A Brilliant Deception

by Kim Foster

  The truth was, I was relieved he was here. Having Jack on our team made it a hell of a lot more likely we’d succeed, and I desperately needed this to be a success. But I wondered if it was possible . . . had he come here for me?

  No was the answer that immediately came into my head. Not possible. In spite of all our history together, he’d made it quite clear that he was over me. The question was: would I ever be completely over him?

  We continued working on our plan as the sky grew dark outside. The later we pushed, the more difficulty I had concentrating. I knew it was more than just being tired. Documents began swimming before my eyes.

  “Okay, well, what about an escape from the rooftop?” Ethan suggested as we brainstormed exit strategies. “Any chance we could get a helicopter, last-minute?”

  Jack stared at him a moment before speaking. “Please. There are a million ways that could go wrong. Does anyone have a serious suggestion?”

  “Hey, no need to get cranky,” Ethan said, glaring at Jack. “You haven’t come up with anything, I’ve noticed. What are you doing here, again? Oh, that’s right, playing the knight, sweeping in to save us all—”

  “Do you want to step outside, Jones?”

  “Enough,” I said sharply, turning on them both. “Listen, you two need to play nice.”

  And then the floor tilted and the edges of my vision went black and fuzzy. The room grew incredibly hot. I felt like I was suffocating . . .

  The next thing I knew I was on the floor, my cheek pressed against the scratchy wool rug. My eyes fluttered open. Jack and Ethan were close, in my face, gazing at me worriedly and snarling at each other.

  “I knew you should have taken her to a doctor—” Jack said.

  “Not helping, Jack,” Ethan spat back.

  My head felt thick. I tried to sit up but failed.

  “Would you two give the woman some room?” Esmerelda said, pulling them away, clearing some space for me.

  Esmerelda helped me up to the couch, and my mind started to clear. My first emotion was anger at myself for looking so weak. How were they going to trust me to be effective in this operation? A sinking feeling of dread settled in my stomach. How was I going to trust myself?

  At least there was one benefit to my little fainting episode. I noticed Jack and Ethan were now working together—they were in the kitchenette fetching me a glass of water and a cool cloth.

  I grimaced; it was not the way I wanted to get them to cooperate.

  I closed my eyes and sank back in the couch, racked with anxiety and guilt and frustration. When was I going to be back to normal? And, more importantly, would it be soon enough for Felix?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The next morning I left the hotel early. It had been a fitful, restless night, filled with shadowy nightmares about my mom. I awoke with an ache in my chest and a desperate need for fresh air. I walked out onto the streets of Venice in search of coffee.

  Venice, in the morning, had a dreamlike quality. The air was hazy and had a pleasant, salty heaviness to it. The sounds of the canals lapping the lower walls of the buildings, lazy and peaceful, reached my ears at every bridge and waterside path. Gondolas sliced through smooth water, gondoliers pointing out the sights to their passengers in rolling Italian, only occasionally bursting into a few notes of song—to the delight of their passengers.

  I strolled along a small canal and took a sip of coffee, a quick burst of delicious espresso topped with heavenly foam. The barista had given me a peculiar look when I asked to take my coffee with me. It wasn’t something people did here, but I very much wanted to walk.

  It wasn’t until I’d been walking for at least twenty minutes that I realized something: I hadn’t had any dizzy spells yet. I wondered how long it would last. I didn’t dare hope they were gone for good.

  I glanced at my watch. It was almost eight o’clock. I knew I should be getting back to the hotel to continue making plans with the team . . . but there was something therapeutic about this fresh Venetian morning. I was desperate to feel like my old self again; I would be no help to Felix unless I did. I’d give myself ten more minutes, then head back.

  I crossed the majestically arching Rialto Bridge and arrived in the heart of an outdoor market. It bustled with the early rush of people shopping, picking up bread and fresh vegetables for the day. All around me were the sounds of shoppers haggling and old friends greeting one another, as bent Italian nonnas inspected tomatoes and filled string bags with lemons and lettuces.

  As I wandered, I passed a bookseller’s tiny stall. A book titled Crociate stopped me. Crociate was the Italian word for the Crusades. That had been Richard the Lionheart’s quest, I was pretty sure. My history was fuzzy, but I was reasonably certain of that.

  The merchant saw me looking at the book. “Vuoi guardare?” he said, asking me if I’d like to look at the book. Since being in Venice, I’d surprised myself by how quickly my Italian was coming back to me.

  “Posso?” May I?

  He nodded. I reached forward and took the book in my hands, flipping through the first few pages. The book was old and the pages carried a musty smell.

  He watched me carefully. “Se siete interesati alle Crociate, si dovrebbe guardare a questo libro,” he said. The bookseller held up another book—this was the one I should really look at, if I was interested in the Crusades.

  “Grazie.” I put down the first one and picked this one up. It had a plainer cover, true, but as I flipped through, the images, the depth of the detail was much richer, I could see that straightaway.

  As I paged through the book, we shared small talk about the weather, and the cost of gas in Italy—there were many grave remarks made about the recent price spike. Then I told him I was curious about Richard the Lionheart. Did he know anything about the history?

  The book merchant’s eyes twinkled. “Ah, yes, King Richard,” he said, in Italian. “Venice is part of his story. A very important part. Did you know this?”

  I looked up, and responded in Italian. “No, actually. I didn’t know that.”

  He nodded. “But . . . it is not talked about much in books. And I am not really the expert.”

  I felt a twinge of disappointment and looked down at the book I was holding.

  “But I know someone who is,” he added.

  My head lifted.

  He smiled. “You would like to speak to him? Come with me.” He told his assistant to mind the stall for a moment, and then brought me to a neighboring stall, two down.

  I walked into the tiny space filled with glass vases and ornaments and bottles in candy colors of crimson and turquoise, curled like frozen honey into fanciful shapes, glittering like jewels. I knew glassblowing was an ancient skill in Venice, the city’s most famous artistry. Even so, my breath was taken at the magic of the glass.

  The bookseller greeted the glassblower with the double-cheek kiss of familiar Italian locals.

  “Giuseppe, I have someone here who has an interest in the Lionheart,” he said, indicating me. The glassblower looked at me appraisingly. The bookseller smiled and nodded to me, then excused himself and returned to his stall of old books.

  “You are interested in the story of King Richard, when he was here in Venice?”

  “Yes.”

  He shrugged. “Well, there are books. You can read those,” he said, turning back to his work polishing his glass pieces.

  My shoulders dropped. It was a test. I would need to prove my worthiness in some way. “I wonder—do you know anything about this?” I pulled out a photograph of the Lionheart Ring—the one I had folded inside my purse.

  His face changed, his eyes sparkling like the ruby in the picture. “Of course. It has been a very long time. And I’ve never seen an actual photograph . . . but I have read descriptions. This was the Lionheart Ring. He was wearing it when he was shipwrecked.”

  “How do you know that? Is that in here somewhere?” I pointed to the cover of the book.

  He shook his head.
“The truth of that is barely mentioned in any books. But I know because my family has always lived in Venice. And this is the story I have always been told. It was passed down through the generations. My ancestors owned the home where part of the crew hid, while they gathered supplies.”

  He told me the story of how they camped near here while they prepared for their overland journey. The journey had ended in disaster—it had not been long before Richard the Lionheart had been captured by his enemy, Leopold V, duke of Austria. He was held prisoner for over a year, until the ransom was paid and he was released.

  “But when they captured the king, they did not capture the Lionheart Ring,” he said.

  “How did they keep it safe?”

  “King Richard gave the ring to a trusted man—someone who went on his own way to England, secretly, and carried the ring home.”

  “Do you know who this man was?”

  A knowing smile curled over his leathery face. “A trustworthy man who had been by his side during the Crusades: his most skillful archer, and a man with a great talent for stealth. They called him Lox.”

  “ ‘Lox’? Who was he?”

  “You perhaps know him by the more complete name he used in his home in England.”

  “Which was?”

  “Robin of Loxley.”

  Robin Hood.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Well, that certainly explains things,” Jack said, once I told everyone what I’d learned. I had raced back to the hotel and found them all gathered in Jack’s room. “If Richard gave the ring to Robin Hood, then he didn’t steal it at all.”

  Esmerelda nodded thoughtfully. “It would explain why the description and story of the ring, and its location, were obscure and lost to history. And it would explain why the existence of the Lionheart Ring is not well-known in modern times.”

  I had lost track of time in the market and stayed too long. My insides squirmed with anxiety over Felix—a prisoner of his enemies, just like Richard the Lionheart. We had to get in there—ready or not—and get him out.

  Ethan cleared his throat. “Well, it’s all very interesting, but it doesn’t help us much. We need to get to work if we’re going to do this job tonight.” He turned to me. “Montgomery, how are you feeling? You seem . . . a little better.”

  I was a lot better. The fuzziness, the difficulty concentrating, it had all settled to a low hum now. My balance felt solid again. I wasn’t perfect, but I was pretty sure I could do my job again, and it was perhaps as good as it was going to get . . .

  “Wait—did you say tonight?” I said, snapping out of my reverie. We had planned to take at least another day to do surveillance and map our approach. We had to get this right.

  Ethan nodded grimly.

  “Why?” I asked, feeling anxious. “Why tonight?”

  “Because of this,” Ethan said, turning to Esmerelda. “Show her what you saw when you went out to get bread this morning.”

  Esmerelda handed her phone to me. I stared at a photograph of Hendrickx stepping off a vaporetto, the Venetian water taxis.

  “He’s here,” she said.

  Shit.

  Several hours later I was sitting among silk and wool blankets on the seat of a gleaming black gondola as it glided through the water. Jack stood at the back of the boat wearing a gondolier’s uniform. I wore the disguise of a woman on her way to the opera, a full-length formal gown.

  Venice in the evening was washed with violet and indigo. Lanterns perched on top of spindly posts cast sparkles into the glittering canals. Shadowy buildings lined tiny alleys and even tinier waterways.

  Under my gold silk, long-sleeved Alexander McQueen gown I wore a wet suit. Under the red and gold brocade blanket in the gondola was a scuba tank.

  We turned a corner, gliding gently around a building, and found ourselves in a tiny side canal, out of sight. Jack kept silent watch while I slipped off the dress, strapped on the scuba tank, and prepared to go in the water. We knew where the Lionheart was being kept in the palazzo. There was only one secure vault in the place, and that had to be where they were keeping it. It had a large amount of steel, and electronic signatures of a laser grid inside the vault.

  I was going after the Lionheart Ring, while Ethan and Jack were going to rescue Felix.

  When we’d been hammering out the plan, I had fought them over that part. “I have to go and get him,” I’d protested. “He was my responsibility in Yorkshire.”

  “Cat, you are a jewel thief,” Jack had said. “Not a rescue specialist, not an operative. Do what you do best. We need both parts of the plan to come together, right? We need to retrieve both Felix and the ring for this to be a success.”

  “From what we can see,” Esmerelda had said, “there’s much more security guarding Felix than the ring. It’s a two-man job, Cat. I understand your impulse—but it will really work better this way.”

  Esmerelda’s role in this op was simple: she would function as the lookout, for everyone, from her vantage point of a neighboring palazzo with a pair of computers and surveillance equipment.

  “Why are you helping us take the ring, anyway, Esmerelda? I thought you didn’t care about ownership,” I’d asked her.

  She’d smiled. “No, the DOA doesn’t care. I care very much.” It didn’t surprise me. She was a woman with a strong sense of right and wrong. It was why she’d come to my rescue in Paris, why she’d put herself at risk to help me in a moment of great need.

  I’d looked down at the plan, all our surveillance data. They were right. There was far more security and personnel attached to Felix. The ring theft was a solo job. If things went south with the rescue, Ethan and Jack would have to take out a lot of people to get to Felix. Something they would be much better equipped to do than me.

  “I guess they don’t trust him,” Ethan had said. “They think he’ll try to escape. They’re not worried about the ring doing the same.”

  Both Ethan and I—the professional thieves in the room—had scoffed at that. It was typical naïveté—throw up some technology to protect it, and assume it would be fine. It was said that Caliga had lost the finer points of burglary. Here was more evidence of the truth in that. Sure, they could storm into a lab, shooting whoever stood in their way and retrieve something valuable. But as for understanding the thief’s art? They didn’t seem to put much stock in that.

  I finally consented to the plan, because in the end, I knew if anyone could pull it off it was Jack and Ethan. Not that they wouldn’t be at each other’s throats the whole time. They were like chalk and cheese. Ethan, the crook, never took anything seriously; Jack, the lawman, took everything seriously. Though I had to admit, those lines were blurring lately. I hoped they would be able to put their differences aside for a couple of hours.

  I dropped into the chilly water of the canal, the surface quickly swallowing me up, and then calmly descended toward the underwater hatch beneath Caliga’s palazzo. At least I hoped it was there. It had been an ancient hatch, faintly scratched out within the old blueprints.

  Bubbles fizzed upward like champagne, and spears of silvery moonlight shimmered through the indigo water around me. I made my way through the wood piles the city was built on, using an underwater GPS for navigation. Soon, I was directly underneath the palazzo. I turned on a high-power flashlight.

  This palazzo had once belonged to the Venetian Mafia, and a secret underwater entrance would have no doubt come in handy for their smuggling enterprises. Or body disposal.

  The hatch had been cemented shut long ago, however. I would need to drill through it with a plasma cutter to gain entry.

  I cut the hole in the floor and pushed the door up, swinging it open on ancient hinges. I pulled myself up and into the antechamber. It was a large, empty room, dark and damp.

  I removed my oxygen tank and left it by the hatch.

  Creeping across the stone-walled room, at last I stood in front of the safe. I took a deep breath and started to crack into it, knowing the Lionheart
Ring was just on the other side. I briefly wondered what else they might have stashed in this safe. The Fabergé egg? I couldn’t think about it, I had to focus on safecracking. I wanted to be quick about it and get out of there in case things got ugly upstairs with the rescue effort.

  I focused my vision to a pinpoint, blocking out the sounds of water dripping, shutting out all thoughts other than this safe. Three of the four tumblers gave way to my coaxing. I started on the fourth and final one, not letting myself get too excited.

  A soft sound scuffed on the floor behind me. I froze, hand on the lock.

  “Hello, Cat. I knew you’d be here sooner or later,” a woman said calmly. Brooke Sinclair.

  One word stuck out in that sentence: here.

  Slowly, I turned toward her. “Brooke. I suppose you’re here for the Lionheart, too?”

  Her mouth twitched. “It’s worse than that, actually. I work for Caliga now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Ethan nimbly climbed across clay roof tiles, the luminous Venetian waters far below.

  “I’m on the roof,” he whispered into his earpiece. “You in position, Barlow?”

  Jack’s voice rumbled in Ethan’s ear. “Almost there.”

  Ethan looked down. The faint outline of Jack’s gondola had reached the water’s edge of the small campo. Ethan jumped down to the third-floor loggia—a columned, partially enclosed balcony, just below the roof. It was furnished with chaise lounges and a small mosaic table, potted ferns and climbing vines.

  “Okay, I’m lowering the rope,” Ethan said. The climbing rope dropped silently down and unfurled at Jack’s feet.

  Without wasting a second, Jack grabbed it and began to climb. “If I hear one crack about Rapunzel . . .”

  “You said it, not me,” Ethan replied. He could hear, through his earpiece, the efforts of Jack’s climb. He was doing a good job being silent, only making an occasional grunt.

  It irked Ethan to be working with Jack, but at the same time he had confidence in the man. Jack was competent—strong, fast, intelligent. Of course, even thinking those things annoyed Ethan.