I had designed the harness for myself along the lines of the rig climbers wear, except it was for my back, shoulders, and waist. It was tight so it didn’t get hooked on balcony rails or grabbed by people attempting to thwart my timely escapes. The tube for the painting fit neatly under the straps at my waist and shoulders and ran down the length of my spine. It gave me an old crone’s lumpy back, but that only made the urge to cackle in a witch’s voice slightly stronger than usual.
With the canvas safely on my back and my knife tucked in my pocket, I turned back to the monitor. Still no movement in the hall outside the panic room door, and nothing on the grounds that I could see. I braced myself for one last look at Colette and Sterling, just to make sure they wouldn’t be roaming the halls anytime soon.
Whoa, nope. Sterling’s naked butt glared at me from the screen, and I slammed my eyelids shut attempting to scrub the image from my brain.
“Ick. Blech. Ugh. Nope. No. All the noes,” I muttered under my breath as I opened the panic room door and slipped out into the second floor hallway, where light-blind cameras now stood sentry over the naked ballerina’s shadow dance. When I’d passed all three cameras I hit the remotes, and the hallway was plunged back into dimness. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust, then I scanned the floor for the lights. I was counting on their small size and discreet placement near the baseboards to render them invisible while I was still trapped inside the house. I could just barely see them from where I stood at the end of the hall. Good enough.
Sterling’s cat waited for me at the door to the balcony and wound his way around my ankles twice before I slipped behind the long curtain and tucked it around myself. I crouched down to stroke his soft fur, scratch his ears, and calm my heartbeat with his rhythmic purring.
The hard part of my job was done. Now I just needed to wait for Sterling to turn off the alarm to let Colette, and me, out of the house.
Now that I knew where all the cameras were aimed, I planned my escape route accordingly. I didn’t have to return to the garage roof, with its high potential for naked-eye visibility, and could instead drop down over the balcony railing and use the drain pipe to control my fall to the ground.
The cat nudged its way next to my hip and curled into a contented ball as I stroked its fur and tried not to think about how Colette had spent the past thirty minutes. She promised she would be fine, and I trusted her, but the thought of having sex with Sterling Gray held exactly point-five appeal on a hundred-point scale for me, and that was only because he had the good taste to build a secret bookcase door in his dad’s house. Now his friend the Disney prince was up somewhere near the seventy-point range, with room to move up or down based on factors like hygiene, sense of humor, the sound of his chewing, favorite movie, and how well he kissed.
I sighed. Darius Masoud was not for kissing. At least not for kissing me. Whoever he kissed would not be the kind of person who needed an alibi for anything, much less a naked sister alibi.
I spent the next hour planning D&D campaigns for Honor and her thieves, and was startled when the electronic “Alarm, off” voice murmured from the hall. I dumped the sleeping cat off my lap, pulled myself up off the floor, and stepped out from behind the curtain to open the balcony door. I’d just closed it behind myself when I heard the alarm re-engage, and didn’t even wait for the heart-pounding to still before I dropped down off the balcony, shimmied down the drain pipe, and sprinted away from the house. I bolted for the dark alley where I’d hidden my motorcycle behind a dumpster. The balaclava came off, my helmet went on, and a minute later I was an anonymous biker flying down the streets of Chicago.
6
Darius
“Secrets are your greatest liability. Fear is your greatest weakness.”
Darius Masoud
Couldn’t have seen that coming.
I did try to withhold the smirk that had been threatening ever since we’d gotten the call from Gray about a theft at his father’s mansion, but judging by the angry glare on Gray’s face, I was only marginally successful.
“How could this have happened?” He turned from the front door and marched straight upstairs, leaving me to close the door.
“What time did your guest arrive, and what time did you reset the alarm?” I countered.
Gray turned to scowl at me. “Colette got here at one a.m., and I re-armed the system immediately after she was inside.”
I tried to avoid the mental image of the beautiful blonde and her mischievous smile, but was unsuccessful. Her image winked at me as she stood at the bookcase door reading Beowulf. I shook my head to banish her.
“And did she stay the night?” I asked, with a morbid interest in the answer.
We reached the second floor landing, and he gave me a look as though I were a proper idiot for wondering. “Of course not,” he snarled.
I’d had a lot of practice maintaining a neutral expression, which came in quite handy when dealing with Cipher Security’s wealthy clients. “Well, let’s review the feeds then, shall we?” I indicated that he should precede me to the panic room.
“I did that already, obviously. There’s nothing.” Nonetheless, Gray was already marching in that direction.
The bookcase door was closed, and I stopped Gray before he could pull the book to open it. I studied the shelves as he tapped his foot impatiently.
“Did you rearrange the books?” I asked.
“No.” Annoyance seeped from his skin like a stench, and I had the sudden thought that Ms. Collins would likely have said something inappropriate to him about it. The idea of that made me smile.
Gray’s scowl deepened. “Is something funny?”
I noted the change in position of several books, and realized that two of the rearrangements were next to the levered Melville. I studied them more closely. Call of the Wild and The Jungle Book had been placed next to Moby Dick.
“Clever,” I murmured.
“What?”
“You haven’t touched the arrangement of these books since the lever was installed?” I didn’t think Gray had the imagination to place the anthropomorphized stories together, but the camera feeds should confirm my instinct.
“These books were bought and arranged by my designer. What purpose could possibly be served by moving them?”
Besides reading them? I would have been astonished if Sterling Gray had read anything since his days at Harvard but the stock market reports on his father’s company.
I noted two other subtle changes to the book order and wondered at one of them. What could Octavia E. Butler and Mary Shelley possibly have in common … ah, besides feminism and groundbreaking gothic science fiction? I snorted to myself and donned a pair of gloves before reaching up to tug on Moby Dick.
I smirked like the adolescent boy I could still occasionally be, and the bookcase door swung noiselessly open. My first glance was to the monitor, where I was glad to see the various camera feeds still recording throughout the house. My job would have become considerably more difficult if the video surveillance system had been damaged in any way.
And yet why hadn’t it been?
My gaze swung over to the elaborately carved wooden frame that now hung empty behind the sofa. I knew how heavy that frame was, as I’d been the one to install its security lock.
“What else was taken?” I asked as I entered the small room.
“It’s not enough that this was?” Gray’s tone was sharp and defensive, and I stored that impression away to consider later.
I allowed my eyes to flick to Gray’s briefly before returning to my examination of the room. “I know we have the valuation docs at the office, but off the top of your head, what can you tell me about the missing painting?”
He huffed in exasperation. “My father acquired it from the artist, and he wanted it installed in the panic room for safekeeping.”
“So the painting belongs to your father?” This hadn’t been in the valuation file, but it made sense. Most of the Gray mansion’s contemporary
art and photography had been acquired and insured by Sterling Gray, but the painting of the two sisters was in a much more classical style and didn’t particularly fit with the art in the public rooms.
“Everything belongs to my father, including your failed security system.” Gray’s anger was palpable. “Why are you so interested in the painting?” His movements were restless as he brushed imaginary dust from the desktop.
“I’d prefer that you touch as little as possible until the police have had a chance to dust for fingerprints.”
“No police,” Gray said sharply.
My expression remained casual and calm, even as instinct warned me that Gray’s secrets could become problematic for Cipher Security.
“Insurance won’t pay without a police report.”
“The painting wasn’t insured.”
I allowed the surprise to show on my face. “It’s valuable enough to keep in a panic room.”
“My father saw no point in paying exorbitant insurance fees for something no one could steal.” The restlessness was back, and it seemed all Gray could do to keep his fingers from tapping.
“And yet it has been stolen.”
Gray held my gaze with a calm steeliness his twitching fingers belied. “No police.”
“Cipher Security will not be held responsible for any monetary damages without a legal judgment.”
Gray’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t need a legal judgment to hold Cipher responsible. The features editor at the Tribune is an old friend of my father’s, and he owes Dad a favor.”
My tone went flinty. “I suggest you take your threats directly to Quinn Sullivan, as I will not be passing them along without considerably unflattering editorial commentary.”
Gray met my gaze for a long moment. “I don’t make the mistake of underestimating the consequence of my father’s wrath if that painting isn’t recovered.”
Interesting. It sounded almost as though Sterling Gray was warning me rather than delivering an ultimatum. “I’ll need a few hours to go through the footage. Where can I find you if I have any other questions?”
He nodded. “I’ll be in my office.” Gray glanced at the empty frame on the wall, scowled, and then left the room.
I took a moment to do a visual sweep of the room. There was nothing obvious out of place, and as I didn’t have a fingerprint kit or the resources to match any fingerprints that might be recovered, I sat at the computer and opened the storage files for the previous night.
There’d been no camera set up in the panic room; the senior Mr. Gray had been adamant that there be one place in the house that was completely private. I enlarged the image from the camera that was aimed at the bookshelf door, and scrolled backward through the footage, beginning with my own arrival.
Sterling Gray entered the room at 8:17a.m. and came back out less than thirty seconds later with an expression of panic on his face. Again, interesting. He did not appear to be a man who panicked easily. I looked down to see Gray’s cat, the same striped one that had wound its way around Ms. Collins’ feet at the party, stroll into the panic room. I reached down to pet it as it rubbed against my legs. The light dimmed onscreen as I scrubbed back through the footage, and movement caught my eye at 2:33a.m. It was the cat, strolling in reverse to the window at the end of the hall. A few moments later, the hall sconces lit and Gray returned from downstairs alone, and a few moments before that, he and a woman with long, wavy blonde hair walked down the hall. I stopped the footage. 2:27a.m.
I rewound the tape and watched her walk. She wore the same hot pink dress she’d worn at the party, and it floated around her with each graceful step. She laughed at something Gray said as they walked past, and though the cameras had no sound, it seemed pretty and delicate, just like she was. It was as if being with Gray had lit a fire and burned all the awkwardness out of her, leaving behind pure grace and femininity.
I continued scrolling backward through an hour’s worth of nothing when suddenly the footage went completely white. I hit the stop button and stared at the computer monitor.
There was an edge to the whiteout, and I could just see a shadow of … something … in it. I scrolled past the whiteout, and less than ten minutes later, the white screen disappeared, and the near blackness of the hallway once again became discernable.
I stood so suddenly that I startled the cat, and it darted out of the panic room. I followed it out to the hall to find it cleaning itself, as though utterly unconcerned, right in the middle of the floor. Near the cat, up against the wall, was a small disk that almost completely blended in with the dark wood of the floorboards.
I bent to pick it up, and the cat unfurled itself to bump my leg for more petting. The object in my hand appeared to be a tiny, remote control-operated light. When I found two more along the wall heading toward the back staircase, I suddenly understood why the monitor had whited out.
“Very clever,” I murmured to myself as I gathered the other mini spotlights from the floor. The cat strolled ahead of me down the hall to the French doors at the end by the stairs, behind the bronze statue of a ballet dancer. I followed it to discover if there were more spotlights down the staircase, but I found no others. The cat emerged from behind the heavy drape on the left side of the French doors to wind around my legs again for more attention, which I squatted down to give him as I studied the hall leading to the panic room.
Three lights across from three cameras. They could have been placed there at any time during the party, but a simple search of camera footage would reveal someone bending down to set them. I sent one of the lights sliding down the side of the wooden floor like it was on a shuffleboard. The light came to rest a few feet away from the third camera. I slid the next one with more force and it stopped directly across from the second camera. I studied the French doors behind me. I knew they were wired to the alarm, as I’d supervised it myself, but if the alarm hadn’t been armed …
I gave the cat a last scratch and returned to the panic room to scrub backward through more footage. At 1:04a.m. Gray and Ms. Collins walked backward down the hall and out of frame. The landing just inside the French doors was out of sight of any camera, and I switched views to catch them in the stairwell. Damn. The landing was blind, which represented a weakness in my security system.
If, in fact, someone came into the house through the French doors, Cipher Security could be held responsible for the failure to capture an image of the thief.
First, though, I had to rule out the possibility that Colette Collins was the thief.
7
Anna
“I’m like the funhouse mirror reflection of my sister.”
Anna Collins
I felt like a thief every time I entered Colette’s apartment through her bedroom window. But it was hardly sporting to walk in the front door when she only lived on the second floor, and climbing up the fire escapes kept my ninja skills sharp.
She was still sleeping when I flopped on her bed the next morning, and I grinned at her shriek of surprise.
“One-zero, Anna,” I said cheerfully.
“I was up until three a.m. giving you an alibi, so two-one, Colette,” my sister said, peering at me through sleepy eyes.
“Except I got Mom’s painting, so we’re two-two at least.”
Colette sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Show me,” she said, instantly alert.
I pulled the harness off my shoulders and opened the telescope tube. As kids, my sister and I had always opened presents together, so I’d held off looking at the painting until I was with her.
The canvas was thick, and I realized as I unrolled it that the backing was stuck to it. Colette shifted over, and I spread the painting of Mom and Aunt Alexandra out flat on the bed. The half-inch of canvas that I’d cut away from the edges to get it out of the frame hadn’t affected the integrity of the image, as the room the young women were standing in faded to black around them.
Colette gasped quietly and touched the faces of our mother and her older sister
with a delicate fingertip. “They were so beautiful.”
“Mom still is, and the photos I’ve found of Aunt Alex show that she aged well too,” I said solemnly.
Colette sounded wistful. “I wish I looked more like Mom.”
“You and Mom have the same eyes – she just always looks like she’s about to burst into song and start dancing around the room with teapots and kitchen implements.”
Colette snickered, and I added a mental point to my score. I loved to make my sister laugh.
“Meanwhile, Aunt Alex looks like she knows where all the bodies are buried,” I continued.
“Are you kidding? She’s probably the one who buried them. Mom said Aunt Alex always treated rules more like guidelines, and sometimes she just flat out ignored them.”
“So, like me,” I said, as I studied the two young women in the painting.
She smiled at the comparison but didn’t confirm or deny as she stroked the cut edge of the canvas. “You couldn’t take the frame?”
I shook my head. “Wired to the wall.” I studied my sister’s face. Her lips looked a little swollen, and her jaw was slightly red. “Was everything … okay? I mean, for you, last night.” I stumbled over the words because it felt so hard to say them out loud. “He didn’t hurt you or anything?”
“What? No.” Colette flushed. “No.”
And that, oddly, was all she had to say about that.
“Is that a flush, like I don’t want to talk about it, or a blush, like I can’t tell you?”
“I’m not talking about this with you right now, Sister.”
We’d called each other Sister since we were little, just to confuse whoever couldn’t tell us apart. At this point, I couldn’t see anything but our differences, but I’d learned that most people were not very observant and saw whatever they expected to see. I was counting on it, in fact.
Code of Honor Page 4