Chapter Eleven
Leo looked around the plush apartment, wondering what Diana was thinking. The place was nice. Too nice for Hyrum Seaver, the twenty-two-year-old uni drop out who owned it. Leo wasn’t surprised. The market for authentic looking forgeries was always hot, and never more so than in the twenty-first century when it was nearly impossible to get past chip readers and databases and all the technology that made being off the grid virtually impossible.
But Hyrum knew his shit. Passports, driver’s licenses, birth certificates. Hyrum Seaver could reproduce them all.
And from the looks of the high end flat overlooking the river, business was booming.
Leo had thought about going to the club, asking Farrell for help. But Farrell and Jenna had only been back from Paris for a few weeks. They’d been through hell over the past couple of months. They deserved time with their daughter, and Leo knew Farrell was busy getting things under control with the business.
This was his problem. He would take care of it himself.
Still, he’d felt bad calling Farrell, asking for time off, being cagey about his reasons. But it was better than involving his boss — his friend — in yet another mess.
“You’ll have to pay extra for the rush.”
Leo turned his attention on the guy sitting at the computer in front of him. “It’s fine.”
Leo didn’t love bringing Diana here. In fact, he didn’t love anything about this, not the least of which was having to take her with him as he tried to find the men who were hunting her.
But he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t leave her in London, even with a friend. Despite what he’d told her, he wasn’t at all sure Antonis Stavros wouldn’t come after her. Leo had no doubt the man’s informants had been deputized at the police station, but a man like that had connections everywhere. He might flee the country, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t leave people behind to find Diana.
Which meant she had to come with him, arguably just as dangerous given that he’d finally figured out why the name she remembered the men saying felt so familiar.
“I need a picture,” Hyrum said, looking nervously at Diana. Behind his computer monitor, he was perfectly at ease, a king surveying his kingdom. But his nervousness around Diana made him look like the geeky college kid he should have been.
“Diana,” Leo said, directing her to the chair on the other side of Hyrum’s desk.
She sat down, and Hyrum tapped a few buttons on his keyboard. “I’ll need a couple hours. You guys are welcome to hang in the living room while you wait.”
“That’s okay,” Leo said. “I have a few things to do. We’ll be back in two hours.”
He led Diana out of the flat and onto London’s darkened streets. Night had fallen while they’d been inside Hyrum’s flat. Leo relaxed a little. He was comfortable in the shadows. Had been living there all his life.
“Where are we going?” Diana asked.
“We’re going to need a few things. Come on.”
They stopped at a discount store and picked up a change of clothes, toiletries, and two backpacks. They would be suspicious going through customs with no baggage, and Leo was careful to choose things that would help them pass as a young couple on a budget holiday. The thought caused him a pang of regret. He would much rather be traveling with Diana on holiday, preparing to lay next to her on a sandy beach, than fleeing to a part of the world that was as dangerous as it was mysterious.
He wasn’t surprised that Diana didn’t ask many questions. It was one of the things he’d always loved about her. She seemed to know when he needed time. Seemed perfectly willing to give him all the space he needed before he was ready to talk. And he was under no illusion; she was likely still figuring things out for herself. Figuring out how she felt about the fact that everything she believed about him had been a lie.
Not everything, he corrected himself. Not the way he felt about her. The way he’d always felt about her.
They left the store with an hour to spare and found a dimly lit pub with a nondescript sign and a blue collar clientele. They were both ravenous, and they passed the time plowing through plates of crispy fried fish washed down with cheap beer. When they were done, they headed back to Hyrum’s flat. Leo approached cautiously, wanting to make sure they hadn’t been made. It wasn’t Hyrum. Leo trusted him as much as he trusted anybody in the business.
But the business bred paranoia. You never knew when someone might trade you for something more valuable. He assumed his connection to Farrell’s operation gave him some form of protection, but he wasn’t about to risk Diana’s life on the bet.
Leo transferred the bags to his left hand so he’d be able to grab his weapon if the situation called for it, but the street outside looked clean, and a few minutes later they were being ushered back into Hyrum’s flat.
“Almost done,” he said.
His eyes were glassy, and he turned away from them and sat down in front of the computer. Several documents emerged from the printer, and Hyrum spent twenty more minutes carefully applying stamps to the documents, including two that looked like three dimensional holograms. Leo didn’t know much about forgeries, but he knew one thing; it was impossible to replicate the holographic stamps that had become standard on identifying documents. The stamps used by Hyrum were the real deal. Farrell didn’t even want to know how he’d come into possession of them.
“All set.” Hyrum stood and handed the documents to Leo. “The stamps are solid, and the printing technology is about ninety-eight percent there.”
Leo raised an eyebrow. “Ninety-eight percent?”
Hyrum shrugged. “It changes fast, mate. We do our best to keep up.” He looked over at Diana. “She’s not going to have any problem.”
Leo knew what Hyrum meant. Diana looked like what she was — an affluent, educated woman. It wasn’t just the expensive clothes Leo had chosen for her or her classic bone structure. It was something about the way she carried herself. About the regal lift of her chin and the way she moved so easily through the world, even now. Like she didn’t have a care in the world. As if she could part a crowd like the Red Sea simply by moving through it.
Leo wouldn’t have been surprised if she could.
He took the documents from Hyrum and gave them a cursory glance. The name was fake, but the picture was Diana, and everything looked legitimate.
“Thanks.” He handed Hyrum a wad of cash, thankful all over again that he’d learned from Farrell’s example and stashed a sizable chunk of cash and an alternate set of identification for himself in a safe deposit box in the city. He had gone to the bank after the boat ride on the Thames and withdrawn it all.
Hyrum gripped his hand in the kind of bro handshake Leo despised. “No problem.”
“Remember,” Leo said. “We were never here.”
Hyrum nodded as he walked them to the door. “I know the drill.”
Leo and Diana stepped out into the hall. They were almost to the elevator when Hyrum spoke behind them.
“Yo, Leo.”
He turned around. “Yeah?”
“Watch your back, mate.” He glanced at Diana. “And hers, too.”
"You can count on it.”
They stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the ground floor. When they got there, they exited the building, and Leo flagged a cab.
“Heathrow,” he told the driver, settling back into the seat.
“Where are we going?” Diana asked.
“Spain.” He hesitated, wondering how much he should tell her, then deciding there had been enough secrets between them. “And then Algeria.”