by Cindy Dees
Sebastian steered the conversation toward more trivial matters over the meal, which was just as well. It wasn’t like Zane was in any huge hurry to confess all of his own sins. Nope. Wine first. Then true confession.
Tonight, though. He wanted the slate clean between them so their relationship had a solid foundation to build on.
After the meal, Sebastian made a quick call to Etienne to ask for the armored SUV to pick them up in a half hour. They would go to the bank first to get the plates and then to the engraver’s house.
The safe deposit box was delivered to them in a private room at the bank, and Zane picked up both plates reluctantly.
“We’ll only need one of them,” Sebastian commented.
“Why only one?”
“Because that’s all it will take for a topnotch engraver to tell us if the plates are accurate enough to print passable money, and if he can tell who made them. This way, if Erebus’s people jump us while we’re out in public, they’ll only get half of what they need to counterfeit money.”
Chilling, but logical.
And handy as hell. He happened to have one undamaged plate left to show to this engraver of Sebastian’s.
Zane held out the undamaged front plate to Sebastian and, in secret relief, tucked the defaced back plate back into his safe deposit box. It crossed his mind to tell Sebastian what he’d done, but now was not the time. Sebastian didn’t need to be distracted and angry at being left out of Zane’s plans while they were out in public, exposed to Erebus and in danger.
They pulled up in front of an aging but still lovely brownstone north of Central Park. Etienne dropped them off and then drove away. In an abundance of caution, Sebastian carried the lone currency plate in his coat pocket as they trotted up the steps and rang the doorbell.
A man with short gray hair opened the door for them and introduced himself as Claude Vanderpohl. “My son is in his workshop this morning. If you want to leave your engraving order—”
Sebastian cut him off. “Actually, we want to speak with Mr. Vanderpohl directly. I’d like to ask his opinion on something. I’m told he’s an expert on fine engraving.”
“He is that,” their host replied dryly. “If you want to try to speak with my son, you’ll have to go see him.” A shrug. “Maybe he’ll want to talk with you. Maybe he won’t.” Claude led them toward the back of the long, narrow home. “Matty’s workshop is back here.”
They stepped into a dark room that felt tiny and cluttered but in fact was a rather spacious room that took up the whole back of the ground floor. Tools and gears and boxes of who knew what crammed the floor-to-ceiling shelves. They rounded a freestanding wall of shelving, and Zane spied a man sitting on a tall stool, hunched over and staring through a large magnifying glass on a brass stand at something small on the worktable before him.
“You have guests, Matty. Clients.”
“Uh-huh.” The engraver sounded singularly uninterested in the news.
Zane moved out from behind Sebastian to see Matty more clearly. He was older than Zane had expected, balding, and soft in body like someone who was mostly sedentary. Maybe in his early fifties. He still hadn’t looked up.
“He’s more likely to talk if I’m not here. He’s angry at me for taking away a box of cookies he found in the kitchen.” Claude retreated after that odd comment, leaving them alone with the engraver.
“Hello, Mr. Vanderpohl. My name is Sebastian Gigoni, and I’d like to ask you a question about a piece of engraving I recently—”
“I’m not Mr. Vanderpohl,” the man at the table interrupted abruptly. “That’s my father. I’m Matty.” He looked up at them then, and Zane mentally drew a sharp breath as he looked back at the eyes of a child.
“All right, Matty,” Sebastian said with admirable composure. “I thought you might like to see this.” He laid the engraving plate, sales award side up, on the table in the circle of light shining down on it brightly.
Matty snorted. “That’s terrible engraving. The depth of the letters isn’t even, and the engraving wheel needed sharpening. I can tell because the edges are too rough. You shouldn’t have used a crappy engraving machine. You’d have got a better plaque.”
Sebastian nodded. “Thank you. But I have a surprise for you. Flip it over.”
Frowning, Matty flipped over the plate. And gasped in delight. “Oh. Oh, that’s so cool!” Excited, the engraver reached for a small monocular magnifying glass that he pulled over his right eye. He hunched over the plate in utter concentration.
“Is it real?” Sebastian asked.
No answer from Matty.
“What I actually need to know is will it work?” Sebastian tried again. “Will it print money that will pass for real?”
Still no reply from the engraver. He seemed lost in contemplating the plate. Inch by painstaking inch, he examined the plate like a connoisseur totally engrossed in a masterpiece.
Zane and Sebastian stood silently beside the table for a good five minutes, and still Matty said nothing. Bored, Zane began to register that the third cup of coffee at breakfast had possibly been a bad idea. Another several minutes passed in silence, and his bladder was really starting to complain.
“I’m going to go find a restroom,” he murmured to Sebastian.
He headed back down the hallway but found only a kitchen, dining room, and living room. Damn. There was no sign of Matty’s father either. Cautiously, Zane headed upstairs to the second floor. “Mr. Vanderpohl?” he called.
No answer. Deep silence enveloped the house. He poked his head through an open doorway and saw a bedroom. The bed wasn’t made, and a woman’s dressing table was messy with makeup, perfume bottles, and bits of jewelry. More importantly, however, to the right of the table, he spied a bathroom through an open door. He scooted fast through the space, feeling like an intruder. The bathroom was old-fashioned, with tiny hexagonal floor tiles and a mismatched Formica counter from the seventies.
He used the toilet quickly, flushed, and washed his hands hastily. He was rinsing them when he spotted the brooch. A glittering spider crusted in diamonds. Surely it was one of a kind. Which meant he’d seen that exact piece before. At the ballet.
He picked it up and turned it over. The stamp of an old and venerable design firm graced the back. No question about it: this had to be the same spider as the one on the turban of the lady he’d sat beside at the ballet. What were the odds of that?
Thoughtfully, he left the bathroom and headed back out into the hallway, relieved when he reached the stairs. He was about halfway down them when Claude Vanderpohl walked in the front door. “What were you doing up there?” the man barked.
Guilt speared into Zane. “I’m sorry. I had to use the restroom.”
Claude frowned, clearly displeased, and Zane hurried back toward the workroom and Sebastian, eager to avoid their unpleasant host. There was something familiar about the man. The shape of his shoulders. And that facial bone structure. He never forgot a jawline….
It hit him just as he was turning into the dark, stuffy workroom. It was probably the spider brooch that led him to make the connection. The woman who’d sat beside him at the ballet and Claude Vanderpohl. They had to be siblings, for they had identical facial bones.
But then a flash of the cosmetics on the dressing table upstairs came to him. There’d been a lot of makeup on that table. And lots of contouring products in particular. And white glue. The kind drag queens used to paste down their brows… and a straight razor that would give an exceptionally close shave….
He moved over to the table quickly. “Matty, what’s your mother’s name?”
The engraver looked up from the plate, guilt and confusion plain on his features. “Umm”—his gaze slid away—“I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a secret.”
“Is that because your father actually dresses up as your mother?” Zane asked gently.
Matty sat up, his hands moving without purpose across
the tools laid out on his table. “Nonono. Can’t tell. No cookies for me. Bad man. Go away!”
Matty’s voice rose on the last words.
“It’s okay, Matty,” Sebastian said soothingly. “My friend was being bad and shouldn’t have asked that. Do you want me to take his cookies away from him when I take him home?”
“Yes,” Matty said emphatically. “No cookies for him.”
Sebastian chuckled and nodded to the engraver. “All right, then.”
Sebastian’s attention was fixed on Matty, but Zane suddenly got a bad feeling along the back of his neck. Like he was being watched. He turned fast, just in time to see Claude close the hallway door. A snick announced that the door had been locked.
What. The. Hell?
And then it all fell into place, every piece suddenly forming a complete picture. There was no mother. Claude had been the “woman” beside him at the ballet. It had been Matty’s ticket that miraculously became available, just in time for Erebus’s contact to give it to him. Which meant the Vanderpohls at a minimum knew somebody affiliated with Erebus, or at least with the consortium’s counterfeiter. Or maybe were the counterfeiters….
And the locked door abruptly made perfect sense.
He turned back to Sebastian and murmured, “I need to speak with you in private.”
After the cookie outburst, Matty had returned to examining the currency plate in utter fascination, and Sebastian leaned down beside him to murmur, “Will it make a perfect picture?”
“Don’t know,” Matty mumbled. “Let’s see.” He rummaged in a wide, flat drawer to his left and pulled out a small rubber roller, a pot of what looked like black finger paint, and a piece of paper. He set about meticulously cleaning the roller and preparing the paper and ink.
Sebastian seemed interested in the process, but Zane physically grabbed his sleeve and gave it a tug. “Now,” he mouthed. “I need to talk with you.”
Frowning, Sebastian stepped around the stack of shelves in the middle of the room with him. “What the hell’s so important that I can’t watch a trial print?”
“Claude Vanderpohl was the woman beside me at the ballet. I sat in Matty’s seat. Which means they know the counterfeiters, or are the counterfeiters. And Claude just locked us in here.”
“What?” Sebastian exclaimed under his breath. He moved over to the door and tried the knob once, quietly. He returned to Zane’s side, swearing under his breath.
It fell to Zane to state the obvious. “I think Claude and Matty work for or are part of Erebus.”
Chapter Eighteen
SEBASTIAN LOOKED up as Matty exclaimed on the other side of the shelf. To Zane he muttered, “Pretend everything is fine,” and then he ducked around the shelf and joined Matty at the worktable.
“Whatchya got, buddy?”
“Look! It’s perfect!” Matty exclaimed.
Sebastian stared down at the sheet of paper, and indeed, a perfect, albeit black, image of Andrew Jackson on a twenty-dollar bill stared back up at him. Nausea erupted in his belly. “Do you think a bank would take a note printed with that plate?” he asked.
“Well, duh,” Matty retorted. “Nuh-uhh.”
“Why not?” he asked.
Matty answered scornfully, “Money has two sides.”
Sebastian grinned. “You got me there, buddy.”
Matty grinned back archly.
Out of the side of his mouth, Sebastian muttered to Zane, “Keep him talking.”
On cue, Zane smiled at the engraver and asked conversationally, “If I had the plate for the other side and it was as good as this one, and I made a twenty-dollar bill with them, would a bank believe it was real?”
Matty nodded. “You would need the right paper and ink and metallic threads and the ability to print holographic images.”
From what Wild Cards’ inside man had said, Erebus had already lined up all of that other stuff. To Matty, he said, “But if I had all of that stuff, could I do it?”
“You could print all the money you wanted.”
“How long did it take someone to make this plate, do you suppose?” Zane asked.
Sebastian tuned out Matty mumbling to himself about how long various parts of the job would take him.
They had to keep Matty talking and not sending out any alarm calls until Sebastian figured out a way to get himself and Zane out of this locked, windowless room and away from the Erebus operative outside.
Vanderpohl was no doubt calling in reinforcements as they stood here. Maybe there was a window behind one of the built-in shelves. He commenced scanning the walls for any signs of exterior light. It would be unusual for one of these old brownstones not to have a rear window facing the yard or alley behind the house.
Matty counted on his fingers for a while and finally announced, “It took a really long time to make.”
“Was this made by hand?” Zane asked.
“Only way to do stuff that fine,” Matty declared.
“Could you make something like this?” Zane followed up.
Damn. No sign of a window. There must be a way to unlock the door from in here. Goodness knew Matty had every small hand tool under the sun. He must have a set of lock picks in here somewhere. Or maybe even a key.
Matty shrugged. “I made something like that once. The people who make money asked me to make a picture of someone they were thinking about putting on money.”
“That’s awesome!” Zane exclaimed. “Who was it? Do you have a picture of the engraving you made?”
Sebastian scanned up and down the shelves for something resembling a lock pick while Matty preened for Zane. It was hopeless. The room was so cluttered and random in organization, he would never find lock picks on his own. Did he dare try calling Etienne?
He asked casually, “Matty, do you have a key for the door?”
“No.” His expression went closed, and he sat very still on his stool. “I guess I have to stay in here and work, then.”
“Why?” Zane asked.
“When he locks me in, that’s what I do. I make stuff.”
“Like what?” Sebastian interjected.
“Watches and machines and stuff.”
“Is there another way out of this room?” he asked.
“Nuh-uh. Just the door.” Matty sighed. “I’m already hungry.”
Zane patted his shoulder. “We’ll get you out fast. And then you can share my cookies with me.”
“Liar!” Matty shouted. “Your cookies got taken away like mine!”
Sebastian dived in to calm Matty. “I changed my mind. Both of you can have cookies when we get out of here.”
Except Sebastian heard a voice outside the door. Make that several voices. And they were headed this way. Damn. No time to make a phone call. “Get back behind the shelf with Matty, Zane.” He scanned the shelves urgently for a weapon, any weapon.
“You hide too!” Zane retorted. “If they shoot their way in, there’s no reason for you to die.”
Matty looked back and forth between them in confusion. “I don’t want to die,” he declared, his lower lip starting to tremble.
Zane wrapped his arm around the man. “Nobody’s dying. We just want you to be safe. I’ll protect you, okay? And then we can share our cookies. What kind is your favorite, Matty?”
“I like peanut butter. And chocolate chip.”
“How about peanut butter-chocolate chip all in one?” Zane asked.
Sebastian found what he was looking for on the shelves. He pulled out a length of pipe that was heavy and sturdy, about the length of his forearm. The doorknob moved slightly, and he braced himself behind the door, gesturing urgently to Zane to keep Matty talking.
The conversation about flavors of cookies flowed around him, not touching him. All his focus was on that door and the men about to step through it. The knob turned.
All at once the door flew open, heaving toward him. He dived to the side, barely missing being smashed behind it. A big man spun into the room and launched
himself upward into Sebastian’s gut, lifting him all the way off his feet.
Sebastian chopped downward with his free fist on the back of his assailant’s neck, too close to bring the pipe to bear. The attacker grunted and turned him loose, and he swung the pipe in a short, sharp chop. The man went down to one knee. Sebastian jerked his own knee up hard into the man’s face, and the guy went down the rest of the way, flat on his face.
Sebastian spun but drew up short as Claude said, “Ah, ah, ah, Mr. Gigoni. We wouldn’t want to get your friend killed, would we?”
A second man had burst into the room behind the attacker he’d dropped, and this one had a handgun trained on Zane.
Dammit. If Zane were a trained Special Forces operative, he would have known to throw himself behind Matty and use him as a human shield or hostage. But as it was, Zane stared in wide-eyed horror at the big bald dude with a gun pointed at him.
Sighing, Sebastian dropped the pipe and linked his fingers at the back of his neck without having to be told and moved over to stand beside Zane. One of the thugs took his cell phone.
“Hands up, Mr. Stryker,” Claude snapped.
Zane mimicked Sebastian, and their elbows bumped. They traded glances, and Sebastian put all the reassurance he could into his own expression. It was false reassurance, but a panicked Zane wouldn’t do anybody any good. A thug lifted the cell phone out of Zane’s pocket as well. So much for a phone call to Etienne and a quick rescue.
Matty started to whimper behind them.
“Go to your room, Matteus.”
“Can I take the plate they brought me?”
“No. Give me that.”
“But they brought it for me. It’s mine.”
“You can have the entire bag of cookies in the bread box, but give me the plate,” Claude bit out.
“Yippee!” Matty crowed.
“Where’s the second plate, gentlemen?” Claude asked pleasantly. Not that he would stay pleasant for long, of course. Sebastian knew full well how this game went. Either he or Zane would be tortured until the other one broke and spilled the location of the plates. His gut turned to water at the thought of watching Zane suffer, his beautiful face and innocent civilian spirit broken and permanently marred by whatever these goons would do to him.