The Pursuit Read Online Free PDF Page B

running through the halls. The police were in the building. They had only a few seconds left.
    Kate took out her gun and tossed it onto the pile of stuff the thieves had left behind. “Lie facedown on the floor.”
    “You’re so hot when you take charge,” Nick said.
    Nick lay facedown on the floor, and Kate straddled him. She pinned one of his arms behind him, reached into her coat pocket with her free hand, and whipped out her badge just as a half dozen police officers spilled into the vault, their guns drawn.
    “I’m Special Agent Kate O’Hare, Federal Bureau of Investigation,” she said. “This man is mine.”

K ate sat in an interrogation room that was just like every other one she’d ever been in. It had the same cinder block walls, the same piss-yellow fluorescent light, and the same dirty mirror that hid whoever was watching. The only difference was that this time she was the suspect being questioned.
    Chief Inspector Amelie Janssen sat across the table from her with notepad and pen. The detective’s shoulder-length hair had a just-got-out-of-bed wave to it. Probably because she’d just gotten out of bed. It was 4  A.M.
    “I can’t count all the laws that you’ve broken,” Janssen said. “If it were up to me, you’d be in handcuffs and ankle chains like any other common crook. But it’s not my decision. It’s up to the general commissioner, and she’s waiting to hear from the prime minister’s office, which is demanding an explanation from the U.S. ambassador in Brussels.”
    “I captured an international fugitive who is wanted in a dozen countries, including this one,” Kate said. “So instead of complaining, you should be congratulating me.”
    “You’re right. Where are my manners?” Janssen said. “Congratulations on helping the Road Runners pull off the biggest diamond heist in the history of Belgium.”
    “I had nothing to do with that.”
    “You certainly didn’t do anything to stop it. As far as I’m concerned, you’re an accessory after the fact.”
    “I apprehended the man responsible for the crime,” Kate said. “Or have you forgotten that?”
    “While the rest of the Road Runners got away with the diamonds,” Janssen said. “If you’d told us you were here and what you were doing, we could have staked out the building and captured them all in the act.”
    “I didn’t know there was going to be a robbery.”
    “Okay.” Janssen leaned back in her seat again. “So explain to me how you ended up in the vault with Nicolas Fox.”
    Kate had learned from Nick that the best lies were the ones that stuck as close to the truth as possible. So she followed his advice.
    “There were rumors for months that Fox had joined the Road Runners. So when I heard that Dragan Kovic and several members of his gang were spotted last week in Honolulu, I got on the first flight out there to see if they’d left any tracks,” Kate said. “They did. I found out where Dragan went to rent a car, then used the GPS records for the vehicle to retrace his movements for the few hours that he was on the island. That led me to the store where his gang bought their disposable phones, which have unique identifying numbers. With that information, and some help from a friend at the NSA, I was able to pull the call records. There was only one call off the island.”
    “To the Executive Merchants Building,” Janssen said.
    “You got it.”
    “You should have notified us at that point.”
    “I didn’t have anything,” Kate said.
    “You had enough to go on to fly here and watch the building, hoping you’d spot Fox or a Road Runner who could lead you to him.”
    “Yes, but it was an outrageous long shot. I didn’t even tell my bosses what I was doing. I just cashed in some vacation time and booked a flight.”
    Janssen sighed and made a note to herself on the pad. Kate tried to read it upside-down, but it was in Flemish. “What happened next?”
    “Jet lag,” Kate said.
    “I don’t