Stolen Prey Read Online Free PDF

not that many goddamn Arab womenrunning out the door with a quarter million in gold. You know what I’m saying?”
    “I know what you’re saying, but what
I’m
saying is, we might not have a choice,” Turicek said.
    Getting the gold was the touchy part. There were gold dealers all over the place, and they sold a lot of gold—but they might start to wonder if the amounts got too big. They might wonder about drugs, or spies, or terrorists, or something…. She didn’t need to walk into a dealer’s office and find the FBI waiting for her. “Just routine, ma’am,” they’d say, and then discover a blonde with a shaky passport.
    “So we’re getting out,” Turicek said. “Jacob will go along.”
    “You’ve got to watch Jacob,” Albitis said.
    “I know. We will. Kristina has him under control.”
    “They’re both nuts.”
    “And I’m watching both of them.”
    “Okay. Do that, Ivan. I’ll start right now. I was going to set up four more accounts this afternoon, but I’ll quit and get out of here. Get down to LA, make some pickups, put in some more orders,” Albitis said. “Make up my story.”
    “Be careful,” Turicek said. “If you feel anybody is looking at you, quit. Better to take what we’ve got now, than spend the next twenty years in prison. Or have these crazy people come down on us.”
    “I thought it was a hedge fund,” Albitis said. “This isn’t something a hedge fund would do.”
    “No, it’s more like the fuckin’
Vory
,” Turicek said, and he shuddered as he said it. If they’d stolen from the Russian mob, the mob would want both the money and their heads; or, if forced to choose, just their heads.
    “Jesus,” said Albitis. She glanced nervously up and down the street: the fat woman was receding in the distance. Albitis worried about her epithets. Being disguised as an observant Muslim woman was fine for handling bank cameras, but as a natural-born wiseass, she’d never been that good at controlling her language.
    Did conservative Arab women walk around blurting out, “Jesus Christ,” or “Holy shit”? She suspected they did not. “All right,” she said. “I’m running.”
    W HILE ALL that was going on, three Mexican males were checking out of the Wee Blue Inn in West St. Paul, fifteen or twenty minutes apart.
    The Wee Blue Inn catered to hasty romances and to men who arrived on foot, who really needed a shower and a few hours’ sleep, a sink to wash their clothes in, and who had no credit card to pay with. Didn’t bother the owner: cash was as good as credit, but you had to have the cash.
    The Mexicans had checked in two days before, a half hour apart, small young men—two of them were still teenagers—but with muscles in their arms and faces, no bellies at all; and with hard eyes that reminded the owner of the obsidian-black marbles of his childhood, the ones called peeries.
    They checked in a half hour apart, and got separate rooms, but they were together. The owner didn’t ask them any questions. That didn’t seem prudent. An illegal Latino was cleaning up around the place, saw them check in, and told the owner he was going to take the next day or two off.
    “I didn’t hire you to take no days off,” the owner said.
    “I take them anyway,” the illegal said. “You wanna fire me, so fire me. I’m going.”
    He went.
    It occurred to the owner that the temporary departure of his wage slave might have something to do with the small men.
    Once again, it didn’t seem prudent to ask.
    In certain businesses, prudence is mandatory.

2
    P atrick Brooks had run Sunnie Software out of an office suite in a rehabbed brick warehouse north of Minneapolis’s downtown. Lucas decided to swing by on his way back to the BCA offices to sniff around and get a feel for the Brooks operation.
    He left the car on the street and climbed the internal stairs to the third floor; the office was glass and gray carpet, with potted palms sitting around on redbrick room dividers. The