Chapter 183: The Con

Chapter 183: The Con

Caesar reached up and tapped the little button beside his Adam's apple.

Then he spoke again.

This time, his voice snapped back to its natural register—low, gravelly, dripping with that magnetic edge.

"Surprised?"

He pointed at the fingernail-sized device tucked against the inside of his collar. "Cutting-edge tactical tech. Picture the voice-swap gag from Mission: Impossible—minus the clunky latex masks."

"Here's how it works. A high-frequency mic samples the target's vocal frequencies, then the built-in AI model reconstructs it in real time. From that one phone call, I already pulled more than enough of Thompson's voice samples. The algorithm synthesized his voiceprint in a couple of seconds flat."

There was a note of undisguised smugness in his tone.

"This is a top-tier secret straight out of DARPA's labs. Tech like this is at least fifty years ahead of anything Silicon Valley's putting out for the consumer market."

"Only problem is, it's insanely expensive to produce, and the battery life still isn't reliable enough for prolonged field ops. Never made it to mass production."

Caesar patted the tiny button on his collar.

"Don't let this little nothing of a gadget fool you. DARPA burned close to a hundred million bucks just on the early R&D."

Elizabeth stood rooted in place, drew in a slow breath, and only then did the shock finally drain from her face, replaced by the composure a woman in her position was supposed to wear.

Getting a reaction like that out of Elizabeth—a woman whose emotions never so much as rippled—left Caesar's mischievous streak thoroughly satisfied.

"So what exactly do you plan to do with Thompson's voice?" Elizabeth asked.

Caesar turned, fingers already clattering across the keyboard of the military laptop.

"Next step—we intercept and pin down Thompson's comms frequency."

"Let's see who this old fox rushes to tip off the moment he's scared out of his mind."

An army-green signal-capture interface popped up on the screen. The frequency range was already flagged, and a progress bar began inching forward.

Right now, Thompson had no idea that the encrypted phone he thought was so secure had already been completely hijacked and put under surveillance by Caesar's tactical rig.

Moments later, Thompson's voice—gone shrill with panic—crackled through the laptop's speaker:

"Correa! I need every scrap of raw material at that dump of yours pulled together right now!"

"An hour from now I'm sending the black-market crew to take over—all the ledgers, all the goods, everything gets hauled out!"

The voice on the other end seemed about to ask something, but Thompson cut him off, savage: "Quit yapping! That New York bitch is already sniffing around. Do exactly what I said—one hour, get it done!"

Thompson had barely hung up.

Caesar tapped the Enter key with a light flick of his finger.

On the laptop screen, a blinking red signal source locked cleanly onto a set of GPS coordinates. Beside it, a line of detailed data snapped into view: target number, call duration, and location pinpointed to within ten meters.

Caesar stared at the screen and snapped his fingers. "Gotcha."

Then he twisted around and dragged a travel bag out of the Hummer's back seat. Inside was Elizabeth's personal gear from a previous getaway to Miami Beach.

An oversized, dramatic French wide-brimmed sun hat.

A pair of vintage Chanel sunglasses big enough to cover half her face.

And a Hermès silk scarf worth a small fortune.

Elizabeth looked up, staring at Caesar in disbelief.

"When exactly did you go digging through my personal luggage?"

Caesar grinned. "Field agent rule number one: I never walk into anything unprepared. Put it on."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes at him, speechless—but complied all the same.

Once she'd draped the scarf over her shoulders and slipped on the sunglasses and sun hat, Caesar cocked his head and studied his handiwork like a man appraising a piece of art.

"Mm. Perfect."

Behind the sunglasses, Elizabeth shot him a withering glare.

Caesar fished a pair of aviators out of the bag and slid them on as he laid out the plan. "When we get in there, you keep running your usual ice-queen CEO act. The colder the better. The pickier the better."

"Ideally, the only things out of your mouth the whole time are 'Mm,' 'Uh-huh,' and 'Oh.' Just pretend you're some Russian trophy wife kept by a mob boss—too bored to give a damn about anything. Leave everything else to me."

As he spoke, Caesar produced a loud, garishly patterned Hawaiian silk shirt from somewhere and pulled it on right over his black tee.

He looped a thick gold Cuban chain around his neck and strapped a blinding diamond-studded Rolex onto his wrist.

Paired with the aviators, he transformed in an instant from an ice-cold operative into some swaggering, obnoxious black-market kingpin—the kind of nouveau-riche scumbag who spent his years cycling between Miami and Vegas.

Elizabeth looked at the whole getup and couldn't help but smother a laugh.

"All set," Caesar said, yanking open the car door. "Cue the Hollywood blockbuster. We're rolling."

Twenty minutes later.

The black Hummer cleared the last winding stretch of Nevada backroad. Scattered, abandoned industrial structures began cropping up on either side.

A row of massive corrugated-metal warehouses came into view ahead—clearly renovated not long ago.

Above the entrance gate hung the world's most half-assed sign: Apex Industrial Recycling Co.

The Hummer didn't so much as ease off the gas. It barreled straight toward the shut electric gate.

Inside the guard booth, a security guard in a grimy uniform pushed to his feet, irritation stamped all over his face, grumbling under his breath. "The hell's the rush? You in a hurry to get to your own funeral or somethin'—"

The words died halfway out of his mouth.

Because the jet-black, armored Hummer SUV had rolled up on him like a crouching steel beast. That heavy, gunpowder-tinged aura of do not screw with me washed over him in a wave.

The guard's irritation went from cussing out a windshield to a groveling, ear-to-ear grin in the space of a single second.

"Uh—sir, are you here to—"

Caesar dropped the window. In his aviators and his loud, tacky shirt, gum working between his teeth, he snapped with pure kingpin arrogance: "Cut the bullshit. Open the gate."

The guard, cowed by the sheer mob-boss energy of the man, damn near bent ninety degrees at the waist, nodding frantically.

"Yes, yes, of course, sir—right this way!"

The sliding gate scraped open with a screech of metal.

Caesar floored it.

The V8 roared, and the Hummer surged forward into the yard's interior lot.

Riding shotgun, Elizabeth watched Caesar's letter-perfect performance and finally couldn't resist a jab. "I'm convinced. That acting could win you an Oscar."

Caesar gave her a small smile, then cranked the wheel hard.

Tires shrieked as the heavy body of the car slewed sideways into a spot between two spaces—half its wheels brazenly straddling the yellow line, nose cocked at an angle, unapologetically obnoxious.

Every detail of the way he parked broadcast a single message to the world: I'm rich, and I'm not somebody you want to mess with.

The Hummer had barely settled.

A middle-aged man in a gray suit, hair slicked back and gleaming, hustled out of the office block, wearing the standard oily grin of a black-market fixer.

"Sir, I'm the manager of this outfit—Butcher. What can I do for you?"

Caesar didn't so much as acknowledge him.

He unbuckled his seatbelt at a leisurely pace, shouldered the door open, and climbed out. Then he strolled around to the passenger side and, with exaggerated gallantry, pulled open Elizabeth's door and extended a hand.

Elizabeth played along, slipping her lace-gloved hand into his and stepping out of the vehicle with practiced elegance.

Then Caesar let her loop her arm through his, and the two of them walked straight for the office building doors as though they owned the place—Butcher, standing right beside them, treated as if he didn't exist.

Butcher's expression stiffened. He'd been running in the Nevada black-market scene for years, and he'd never met anyone with more swagger than himself.

He quickened his steps and cut in front of them. "Sir, could you at least tell me what brings you here? Company policy, you understand—this is private property. Not just anybody can waltz right in—"

He didn't get to finish.

Caesar reached into the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt and pulled out a crisp stack of hundred-dollar Franklins. Ten grand, banded tight, a good two inches thick.

Without so much as glancing at Butcher, Caesar flung the stack at his chest like it was trash, letting the bills tumble to the ground.

"Now."

He peeled off the aviators. His eyes carried the cold, brutal weight of a man who regarded human lives as no more than weeds.

"Can we go in?"

Butcher stared at the real, honest-to-God cash on the ground, pupils contracting to pinpoints, and immediately stepped aside to clear the path. The grin bloomed back across his face like a daisy in autumn sun.

"Absolutely!"

Now Butcher was dead certain. These two were no run-of-the-mill nouveau-riche tourists. These were heavy hitters—cartel-level players rolling in with dirty money to launder.

"Sir, ma'am—right this way!"

Caesar slid the aviators back on, took Elizabeth by the hand, and strode brazenly into the office section of the warehouse.

Butcher led them into a reception room that was actually decently furnished.

Elizabeth drew a disinfectant wipe from her Hermès bag, pinched it between two gloved fingers, and swiped the leather sofa cushion down with visible disgust before finally deigning to sit.

The whole aloof, above-it-all vibe of a glacial trophy wife too refined for common surroundings—she had it nailed down cold.

Caesar, meanwhile, went even bigger. He dropped into the sofa with a careless thud and swung both legs, still in their tactical trousers, straight up onto the expensive glass coffee table.

CRASH.

The kick sent the ashtrays and drinking glasses on the table flying to the floor, glass shattering everywhere.

Caesar leaned back, arms sprawled out along both sides of the sofa's backrest like a tyrant surveying his domain, and bellowed at Butcher:

"Get whoever runs this place out here, now!"

"Tell 'em Thompson sent us. We're here to buy in bulk!"

The instant the name Thompson landed, Butcher's heart gave a hard jolt. Any lingering doubt about who these people were evaporated.

He hurried to set a freshly poured cup of hand-drip coffee at the edge of the table and, plastering on his fawning smile, said, "Just give me one moment, gentlemen—ma'am. I'll go make the arrangements right away!"