Chasing the White Lion James Hannibal (essential reading TXT) 📖

traction motors—a low-hanging part, easily replaceable with an onboard spare.

With both hands, Finn tore the next wall of boxes away. A few fell open, dumping pottery statuettes on the flatbed. What remained was a roll-up door with a keypad lock. “Found the smuggler’s door. We’re close, Darcy.”

“Copy. I see you on Eddie’s drone feed. Stand by for detonation in three . . . two . . . one . . .”

Tyler heard no explosion, not even a pop. He felt a minor jolt as Darcy’s charge took out the traction motor, then the conductor laid on the brakes, sending him lurching into the smuggler’s door next to Finn. He pushed himself back. “Can you handle that lock?”

The thief gave him a hard look. Finn unzipped his backpack and dug out a screwdriver and a stun gun.

The train continued to slow. Bewildered shoppers came into view, staring at the two men on the flatbed. A few pointed and yelled.

Finn pried the keypad’s cover loose, exposing the guts beneath, and zapped the housing with the stun gun. The hooking latch clicked back. The train came to a stop.

Eddie’s drone zipped ahead. “The security guards are out of their car and working their way back along the tracks. We can’t involve the authorities, guys. Any word of kids rescued from a train over local police nets will get back to Boyd.”

Mac appeared among the growing volume of onlookers beside the car. “How’s it goin’, lads?”

Tyler pointed up-rail. “Tight. Security is inbound. Go run interference.”

“Will do.” Mac nodded to Pell, whom Tyler had not noticed until that moment. “Let’s have some fun.”

As the Scotsman lumbered off with his chameleon sidekick, Finn rolled up the door. “Uh, boss?” He stepped back, allowing Tyler a clear view of the trailer’s contents.

Tyler peered in. He bit his lip. “Huh. I didn’t see this coming.”

CHAPTER

SEVENTY-

THREE

WESTERN TOWER

TWIN TIGERS COMPLEX

BANGKOK, THAILAND

“WHATDOYOUMEAN, they’re the wrong kids?” After praying with Val, Talia had reclaimed her earpiece. As she slipped it in, she’d heard the last moments of the train heist.

Tyler was using his I’m a thief not a magician voice. “Well, they’re not Burmese refugees. That’s for sure. We’ve got fourteen girls in a trailer set up like a bunk room, all in their early teens, all from Siberia, and all mad as bees. I didn’t know there were so many ways to say ‘You’re ruining my life’ in Russian.”

Talia could hear the girls shouting in the background.

Val gave her a knowing look. “What’s the line, Tyler? Did Rudenko convince them they were on their way to see modeling agents?”

“The best in Hong Kong. The girls thought they’d be modeling evening gowns and catching fat contracts. Right now, they’re struggling to understand that they’re not even in Hong Kong. It’s a classic bait and switch.”

Talia would have laughed, listening to Finn shepherd a pack of angry teens speaking a language he didn’t, except she understood every tearful word. They weren’t runaways. The girls’ parents had paid Rudenko’s ropers huge cash sums to take their daughters off into the glamorous modeling life.

“We got the trailers buttoned up before we left,” Tyler said a few minutes later. “Rail security never saw us. Rudenko will know he’s been hit when he gets his delivery, but he won’t know the who or the why. Pell and Darcy are taking the girls to a hotel to wait out the op. Finn, Mac, and I are headed back on foot. We’re a few blocks away.”

“What about Compassion’s kids?” Talia asked. “What about Hla Meh and the others?”

“We have to face facts. Either their kidnapping had nothing to do with the Frenzy, or the broker involved is Boyd himself. We’ve eliminated all other options. Keep your focus on the White Lion now. Complete the mission, and let God take it where he will.”

Let God. Trust. Faith. Everything Talia had asked of Val, and everything Tyler had asked of her. But leaning and trusting were easier said than done when children’s lives were at stake. Suffer the little children to come unto me. Whoever took them would pay, one way or another.

Stuck in the room in the middle of Boyd’s maze, Talia faded back into the couch cushions. Her hand came to rest on the bump of an object in her pocket. She drew it out. Val’s coin. On Tyler’s AS2—on the day Val first flipped that coin to Talia—how sure Talia had been that she’d rush in to save those kids like the white knight in so many stories.

“My coin,” Val said. “You still have it.”

“I’m sorry. I should have given it back to you in Prague.” Talia offered her the piece. “I thought I was teaching you some kind of lesson, but I was being petty.”

Val shook her head. “It’s all right. Honestly, I wasn’t going to ask for it back, not after today. I took that coin from my father’s safe when I ran away, along with the first cash I ever stole. In a way, that little piece of gold represents my entire life of crime.”

“This coin was in Marco’s safe?” Talia swallowed, suddenly afraid to drop it. “It’s real, isn’t it? I mean, not just real gold. This thaler came from Maximillian’s lost treasure.”

“I didn’t know what I had until years later, when an old collector in Venice told me its history. I used to imagine that single coin would help me track down the rest.”

“So the game we ran on Atan—”

“Was me acting out the fanciful dreams of a lost teenager. Yes.” Val sat up. “Wait. Atan.”

“What about him?”

“He bought our coins, which counted as one of our deals for the Frenzy. He also told us earning too much would get us unwanted attention from the White Lion.”

Talia knew all of this. But they didn’t have enough reserves left from the Club Styx job to threaten Boyd, so the point was moot. They couldn’t force a meeting. She frowned. “So?”

“So, I’ll need my coin back.”

Talia narrowed her eyes. “I thought you didn’t want it.”

“Don’t give