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Liam couldn’t think about that. It wasn’t going to do him any good. He had to focus on the task at hand. He moved on to the next shirt and flipped past ten more before he found what he was looking for.

Christopher Bell

Chris’s office was a shrine to sports fandom. Among the collection of paraphernalia, he had a pair of mint-condition baseball cards—“Shoeless” Joe Jackson and Pete Rose—framed and hanging behind his desk; a Michael Jordan Bulls jersey, also framed; a photo of Wayne Gretzky closing in on the goal, and a football signed by the entire Northwestern team, including Eric Ricci.

He had four computer monitors mounted to stands on his desk and a fifth on the wall above his door that monitored the movements of selected stocks in real time.

Chris closed the door and pulled up an internal application that would let him check the thief’s credit report. This wasn’t something Chris was supposed to do, but he doubted anybody at Ellison Trust would find out.

Ellison Trust had made an aggressive push to expand their credit card business two years ago. They’d offered cards with limits as low as five hundred dollars and had run an advertising campaign through every regional media outlet. Chris was hoping his thief had signed up for one.

As luck would have it, he had.

It appeared to be one of two credit cards the man carried, and it had a zero balance. Chris called over to Retail Banking and said he had a client who wanted to sign up for alerts. Any amount. Then he provided an email address that was, in fact, his, and prayed the thief would use his card soon. One charge might be all Chris needed to find him.

Liam Parker

Liam dyed his hair in the hotel bathroom, changed his clothes, and killed time watching CNN, which spent most of their airtime talking about the war in Syria and a congressional spending bill. A guest named Christopher Bell commented on the state of the stock market. Liam’s name didn’t come up.

He left the hotel looking and feeling like a new man. His disguise wasn’t so thorough that he was entirely unrecognizable. But with black hair spiked up, eyebrows dyed to match, sunglasses, and clothes he wouldn’t normally wear, even his friends would have to look twice to know for sure it was him.

Backstage turned out to be a dimly lit hole in the wall. There was a coin-operated pool table in the back. Neon signs advertising a wide variety of beer hung behind the bar and in the windows. He found Jacob sitting at a table in the corner.

Before they could get down to business, a waitress appeared to take Liam’s drink order. He asked for a Heineken just to get rid of her.

“You look like a douchebag in those sunglasses,” Jacob said once she was gone.

Liam shrugged. He was pretty sure Jacob was right.

“You got the money?”

Liam pulled an envelope of cash out of the pocket of his army jacket and handed it over. The envelope he had gotten from the hotel’s front desk and had the name Holiday Home printed in the upper-left corner. The bills inside were loose, impossible to count at a glance, but Jacob appeared satisfied with barely a peek.

“So, how do we do this?” Liam asked. “Do you have a guy—”

Like Liam had pulled the cash out of his coat, Jacob took a stack of items from the pocket of his and placed them on the table. They included a driver’s license, a plane ticket, and a passport.

Liam had assumed the bar was simply a meeting place, that they’d go from there to another location where his picture would be taken and any documents prepared. He was also only expecting a driver’s license. A thousand dollars didn’t seem like so much when he considered everything on the table.

He picked up the license. The name on it was Richard Hawthorne. Liam recognized the photo as a headshot from the ConnectPlus website. He hadn’t realized until now how much it had in common with those used on government IDs.

Jacob had used the same photo for the passport. The ticket was for Belarus. “They don’t have an extradition treaty with the US. You leave tomorrow night. After that, you’ll figure it out.”

If Liam was going anywhere, he probably would figure it out. He’d get to Belarus, then transfer the money from his bank accounts in the US through a series of countries until it became untraceable. Not exactly easy-peasy, but doable.

Of course, he’d never be getting on that plane. That was not why he started this.

The waitress showed up with a bottle of Heineken. Liam scooped up the documents and palmed them under the table. She smiled, giving no indication she’d noticed the suspicious behavior. “Here you go, hon.”

Liam took a sip of the beer.

“Where are you staying?” Jacob asked.

He shrugged. “Don’t know.” With a new name at his disposal, he didn’t have any reason to go back to the hotel he was in before, and why would he want to?

“Then I’ve got one more thing for you.” Jacob placed the keycard for a room at a Best Western on the table. “State Street. It’s already paid for. You can stay there until it’s time for your flight.”

The extent of his generosity made Liam uncomfortable. “Why are you doing all this?”

“You paid for it.”

“It’s a lot more than I expected.”

Jacob stood. “If I were you, I wouldn’t think too much about it, okay?” He zipped up his jacket. “Just say thank you.” Then he left. He weaved around a couple of biker types at the pool table and dropped some cash on the waitress’s tray on his way out the door.

Liam, on the other hand, wasn’t in any hurry. Sitting in this bar was the safest he’d felt in a while. He considered what Jacob had said—don’t think too