Going Rogue

by Robin Benway

  I don’t think I had ever seen her be that quiet before, that composed, and the penthouse only seemed to echo her silence. The rooms felt cold as we headed to the stairs, all marble floors and crystal chandeliers, and I wondered if that’s why Roux was so loud all the time. Living in relative silence by yourself would be eerie after a while. You would need to stab at it every now and then.

  We went into her bedroom, and I followed Roux into her huge walk-in closet. My parents and I once lived in an apartment in Stockholm that was roughly the same size as this closet, and that wasn’t even accounting for Roux’s massive shoe wall.

  “It’s over here,” Roux said, and she knelt down and shoved a few pairs of jeans out of the way and pulled back the thick carpet, revealing a strong floor safe. “I know you could probably break into it,” she said with a little bit of apology in her voice. “I made my dad have it installed after I met you.”

  “Is that why you kept asking me about the best floor safe models? You thought that I was going to steal from you?”

  “No, no, not you. I just learned a lot about protecting things. I figured I probably shouldn’t keep the egg in my sock drawer anymore.” Roux spun the lock, looking a little embarrassed. “I feel like I’m fingerpainting in front of Picasso,” she muttered. “Just don’t watch, okay?”

  “You flatter me,” I said.

  “Yeah, well.” Roux gave the lock a final twist, then undid the latch and pulled it open. The safe was deep and vast, and she reached in and pulled out a small object wrapped in red fabric, the only object in there. She unwound it, revealing a tiny clear glass box and a gorgeous green egg inside.

  “It’s the Imperial Pansy Egg,” Roux said, her voice almost reverent.

  “Wow,” I whispered. It was stunningly beautiful, a marbled jade green color with golden vines twisting around the bottom and winding up its sides. The vines eventually thinned out into individual stems with a delicate pink pansy at the top, all of them connected by a thin gold strand.

  “Roux, this is amazing,” I told her. “Your parents gave you this?”

  “Nope, not my parents. My grandmother. She died a long time ago, but it was in her will that I should get this when I turned sixteen. I liked her. She was really nice. My parents used to send me to her house for the summer, back before they could get rid of me in summer school, and I always used to look at this egg.” Roux shrugged as if shaking away old memories. “So she gave it to me. My mom was so pissed that she didn’t get it instead. I thought her head was going to explode! It was amazing.”

  I smiled along with her. “That’s the spirit. Can I see it?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Roux handed me the box and I turned it over and over, looking at it from every angle. There was a tiny set of initials stamped into the gold on the bottom. “What are these? Who’s that?”

  Roux leaned over to peer at it. “Oh, that’s the designer’s initials. They would stamp them in before firing it in the oven. Like a business card or the Nike swoosh or something like that.”

  I just stared at her, my mouth quirking up a little. “Did you read up on these eggs?” I teased. “Did you actually do research on a computer?”

  “Shut up,” she said, but she was smiling, too. “I figured that I should know what I had. Nothing in this closet is a knockoff—I got rid of that fake Balenciaga bag as soon as Bergdorf’s got the real thing back in stock, don’t even go there—and I wanted to make sure that this egg was the real deal.”

  “And is it?”

  A vaguely frightening smile crept across Roux’s face, just like it had after she punched Colton Hooper right in the nose, satisfied and strong. “Oh, yes,” she murmured. “It’s the real deal.”

  I sat on my heels, giving the egg back to her. “Okay,” I said. “Where’s your computer?”

  An hour later, Roux and I were sitting on her bed in front of her laptop, containers of half-eaten Thai food next to us as we combed through article after article about Fabergé eggs. “Does your brain ever do that thing where you see the same word over and over?” she asked, sitting away from the screen to rub at her eyes. “And then it starts to make, like, absolutely no sense whatsoever, like it’s written in hieroglyphics?”

  I looked at her.

  “Yeah, me neither,” she said quickly.

  “So there are eight missing Imperial eggs,” I said. “And one of those missing eggs might be in the United States. And it might look exactly like the one I saw.”

  Roux pulled the laptop closer to her so she could read the description. “‘A sapphire cherub pulling a two-wheeled chariot containing a golden egg set with diamonds.’ Cherubs are so creepy, don’t you think? Like, why are naked babies shooting poisonous arrows at innocent people a symbol of love? Why aren’t they a symbol of toddler anarchy instead?”

  “Roux,” I started to say, but then I paused, thinking about her comment. “That is an excellent point,” I admitted.

  “I blame Hallmark,” she said. “Damn them and their anarchist baby uprising. So you think this is your egg?”

  “It could be. Or it could be a fake.”

  Roux sat cross-legged on her bed, picking at the bedspread with her purple fingernails. “I know we sort of had a fight about this,” she said, sounding very small, “and I swear I’m not trying to start anything, but it’s sort of nice looking up information together. It was fun when you and Jesse and I did that last year. It’s like being on a team together.”

  “It is,” I said, clicking through to another link.

  “So could you maybe tell me why you need to find this egg? Only because I know people,” she added before I could say anything. “Honestly. Swear to God. I’m not trolling for information.”

  We had been doing research together for almost two hours. She was right, I did owe her an explanation. “I need to find some things that are very important—”

  “Well, duh. Isn’t that your life motto? Sorry, sorry, go on.”

  “Anyway,” I said. “I need to find something very important and I think this egg has something to do with it.”

  “Is it hidden in the egg?”

  “Maybe? I’m not sure.”

  I could almost see the wheels turning in Roux’s head. “So if the thing you need is in this egg …”

  “Then it’s a knockoff.”

  “But if it’s not?”

  “Then I’ll end up destroying one of the world’s greatest missing treasures for no reason and I still won’t have the thing I need to find.”

  “Oh.” Roux frowned a little, then looked up at me. “Wow, Maggie. Sucks to be you.”

  I stared at her, then very calmly grabbed a pillow off her bed and smacked her right in the head with it. “Kidding!” she screeched, right before I whomped her again. “I was kidding, I swear! Have mercy on the civilian!” But she was laughing too hard to talk and I was giggling, too. In fact, I was giggling so much that I missed her grabbing another pillow and slamming me in the face.

  “Ow!” I cried. “When did you become so violent?”

  “I’m a quick learner,” she replied with a laugh. “Just ask Colton Hooper.”

  Chapter 20

  After I left Roux’s, I walked along the edge of Central Park for a while, scuffing the toe of my boot along the bricks as I thought about the egg and the missing coins. Was Dominic really that much of an evil genius mastermind to create an entirely fake egg? I knew Angelo was checking his contacts, seeing if anyone had forged a counterfeit egg recently, but the fact that he hadn’t called me told me that he was coming up short.

  I walked through the melee of Columbus Circle, then went south along the park, patting a few carriage horses along the way. I had only meant to wander around for a while, but I soon realized that I ended up back in the place where it all began: at the Sherman Monument, just under the winged statue of Victory, her arms spread wide as if to say, “How do you like me now?”

  “Show-off,” I muttered, but then leaned against the statue anyway, resting under the
safety of her figure as I tried to work things out.

  If I broke one of the most valuable creations of the twentieth century, I was fairly sure that my reputation as an expert spy and safecracker would be ruined. If I broke the egg and found the coins, though, I’d save my parents and their reputations. I wasn’t used to making these sorts of decisions on my own. Usually the Collective told me where to go and what to crack and that’s exactly what I did. I did whatever they told me to do, whenever they told me to do it, and I never questioned it. Roux would have asked so many questions that they probably would have kicked her out of the Collective before her first job, but I didn’t.

  And I was starting to realize what a monumentally stupid mistake that had been.

  I sat there for a long time, people-watching as the sun began to finally sink behind the buildings. There were a lot of couples walking hand in hand, which made me feel so lonely inside. I missed Jesse’s hand in mine, how it felt when our fingers touched. I remembered the coldness between our palms last night, the tears smearing his fingerprints, and I shook my head, trying to will myself to focus on work.

  When it finally got so dark that I couldn’t see across the park anymore, I glanced up at Victory. “Any tips?” I asked her. “Because now would be a great time to offer some advice.”

  She just stared straight ahead, pointing south in the direction of our loft, so that’s where I decided to go.

  I was just coming up from the R train on Spring Street when my phone (brand-new SIM card in place) started to buzz. I checked it: four missed calls from Angelo.

  That was not good. Not good at all.

  “Hey,” I said, going to stand in front of the Dean & Deluca on the corner so I could get out of the way of the Saturday crowds. It was the same store where Roux and I had met up for Halloween last year, back before she knew I was a spy. It felt like it had been way more than a year ago. It felt like a lifetime. “What’s up?”

  “You have an hour,” Angelo said, his voice oddly breathless. “He’s just left. Where are you?”

  “Downtown,” I said. “Do you have the security code?”

  “No, he just changed it again,” Angelo said. “You’re not going to get another chance, Maggie. Dominic is very suspicious.”

  “On my way,” I said, then hung up and burst across the street. “Excuse me! Excuse me!” I cried, shoving some people out of the way. There were definitely a few angry expletives behind me, but I didn’t care. I had sixty minutes to get back into the house, crack the security code, and decide whether or not to break that egg, and I needed every single minute I had.

  Twenty minutes later, I raced up the stairs of that spacey New Age station just around the corner from Dominic’s apartment on Pomander Walk, my legs still sore from crouching next to his stairs for so long the night before. I didn’t care, though. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting into his apartment and solving this damn case so my parents and I could have our lives back.

  I still had my gloves in my bag, and I pulled them on as I approached the locked gate on Ninety-Fifth Street. No time for subtlety right now: I yanked the lock, scrubbing at it with record speed and it popped open in seconds. I could feel my back molars grinding together as I worked, the crease between my eyebrows deepening as I slipped through the gate and went up to Dominic’s door. The lace curtains were drawn this time, reminding me of all the windows I had seen in the French countryside. Dominic is from France, I thought, then filed that piece of information away.

  I probably had close to twenty-five minutes now, but I didn’t dare pull out my phone to check. (I knew Angelo would bring up this fact later: it makes him crazy that I don’t wear a watch, especially when I’m working.) The small side street was as quiet as it had been the night before, but no matter. I was about to change that.

  It took me only a few minutes to pick the locks on Dominic’s door this time and I took a huge breath in, let it out, then used my shoulder to shove the door open. “Here we go,” I muttered to myself, just as a loud beep started sounding, making me wince. I made a few halfhearted attempts at trying to guess the pass code, but every single one just buzzed at me, pissed that I couldn’t crack its system. Angelo had said the night before that I had one minute before the police were notified of a break-in and five before they arrived. I tried again, but no dice. The beeping sound was getting faster and angrier, letting me know that I only had seconds before there was no going back.

  It was time to make an executive decision.

  “Screw it,” I mumbled. Dominic was already suspicious, Angelo had said, and no doubt he’d be more suspicious once he found one of his eggs missing. Might as well save some time.

  I reached up and yanked the entire alarm box out of the wall.

  The cuckoo clocks were nothing compared to the racket the alarm made, and I had to physically restrain myself from covering my ears. Earplugs, I thought. Should have brought earplugs. It was so strong and shrill and constant that I could almost see it vibrating through the air as it came down to split my skull. It was the first time that a sound had actually hurt my ears, but it only served to make me angrier. You wouldn’t install a sound like that unless you had something to protect. Those coins were here somewhere.

  I stalked over to the Fabergé egg shelf, my boots crunching against the pieces of the now-shattered alarm box, my eyes going right to that golden mystery egg. If I had had my eyes closed, I would still have been able to find it, that’s how strong its siren song was to me. I had felt that way with Colton Hooper’s safe, hearing it whisper its secrets. Come and play with me, the egg whispered. We’ll have so much fun.

  I picked it up and held it in my steady palm, turning it over to look at it from all sides. It had the same beautiful fragility as Roux’s egg, somehow heavy and light at the same time. I only had the description to compare it to, since there were no actual pictures of this egg, but it matched perfectly.

  Four minutes until the police arrived.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” I murmured, turning it upside-down to see the gold etchwork. Every fake had a tell. There was always something that gave it away. You just had to be good enough to find it, and I knew I was good. But good enough? Good enough to save my family? That was another question entirely.

  There was a small mark in the bottom of the egg, and I held it up to the light that ran under the shelf. It was the initial mark just like I had seen on Roux’s egg, two small letters that—

  Wait.

  I peered in closer. These initials were different. The engraving was shallower than Roux’s egg, a bit shakier. Roux had said that the initials were carved before the eggs were fired in the oven. So if these weren’t as deep, that meant they were carved after firing. Carving into set gold would be nearly impossible.

  Seven o’clock. Three minutes until the police arrived.

  “CUCKOO! CUCKOO!”

  “CUCKOOCUCKOOCUCKOO!”

  “COOO! COOO! COOO! COOO!”

  The egg was starting to feel heavier in my palm. “Wait,” I said, then reached out and grabbed another egg. It was noticeably lighter.

  Gotcha.

  I set the second egg down and gave Cupid a quick kiss before raising the first egg over my head. “Thanks for keeping them safe,” I whispered, then hurled it to the ground.

  It smashed open.

  And ten gold coins spilled out.

  Chapter 21

  “Angelo!” I cried into my phone when I thought I heard him answer, but it was just the drone of an out-of-service buzz. It didn’t matter, though. I was so elated that I could have probably flown home and used my happiness to have Angelo teleported right to my front door.

  I had the coins in my jeans pocket, hard and flat against my hipbone as I walked quickly through the streets. I couldn’t run because the police were no doubt at Dominic’s house by now, looking for anything suspicious or weird. Not that a running seventeen-year-old girl would be that suspicious in Manhattan, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I had
the coins and no one was taking them away from me now.

  I hung up my phone, grinning like a complete maniac as I tried to flag down a taxi. The coins had looked exactly as the picture had shown, heavy enough to not be fakes, the etching of Victory looking up at me serenely as I scooped her and her nine sisters off of Dominic’s floor and hustled them into a small velvet pouch. Ironically, the gold made my heart lighter, my steps softer, and once I got into a taxi, I caught the driver giving me a few weird glances in the rearview mirror as I sat in the backseat and grinned to myself.

  I forced myself to not smile so wide, but it was even more difficult after I got a text from Jesse. “Let’s talk,” it said. “I don’t like not seeing you.”

  My parents were going to be so excited, I thought. Angelo was going to be so proud. I could finally explain to Jesse what had been so important that I had to miss dinner with his mom. School started in less than a week, and everything would be normal and lovely and I would go to college and the Collective would go back to how it used to be and Dominic Arment would be destroyed by karma and an orange jumpsuit and ankle shackles.

  I loved my life sometimes. I really did.

  I had the cab drop me off five blocks away from the loft just in case, and I blended in with some of the later stragglers in Soho as I took a winding path back to the loft. By the time I went up in the elevator, I was hopping up and down, and when the doors opened, I scanned my fingerprint in record time and shoved my way into the loft.

  “I got them!” I yelled. “I did it, I got them!”

  My parents came running, and I immediately realized that something wasn’t right. My dad looked rumpled and distracted, running a hand over his face as if he could erase his worried expression, and my mom’s eyes were red, almost bird-like, her hair up in a messy topknot and her hands wringing together in front of her. There were two half-packed suitcases on the floor, clothes and passports spilling out of them.

  I froze. “What happened? What’s going on?”