick committed robberies in Nashville and Istanbul that were far less clever than anything the real Nick would do. Now in Cologne, the imposter had robbed Heiko Balz, getting Nick into even more trouble with the mob-connected billionaire. And all three crimes were done in rapid succession, within only a few days of each other. What was the big hurry? Why these three cities? What was the point?
    Kate said goodbye to Atalay and walked down the street to a