by AJ Sherwood
Ivan must’ve been a mind reader, as he paused before putting more batter in the pan, eyeing Carter sideways. “You worried about me?”
Dammit. Carter had a better poker face than this, he knew he did. “Can you blame me? I went looking for Malvagio. Instead I find his daughter, who happens to be adored and protected by three of the toughest men in the industry. If you decide I’m a threat to her, I’ll never see you coming.”
“Keep that attitude, and you’ll live.” Ivan had the audacity to wink before going back to the pancakes.
The man sucked at reassurances. Well, maybe he should take the pancakes as a sign that Ivan didn’t expect to kill him later. Unless, of course, the pancakes were poisoned. Or the coffee. Just what the hell had he walked into, anyway?
“You say the best opening is a month from now?” Ivan asked casually, shifting a done stack of pancakes over in Carter’s direction.
He eyed them with a sort of paranoid resignation. He didn’t dare turn those down. And really, he didn’t expect Ivan to kill him now. Carter was the one who’d accepted the contract. The one who knew who to return the painting to. It would be after the job was over that his life would be in imminent danger. He took the pancakes.
“That’s my take on it. Knowles is scheduled to have an upgrade in about a month—software and cameras. It will take a straight week for them to do everything. If we don’t hit them before that upgrade, we’ll have a very narrow window of two and a half weeks to scope the place out, plan our entrance, and pull the job off.”
Ivan let out a low whistle, grey eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Instead of the four weeks we have now. Tight, either way.”
“Trust me, I know. I spent a month looking for Malvagio, and I could feel time ticking away in the back of my head the whole time.” The pancakes were actually rather good. Light and fluffy. Carter stood with the plate in his hand, his hip leaning against the counter’s edge, balancing both words and food. He shifted a bit more to avoid leaning against the gun at his back. “But he’s the only one I knew of who’d successfully gotten in and out. I didn’t even want to attempt the job without him.”
“I don’t blame you. I’d not want to attempt it alone, either.” A quick grin crossed over Ivan’s face, making him look friendly for a second. “In fact, I didn’t. Last time, we came out with a diamond ring. It was hard enough with a small object in hand. With a painting? That much harder.”
“Not to mention we’ll need into the vault.” Just thinking about it gave Carter a headache.
Ivan’s head canted in question, studying him. “Why did you take the job?”
“Honestly? They came to me. And they were frank about the fact they’d tried to reach you first and couldn’t find you. They thought maybe I could do it. I gave them no promises but said if I couldn’t crack into Knowles inside of a month, I’d tell them. Give someone else a shot at it.”
“Fair.”
Carter debated the wisdom of asking. Curiosity won out. “You’re normally reachable for jobs. I was surprised they couldn’t get you for this one.”
“Got injured six months ago,” Ivan answered smoothly. “Took a month off to heal. Then Ari came in with Remi, and I stayed dark a little longer, helping him.”
That made sense. No, wait, it didn’t. “Ah…”
Ivan shot him a look.
No, his curiosity wasn’t worth getting stabbed. And stabbing was in his near future if he asked why Malvagio only had Remi as of a few months ago. He covered his curiosity with a different question. “So, I take it Remi typically hangs out with you guys while you’re planning a job?”
“Normally. She’s in school for a few more weeks now.” Ivan turned back to the pan to flip the pancake.
“She’s suspended this week, actually.”
Ivan’s head came around sharply in surprise. “Suspended?”
“A boy at school tried to put his hand up her shirt,” Carter explained, the words strange in his mouth. It felt surreal to know something about Remi that Ivan didn’t. “She flattened him.”
Ivan snickered evilly. “That’s my solnishko.”
“Is she really that good? I mean, she’s in elementary school.”
“She trains every day. And she wants to be good. That attitude makes her focus.” Ivan’s gaze turned distant for a moment. “She likes to connect with us. She wants to be part of what we’re doing. We often teach her things, share with her what we know. It will help safeguard her, if trouble comes.”
He had that right. Carter had no idea why Remi was with her assassin father instead of her mother, but if she was? Then there had to be a damn good reason for it.
Ivan finished up his stack and flicked the stove off, turning and also leaning against the counter in order to eat. As his fork cut into the stack, he asked casually, “You have some information about Knowles, I assume?”
“Yeah, a little. I dug into it while searching for Mal—Ari. I wasn’t able to get a lot.” Carter shrugged because that more or less went without saying. Knowles was worse than Area 51. “But I can pull up my laptop and let you read what I do have.”
“Da, do that. And I will give you K’s email, you can send the information to him. Save him a little time.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Ivan had to swallow his mouthful before answering. “Forgot to mention, K will join us. We’ll need him on hand for this.”
Wow. He’d actually get to meet the man behind the legend? Carter was one part intrigued two parts unnerved. If this went sideways, he was so in over his head. “Gotcha.”
The front door opened and both men went tense, hands on guns, their manner alert.
“We’re here!” Ari called out.
Ah, good. Carter relaxed again and went back to eating, watching as Remi came through the kitchen door first.
A brilliant smile lit her face as she went straight to Ivan, tackling him around the thighs. “Uncle Ivan!”
Ivan dropped a hand to rest on the back of her head, smiling at her in turn. It softened the man’s expression, which was an interesting effect. He looked less I-am-the-shadow-you’ll-never-see-coming and more doting uncle. “There’s my solnishko. I hear you flattened a stupid boy who tried to put his hands on you?”
She grinned up at him impishly. “Widow’s combo.”
Clearly, the thief knew what that meant, and he cackled. “Ah, my solnishko, you are a joy. I’m sorry I missed it. Do you need pancakes?”
She batted large chocolate brown eyes up at him, looking plaintive and pitiful. “Pancakes?”
“Don’t let her give you that.” Ari glared down at his daughter. “I fed her this morning.”
“Yogurt.” She made a face.
“And toast,” he reminded her.
Remi ignored that completely and went back to making puppy eyes at Ivan. Who, predictably, caved and started feeding her bites off his own plate. Carter got the impression this was an ongoing scene and it had absolutely nothing to do with whether Remi was full or not. It was a subtle sense of something not quite right, although he couldn’t put his finger on why he felt that way.
The byplay distracted him for a moment but he couldn’t really ignore Ari for more than two seconds. The man was like the elephant in the room. He’d been skating on thin ice with this man all day yesterday and confusedly attracted—and those two feelings did not mix well. It left Carter with a sort of sour feeling in his gut. Today, apparently, Ari was more inclined to be amiable. Or at least, he no longer looked a breath away from shooting Carter between the eyes. The assassin even managed a civil nod good morning, which Carter returned.
“Kids are bottomless pits,” Ari groused to Carter. “They should come with warning labels. She’s constantly stealing bites from people’s plates. Harrison, K said he’ll be here in about three days. Maybe two. He’s got some loose ends to tie up first. I thought we could walk through what we know of Knowles, maybe do some preliminary scouting while waiting on him.”
“Outer perimeter sc
outing, at least,” Ivan agreed while hand-feeding Remi another bite. “I don’t want to go inside without him.”
“Yeah, me neither. But a good look at the outer perimeter won’t hurt. You down for that, Harrison?”
“Sure.” So they were going to start on a professional footing? He could work with that. Carter swallowed a mouthful of coffee before adding, “I do have some intel on me. You want to go through that first?”
“Yeah, that’d be good.”
It took a few minutes for them to get situated around the worn-in kitchen table. Carter grabbed his laptop, then pulled up the schedule for the security changes, as well as the upcoming timeline of events. It made for a tight squeeze, all three men pressed next to each other so they could read the screen, with Remi balanced on Ivan’s knee. Carter ended up with his thigh and hip smack against Ari’s which…wasn’t helpful.
Swallowing the impulse to flirt down, he focused on the screen. “So here we have it. There’s six events over the next six months, most of them in the next two. They’re moving inventory around, changing out which art pieces they’re going to show. They’ve got new purchases coming in for the museum upstairs. They’ve got two gala thingies I expect will be a major blowout, at least a thousand in attendance for each one. I don’t know if it’ll be easier to hit them during a party?”
“Tougher,” Ari and Ivan denied in unison. Ari waved for Ivan to explain.
“They double, sometimes triple, security during such events.” Ivan’s nose scrunched up in disgruntlement. “We used a party last time because the cover of more people allowed Ari in close to the mark. But in our case, it will not be good. Zanuda. Njet, not a good idea.”
“Let’s get K on the phone real quick. I want to run through the basics before we figure out our next step. He might know something we don’t,” Ari added to Ivan. “You know what an information hoarder he is.”
Ivan grunted agreement. “A magpie, that one. Alright.”
Without prompting, Remi pulled a tablet from her backpack and punched in a video call. Carter was rather impressed with how competently she did so, and on a program he didn’t recognize. Then again, it was probably something of K’s creation. He couldn’t imagine a professional hacker using box store apps. When the call connected, she smiled. “Hi, Uncle K!”
Carter blinked at the screen. With only a single letter code name, he’d not known what to expect of the hacker. K, apparently, was of Asian descent. Those eyes were pitch dark, his face oval in shape with a paler skin tone, no doubt from staying indoors all the time. His blue-black hair was cut in a low fade, the longer, textured strands brushing his forehead in a ruffled sort of way. K the hacker was rather cute, actually, in a geeky way. And if he were older than thirty, Carter would turn straight.
“Hey, princess. What’s up?”
Ari tilted sideways in his chair to be seen on the screen. He braced himself against the table, no part of him touching, but it made him basically tilt over into Carter’s lap which also was very unhelpful. “We want to run through the job and the basics of Knowles. Thought we might do some setup and a perimeter sweep while waiting on you.”
“Sure, not a bad idea. Harrison, let’s start with job specifics. Who’s your broker on this one?”
“Emura,” Carter answered. He got four blank looks in response. Granted, brokers popped in and out of this business, but it didn’t bode well that these three hadn’t heard of him. “Ah…you don’t know who that is.”
K frowned and shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t. You worked with him before?”
“No, actually; this is the first contact I’ve had with him.”
“What were the terms, exactly?” Ivan inquired.
“He handled all money and contact with the client. Takes one percent fee. I thought it was fairly standard, except the fee, as it is a rather large payout.”
“Even one percent would be a good chunk of change and not much work on his end,” Ari agreed, but he was still frowning. “Still, almost every million-plus job I’ve taken had a ten percent broker’s fee.”
“Remi,” K requested, “Look this guy up for us.”
Remi seemed all too happy to participate, and she promptly minimized the screen and shuffled it off to the side. With the smooth expertise of a criminal, she had the job site up and logged into, searching under the broker’s page. Carter was more than a little impressed. She did stuff like this often?
His attention was pulled from her by Ivan’s next question.
“If we’re going to be doing this stealthy?” He waited for Carter’s nod of confirmation before continuing. “Then the painting will need to be switched out. Who is the forger?”
“Emura said he’s got Lansky working on it.”
Ivan, K, and Ari all groaned. Ivan actually flopped halfway across the table.
Carter did not like that reaction. “Why? Is Lansky no good?”
“Lansky is exceptionally talented,” Ivan denied, still sighing like doom had just knocked on his door. “But he’s the slowest painter I’ve ever seen.”
“He’s a perfectionist,” Ari explained, and he too looked like doom was kicking the door down. “He won’t surrender a painting until it’s absolutely perfect. It takes months, sometimes a full year, to get a forgery from him. For a quick job like this, he’s not a good choice.”
That uneasy feeling from before doubled and settled uneasily in his gut like bad sushi. “Honestly, I felt like something was a little off when Emura contacted me. Why hire a merc? This isn’t really in my field.”
Ari’s brows arched. “But you took it.”
“Well, yeah, ’cause that’s a pretty paycheck, and I had this crazy notion that if I found you, I might be able to pull a team together and get it done.”
Ari spread a hand and canted his head in acknowledgement. After all, Carter had managed just that.
“Found him,” Remi announced. “Emura, no last name. Registered six months ago as a broker. Has only seven jobs on his resume. Here, Uncle K, I’m sharing screens.”
Ari and Ivan leaned over her shoulder to get a look. The reaction was pretty much instantaneous and simultaneous.
“Chert svoloch.”
“Figlio di puttana.”
“This bastard again?”
Carter’s head swiveled between them, alarm climbing. “Just how bad is this guy?”
“That is Derek Collins. Last job I took from him, he gave me bad intel,” Ivan filled in with a growl. “Got shot. Ari had to come save my hide. And he didn’t pay me.”
“I had to hack his account to get the payment,” K threw in, still growling like a wounded bear. “We reported him to the site and they revoked his access. He should not be back on here, even with a fake name and photo. Damn him for aging that photo—that’s no doubt how he got around the security filters. Dammit. Good job, Rems. I’ll flag this guy and get him booted again. This time, it better take. This bastard is not trustworthy.”
To say Carter was dismayed was a vast understatement. “Well, shit. Now what?”
“I can find a way to contact our client directly,” K offered. “No reason to ditch the job just because of this bastard. Although the question of the painting is…I don’t know, guys. Do we really need a perfect forgery for this?”
Ivan’s head waffled back and forth. “Njet. I do not think so. We need a painting only to fool security cameras, right? Just long enough for us to get out and clear? It doesn’t have to be forgery to do that.”
Carter nodded slowly, his mind taking hold of this idea. “That’s true. A security camera won’t be able to tell the difference between a painting and a high-quality print of a painting. As long as it’s the right size, and on a canvas, does it matter?”
“As much as Lansky drives us crazy, he does pull through. Let’s not step on toes. Maybe contact him, tell him Emura’s a bad broker. Let him know we don’t need the painting,” Ari suggested.
Carter was always for preserving good will in the industry. “I
can do that. I have his phone number. You all okay with this plan?”
“Yeah, only thing that makes sense. I guarantee you Lansky isn’t anywhere near done with the forgery. A Monet? He’ll still be at it a year later.” K laced his fingers together and stretched them before settling them on the keyboard and typing like a madman. “I’m contacting the site admin now and reporting Emura. They’re slow, though, the job might be done before they get their acts together. Let’s assume we’ll have to work around Emura for now.”
Carter nodded. “Okay.”
“Harrison, what do you know about Knowles?”
“Very little, but enough to know I don’t want to tackle it alone. Knowles is ostensibly a showcase for the Knox family. They don’t actually live there most of the time, although the mansion can house about fifty people. The top three floors are bedrooms, pools, tennis courts, ballrooms, and a massive gallery to showcase their art and jewelry collection. There’s a vault somewhere on the property that stores anything they’re not interested in displaying. They’ve got their own private security company made up of a lot of mean men with guns, and they’re not rent-a-cops. These guys are pros. They can more or less be gotten around, I think. Here’s the problem.” Carter faltered. “Actually, you know the problem better than I do.”
Ari snorted in wry agreement. “That we do.”
“Tell me, tell me,” Remi encouraged, bouncing in place.
Turning her a little in his lap, Ivan faced her, ticking things off on his fingers as he listed their problems. “Solnishko, it’s like this: the place is a fortress. The vault has walls two feet thick, made with steel reinforced concrete. The doors are blast doors with lockdown bolts—”