“What?”
“You’re in blackface.” He shook his head at me in mock disapproval.
“I have black makeup on. I’m not in blackface. It’s a little different.”
“How is it different?” He raised an eyebrow, amused.
“I’m not portraying a black person in a silent film. I’m hiding my identity. Stop being—”
“Someone’s coming,” he snapped, noticing one of the camera feeds.
I quickly lowered back into my stall and lifted my feet up. Someone came into the bathroom and into the stall on the other side of me.
First, there was grunting. Then an array of disgusting bathroom sounds, all loud and in quick succession. Then more grunting. Then a few more sounds. And then the smell wafted into my stall.
I silently clamped my hand over my nose and mouth, but it was too late.
Oh god, the smell is in my mouth. Oh fuck, I can taste it. Oh god. Make it stop. So gross.
Rhys chuckled in the next stall but quickly turned it into a fake cough.
The man in the Stall of the Stench sighed loudly, muttered something under his breath and flushed. After he washed his hands and left, Rhys burst out laughing and I groaned.
“Oh my god,” I said, waving my hands frantically in the air around me. “What the fuck was that?”
“I have no idea what that man ate. Maybe I don’t want to know.” I heard Rhys typing. “Alright. People are leaving the gallery.”
I stood up on the back of the toilet and just prayed not to fall through the porcelain cover. I carefully shifted a ceiling tile to the side, and Rhys helped me up into the ceiling.
“Really, you don’t need to put your hand on my butt to help me up.”
“No, I think it’s better I do.”
Tummy down, I crawled further in, the metal grating of the ceiling tiles squeaking as I moved across them. Rhys lifted his laptop and backpack up to me before pulling himself up. Lying on his stomach, he slid the ceiling tile back into place, hiding us from view.
Moments after he got up there with me, someone came in the bathroom, stopping at each stall. I froze and held my breath. It had to be a security guard checking for people in the bathroom. He left, and Rhys and I both exhaled.
“Now what?” I whispered.
Rhys opened his laptop, and we watched the security video feed. A cleaning lady swept the floor and scrubbed the toilets just a few feet below us. She sang a song to herself as she mopped.
We stayed absolutely still, taking shallow, silent breaths. The combination of the heat in the ceiling and the thick black face paint made my skin moist. I felt a bead of sweat slide down the side of my face. I couldn’t wipe it away without moving, and I couldn’t move without making a noise. I even tried blinking quieter.
The cleaner left, and we both exhaled again.
“My foot is asleep,” Rhys whispered.
We continued watching the security feed on his laptop. The man I assumed was the gallery curator or owner or whatever, the guy who spoke at the event the night before, finally left, the guard locking the door behind him. That guard relocated to a chair in the corner and played a game on his phone. Another guard stayed in a chair next to the Picasso, which now had a velvet rope around it. The third guard was in a different part of the gallery, closer to the bathrooms. We could only assume the guard upstairs watching the video feed was getting drowsy by now, if not already asleep.
“How are we going to know if that guard is asleep or not?” I looked at Rhys. “What if he doesn’t even have a coffee?”
“That … is a good question. I guess we assume he’s asleep if he doesn’t come out for an hour.”
The feed showed the cleaner leaving through the back exit. Our car was parked back there. Hopefully she wouldn’t notice an unfamiliar car parked back there.
“What about the footage of us parking—”
“Already found it. Already deleted it.”
“And other security cameras in the area?”
“I checked them all out. None of them point to the back exit. We’re fine.”
I smiled at him. “Who’s a good boy? You’re a good boy. Yes, you are.”
The glow from the laptop screen lit up Rhys’s face. He grinned. “Hush, you.”
I pulled my legs tight together. “I have to pee. How much longer do we have to wait?”
“At least until ten.”
I groaned and shifted positions. My arm was asleep, but my bladder was very awake.
And so we waited. And we watched. And we waited. And we watched. The guard in the upstairs room never came out, and the guards downstairs mostly just read books or played on their phones.
“Shit,” Rhys said, his eyes growing larger. “Someone is going to check on the guy upstairs.”
We watched on the laptop as the guard opened the door to the security feed room, looked in and then laughed. The guard took a picture with his phone from the doorway and then closed the door again. We waited a few more minutes. The sleeping guard still didn’t leave the room.
“Okay,” Rhys said. “I’m cutting the feed.” He typed quickly and brought the feed back up. One by one, they all went black.
We both slid on a pair of gloves and carefully moved the tile up and to the side. Rhys slid out first. I handed him the laptop. We’d come back for that later. He helped me down. He fetched another item from the bag—a green can with a metal handle on the side, connected to the top.
He winked at me. “This job is fun.”
Rhys handed me a fistful of tranquilizer darts from the backpack, raising an eyebrow at me. “You really think we’ll need twelve of these?”
I smiled wide. “You never know.”
He pulled a gas mask from the bag and over his face before handing me my mask.
“You ready?” Rhys said, his voice muffled behind the mask.
I nodded and slid the gas mask on.
The next ten seconds went so fast, yet I remember it all very clearly.
Rhys whipped open the bathroom door and took several long, running strides toward the main gallery room. He unlatched the smoke grenade and tossed it to the center of the main gallery room. Thick clouds of purple smoke filled the air as the guards yelled to one another.
Rhys disappeared into the purple, cloudy abyss. I could hear the guards coughing and gagging and dropping to their knees, one by one. The guard in the back rushed into the fog, running right to me. I stuck out my foot, and he fell onto his stomach. Before he knew what happened, I slammed a dart into the back of his leg. He fell limply over, his chin hitting the floor.
I panicked when things went silent. The can was still spewing out purple smoke, and it was all I could see.
Someone grabbed me from behind, yelling in French as he forced me up against a wall, pinning my left arm behind my back and my right arm tight against the wall. My arm scraped against the corner of some framed art, and I yelled as the sharp edge ripped across my skin. I wiggled my right hand free and jabbed him hard in the eyes. He backed away, slapping his hand over his eyes and wailing. I whipped around to face him and swung my foot up, nailing him between the legs. He coughed as he fell to his knees, and I finished him off with a tranquilizer dart to the back of the neck.
“Molly. Molly, where are you?” I heard Rhys whisper.
I touched my arm and felt the blood between my fingers.
“Fucker,” I whispered.
“What did I do?”
“No, not you! Where are you?”
The mist began to thin. Rhys was standing over a guard, slumped against a wall.
“You alright?”
I nodded. “I’m fine. Just a scratch.” I glared down at the guard who hurt me and kicked his limp leg in retaliation. “Upstairs. Let’s go.”
Rhys followed me up. I peered through the window in the door. Sure enough, the security guard was slumped over in his chair, sleeping soundly. Quickly and quietly, I whipped the door open and stepped close to the snoozing guard.
&
nbsp; I stuck the dart in the side of his neck. He didn’t even stir—he just kept sleeping, like we needed him to.
Rhys rummaged around the tiny office. “Now. Where is that little gift from our friend?”
A brown parcel, tucked neatly between the mini fridge and a table, caught my attention. I slid it out and ripped open the paper. This was it, the little gift that Sophie had left for us to help us complete the mission. And it was awesome.
We headed back downstairs, the parcel under my arm. The gallery was silent, except for the sounds of our footsteps. The fog was almost clear. Three security guards, out cold, lay on the floor.
Rhys and I went to work. He lifted the Picasso off the wall while I unwrapped Sophie’s present nearby. I slid the painted canvas out of its narrow cardboard box as Rhys took the Picasso from its frame.
We switched them.
Sophie’s painting in the box was a forgery of the real Picasso painting. It was an exact copy. Being so close with the curator at the gallery, she’d had the chance to see the painting before the gallery event. She was able to photograph every inch of it and replicate it in her workshop. It was a perfect match. And thus, the perfect crime.
We lay them side-by-side on the floor, admiring Sophie’s work.
I nodded in approval. “She might be a genius.”
Rhys tucked the real Picasso into the box while I put the forgery into the frame. He helped me mount the frame back on the wall.
Now it was time for cleanup. We grabbed the laptop, the backpack and the rest of our gear from the bathroom. I found some bleach in the supply closet and wiped down where my arm had been scraped. We checked the place for hair, wiped the bathroom stall down where our prints might be and looked for footprints we may have left. We got rid of the smoke grenade canister.
And since I was still a little ticked at the guard that hurt me, I found a marker in the office upstairs and drew a dick on his face.
Rhys laughed at me and tucked the boxed painting under his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
* * *
We drove for an hour and a half until we reached the address Sophie had given us. It was just outside of Paris, an idyllic little cottage surrounded by acres and acres of land in the countryside, secluded and away from prying eyes.
Sophie came rushing out when the headlights of our car lit up her front windows. She waved us inside, quickly scanning the road to make sure we hadn’t been followed.
Running my hand through my sweaty, sticky hair, I watched Rhys pull the Picasso from the slim cardboard box. He laid it out on the kitchen table.
When I spoke to Sophie about this plan at her flat in the city, she had been calm. Demure, even, about the whole thing. Now her hair was a little disheveled, and her eyes lit up at the sight of this artistic treasure displayed before us.
She lightly touched the bare canvas, lowered her face to it and smelled the paint. Her eyebrow twitched. She lifted up a corner of the wooden canvas and bit her lip.
“Help me turn this over,” she said, holding the bottom edges as Rhys flipped it over at the top end.
The sheet of wood looked very old. Various faded stickers clung to the board. A burn mark at the bottom in the corner, barely visible, caught Sophie’s attention. She narrowed her eyes at it.
“Merde,” she whispered.
Rhys and I exchanged glances.
Rhys, still holding the painting up at the opposite end from the burn mark, squinted at it. “What’s wrong?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Sophie?” I said gently.
“Do you see this burn mark?” She sighed. “It’s a branding mark from the company that made this wood. It’s very light, but you can see that it says ‘1917.’”
I looked closer. “Yes. I guess it does say that. So?”
Sophie and Rhys slowly flipped the painting back over so the painting was facing up on the table.
She sat down in a kitchen chair, her face blank, her eyes staring straight ahead. “It should say ‘1911.’”
Rhys and I looked at one another again.
“What? What do you mean?” Shit, shit, shit, no, no, no, shit, shit. “That could say ‘1911.’ That seven could easily be a one!”
“It doesn’t smell right. I’m so sorry,” Sophie said quietly. “This is a forgery.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Hold on just a minute,” Rhys said, waving his hands in the air front of him. “This is a forgery? Did we accidentally put the real Picasso painting back in the frame at the gallery?”
Sophie shook her head. “No. This is not my forgery. This is someone else’s forgery. It’s very good, but that burn is not right. I saw the real thing with my own eyes. And the smell of the paint is not quite right.”
Rhys winced and blinked quickly, all the pieces coming together in his mind but not quite connecting. “So … wait, what?”
Sophie sat in a rocking chair, crossing one leg over the other. “You stole a forgery … and replaced it with a different forgery.”
Rhys’s mouth dropped open.
“Shit,” I said, dumbstruck. “How did that even happen?”
She shook her head again, her wavy hair bouncing against her shoulders. “Someone else got to the real painting before you did.”
“What about the painting at the gallery event last night?” I stared at her. “Was that this painting?”
“No. I was there at the gallery when the real painting was being put into the frame before it was put out on the floor. Someone must have gotten to it last night after the event opening.”
“But that’s impossible,” Rhys said.
“Audrey is coming over to get this painting tomorrow so she can deliver it to her client.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “What are we gonna do?”
We all went silent.
Rhys shrugged. “We give her this painting.”
“What? No, we can’t do that—”
“He’s right,” Sophie said. “She won’t know the difference. Her client won’t know the difference. We’ll all get paid, and the deed is done. Nobody needs to know this isn’t the real thing.”
“And what happens when the real painting surfaces?” I said. “Audrey will have us all killed.”
“You two couldn’t tell the real painting from the forgery. Audrey can take it up with me if that happens, but I doubt it will. That painting is likely long gone by now.” Her eyes drifted to the forgery lying on her kitchen table. “A shame, really.”
I leaned against a nearby wall and considered our next move. “Alright. We stick with the original plan. Audrey will never know.” I looked at Sophie. “Are you a good liar?”
The corner of her lip curled up. “I’ll manage.”
* * *
After only a couple hours of sleep at the hotel, Rhys and I drove back to the airport outside of Paris. I was running late for my flight, and he still had to return the rental car before his flight back to London.
With heavy eyelids, I pulled my luggage from the trunk. Rhys stepped out of the car, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans.
He smiled shyly at me as we stood together on the asphalt. “You’re leaving me again, I see.”
“Ya know, you can visit my country too. We’ve got some cool stuff. We’ve got Disney World and a couple great zoos and a truly uncomfortable attachment to guns. What more could you want?”
He shrugged. “It’s more convenient for me this way. There are far too many Americans in America.”
“Hey. We’re not all bad.”
“No.” Rhys tucked some hair behind my ear and let the edge of his thumb linger on my cheek, brushing it gently. “Not all of you.”
My heart sped up.
Is he going to kiss me now?
“Have a good flight, kid.” He gave me a single nod, got back in the car and drove away, leaving me alone in front of the airport.
Yeah, well, fuck you too, sir. I didn’t want to kiss you anyway.
I found my departure gate
and went through customs, still grumpy. Rhys certainly had no problem kissing me before. Why was he playing these games with me?
Not that I had any interest in kissing him, of course. I just prefer when people finish what they start. Ya know, if you’re going to pick up the ingredients for a pizza, make it and then cook the pie, you should probably just go ahead and eat the damn pizza.
Great. Now I want pizza.
Just as I flopped down in my seat on the plane, my phone buzzed inside my pocket. As I wiggled in my seat to fish it out, the lady in the seat next to me glared.
“Sorry,” I whispered, struggling.
“You’re not supposed to have your phone on while on the plane,” she said in an American accent, glaring at me.
“Yeah?” I snapped. “We’re not even in the air yet, so I don’t think I’m gonna take the plane down by using my phone. Besides, the phone can be on, it just has to have connectivity turned off. Don’t worry, I’ve been on a damn plane before. Relax.”
It was a text from Rhys. He missed me already.
Rhys: I really wanted to kiss you back there.
Molly: You kinda looked like you were going to.
Rhys: Yeah…
Molly: Were you intimidated by my stunning beauty, is that it? :P
He didn’t respond. I stared at the screen, waiting for his name to show up. Finally, his reply appeared.
Rhys: I have a girlfriend.
* * *
I couldn’t nap on the plane—my brain just wouldn’t shut up.
Why wouldn’t he just tell me? Why keep it a secret? Why do I care? I don’t even care that much. I just thought we were friends, and friends tell one another about new relationships. Maybe we’re not friends, and he’s just a jerk.
Fuck that guy.
Exhausted, I almost fell asleep in the taxi on my way from JFK International Airport to Brooklyn. The driver got my luggage from the trunk, and I handed him a wad of cash. I don’t even know how much I tipped, but he sounded more excited than any other driver I’d ever heard.
I was about to unlock my front door when I noticed it was already open by about half an inch. My mind immediately went to a bad place.
Thick as Thieves Page 6