“She looks formidable,” I said, “as though she had opinions and wasn’t shy to express them.”
Amber laughed. “Apparently, Manet had a close relationship with his mother, who was a great supporter of his art, even when his father had pushed him into studying law. Mrs. Gardner bought this painting from Manet’s stepson, who inherited it from Madame Manet herself, and she may have been his grandmother, if the speculation that Manet was his father is true.” Amber looked at me with sparkling eyes. “Art history was my favorite subject. It’s why I came back here after …” She trailed off as she looked around the room.
“After they fired all the guards and interns?”
Her eyes darted to mine again. “Yes, exactly.”
“I had a chance to speak with my friend’s mother, Sophia, who also interned here then,” I said quietly.
Amber moved to another painting, and I followed as though our conversation was purely about the art. “I thought about your friend’s mother and realized I did remember her. She was a talented artist herself and spent a lot of time in this room copying the Impressionists.”
“She told us that she painted in here after hours, when Rick and his band played in the museum.”
Amber smirked and shook her head. “Those were very different times.”
We moved on to another painting, and I continued speaking in quiet tones, as though asking about the art. “Do you remember a young musician named Markham Gray?”
Her eyes darted to me in surprise. “Markham? Of course. Everyone knew him. He’s the one who invented sensor tag and was the best at playing it. The games we used to play here after hours horrify me now. The priceless art we put at risk just because we were bored—” She shuddered. “As awful as it is to say, the heist was probably the best thing that happened to this place. Attention was finally paid to proper security, which definitely put an end to the shenanigans, and the empty frames and the mystery of the missing art have become a huge draw for the public.”
We had walked all the way around the room and were back in front of the Manet, with the small, empty frame beneath it.
“Sadly, some invaluable artworks remain lost to the public because of it,” I said, studying the sad little frame.
“It’s very lucky that Madame Auguste Manet was in the annex that night for repair. I’m certain it would have been the thieves’ target if it had been here.” Amber said, studying the painting once more.
I failed to control my expression when I asked her, “You mean to tell me she was in the annex?”
Amber seemed confused by my shock. “It was a scheduled restoration.”
“The door to the annex from the Dutch Room was open that night,” I murmured.
She stared at me in surprise. “It was?”
“There’s a crime scene photo showing the open door. The Times printed it a decade ago.”
The docent exhaled quietly. “I didn’t know.” She was pale as she gazed up at the formidable woman looking down at us as though in judgment. “That makes it even more remarkable that she wasn’t stolen. She’s far more valuable than Chez Tortoni.”
Indeed.
33
Anna
“The door to possibility isn’t locked.”
From the T-shirt collection of Anna Collins
The Cipher offices had no obvious entry points beyond the front doors, which were watched over by a trained security guard and six cameras, and the elevator, which presumably went down to the parking garage and more cameras. My escape route assessment was automatic, and the guard at the desk seemed amused when I gave him my name.
“Darius said you’d look for the exits. Did you find the staircase?”
I narrowed my eyes at the man behind the desk. He could have been mistaken for a younger Idris Elba, and his British accent added authenticity to the resemblance. His smile seemed genuine, not mocking, so I decided to play.
“The obvious one is next to the elevator, but I assume the cameras cover it.” I looked around the wood-paneled lobby, and my eyes lingered on a large potted palm on one side of the lobby, well away from the main entrance. “There,” I said, nodding to the palm. “That’s meant to draw eyeballs away from the seam of a door panel.”
I studied it more closely. “Not an outside door. Either a staircase or a closet with another elevator.” I turned back to the guard. “Probably goes to the roof, where I’d put a helicopter pad if it were my building.”
An eyebrow arched, and Idris-ish looked impressed. “It’s a staircase, and it took me three months to spot it. I’ll let Darius know you’re here.”
He picked up a phone, and I walked over to the panel behind the potted palm to study the seam of the hidden door. It was cleverly done and was similar enough to the panic room door at the Gray mansion that I thought it might be Darius’s work.
A minute later the elevator dinged, and Darius stepped out into the lobby. He wore a gray suit and white shirt with no tie, and he was gorgeous. My breath caught, and I was instantly self-conscious of my jeans, engineer boots, and Alice-in-Wonderland T-shirt that proclaimed “To Live Would Be an Awfully Big Adventure” across the front. At least I’d swapped out the leather jacket for a black cashmere sport coat I’d found in a second-hand store in Los Angeles.
But Darius didn’t seem to notice my outfit. His eyes were fixed on my face as he walked toward me, and my heart started trying to climb out of my throat, apparently to embrace him. A heart with zero self-preservation instinct was a liability I didn’t need to bring into a meeting at Cipher Security, but the smile on my face didn’t get the memo.
“Hi,” I said, approximating the cleverness of a frog.
“Hello,” he said with a smile in his voice and eyes. His expression was pure business though, and if I hadn’t seen the sparkles, I would have been a little bit crushed.
I bit the inside of my cheek to get my smile under control, but then Darius whispered, “Stop biting your cheek,” and I poked him in the side, and then I was officially twelve years old.
Idris-ish saw everything – he had that kind of casual attention that made it seem he wasn’t watching when he was actually aware of everything in his environment. Darius walked me to the desk and introduced us.
“Anna Collins, this is Gabriel Eze. He’s been working with Cipher for what, about a year now?” Darius directed the question to Gabriel, who stood and held out a hand to shake mine.
“It’s nice to properly meet you, Anna. Welcome to Cipher.” Gabriel’s hand was as warm as his voice, and I half expected “Bond, James Bond” to come out of his mouth.
“Nice to meet you too,” I said. I should probably have been nervous and twitchy being in the lion’s den, but the lions all seemed very nice and far too pretty to be as dangerous as they probably were.
“We have a meeting with Dan and Quinn in the conference room on three,” Darius said to Gabriel. “You can reach me there if any calls come in.”
“Got it.” He looked at me. “That room has the best coffee, so don’t be shy.”
“I can be a lot of things,” I said with a smile I actually felt, “but shy isn’t in my repertoire. Awkward and dorky I have covered, and I could draw a map to Mortification Central, but I won’t, because that’s the kind of place you have to stumble into.”
Even Gabriel’s chuckle held warmth, and I had the sense he was a genuinely nice guy. “I’ve been there, but you make it seem like fun.”
I waved cheerily as Darius guided me to the elevator. I felt the barest touch of his hand on the small of my back, and it sent prickles of awareness through my skin. “We can’t take the secret stairs?” I asked, looking pointedly at the hidden door by the potted plant.
He hesitated for a fraction of a second. “You saw them?”
“I found them when I looked for them. I’m intrigued by things that are hidden in plain sight,” I said.
Darius threw a smirk in Gabriel’s general direction then led me over to the hidden door. “Okay, Smartypants. Fi
nd the access.”
The wall was paneled with honey-colored wood, and each three-foot section had a seam, so it was clear where the door was, but not how to open it. There were no visible latches, depressions, or hinges, which meant it probably opened inward, and nothing hung on the panel that could be used to hide a catch. There was, however, a wall sconce on the panel to the left of the one I thought was the door. I reached up and felt around the base of the sconce. I found a button that I knew wasn’t the switch for the sconce because sconces like these would be controlled by a master switch with a dimmer, so I pressed the button and voilà, the panel gave a little click as the latch opened. I shot Darius a triumphant look and caught the raised eyebrow of surprise.
“Did you know to look for that too?” he asked.
“You designed it, didn’t you?” I asked, with only a little bit of awe.
There was pride in his smile. “Yes.”
“It’s cleverer than at Gray’s,” I said without thinking. His expression shuttered in the next instant, and I scowled at myself for reminding him of what I’d done, and who I was – or wasn’t – to him.
“Gray doesn’t appreciate clever,” was all he said in response. He opened the door and gestured for me to enter the narrow staircase ahead of him. I began climbing as he closed the door behind us with a quiet snick.
“You didn’t like him much, did you?” Despite everything it had and could still cost me to have him know my part in the theft from Gray mansion, I was happy to be able to speak honestly. I actively disliked lying, even by omission. I preferred to save my energy for things like climbing mountains and icy ocean swims.
“Malcom Gray tried to have me removed from his project when I wouldn’t give him priority on a set of door locks that had been ordered for another client. He tried to bribe me for them first, and then he tried to have me fired.” Darius’s voice came from behind me on the staircase, echoing slightly in the empty space. I could almost feel the echo in my stomach because the disgust in his voice was so visceral.
“Right. Your thing with greased wheels,” I muttered.
“Right. That.” His teeth were gritted, and that echoed in my stomach too.
“If we’re still friends later, can I meet your parents?” I said, making the conversational swerve of the century.
There was a long pause, and I was glad not to be able to see his face so I couldn’t tell if “Ah, hell no” was written all over it.
“I … suppose so,” he said carefully as I reached the third floor landing.
I tried not to notice how hard the words were for him to say, and I changed the subject so I didn’t have to think about it too much.
“Can I just open the door,” I asked, indicating a simple metal fire door, “or do I have to tap three times and spin around in a circle?”
Whatever expression had been on Darius’s face at the start of my question was replaced with the quirk of a smile. “The latter.”
I grinned, then tapped three times on my own head and wiggled around in a circle as if there were a hula hoop around my hips. It was absolutely worth the look on his face and went a long way toward replacing his usual intensity with something more playful.
I liked playing with Darius.
He might have even liked it too, considering that he got way too close to my face as he reached past me to open the door – the kind of close that sometimes resulted in lip collisions. Sadly, this one did not.
I stepped into the hall a little more breathless than I would normally be after three flights of stairs, and Darius led the way to a conference room dominated by the kind of table people took shelter under in earthquakes.
“Would you like a coffee?” he asked, moving to a machine on the sideboard.
“I think I’d better, in case Gabriel asks,” I said, looking around the room. “This table is bigger than my first apartment.”
He smiled. “When we lived in London, the first place my parents rented was a bedsit in Chelsea.”
The sound of the coffee machine filled the room with a pleasant hum. “What’s a bedsit?”
“It’s a flat so small you have to literally sit on the bed to wash your face in the sink. We lasted one month before my brother and I were ready to climb out the window just to get enough air in our lungs to complain.”
He smirked. “Of course, we weren’t allowed to open the window because of the drug deals happening in the alley below us.”
“Nice neighborhood?” I asked. I’d accidentally rented a guest room in an interesting part of Hollywood once, and since then had learned to do my research.
“Right around the corner from a strip club. But the price was right while my father made his connections with the Iranian community that eventually led to work as a teacher.”
“Is that what he does now?” I asked as Darius set another coffee cup in the machine.
“How do you like your coffee?”
I smiled. “Surprise me.”
He considered me a moment, then reached under the counter and pulled out a bottle of almond flavored syrup. He poured some out and steamed it with milk while he answered my question.
“My father drove a taxi the whole time we lived in London and for the first few years we were in Chicago. Disgracefully, a professor’s salary at a junior college is not enough to support a family.”
“In Luxembourg, the beginning salary of a teacher is higher than the highest teacher salary anywhere else in the world,” I said, and then scoffed at myself for the random fact outburst.
“Don’t do that,” Darius said, with the beginnings of a scowl.
“I know,” I said, “my trivial-trivia nonsense gets exhausting.”
“No. I love your trivia. Don’t dismiss yourself for the things you say. It’s diminishing.” He set the almond cappuccino in front of me.
“Thank you,” I said automatically, while my brain spun on the things my ears had just taken in.
He looked at me oddly. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m not. I got hung up on ‘love’ and ‘diminishing.’ Aaaand … now I’m just going to insert my foot the rest of the way into my mouth and know that at least I do self-humiliation perfectly.”
Darius smiled at the expression of mortification on my face. “I get hung up on love too, if it’s any consolation.”
“Oh, phew. I’m just going to step right over that as if it never happened. But explain diminishing. How do I diminish myself for owning my own ridiculousness?”
“You don’t. You diminish anyone else who thinks what you just said was interesting, or thinks you’re fascinating for knowing such a thing.”
“Oh.” I’d never thought of that. I looked at him while I sipped my coffee, which was sooooo good, by the way. “So, self-deprecation is a bad thing?”
“It can be,” he said.
I had just opened my mouth to dispute that when the door opened and two men came in. The timing was unfortunate on so many levels, not the least of which was that my open mouth resulted in a relaxed jaw, which, at the sight of their majesties Alpha Male One and Alpha Male Two, became an unhinged one. When I realized I was staring, I snapped my mouth shut, but not before I caught the glint of amusement in the shorter man’s eyes.
Darius stepped forward and spoke to the men. “Quinn, Dan, I’d like to introduce Anna Collins. Anna, this is Quinn Sullivan,” he indicated the taller of the two men who looked like he was made of steel and kidskin leather, “and Dan O’Malley,” he said, nodding at the other man, who was more cast iron, bull hide, and ink. “They own Cipher Security.”
I stood and shook each man’s hand. “You must be very good at your job,” I said to Quinn before I could stop the words.
He raised an eyebrow. “I am. But I’m curious why you would say so?”
“Because you’re scary and intimidating and too handsome to be real.” I clapped a hand over my mouth and squeezed my eyes shut. “I just said that out loud,” I murmured through my fingers.
Dan barked
a deep, rumbly laugh. “She’s got your number.”
I opened my eyes to see that the man of steel wasn’t scowling. He wasn’t smiling either, but I hadn’t been kicked out of the room yet, so that was something.
I inhaled. “Let me try that again. Hi, I’m Anna. Thank you for letting me crash your meeting, and sorry-not-sorry I stole from your ex-client.”
Quinn’s not-scowling expression froze very slightly, and Dan shot Darius a look. “This is your thief?”
“She is,” Darius said quietly.
“Maybe we better sit down,” Dan said seriously.
I returned to my seat and took a fortifying sip of my coffee. Dan nodded at it. “What kind did you get?”
“Almond cappuccino. What’s your favorite?”
“Hot, strong, and on demand.” He shot a look at Quinn. “Do not say what you’re thinking.”
“Can I?” I said, yet again opening my mouth without the control of my good sense.
Dan smirked, I smirked, and the phrase like my women was said without words. It was oddly satisfying to have an inappropriate mental dialogue with a stranger. “So,” Quinn said, looking at Darius. That was all. Just, “So.” That’s what power looked like. One word.
“Anna did indeed take the painting from Gray’s panic room. Apparently there is some question about the legitimacy of Gray’s claim to it, but for the moment, that is not the primary issue,” Darius said. He spoke to both of his bosses but managed to include me in the conversation with his gaze.
“Ownership is what determines whether the crime includes theft or is restricted to breaking and entering,” Quinn said.
“I have the materials to back up the ownership issue,” I said.
Quinn gave a curt nod of the head. “Good.” His gaze returned to Darius. “What is the primary issue, then?”
“A second painting was found behind the first, stretched on the same frame. This second painting is, to the naked eye, indistinguishable from a Manet that currently hangs in the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston.”
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