Detect Me

by Selma Wolfe

  She debated calling back her friends, ultimately deciding against it. They were good enough friends to ask how she was doing, but not good enough friends for Nikki to really tell them. No fault of their own; mostly hers in fact. Ben had told Nikki she had trust issues, and maybe he’d been right.

  There had been other problems too. Like the fact that Nikki had barely come up for air her whole last year. She had spent the year bent over a canvas, working frantically, trying so hard to piece herself together as an artist that somebody would want. She’d poured herself into her craft and slopped out around the edges. And in the end, instead of coming together, everything had fallen apart.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Nikki glimpsed the corner of something bright red and orange peeking out from behind her bookcase. She almost gasped out loud, but didn’t – it would have felt too silly, alone in her apartment like this. Instead she made a strangled sort of noise and walked over to shove the canvas back out of sight. She used her foot rather than her hand and imagined kicking the stupid thing, absolutely wrecking it, but in the end she just gently nudged it away.

  While she was staring at the blank wall – not exactly white, more of a cream or beige – her phone rang. Nikki’s heart leapt into her throat. It couldn’t be… She remembered Mark’s smile and her mouth went dry. She hit “receive” without thinking twice.

  “Good moooooorning,” a raspy voice trilled on the other end, and Nikki physically winced away from the phone. Her free hand clenched hard enough to hurt.

  “Hi Mom,” she said. She had only her own idiocy to blame for this treat. “And it’s not morning. I’ve been up all day, seriously.”

  “Sure you have, sweetness. And how’s the sketching going? Got a place in the National Archives yet?” Her mother huffed out a laugh that clawed at Nikki’s stomach.

  She breathed in and out. “I’ve told you, I don’t expect… No. Okay? You know that isn’t happening so why do you keep asking?”

  “Aw, darlin’, I just like to show an interest; offer my support. Still keeping the lights on, or…?”

  “Yes,” Nikki ground out. “I told you, there was more than enough money left over from that prize I won.”

  “You were in school, so it seemed a bit like stealing to use it that way,” her mother said, sounding just as mystified as she had every single other time she’d brought it up in the past year. “But you know best, I suppose.”

  “It’s not the same thing as my scholarship money, Mom.” Nikki heard her voice rising and tried to calm herself down.

  “Sure, honey. It’s not a problem,” her mom said. “It’s a big city out there for a little girl like you. I’m sure you’ll do anything and everything you have to. If you can’t handle it, I can send you some money. Just let me know.”

  Nikki was pretty sure she’d actually rather stab herself in the face and get the insurance money. “No thanks, Mom. Say, you done any drawing recently?” It was a low blow, but she didn’t feel all that bad about it.

  Her mom’s tone went from thick honey to a string about to snap in an instant. “Of course not. What’s the point? Nobody gets anywhere with art. It’s a loser’s game, unless you’re some kind of genius.” Enough of a loophole not to be a direct insult, though Nikki knew what she meant.

  Nikki sighed. Things were so much better when Dad was still around and she could ask for the phone to be passed over. He didn’t have much to say, but that was a virtue in itself after an earful of Mom. But maybe Dad was the problem – if it hadn’t been for him Mom wouldn’t have given up all her dreams to move to a dusty Midwest town, and regretted it later.

  No matter how much of a screw-up she was, Nikki wasn’t willing to risk that life. She’d go for broke or die trying.

  “I better go, Mom. Um… uh… Charm! He’s escaping!”

  “What fool thing are you on about?” her mom asked, honestly mystified this time.

  “I got a pet iguana,” Nikki said, resigning herself to a truckload of horror stories about lizards appearing in her email tomorrow. It was worth it. Grievous bodily harm would have been worth getting out of this phone call.

  “What? You have got to be…”

  “Gotta go!” Nikki shouted, and clicked the phone off decisively.

  She stood in the middle of the room for a moment with her hand at her side, breathing hard. For once in its miserable life, Charm poked its head up from underneath its log to stare at her with unblinking black eyes.

  “Don’t judge me,” she told the iguana. It stuck its tongue out at her.

  Then she sighed.

  There was no way she wasn’t going back to Mark’s office tomorrow morning.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A knock at the door startled Mark to his feet.

  He stared at the clock - 9:30AM, a respectable hour for people to be up and about, particularly people that had been invited - and shook his head. A year and a half later and he was still jumping at shadows and odd noises.

  It made him feel wretched, but the way he felt about it didn’t change the fact that his pencil was shaking in his hand.

  He dropped the pencil onto the desk.

  “Dammit,” he said quietly. Then he lifted his head and shouted, “Come in!” Mark ground his teeth and fought to keep his heart from racing.

  He couldn’t stop himself from heaving a sigh of relief when the door swung open to reveal Nikki’s slim silhouette, framed in the shadows beyond the doorway.

  “Am I late?” she asked. She stepped forward into the light and gave him a wry twist of a smile. “Or am I early?”

  “Neither,” Mark said, and to his surprise he managed a small but honest smile himself. “This is a 24 hour party.”

  He tried not to fidget as Nikki turned a critical eye on him. She was wearing a high-waisted black skirt with a white shirt tucked into it just below her bust line. The hem of the skirt was at least four inches above her knees. It was all very distracting. And Mark knew that the evidence of his own tendency to forget about things like food and sleep were showing on his face.

  “When was the last time you slept?” Nikki asked tentatively.

  Mark frowned, partially out of irritation and partially because he was having difficulty remembering. “I was re-reading old case files.”

  “That’s not actually an answer,” Nikki said. Inexplicably she grinned at him, her eyes lighting up in her face. Mark’s stomach turned over.

  Lack of food, he told himself. This was what happened when you survived on vending machines stocked by anorexic secretaries.

  “Why don’t you sit,” he said, waving vaguely at the chair in front of his desk. She sat down obediently, but with an amused expression that made him think obedience was the exception, not the rule with her.

  Mark sat back down himself and looked at Nikki, who stared back patiently. They just sat there for a moment. There were words… words he was supposed to be saying… things they needed to talk about, he was sure…

  He ran his fingers through his hair and heaved a huge sigh.

  “Sometimes I can’t sleep,” he blurted out.

  Nikki rocked back in her seat, and for a second he thought she was going to get up and leave. He wouldn’t have blamed her. Mark had asked - demanded, really - that she come back to his office and now that she was sitting in front of him, he couldn’t push his brain through the fog and think.

  “Sometimes I can’t sleep either,” Nikki said, her voice gentle but not pitying. He was ludicrously grateful. “Did you have a bad breakup too?”

  “Actually yes, sort of,” Mark said. They shared a rueful smile, comrades in arms, and just like that his mind kicked into gear again.

  He grabbed hold of the exhaustion so that rather than weighing him down, it buzzed in his veins like caffeine, making him jittery and attentive rather than sluggish. Mark leaned forward across the desk and started to sort through the sheaves of papers scattered over his desk.

  One by one he handed Nikki pertinent files, and she scanned thro
ugh them without wasting any time on small talk. A tiny part of him regretted that.

  “So far Ghost has hit Paris, London, and Amsterdam,” Nikki said in an undertone, like she was talking to herself more than Mark. “The trick is figuring out where Ghost’s going next. Do you have any other information? Other spottings? Maybe if we can figure out where they are now, we could guess what they’re going to hit next.”

  Mark nodded and got to his feet. “Sure, but Starry Night is on loan right now, so it’s probably not the obvious choice.” He tried not to feel too smug when Nikki’s eyebrows shot up.

  “You did your research,” she said, sounding equal parts shocked and impressed. “After what I said yesterday, about the art.”

  Mark shrugged and tried to look nonchalant. “I listen,” he said.

  Nikki sternly told her stomach, which was attempting to sprout butterflies, that it was being stupid and presumptive and teenager-ish besides. Mark was a detective. It was his job to gather up any information he could. Why wouldn’t he listen to her? She was an expert, of sorts, even if it had never been acknowledged by anyone but Mark.

  She covertly watched Mark move around the room, striding from shelf to shelf and grabbing file folders without even looking. His face was set with determination, and though the sight of him lit up with that fire from within made her pulse race, it also made her heart sink. This was who Mark was - the kind of man who was in his office so much that he’d memorized the latitude and longitude of every file.

  “Here you go,” Mark said, thrusting a huge stack of papers at her. “Ordered from most recent to least recent, of course.”

  “Of course,” Nikki echoed. She glanced down absently, wishing with all her heart that she could make herself stop wanting the full force of Mark’s attention to be focused on her.

  Nikki stared at the headline at the top of the front page, and hey, wish granted. Suddenly she had bigger problems. Because Ghost was in… New York.

  “The MoMA,” she said numbly. Mark stared at her, his motion finally stilled and focused on her, and the gears in her brain started turning. “The Museum of Modern Art - oh my God, that’s where Ghost is going next. It’s the exhibit they’re renovating! The Ghost - Mark, they’re going to steal it tonight!”

  “What?” Mark frowned and then suddenly he was jammed up beside her, crowding over to the desk to peer at the file, his shoulder rubbing against hers. Nikki noticed that as quickly and urgently as he was moving, he barely jostled her arm. He was careful, she thought. And warm.

  Mark flattened his hand over the first page and fanned the contents of the file across the desk. “Why do you think the thief is going to the MoMA? Why now? I did some research on their stuff, and Starry Night is being loaned overseas right now. The MoMA’s getting it back next week. That was when I expected a strike.”

  It was hard for Nikki to concentrate with Mark’s shoulder bleeding a line of heat down her still-damp side. She shuffled away and turned to look at him. Instantly she saw that Mark had noticed her move; his eyes narrowed slightly and she saw guards slide up that hadn’t been there a second ago during the thrill of the chase. A forlorn shiver of regret ran up her spine.

  “Because Starry Night isn’t the only Van Gogh the MoMA owns,” she told him quickly, hoping absurdly that if she spilled enough information, maybe Mark would forget to throw up all his walls. “They also have an earlier painting. It’s called The Olive Trees. And tonight it’s going to be taken down from its place in order to have repairs done.”

  “I’ve never heard of that painting,” Mark said, though Nikki noticed that his body went very still; rigid with anticipation. “All the paintings stolen so far have been big ones, pieces everyone has heard of. Why would the thief take something unknown?”

  Mark’s light blue eyes watched her carefully. The two of them were still close; enough so that when he took a small step forward, she thought she could feel his body heat again, stretching across the distance and making Nikki yearn for human contact in a way she hadn’t since she’d dumped Ben. She wanted to feel the touch of Mark’s skin so badly that it scared her.

  Words bunched up inside her throat and she talked as quickly as possible, trying to push away her demons with jumbled sentences that laid bare for Mark everything she knew.

  “Because it’s not unknown. Not to anyone truly interested in art. It’s the partner of Starry Night. Van Gogh painted it while he was institutionalized. Impressionism is all about light, and that’s what The Olive Trees is. It’s… important,” Nikki said, helpless to explain things properly with her thoughts snarled and tangled and her body at war with her mind. Her body didn’t want to just talk to Mark. But her mind was screaming at her to run; warning Nikki that this kind of over-investment in such a short amount of time was horribly dangerous.

  She recognized that fire in Mark that had attracted her to other men in the past; that brilliance and drive. But brilliant, captivating men didn’t make good lovers. They made cold beds and quiet tears.

  “I see,” Mark said quietly, still staring at her. “It’s the light to the other painting’s darkness.”

  Something inside Nikki’s stomach tightened painfully. “Yes,” she whispered, feeling lost already.

  What Mark needed to do right now was to focus 110% on the case, the way he always did. This random tip was precisely what he’d been looking for; a chance to get ahead of the thief and beat them at their own game. He needed a plan, and fast.

  But it was hard to focus when the woman - Nikki - was looking at him like that.

  She looked sad, unquestionably sad, with the corners of her lips tugged down and her eyes meltingly soft. But there was something else about her expression, something… captivated. Like she couldn’t look away. From the case? From him?

  Mark opened his mouth to thank her for her time and say that he needed to get to work.

  What came out was, “Where do you think should we go?”

  We. He winced internally, but he didn’t take the words back.

  Nikki’s eyes widened and all at once the hurt dropped away from her face, to be replaced by confusion and cautious hope. That was worth it, Mark had to reluctantly admit to himself. He couldn’t afford to get overly involved with anyone, least of all a woman as pretty and sweet as this one. But Mark couldn’t beat down the irresistible impulse inside of him to try to push away that lingering melancholy on Nikki’s face. He wanted to make her smile.

  Oh God, he was so screwed.

  “We…” Nikki said cautiously, pausing like she was waiting to be contradicted. When Mark said nothing, she kept going with more confidence, “should probably go straight to the MoMA. There isn’t a minute to waste. They don’t like to take down big exhibits like that for more than a day, so I’m sure they’re working on it right now. We could talk to the front desk and find out where they’re working with the painting.”

  No mention of running to the police for help. Mark liked her more every minute. This was definitely going to be a problem.

  “Okay.” He nodded. “Got a coat? We’re off.”

  As was his complete lack of self-control.

  Nikki snapped her cell phone shut and had to hurry across the sidewalk to where Mark was waiting, patiently holding the cab door open. She’d thought it would take him longer to flag someone down. Mark hailed a taxi with the easy confidence of someone who always had the money for a ride.

  If Nikki had known him better, she would have loved to know where he got that money from. Because if mystery novels were any indication, detective work wasn’t exactly a lucrative career. She suspected by Mark’s confidence and clothes that he had been born into money and was free to follow his passion for investigation without worrying about funds.

  It must be nice, she thought.

  She probably should have been resentful, but it was difficult when Mark held the cab door open for her and told the driver to wait until Nikki’s seatbelt was buckled to start driving.

  “Nobody buckles thei
r seatbelt in cabs,” she told him, repeating the girl who had laughed at her during her first week in the city. Nikki could still feel the incredulous shriek of mirth sting her ears, and she glanced down reflexively to make sure she was wearing city-girl-appropriate clothes and not an old, stained sweater or something equally unimaginable.

  Mark raised his eyebrow as the taxi started to jerk its way through traffic, giving the ABS a good workout. “Don’t they?” he said, politely disbelieving. “Well, I prefer it when women who travel with me arrive at their destinations intact.”

  It made Nikki feel slightly silly, but it also quieted the old laughter echoing in her ears.

  She turned her head to watch the city go by outside the window. Instead, she ended up watching Mark’s reflection.

  Nikki meant to berate herself for running thoughtlessly after a man that she couldn’t afford to be as attracted to as she was. But the quiet of the cab settled over her like a blanket. For the first time in a long time, she felt… comfortable. At ease. The inside of the cab was warm, she could see the subtle angle of Mark’s head as he kept an eye on her, and the silence felt effortless.

  “Here you are,” the driver said. The cab screeched to a halt and Nikki’s eyes flew open. She yanked her head around to look at Mark, almost panicked. She’d meant to spend time thinking about what the hell she was doing and how to get out of it, and instead she’d just relaxed into the seat and wondered what would happen if she accidentally-on-purpose fell asleep on Mark’s shoulder.

  Mark was already sliding out of the taxi, though, and all she saw was the back of his head. His hair was a bit long at the back, like it needed to be cut but he’d forgotten. Nikki shoved at a wave of affection that threatened to rise up inside her. Distracted by her traitorous emotions, when Mark smiled at her and gestured for her to come, she smiled right back and followed.