by Elise Noble
Black was already tapping away at his phone screen. “Shadow Falls Academy, providing a first-class education to boys and girls from grades nine through twelve. A selective school for gifted pupils, specialising in the arts.”
Bloody hell. A school? A real school? That was…insane. And audacious. And possibly the work of a genius. I mean, who would ever suspect that a school was the front for a ring of art thieves?
I had a million questions. “Somebody needs to pick Sky up.”
“I’ll go,” Rafael said, already heading for the door. “Send me the address.”
“How did you get to Culpeper?” I asked her.
“Borrowed a Ferrari from the parking lot. And when that ran out of petrol, I swapped it for a Ford Fiesta with a guy near Charlottesville.”
“When you say ‘swapped’…?”
“Okay, so I just drove the Fiesta away while he paid for his fuel.”
“Did you wipe your prints?”
“Uh…”
“Don’t worry,” Mack said. “I’ll clean it up.”
She meant that if Sky’s prints popped up in a police database, she’d get rid of them. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d pulled that trick.
“Are you safe?” I asked Sky. “We’ll get there as soon as we can.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. This place is open all night.” A door opened in the background, and I heard voices. “But I gotta go.”
She hung up, and I blew out a breath. Once again, the whole case had been flipped on its head.
“Get Sky and drive straight back to Riverley,” Black instructed Rafael. “Emmy and I will join you as soon as we’ve picked the Picasso up tomorrow morning.”
Today had been a roller coaster. The nerve-racking ride up the incline followed by the adrenaline rush of the Spirit theft. Then the crushing realisation that we’d been tricked by the Master. But now? We’d hit one final loop and come out on top. Tomorrow, we’d regroup and start planning for the next ride.
A trip to Shadow Falls Academy.
The funhouse.
CHAPTER 17 - SKY
“BYE, GUYS.”
STUD, one of my new buddies from the Venom Motorcycle Club, crushed me in a hug, and Rafael glared at him. Stud glared right back.
“Look after our girl.”
“She’s not your girl.”
“Boys, boys, it’s three a.m. Can we avoid getting into a punch-up? Rafael, these gents have been taking care of me all evening. Stud, my brother can get a teensy bit overprotective sometimes.”
Finally, Stud nodded and held out a hand. “Good. He should be.”
After a moment, Rafael offered his hand too, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Massacre averted. Phew. I was too tired to play referee, too tired to panic at Stud’s touch, too tired to think.
Rafael opened the passenger door of the Navigator, and a quick glance into the back told me he’d packed up all my stuff from the hotel room. My case was there with the beautiful, tear-stained dress draped over the top of it.
The night could have been worse, I suppose. After I’d followed the waiter to the school in Shadow Falls—population 1,027 according to the sign at the town limits—I backtracked to Culpeper and abandoned the Ford outside a strip mall with the key in the footwell. Someone would find it. Hopefully the right someone. Then I schlepped up the road to Eddie’s Roadhouse, a bar with bad decor and good music. The place had been packed, and when I’d offered to help out behind the bar for an hour in return for use of the phone and a couple of drinks, the bartender’s eyebrows had shot into his hairline, but he’d agreed.
I fit in there better than at the Grove, despite my stupid outfit, and when trade dropped off after midnight, the bikers had invited me to play pool. Mostly so they could stare at my ass, I suspected, but when a slimy little cowboy patted it, they picked him up and dumped him in the parking lot.
But now Rafael was here, and we were back to awkwardness.
He drove the first five miles in silence, and since I didn’t know what to say either, I just stared out the window. Finally, he spoke.
“I thought you’d gone.”
To lie or not to lie, that was the question.
“I considered leaving,” I admitted.
Silence.
“What did you tell Emmy?”
“That you were sick. And then later, I had to admit that you weren’t, and she wasn’t impressed that I’d lied.”
“Sorry.”
“She knows there was someone from your past at the event who you didn’t want to run into, but I didn’t go into the details.”
“Thank you.”
“Can’t guarantee she’s not going to ask you about it.”
I’d have to deal with that when the time came. “Did the job go okay? I mean, I heard what happened with the other painting. It was on the radio.”
“We got away clean. After The Shepherd vanished, nobody was looking at Spirit.”
“What about the Ferrari I took? Is the owner pissed?”
“When I left the party, nobody had even noticed the car was missing.” Wow, really? Perhaps I was a better thief than I thought. “Most likely the owner’s staying at the hotel.”
“Oops. Somewhere out there, a kid’s having the night of his life.”
Rafael barked out a laugh. “At least somebody’s happy.”
“What’ll happen to the valet? I nicked the keys when he wasn’t looking, but I don’t want him to lose his job.”
“If he let a customer’s car get stolen, he deserves to be fired.”
Shit. Although that was sort of true, I didn’t need an extra helping of guilt with my transgression. “It was his boss’s fault. He insists on keeping all the keys in a bloody basket.”
“Fine. I’ll ask Black to put in a word.” A pause. “So, the thief really went to a school?”
Rafael still didn’t look happy. Should I apologise again? Probably, but what was the point? Even if I grovelled every day for the rest of my life, it wouldn’t make up for completely losing my head the way I had earlier.
“Yup. It’s in the middle of nowhere. Creepy as fuck.”
“Creepy isn’t a problem. A school—that’s the problem.”
I saw his point. Casing a school would be almost impossible. Send the men from Blackwood to take a peek, and they’d get arrested. Although I couldn’t imagine the pupils being too upset if they showed up, especially if they took their shirts off.
“Speaking of problems… What about me?”
“Get some sleep. We’ve got a meeting about the School of Shadows at eleven o’clock, and then we’re going climbing.”
“But Emmy—”
“I’ll handle Emmy. Sleep.”
Everyone stared at me when I walked into the Windsor Room the next morning, and I wished I’d stayed in Eddie’s Roadhouse. Being the centre of attention because I had tits and ass was something I could handle. The whole of Blackwood knowing I fucked up? Not so much.
“Here she is,” Nate said. “The hero of the hour.”
Huh?
“Heroine,” Carmen corrected.
They weren’t mad at me?
Bradley came in with a tray of pastries, followed by Mrs. Fairfax with fruit, juice, and coffee on a cart. I realised how hungry I was. Bar snacks from Eddie’s had been a poor substitute for a three-course dinner. Since it seemed I still had a job, at least until my next faux pas, I took a croissant and helped myself to a mug of black coffee, then found a seat.
Xavier appeared with a toddler in his arms—his daughter, I presumed—followed by Ana and Quinn with their little girl. Was it “take your kid to work” day? Yes, it seemed, because Emmy was followed in by Beth with Rune, and after them came Alaric and Black carrying a slim wooden crate between them. Plus Rafael had let Marshall out of the basement. Hallie and Dan came next with Caleb, Dan’s son, then Mack and Luke appeared too, plus half a dozen people I’d never seen before. Wow. This was one big meeting.
“First things first,” Bla
ck announced, prying the front off the crate with a nasty-looking knife. “Let’s get this hung up.”
The Picasso was none the worse for its adventure, thank goodness. I’ll admit I didn’t quite understand the appeal of a portrait with all the bits of face in the wrong place, but the colours were pretty. Still vivid, and with the climate control in the gallery downstairs, hopefully they always would be. But for now, Black hung it on a spare hook next to the whiteboard, and everyone leaned forward in their seats as he swung open the front of the specially modified frame.
There she was, sandwiched between the Picasso and a false canvas back. Spirit of the Lake.
“Exquisite,” Alaric murmured.
“I’ve never been so terrified as I was when I picked her up,” Beth said.
Understandable. The last time Beth had transported stolen goods, she’d been totally oblivious to what she was doing. Now? We’d corrupted her completely.
“Any problems?” Emmy asked.
“Apart from me almost passing out? No. Two of the policemen even helped me to carry the box to the car.”
“We’ll make an agent of you yet.”
Alaric scowled at Emmy. “No, you won’t.”
I pushed my chair back and stepped forward to take a closer look at the painting. On balance, I preferred Spirit to the Picasso. The lone woman reminded me of myself, one girl against the world. Or was I? Right now, I wasn’t sure.
But I didn’t want to be alone anymore.
“Sky, while you’re standing up, can you talk us through what happened last night?” Black asked. “From the beginning, please.”
I told the story for the third time. The version I’d given Emmy over the phone from the back room at Eddie’s had been somewhat garbled, the tale I’d told Rafael tempered by tiredness. Now I went through everything. And then went through it again. And afterwards, Black and Emmy and Dan and Alaric and Hallie asked me enough questions that my brain turned to mush and left me second-guessing myself. Had I definitely been following the right car? Could I have imagined him turning into the driveway? Perhaps he’d simply gone around a bend farther ahead?
But no, it would have been too much of a coincidence, right? The School of fucking Shadows. Shadow Falls Academy. Talk about thumbing their noses at people.
Mack thought so too.
“While you lightweights were sleeping, Luke and I did some preliminary research. Shadow Falls Academy was founded seventy years ago by Phineas and Golda Rosenberg out of concern that the arts were being neglected in the public school system. A few pupils live nearby and go home each day, but ninety percent of them board. There’s an emphasis on painting, sculpture, music, dance, and drama. Their former students have won two Oscars, three Golden Globes, four Tony Awards, an Emmy, one regular GRAMMY, and nineteen classical GRAMMYs. We lost count of the number of art and dance prizes. The school is basically the creative industries’ best-kept secret. But they’re no slouches when it comes to academia either. Over half of their students go on to attend Ivy League schools. Care to take a guess who one of their past pupils was? I’ll give you a clue—after she got married, her surname rhymed with ‘insane.’”
“Fuck,” Emmy muttered. “Kyla Devane’s mother?”
“Got it in one. The Devane family endowed a scholarship at the Shadow Falls Academy, and Kyla presented a prize there two years ago. I found a picture of the ceremony on a cached version of the school’s website. And we can’t be sure it was connected, but President Harrison is pushing for legislation to charge property taxes on private schools, and one of the items on Kyla’s manifesto was a promise to block that.”
At least now we knew how Kyla had gotten hold of the painting she’d used to bribe Irvine Carnes for his endorsement in the senatorial election. I’d been curious about that. And thankfully, she was last month’s problem.
“Oh, it would have been connected,” Emmy said.
“So we can assume that the Rosenbergs are involved, and we sure as heck know they’re rich. As well as obscene fees and alumni donations, they’ll have income from their sideline.”
“So we’ll have to tread very, very carefully. Who runs the place now? Presumably Phineas and Golda are dead and buried?”
“In the family mausoleum. Their son, Sandor, took over as principal, but he retired a decade ago with heart problems. There was a celebratory dinner.” Mack flashed a photo up on the screen. “Recognise anybody?”
“Congressman Lewis,” Black said. “And Governor Leclerc.”
Alaric pointed at a woman with impossibly red hair. “Nerissa Fremantle. Married to Paul Sterling.”
The Hollywood director? Wow.
“Front right. That guy’s a professor at the Holborn School,” Sofia said. I hadn’t noticed her sneak in at the back.
“What’s the Holborn School?” I asked.
“A first-rate place where genius musicians go.”
The list went on. Basically, if you attended Shadow Falls Academy, you were more or less guaranteed an easy ride through life, unlike at Greenfields Comprehensive. Which was a misnomer if there ever was one. It wasn’t near any fields, and the only greenery was the forest of cannabis plants some enterprising sod had grown on the roof. The police helicopter spotted them on a flyover, and they raided the school in the middle of one of the few lessons I’d bothered to go to. Biology, I recalled. Because everyone needed to know the anatomy of a goldfish.
“Sandor passed away the year before last, I believe,” Mack said. “No fanfare, but I found a death certificate. And after Sandor came Ezra. He’s the current principal. Look familiar to anyone?”
Another picture appeared, this time of a man in his late forties with wispy brown hair and glasses. Emmy cursed under her breath.
“He was sitting behind me at dinner last night, except he wasn’t wearing the glasses then. Contacts, probably.”
“And here’s the family photo. Sandor and his wife, Tovah, in the back row, their kids in front. Ezra, Saul, and Mina.”
“They were all there except Sandor and Mina.” Tovah had been the grey-haired lady feigning shock. “Sandor had an excuse for skipping the party—he’s dead—but where was the daughter?”
“Could she have been the accomplice in the basement?”
I shook my head. “It was definitely a guy. The body shape, the way he moved… A guy.”
“Do you know anything about this?” Alaric asked Marshall.
Marshall held both hands up. “Not me. A school? I’m as surprised as anyone. Who risks involving children in a criminal enterprise?” He glanced around the room and realised who was present. “Not that this is a criminal enterprise,” he added hastily. “More of a rescue mission.”
“It’s summer break,” Dan told him. “You try finding last-minute childcare.”
“Of course, of course. I suppose the letters from the Master could have been written by a teacher. They were always grammatically correct.”
“You’ll need to contact him about Spirit.”
“I’ve already drafted the wording. Unless you’d care to give me access to the internet, one of your people will have to place the ad.”
“Understood,” Black said. “But in the meantime, we need to take a closer look at this school, which is going to be a challenge. Do we know if they’re recruiting staff at the moment?”
Mack answered, but it wasn’t good news. “No current vacancies according to the careers page on their website.”
“Start researching the staff they do have: teachers, the back-office team, cleaners, groundsmen. Find someone who’s short of cash. They may be willing to sell information.”
“Too slow,” Emmy said. “If The Shepherd was stolen to order, they’ll be moving it on sooner rather than later. How long does a handover take to arrange? A week? A month?”
“Possibly longer if they’re using the USPS. And there is one obvious solution. As Mr. Marshall here so helpfully pointed out, we have several children on summer break. One of them can pose as a poten
tial pupil and ask for a tour.”
“Me!” Caleb volunteered. “I’ll go.”
“You’re too young, honey,” Dan told him. “Maybe in a couple of years.”
“I’ll do it,” Rune said.
Alaric was shaking his head before she finished the sentence. “No, you won’t.”
“But I love school.”
“I think you’ve had enough excitement in the last month, don’t you?”
Rune harrumphed and folded her arms, but she didn’t argue. Wait. Why was everyone looking at me?
“Uh, I’m not the best person for this.”
“It’s only an interview,” Emmy said. “A little chat.”
“I failed everything except PE.”
“Not because you’re stupid. You just didn’t go to class, did you?”
“I had better things to do.”
“Yes, like learning how to hustle, which is why you’ll be perfect for this job. And you won’t be alone. You’ll have your parents with you.”
“My parents?”
My birth mother had pissed off into the sunset when I was two, and I hadn’t seen my father since I was ten. No great loss. At least the physical scars had faded now, even if the mental ones hadn’t.
“Yeah, you’ll need parents. I’m out because the Rosenbergs have seen my face. Ditto for everyone else at the gala, which leaves one obvious candidate. Sky McLain—it has a nice ring to it.”
“Sky McLain?”
“Alaric was lamenting his lack of involvement before. Now he can walk right into the hornets’ nest. Right, Prince?”
“Right. But only if Sky agrees.”
Talk about déjà vu. The first day I met Alaric, I’d been thrust into the role of his daughter as a punishment for stealing Bethany’s car. That surveillance operation was what landed me the job at Blackwood in the first place. How could I say no?
I fluttered my eyelids. “Should I call you Daddy?”
“No.”
Emmy snorted, then quickly got back to business. “Alaric, you’ll need a wife. Who do we have left? Sofia? Or I could bring Mimi over from Australia, but she’s kind of a bitch.”