by Cari Z
Well, it hardly mattered. Whether he was off pressing the flesh with another aristocrat or cozying up to a representative of the prime minister, he would find me when he was good and ready. In the meantime, I would find myself a drink, some food, and a quiet place to get a better handle on my nerves.
Food and drink were easily solved—I snatched a couple of canapés off a passing tray and got hold of a glass of the promised champagne, then made my way around to the far entrance to the Reading Room. That was where the Glories of the Ancient World exhibit could be found, and that was where I was determined to get a look.
I’d been to these things often enough to know that a Director’s Dinner was a prime time for museum employees to give “private tours” of the upcoming exhibits, flaunting their access to friends and patrons. That often necessitated leaving one of the entrances to the Reading Room unlocked, and I found myself correct after I moved around to the far doors and found one of the knobs conveniently turnable.
I entered and felt as though I had stepped back in time. My temporal dissonance was not simply due to my surroundings, the immense history and grandeur of both the artifacts within the room and the room itself, but also because it was like stepping back into a younger version of myself. I had come to work at the museum a decade ago, when I was an optimistic young man in my midtwenties. There had still been regular exhibitions in the Reading Room at that time, and to be chosen to assist in assembling one of them had been an immense honor.
Curating exhibitions was where my heart lay, and I had helped to assemble beautiful, soul-touching, sensuous strolls through history, from the era of Emperor Hadrian to the saints of medieval Christianity. It had been fulfilling work, and for years I had been content with it.
No work was without its flaws, however, and over time the flaws in my own chosen career surfaced. The British Museum held some of the most fantastic historical and cultural treasures in the entire world, many of them taken without legal provenance from other countries one or more centuries ago. For years, the groundswell of discontent over its possession of such important pieces of work had grown, along with the museum’s own insistence that, no matter how the art came to be in its possession, it would not under any circumstances part with any of it now.
The Elgin Marbles… the Benin Bronzes…. There had been a little bit of give in the museum’s stern stance lately, but not enough. Certainly not enough to save me, back when I had mucked everything up.
I shook my head and stepped deeper into the Reading Room. Most of it was cut off, actually—the Glories exhibition was confined to perhaps a third of the overall space. The offering might be small, but the pieces on display… they were utterly magnificent.
Some I was well-familiar with. They had moved the most exceptional finds from the Sutton Hoo collection in here, as well as the Aztec Serpent and the Portland Vase. They had also pulled the Bronze Bath of Ur and the Assyrian Banquet Scene out of the basement—how thoughtful of them, to give the public brief, expensive glimpses of things which ought to be far more accessible. They’d also pulled up the Vale of York Cup, several golden masks, a collection of cat mummies—always a hit with the children—and several scepters.
I stepped closer to the scepter display, sensing something… off. There was the golden scepter of Taranto, here the deer-headed scepter from the Sutton Hoo collection, there a fantastic jade piece from the Shang Dynasty that I knew for a fact Gerard’s late father had donated, but in the fourth place—nothing. Yet there was a custom mount prepared for whatever was supposed to be in there. How odd, to leave a piece out like this. Perhaps it was still in restoration?
“—think you’ll see something you like,” a very familiar voice said from the direction of the doors. I froze in place, half inclined to run and hide while the other half of me yearned to step forward, to make myself known and confront him.
Think of the devil and he shall appear. It was Gerard, and he wasn’t alone. Two other men were with him, and I liked to think that it was his company that persuaded me to stay quiet and still where I was, rather than indulging in the urge to demand an answer to why he’d invited me here. I didn’t hide myself, but I didn’t make myself known, either—just watched as the three of them entered, Gerard and the shorter of his two companions instantly making their way to the Banquet Scene carving.
“How marvelous, to see it displayed again after all this time,” the smaller gentleman exclaimed. “I intended to make a trip to New York to see it while it was abroad, but alas, events conspired against me.”
“It is quite fantastic, isn’t it?” Gerard sounded as delighted as if he’d carved the bloody thing himself. “One of the most valuable treasures in the entire museum.”
“What was its latest appraisal?”
The third man didn’t seem interested in talk of current valuation—he was looking around the room restlessly, keeping up his slow walk as he did. The instant he saw me, his demeanor went from watchful to full-on alert—he immediately reached behind his body and came back with a gun, which he held low and steady in both hands, not pointing it at me, but under the circumstances that didn’t make me feel any better.
What stopped me from laying into him for drawing a weapon in a place like this was the utter intensity of his gaze. It held me fast, hypnotized me like a snake toying with a mouse. The face those eyes stared out of didn’t hurt either—he had a heavy brow, sharp cheekbones, and a mouth that might have looked inviting if its tilt wasn’t so forbidding. If not for the way his nose appeared to have been beaten into submission several times over, he would have been quite handsome. He certainly looked better in a tuxedo than I did.
“We’ve got company,” he said, turning toward Gerard and his companion without ever taking his eyes off me. That voice seemed familiar… where had I heard it before?
“Oh?” Gerard looked my way, and his smug, toothsome face broke out in a grin. “Ah! And just the company I was looking for.” He broke away from the group and began to walk to me. “I should have known you’d find your way in here, Mal. You never were much for parties, were you?” He held out a hand to me, which I resolutely ignored. I looked from him to his—bodyguard, perhaps?—to the olive-skinned man still standing by the Banquet Scene, his dark, glittering eyes fixed on me.
“What the hell is this all about?” I snapped.
Chapter Three
THERE WERE few things more irritating to me than being given the runaround by a potential client. It was one thing to insist on a certain level of operational security—that, I understood. If he or she wanted to meet in a no-name motel under the cover of darkness using fake identities, whatever. KIS’s customers paid a premium to work with us, and that meant putting up with some bullshit. I was, however, used to meeting them and establishing what the job to be done was before I got put on the clock.
I arrived in London after getting five hours’ sleep in Roussillon, then driving to Marseille to catch a red-eye. My plane came in a little after ten, so I caught a taxi to the hotel Robert had told me to go to—the Strand Palace Hotel, pretty nice—and waited for my new client to contact me.
Which he did, via a courier delivering a large, cream-colored envelope on a silver tray. I thanked the guy, flicked my knife open, and pulled out something that reminded me of my sister’s wedding invitations. You are cordially invited to participate in our annual Director’s Dinner, as a celebration of your generous patronage, at the British Museum. The time and date were printed on the bottom of the invite—the dinner was at eight o’ clock tonight.
This is it? This is all I have to go on? Annoyed, I called up Robert.
“What is this bullshit?” I asked as soon as he picked up.
“Mmm… you know it’s only six in the morning here?” he said with a groan.
“I thought I was supposed to get more contact details from the client when I touched down in London. All I have is an invite to a big damn party tonight.”
“A big damn party that you’re prepared for. Tu
xedo, remember?”
“Robert.” I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I feel like I’m walking into this blind. You know I don’t like that.” The last time I’d gone into a situation with insufficient intel, I’d gotten my shoulder blown apart by a countersniper.
Robert was sympathetic, but he stood firm. “Anonymity is part of the client’s instructions at this time. Even I don’t know his real name. The down payment was made through a shell company, but our techs are working on that. Apparently, the project is somewhat sensitive, but you’ll learn everything tonight, I promise.”
“And if I don’t like it?”
“Then you don’t do it.” I breathed a silent sigh of relief at Robert’s immediate answer. “I won’t make any of my operatives take a job they’re uncomfortable with. And if it’s shady enough to make you think twice, then it’s shady enough that I don’t want to pass it along to anyone else.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “I appreciate that.”
“It’s no problem, Alex. Just good business.”
It was a hell of a lot more than that, but he was keeping it light for me, which was just what I needed. The guy should have been a shrink. “I’ll talk to you once I get the actual details of the job.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
I ended the call and sighed again, my whole body aching with tension. I stripped down and headed for the shower to clean up.
The hot water felt amazing on my back and shoulder. I rolled my head back and let the spray beat down on my cicatrix-marked skin, as thick as climbing rope in places and twice as hard. I’d showered back in Roussillon, but that had been a lukewarm affair, nothing like this cascade of therapeutic heat. The muscles of my back slowly relaxed, and all of a sudden it felt like my legs had been cut out from under me. I sat down hard on the tiled floor of the shower and rested my head on my knees with a groan.
You’ve got all your other muscles compensating for the weak ones. Get back to your exercises or get ready to be fucked-up. I could hear my physical therapist’s voice in my mind like she was right there, laying it all out for me. Frieda had been an absolute drill sergeant in the clinic, which was just what I’d wanted out of her. Nothing fluffy, nothing feely, just pain and gain.
As much as I didn’t want to, I turned off the shower after another minute, got out, and lay down on the bed to stretch my shoulder out for a while. It was so tempting to just fall asleep again, but technically I was on the job now, and I needed to keep my mind focused on that. I worked my body until everything felt pliable, then got dressed and headed down to the restaurant to get some food.
The Gin Palace was tempting, but again—not while I was working. The restaurant was good, though. I treated myself to a plate of honey roast gammon with sautéed greens and a Yorkshire pudding. It was rich, heavy, and just what I needed after almost twenty-four hours without a real meal. Espresso and a croissant with Patricia didn’t count.
I paid the bill, checked the time, and decided to go for a walk. It was a good way to clear my head before a job, and to get a feel for the place I was in. I didn’t get a lot of time to be a tourist when I was abroad, but when I did I tried to make the most of it. Moving through crowds that seemed to be equal parts native Londoners and tourists, I kept my head down and my eyes open as I set out from the hotel.
I didn’t expect any trouble leading into this job—it might be a treasure hunt of sorts, but I sure as hell was no Indiana Jones—but I couldn’t help evaluating every person in my line of vision.
He’s got a slight limp—easy takedown. Her purse is too heavy—club or bottle? She’s in stilettos—good makeshift weapon. It was second nature at this point, planning how to disable or kill people. It was probably an unhealthy habit, but what the hell. I’d give people the benefit of the doubt when I was in my grave. Still, there was nobody really interesting—a few young men carrying knives, an older lady wearing sneakers and a headscarf who carried herself like she was expecting to be accosted any minute and was damn well prepared for it. Expandable baton in her jacket pocket, maybe? It was one reason for her to be wearing a big coat like that in this heat, even though we were in perennially rainy London. I thought about it until I wandered to the front of the Royal Opera House and saw her stepping through one of the tall glass doors.
She was tall, with skin the shade of a sandy beach at twilight, and thick black hair coiled at the back of her neck in a luscious chignon. She wore a long, light gingham dress, cat-eye sunglasses, and carried a straw bag with thick black handles. Her style reminded me a bit of Patricia, and as she passed me, she gave me a small, tart smile—a brief acknowledgment of my wandering eye. She was beautiful, but that wasn’t what made her interesting.
She moved like a ballet dancer—or, I amended, almost like a ballet dancer. There was an unmistakable smoothness to her gait that meant she knew how to control her body from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, but the way she was walking looked… contrived, somehow. As though she’d added a bit of wiggle to make herself seem a little bouncier, a little less intense. I knew, I just knew, that this woman was far more dangerous than the one with the baton. I watched her vanish into the crowd, and my instincts settled somewhat.
Just because you peg a threat, that doesn’t mean it has anything to do with you. I put my head back down and kept walking. I walked for most of the afternoon, stopping in a shop to buy an umbrella when it began to rain and going by the museum twice. I walked up to the doors but didn’t go in, just looked for the most obvious security measures so that I could figure out how to defeat them if need be.
There were cameras, but that evening I’d just be one more guy in a tux. I didn’t see any metal detectors, which… honest to God, it made dressing for work easier, and I appreciated that, but unless this job really was as banal as Robert had insinuated—which when there was big money involved, I doubted—then it had just gotten a lot easier for someone to cause chaos.
I walked back to the hotel with enough time to grab a sandwich at the café in the lobby and shower again, then changed into my tuxedo. Thanks to Robert believing in being overprepared and having a ridiculously good tailor on staff, operatives had bespoke evening-wear options in every country where we had an office which, funny enough, didn’t include England.
The tuxedo was a classic midnight black, cut to be roomy enough in the jacket that I could keep my shoulder holster on without turning my silhouette into a brick. The cummerbund even had a discreet sheath in front for my custom, matte black push dagger. I’d opted out of the optional garotte wire in my bow tie, though. I didn’t want to make it easier for anyone else to strangle me to death.
I glanced at myself in the bedroom mirror before heading out. In these duds, with my hair slicked back like it was, my sister would have told me I looked like a gangster. Whatever, she’d never liked it when I looked better than her. “Tucker,” I murmured to my reflection in a bad Scottish accent, straightening my tie. “Alex Tucker.” Grabbing my umbrella, I headed for the stairs.
I caught a cab to the museum and got there exactly at eight. I joined the crowd, keeping my umbrella low as we made our way in a strange, oddly orderly jumble to the entrance. A minute in, the guy next to me slipped on the slick pavement. I grabbed him before he could do a face-plant and kept him on his feet, frowning a little at the deeply chilled feel of his jacket. How long had he been out here? “You okay?”
He didn’t pull away, like most men would. He didn’t even try to, he just straightened up and stood there with his arm in my grasp, looking at me a bit searchingly—the umbrella did a good job of keeping the light off of me. “Quite, thank you.”
The light was bright on him, though, bright enough that it brought out the blue in his eyes, making them almost sparkle. And what was my brain doing, noticing something like that? I was working—this was no time to be thinking about finding a pretty guy for a quick hookup. Time to move on. “No problem.” I pulled my hand back and shifted ov
er to the side, and a minute later, he was completely out of sight.
Good.
Great.
I sighed and got my head back into the game. The person at the door accepted my invitation with a smile and offered to take my umbrella. I handed it over and watched where she stowed it, along with a host of others. Some of them were nice—long-handled and sturdy, just the thing for cracking across the back of someone’s head if the opportunity called for it. Good to keep in mind.
There was an act going on, some sort of circus performance, but I ignored it, refusing to be one more gawker. I declined the champagne that seemed to be pressing in on me from all sides and decided to give my mysterious host exactly five minutes to catch sight of me before calling up Robert to bitch again. I squared my shoulders and held my head high as I made a circuit of the room, looking from person to person for a face that looked back. At two minutes and thirty-seven seconds, I found one.
He was a tall man, with a square jaw and a face that time or Botox had been kind to. He had light brown hair that was beginning to recede, and when he smiled at me, his teeth practically dazzled. If my tuxedo was classic, his was so fashion-forward it was almost obscene, the black-lined burgundy velvet jacket somehow not clashing with the floral shirt beneath it. He held a glass of champagne in one hand, and with the other, motioned me toward him. My client, then. Fantastic. I walked his way, prepared to be annoyed, at least by his shirt if nothing else.
The first words out of his mouth didn’t help any. “Try to put on a smile, won’t you? Glowering like that makes it seem like you’re not happy to be here.”
Was this what women felt when men told them to smile, this seething, frustrated rage? I couldn’t punch this guy because he was a client, but I’d be damned before I gave him a grin. “I’m not here to be happy, I’m here to work. Aren’t I?”
“I certainly hope so, but not for me. I’m merely going to… facilitate your acquaintance with my friend, who will be your employer for the task ahead.” If his accent was any plummier, fresh fruit would be falling out of his mouth. “He’s waiting for us, rather appropriately, in the Enlightenment Gallery. This way.” He indicated a door in the wall on our right, then led the way there, moving with the inborn confidence of a man who was certain that all doors, no matter how forbidding, would open for him without a creak.