The Fourth Rule: A Novel (A Riley Wolfe Novel, Band 4) - Hardcover

Lindsay, Jeff

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593186257 ISBN 13: 9780593186251

Verlag: Dutton, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

THE BIGGEST HEIST.
THE MOST DANGEROUS ADVERSARY.
FROM THE MASTER OF THE GENRE.
OH, AND EXPLOSIONS. 

Impossible doesn’t belong in Riley Wolfe’s vocabulary. He’s a master of heists and disguises, whose life's work is swindling the rich out of their undeserved treasures.

Now rumors surrounding a dangerous new figure of international crime are spreading through the underworld. And this ruthless collector, the Cobra, has a personal vendetta against Riley . . .

No matter—with the aid of his new partner, Caitlin, Riley prepares to take on the most powerful cultural institution in the world and bring home the supposedly unstealable Rosetta Stone. With the Cobra waiting for the right moment to strike, Riley is put to the ultimate test as he faces this most venomous villain—and tries to make it out alive. 

Packed with Jeff Lindsay’s trademark style of intricately plotted twists, stunning global settings, and thrilling action, The Fourth Rule is a relentlessly suspenseful and delicious escapist thriller that will leave you shocked, breathless, and endlessly entertained.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jeff Lindsay is the New York Times bestselling author of the Dexter novels, which debuted in 2004 with Darkly Dreaming Dexter. They are the basis of the hit Showtime and CBS series Dexter. He lives in South Florida with his family.

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1

When she made the decision to go freelance, Alex knew it would not always be easy. Easy would have been to take one of the dozen prestigious job offers that came to her for graduating at the top of her class at Stanford. Prestige didn't interest her. Money did, and none of the available jobs came near to the amounts that got her attention.

But Alex had a plan, one she knew could catapult her into the seven- or eight-digit incomes she wanted. She made a very basic calculation, based on pure logic. People with the most money could pay the most. But people-not corporations; those had too many rules, too much oversight. There were plenty of people who had the money she wanted and didn't want the oversight. And many of these same people paid so well because they could not use ordinary sources when they had a tech problem.

Criminals. Drug lords, arms dealers, all the people who lived and worked in the shadows. And the ones who made it-the ones who lived-had the money. They also had a need, and Alex could fill it. Better, she could do it without the danger of getting killed at every step.

There were still big risks. That was inevitable. It went with the big paydays. But if it worked at all, the risks would be well worth it.

And it did; it worked. It took her a mere six months to make her reputation with the right people. Some of them were very scary people. But she made sure they understood that they needed her, and she learned to deal with them without fear. It was part of her job. It was a part she chose, because that was how she made her genius with computers pay exponentially better than anything her classmates at Stanford could earn. She worked the dark side, and she didn't regret it, either. The way money poured in made it worthwhile. And she always made the clients get the picture right away-they were much better off with Alex on their side. Harming her was actually harming themselves.

They got the idea, or Alex didn't work for them.

There was one client who still scared the hell out of her. Scared everybody, in fact. Alex knew that before first contact. Still, this particular client was pretty much the apex predator, and they paid twice what everybody else paid, so it was worth it.

Mostly. Alex still had to remind herself of the size of that payday before every job for this client. Even this one, which had been relatively simple. It had taken a long time, maybe longer than the client wanted, but Alex was pretty sure that nobody else in her business would have been able to do it all.

Still, that wasn't the hard part. It had been tedious, it took a lot of time, but it was mostly routine. No real skull sweat. The hard part came now. Delivering the results, which the client wanted in person, face-to-face. That made Alex's stomach churn. And it was a long trip, which didn't help. There was more time to worry, which she did. And now she was there, ready for the meeting, trying to brace herself for being in the same room with the scariest person she'd ever met. She swallowed hard, clutched her folder of results in suddenly sweaty hands, and opened the door.

"Sit."

Alex obeyed before she was even aware of doing so. There was just so much menace radiating from the head of the table that if she'd been told to strip naked and dance, she would have done it without thinking twice.

"Report."

Alex licked her very dry lips and opened her folder. "There's sort of a bulletin board on the dark web," she said. "I went through all the posts from three months ago and worked backward. It took some time, but I pulled seven posts that I thought might be something. Six didn't pan out." She lifted the top sheet of paper from the folder and slid it across the table. "This one did."

Those terrible eyes lit up with a cold fire. "The crown jewels."

"I believe so."

The eyes held her for a long and very uncomfortable moment. Then: "Go on."

"Right, so when I was sure, I traced that and found the guy who posted it?" She slid the second sheet across.

"And?"

Alex shrugged. "He's nobody, really. Just a business guy. But he had the money. And his family had strong ties to Ireland."

"Obviously. And on the other end?"

Alex swallowed. "We sort of knew who did it, like you said? And so I just confirmed it. He went into hiding after he delivered? And, uh-"

She could see her audience was impatient, so she jerked to a stop.

"Where is he?"

Alex nodded and tried to push away the raw fear that was clawing its way up her spine. "Right, so-I found him," she said.

"Not enough. I need to know him, too."

Alex found that she couldn't swallow. She took a ragged breath. "Yes, I- So that's why, uh- I hacked into the FBI and found his file." She tapped the manila file folder she'd carried in. "There were two profiles on him, which-that's really unusual?"

She took a printout from the folder and slid it down the table.

"That's really all anyone knows about him, because, you know . . . But there are no known photographs of his face, but-the file had his birth name? I used that and found a picture from his seventh-grade yearbook."

Alex took out the top photograph and pushed it down the table with the printout. No reaction. Those terrible cold eyes never blinked and never left hers.

Alex found that her hand was trembling. She took a deep breath, willed the hand to stop shaking, and went on. "I used an AI program I developed to age that picture. You know-project what he'd look like now?" She raised a hand half-heartedly to stop an objection that never came. She let the hand flop down into her lap. "I know, there are lots of programs that do that. Mine is better. Much better."

"Go on."

"Yes. I'm sorry. Yes. So . . . Using the new picture"-she slipped the next photo out of her folder-"I began an expanding search pattern with my AI facial recognition system. There were a number of hits, possibles, of course. But all relatively low probability-until finally, it picked up a probable in New York. Kennedy airport."

Alex placed the next photo on the table.

"AI gave it an eighty-three percent positive. That was the highest percentage I'd gotten, so I followed. Subject used an American passport and flew first class."

"Destination?"

"Yes, of course. Heathrow. In London." She tapped the photo. "This is him."

Dead silence for what seemed like a horrible long time. Finally: "You're certain?"

"I am," Alex said. "Subsequent surveillance photos improved the AI rating to ninety-five percent. I programmed it for a certain amount of caution, so . . . That's pretty much totally sure."

More silence. Alex felt her whole body bathed in cold sweat. "He seems to have settled in one location, indicating he will most likely be there for a while? So . . ."

She slid out a single piece of paper. "The address is here, with a floor plan."

"Good. The name on the passport?"

Alex took out another photo, a screenshot of a passport, and slid it across the table. "Harry Metzger," she said.

2

And there I was in London on a beautiful summer afternoon, one of those rare English days when you can actually see the sun, and even feel it on your face. But instead of frolicking on the green-and there really is a Green Park-I was slouched in a carrel at the library of the British Museum going through a stack of dusty intel reports from the last few months of WWII. I found stuff, of course-you can't help it. But nothing really important. Just lots of interesting factoids.

One of them snuck under my guard and turned into something I wanted to know more about. Maybe it was kind of a sidetrack, but I'd gotten interested in a treasure known as the Amber Room. It's a personal thing, but I totally love amber. It's very valuable, of course, but that's...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Dutton
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593186257
• ISBN 13: 9780593186251
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@phaidon.com; gpsr@phaidon.com; ; Zähringerstraße 24; Berlin; 10707; Deutschland