Also available from Sloane Steele
and Carina Press
It Takes a Thief
Between Two Thieves
Also available from Sloane Steele,
writing as Shannyn Schroeder
The O’Learys Series
More Than This
A Good Time
Something to Prove
Catch Your Breath
Just a Taste
Hold Me Close
Hot & Nerdy Series
Her Best Shot
Her Perfect Game
Her Winning Formula
His Work of Art
His New Jam
His Dream Role
To Catch a Thief
Sloane Steele
To everyone who’s willing to do what it takes to make things right
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Epilogue
About the Author
Excerpt from It Takes a Thief by Sloane Steele
Excerpt from More Than This by Shannyn Schroeder
Chapter One
Logan Ford walked around the cubicles in the FBI field office and knocked on his boss’s door. SSA Taggert had sent him undercover, and while Logan had jumped at the chance, he felt like he was spinning in circles, and he hated nothing more than wasting his time. There was something about this case—cases—that poked and prodded at him. Like a slightly out-of-focus photograph. Or a jigsaw puzzle missing a few key pieces. And he was the kind of guy that couldn’t let a puzzle go unsolved.
“What’s going on?” Taggert asked.
Logan entered and sat in one of the old chairs, even though Taggert hadn’t invited him to. He did it mostly because he liked to irritate Taggert, which probably wasn’t the wisest move. This was the man who could approve his permanent transfer back to Chicago. “This op is stuck in neutral.”
Taggert couldn’t get warrants for anything like financials on these guys. All Logan could do was talk to them and he was an outsider.
“Look, there are a lot of eyes on this,” Taggert said. “We’ve had two separate people pop up with forgeries of paintings that are worth a whole hell of a lot of money.”
Logan held up a hand. “I’m not saying that there isn’t something there. These people are as shady as shit. But I don’t have an in. They’re telling Logan Freemont, insurance agent, that they bought authentic pieces.”
“Atlas Insurance agrees that when the items were purchased, they were authenticated.”
“That’s the first piece of questionable stuff. Both pieces were insured by Atlas.”
“How many companies insure artwork like this?” Taggert slid his chair back and laced his fingers behind his head.
“More than Atlas. But Max Ingram and Randall Scott are friends. They probably share information along the lines of ‘I gotta guy for that.’ It’s not enough in and of itself to be suspicious.”
“You said the Atlas connection was the first piece. What else do you have?”
Logan propped an ankle across his knee. He had nothing substantial, but his gut told him these guys were pulling some shit. He just couldn’t figure out what. “Both artifacts were purchased within two weeks of each other about five years ago, and now they’re both attempting to sell at the same time.”
“Ingram’s was stolen.” Taggert squinted. “I mean it was stolen from him. He wasn’t selling it.”
“But he planned to. Same auction house had an appointment for next week.”
“You think they’re buying authentic, sitting on them, and then trying to sell forgeries?”
Logan took a breath and tried to explain his hunch. “I saw Scott’s face when I told him I agreed with the first assessment that the Mathis was a forgery. He looked so sure that the first appraiser was wrong. I’m not saying he’s innocent, but...it feels like there’s something else at play. I think someone’s out to get these guys.”
“What makes you think that’s what’s happening?”
“I trust my gut.”
“It’s a bit of a stretch with no evidence.”
Knowing who forged the paintings would be evidence. That would be enough to connect the two cases. “Why aren’t we bringing in the art fraud division on this? They’re the experts.”
“Because right now we don’t know what the crime is.”
“We’ve seen the forgeries. We know there’s some kind of fraud happening.”
“Counterfeit art is all over. They’re particular about where they spend their resources. But we have sent them the forgeries to inspect.”
“I only have a minor in art history.” And he’d taken those classes because he figured it’d be a good place to pick up girls. “I don’t know how long I can pull this off. At some point, someone with more knowledge is going to pick up on my lack of expertise.”
Mia Benson came to mind as one such person. As a museum curator, she knew art. Her family connections put her in the same social circles as these men. He’d been trying to get her alone to pick her brain. He had little doubt that she might be able to shed some light on these men and their purchasing habits. She might be able to help him flesh out his hunch.
But she’d shut him down cold. He wasn’t used to a woman not giving him a chance at all. He’d been rejected before, but never summarily dismissed, and that’s what Mia had made it feel like. He couldn’t help but take it personally since she knew nothing about him other than the insurance cover story. Maybe she didn’t like insurance agents. “I’m going to do some background on Mia Benson. I think she could be useful.”
Taggert narrowed his eyes. “Do I know that name?”
“Probably. Her father was half of the Benson and Towers pyramid scheme. They’re in the wind.”
Taggert scooted forward with more force than necessary and leaned his forearms on the desk. “What does she have to do with this?”
Logan shook his head. “Nothing directly as far as I can see. But she knows the men, and she’s a curator at the Art Institute. When the appraiser told Scott he had a forgery, he asked Mia to be a second opinion.”
“Did she agree that it was a forgery?”
“Yeah.”
“Then she’s not her father. He would’ve lied and taken a cut of the profit when Scott sold.” He offered a dry chuckle. “All jokes aside, though, if she’s around this situation, even as a minor player, you need to keep an eye on her. You should touch base with the agents on her father’s case. They might have some insight.”
Logan agreed and
added that to his ever-growing to-do list. He didn’t get a bad vibe from Mia. Regardless of who her father was, Logan didn’t think she had anything to do with this.
“We can give it a little time,” Taggert continued. “If nothing else pops, we’ll set it aside. But right now, people much higher on the ladder are looking at the forgeries. Rich, powerful men are loud.”
Logan stood. “You don’t have to tell me. I’ll find something, though. I just need the right thread to pull.” Because if he didn’t, he’d probably get shuffled to another city. He’d been trying to transfer back to Chicago for years. He’d missed home, and solving this case would give him the collateral to stay.
“Poke around some more. Atlas is giving us access to whatever we need. They don’t want to insure worthless crap, so if it turns out to be an in-house issue, they’ll deal with it.”
Logan nodded and left the office. Having access to Atlas’s files might show him which string to unravel. In the meantime, next on his agenda was a visit to a local field agent who’d brought in the original Devereaux painting after it had been stolen from Ingram. Hopefully, Agent Eden Stokes might be able to shed some light on the forgeries.
As much as he hated wasting his time, he hated letting criminals get away with fraud even more. Someone had a plan to make money off the art. If it wasn’t the current owners, it was a thief who planted the forgeries. Either way, he’d bring them down.
* * *
When Mia entered the River North apartment she and her team used as a base of operations, she found Nikki in her usual place, lying halfway upside down on the couch, shoveling potato chips in her mouth. After the last job, she’d decided to move out to live with Wade, her former partner in crime.
“What are you doing here?” Nikki asked, swinging her legs around to sit upright.
“We have a job to plan.” She looked over to the desk. “No Audrey?”
“She ran out to get some more energy drinks. I guess your cousin has been keeping her up late and wearing her out.”
Mia closed her eyes and shook her head. She didn’t need images of Jared in bed with anyone, much less their hacker. “Do we have anything yet?”
Nikki pointed at the TV. “I’m studying the auction house. Once the pieces are delivered, they must go into storage, right? They don’t unpack and rush to authenticate, do they?”
“They will absolutely have them authenticated, but I have no idea what the process is at this particular auction house. I can find out.”
“Good. If they have them in storage, it’ll be like the Devereaux.”
“No. Not like the Devereaux. The auction house will certainly have better security. Especially since there will be a Picasso for sale. I wouldn’t be surprised to find they had around-the-clock monitored security.” She pulled out her phone and made notes about who to contact to get information about the auction. She briefly considered adding Logan Freemont to that list. As an insurance agent for Atlas, he would probably know the ins and outs of McNamara’s. But then she brushed the thought away. She didn’t need to encourage the man. Or tip her hand by bringing his attention to these particular pieces.
“As long as I don’t have to run another con. That takes too much out of me. Give me a good old-fashioned break-in any day.”
“If you can’t break in, what other options do we have?” Mia wondered. Even after the heists they’d completed, this was still far from her area of expertise.
Nikki inhaled deeply and blew out the breath, puffing her cheeks. “Steal them before they get picked up, or hit the delivery truck. But that one is assuming they both get picked up by the same truck on the same day. Lot of assumptions. Plus, hitting the truck would mean they would know they were stolen. The counterfeit would be pointless.”
The front door opened and Audrey came bopping in wearing baggy clothes that did nothing for her figure. “Hey, they were all out of cupcakes, but—” She froze when she saw Mia. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see where we are on the next plan.”
“Oh.” Audrey handed Nikki a small box of donuts. Her light brown hair was falling out of her loose ponytail, as usual, and she tucked it behind her ears.
“Oh, what?”
Audrey shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just that you were mostly hands-off on the last job. I figured we were just gonna do our thing.” She waved a hand between herself and Nikki.
“Being hands-off didn’t serve me too well. If you recall, I was roped into playing a paranoid freak.”
“Yeah, you were pretty good there.” Audrey chuckled, popped open an energy drink, and sat behind the desk. She immediately began typing at the computer without telling anyone what she was doing.
“Nikki was running down options other than breaking into the auction house,” Mia explained.
Audrey nodded. “The obvious move would be to make the switch at their homes before they ship. We’re pretty good at that.”
“Unless we have to alter the frames like we did for Scott’s house,” Nikki said. “They would probably take note of them being cut—especially after what happened to their buddy.”
Mia looked at the TV. “Can you pull up the paintings? I don’t think we’ll need to do any alterations.”
Audrey tapped away and a moment later they were staring at the Moreau that belonged to Keaton Bishop. It was a nightmarish painting created in the early twentieth century. Moreau had been known for sampling styles of other artists, and this one was part of his surrealism period. Mia had always preferred a Degas to a Dali, but over the past few years, the twisted reality of surrealism had begun to pique her interest.
“The canvas itself is small. It’s only a foot and a half square,” she said as she focused on the painting, a garish image of a man groping a woman who was obviously uninterested.
“I’d kick some dude in the balls if he grabbed me like that,” Audrey said.
Nikki huffed. “I’d cut him.”
Mia wasn’t sure what she would do. She’d led a fairly sheltered life, and while in her teens plenty of boys had gotten handsy, it hadn’t been this level of harassment, but she had heard of girls who ran into problems. In their circles, however, things were handled quietly and discreetly. Nothing about Nikki or Audrey was quiet or discreet. Part of her wanted more of that. “Anyway...the Spenser might pose a slightly bigger problem, in that it is a slightly bigger painting.”
Audrey switched the image on the screen. This one favored cubism, and Mia definitely found it more soothing than the Moreau. The painting showed another couple, holding hands but each looking in a different direction, away from each other. It was how she often pictured her parents.
“This painting is two by three. Not unwieldy, but not quite compact. The good thing is that for both of these, there is no exterior frame. The canvas, the stretcher bars, and the hanger. That’s it.”
“Does London already have them done?”
Mia nodded. She’d checked in with their forger earlier in the day to verify.
“When’s the auction?” Audrey asked.
“Not for about three weeks. They’re still accepting new pieces for the auction.”
Nikki swung an arm over the back of the couch. “This seems riskier than you usually like. What’s up with that?”
“Since when do you care about risk?” Mia retorted. Then she waved a hand. “It’s what makes the most sense. Both of these paintings are going to auction. When I devised this plan, I hadn’t considered how fast any of our marks would move.”
Plus, her father had called. He’d reached out because he was getting desperate. Her plan was working. One way or another, she was going to get justice for her father’s victims. First, she was paying restitution through sales of this artwork. Then, she was going to make him come out into the open so he would have to face the consequences of his actions.
“Mia?” Audrey�
��s voice startled her.
“Yes?”
“We lost you for a minute there. Anything else we need to know?”
“No.” She put her phone back in her purse. “Do you have the other list ready? The one with the recipients?”
Audrey smiled and clapped her hands. “You know I do.” She pointed to the TV again, where images of McNamara’s were replaced with family photos. “This is the Bhatt family. They lost their family-owned convenience store. This week they got the store back, including the deed to the building.”
“What is this?” Nikki asked.
“I asked Audrey to put together the information about the families we’re helping. You can see the good we’re doing.” Mia needed the reminders because so much of what they were doing made her feel not much better than her father.
“Shit. I wouldn’t care if you were just lining everyone’s pockets. This is fun.”
Mia shot a look at the thief. “If I’m not mistaken, Wade cares.”
Nikki’s eyes narrowed at the reminder that Wade wanted her to go straight.
Audrey clicked through to another picture. “This is the Jackson family who will be able to afford to give their daughter the wedding of her dreams. Sorry no wedding photos as it won’t happen for another six months. And this is Marianne Jenkins, who lost everything because of your father. Literally everything. She’s sixty years old and fell apart when she found she had nothing. She was living on the streets.”
Mia spun to look at Audrey. “How did you find her?”
“I have my ways. She is now set up in a beautiful senior living community.” Audrey became a little misty-eyed looking at the happy old woman. “The money from the Devereaux is going to reach so many more people.”
“Good. Because while getting to my father is my ultimate goal, doing this is the more important piece.” She picked up her purse. “I’ll do some checking and see what I can find out about the upcoming auction. There’s a charity function tomorrow night and most of our favorite players will be in attendance, so we should be able to get some information.”
Audrey flopped back in her chair and rolled her eyes. “God. Not another party. Don’t you people have anything better to do?”
To Catch a Thief--A High Stakes Romantic Suspense Page 1