The Thief and the Globetrotter

Chapter Thirteen: The Rendezvous

No. Rei shifted uncomfortably in her chair. What would motivate someone to perform complex break-ins to a string of houses that coincidentally excluded ones guarded by Sundial? What would motivate someone to take a single thing from a home, always something old and likely ill-gotten?

An optimist might suggest some kind of archaeological Robin Hood. Take from the rich to give to a museum? Rei knew better. No reputable museum would accept anything on the list of stolen items. They couldn't. For one, it was stolen. Unless the history vigilante had the forethought to steal any paperwork citing origin, there was no way a museum would accept such a donation. Secondly, Rei very much doubted paperwork citing origin existed for any of it.

Rei knew that. Her brother didn't. The thought made her skin crawl. It was too perfect, too... personal. It felt like a secret message directed at her.

She made herself smaller, not daring to let her mind wander into darker considerations. Family was complicated. She kept scrolling through Sundial news until a bold headline caught her eye.

Ransom demanded in Rei Collingwood case.

Rei blinked. What demanded in the Rei Collingwood what?

***

Baz lingered outside Sundial Security. For a firm firmly established in surveillance and safety, no one moving in or out of the building paid much to the man in black down the block. Sitting in a bus shelter, headphones in his ears, made him nigh invisible. No one considered that he'd been there for awhile, watching a bus from every route stop and drive off without getting on. It was the kind of look that Baz had mastered rather unintentionally. He had a knack for divided attention, following along to conversations while picking up on other details. Reading and eavesdropping. Catching up on the reading ahead for one class while sitting in another. The side effect Baz never anticipated was how other people assumed he was lost in another world.

In this case, nothing came out of his headphones. The dazed, blank stare was just watching for Cheng Collingwood out of the corner of his eye, watching for movement from the police cruiser sitting in the building's parking lot.

Maybe they were waiting for the phone, stuck in limbo until Cheng was directed to an exchange point. Maybe they were awaiting a last-minute change of plans demanding more money.

Baz waited, fiddling with his ring in his growing impatience.

Finally, a black car pulled up in front of the doors. Even when leaving to pay his sister's ransom, Cheng donned a suit like it was a business transaction. Maybe it was, to rich families. Maybe people were kidnapped so often that it became as routine as any other exchange of money from one hand to another. Cheng looked too calm as far as Baz was concerned, but what did he know?

The driver of the car stepped out. Cheng wouldn't be chauffeured. He climbed into the driver's seat himself. That must've been a condition of the exchange. No personal drivers. Presumably, no cops either.

The cruiser in the lot started up anyway, leaving just behind Cheng's car.

Baz shifted, grabbing his bike from the rack nearby and hopping on. The police car whizzed past the bus shelter and Baz gave it a chance to put reasonable distance between them before following the route.

He unzipped his hoodie so it no longer obscured his chest-harnessed GoPro. He flicked it on.

The thing about Temperance was it had great bike lanes. It benefited Baz before and it surely was now. The near non-existent bike traffic made him faster. A bit of recklessness, darting through red lights when there were no cars, gave him an even greater advantage.