Game On: Tempting Twenty-Eight (Stephanie Plum #28)(5)

I followed Diesel out of the apartment house to a black and red Ducati.

“Nice bike,” I said.

He handed me a helmet. “It’s a Multistrada 1260 Enduro. It’s good on a chase and even better when you’re trying to lose someone.”

“And when it rains?”

“We get wet.”

Lucky us that it was a sunny day in September without much chance of rain. I tucked my hair into the helmet and straddled the bike.

Diesel powered up, returned to Chambers, and minutes later we were on Route One, on our way to a Porsche dealer. I’d like to say it was exhilarating to ride behind Diesel on the 1260, but a better word would be terrifying. Jersey drivers are for the most part fearless and totally lacking patience. Speed limits are taken as mere suggestions. I have to admit that I’m a typical foul-mouthed Jersey driver with rude hand signals and a lead foot when I’m encased in three thousand pounds of steel and fiberglass. Zigzagging through traffic on a crotch rocket is a whole other deal.

Diesel pulled into the dealership and parked in front of the showroom door. We got off the bike and removed our helmets.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re whiter than usual.”

“You’re a maniac driver. I said the rosary for the entire time we were on the highway, and I made promises to God that I couldn’t possibly keep.”

“Go figure. I thought you were screaming because you were excited.”

“I was screaming for you to slow down!”

The grin returned. “It’s not the first time I’ve heard that.”

“No doubt. Now what?”

“Now you flash your fake badge around and show everyone Oswald’s photo, and hope we get lucky.”

“Just because I bought it online doesn’t mean it’s fake. It says fugitive recovery agent.”

“Whatever.”





CHAPTER THREE


I cruised through the showroom and spoke to four salesmen. Three couldn’t remember seeing Oswald. The fourth said he might have seen him bring a car into service. I left the sales floor and went to the service department. I showed his photo to a woman in the receptionist cubicle.

“He was here last week,” she said. “I remember him because he ate all of the complimentary mini doughnuts and then got verbally abusive over his loner car being a base model.”

“Can you give me some information on the vehicle he dropped off? Did he leave it for service?”

“It was left overnight,” she said, scrolling through the shop history. “Here it is. Oswald Wednesday. He brought in a 911 turbo S for an oil change. It was one year old.”

“Color?” I asked.

“Black. 9,432 miles on it.”

“Did he give an address? Phone number?”

“He gave a New York address. He declined to leave a phone number.”

“Do you have a license plate?” I asked.

“It was a New York plate. I’ll print the information out for you. We’re always happy to cooperate with the police.”

Diesel was standing a couple of feet behind me. “Did he pay with a credit card?” Diesel asked.

“He paid with cash.”

I thanked the woman for her help, and we left the building.

I called Connie and asked her to run another check on Oswald Wednesday. “I have an address for a condo in Manhattan. See if that turns up anything new.”

“What’s Oswald’s Trenton connection?” I asked Diesel. “Has he been here before? Does he have friends or relatives here?”

“I couldn’t find a Trenton connection. That doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist.”

“Are you fibbing to me?” I asked him.

“Possibly,” he said.

It was hard to work up too much anger over this since I didn’t feel compelled to be totally honest with him, either.

“I assume you’ve been through the Manhattan condo,” I said.

“I have and it’s clean.”

“And you left some illegal surveillance devices behind?”

“Yes. No activity.”

“Does Oswald do anything besides hack into computers?”

“He has degrees in mechanical engineering and computer science from MIT. He’s never stayed at a job for more than six months. He holds a bunch of patents, mostly on obscure but essential nuts-and-bolts type stuff associated with artificial intelligence.”

“Wow.”

“He’s also a psychopath who feeds on suffering and chaos when his hacking projects get boring. He’s been involved in some of the most high-profile hacking incidents in the last few years. Most of those incidents were never revealed to the public for security reasons.”

“Wow, again. Does he work alone, or does he have partners?”

“He mostly works alone but he communicates with a loose network of other hackers and artificial intelligence researchers and tool makers. I know where some of them are located, but not all of them. It’s believed that two of them have been involved in at least one major ransomware job. They’ve disappeared.”

“None in Trenton?”

“None that I know about. They’re spread all around the world. Glasgow, Singapore, Nova Scotia, Boston, Atlanta, Osaka.”