“No, he didn’t call them,” I said calmly. “He must have installed a silent alarm on the panic room door that tripped and alerted him by cell phone.”
“Why are you two here?” she said, including Shane in her questioning look.
“Stakeout,” Shane said.
Anna grimaced. “I hate stakeouts.”
Shane chuckled. “I don’t know, Darius plays a pretty mean trivia game.”
Anna leveled her surprised gaze at me until Sterling interrupted. “I really will call the cops if someone doesn’t tell me what the hell is going on.”
Anna sighed and pushed the button somewhere in the bookshelf to open the door. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
She stepped out of her T. rex costume as she walked, revealing a skin-tight body suit that appealed to every aesthetic sensibility in my body, then she bunched up the costume and shoved it into the tube she wore in a harness on her back. We filed into the small room behind her, and Sterling flipped on the light.
His eyes went immediately to the painting on the wall, as did mine. Shane was busy looking around the room.
“What the hell …?” His voice trailed off, and he looked to Anna for an explanation.
“It was behind the painting of the sisters in the same frame. I didn’t know about it, but your dad did. He’s the one who commissioned its theft.”
“The original theft,” I added for clarification, “thirty years ago from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The person he charged with stealing it for him was Anna’s and Colette’s aunt, because her sister, their mother, had painted an exceptionally good copy of a very valuable original.”
“My aunt substituted the copy, though, and hid it behind a painting she and her sister had done of each other. Your dad refused to give that one back to my aunt, and their Cuban Missile Crisis-level stalemate lasted almost thirty years.”
“You mean because they each had something on the other, so no one could force the other’s hand?”
“Exactly.” Anna said. “Then my aunt died and we found a letter she’d written to us asking us to get the painting back for our mom, so we did. We just didn’t know about the one behind it. And since that’s the painting your dad actually wants, I decided to put it back.”
“In a T. rex costume,” Sterling deadpanned.
I smirked, Shane giggled, and Anna just shrugged. “As one does,” she said.
Sterling put his gun away in a drawer in the desk, then turned back to regard the painting on the wall.
“It isn’t a very nice painting, is it,” he said.
“Nope. It’s a good copy though.”
Sterling sighed and looked at Anna. “I presume you have proof of my dad’s part in the theft of this good copy?”
She nodded. “I do. I really don’t want your dad to know that we know about his involvement in, well, let me just say, something the police in Boston are still investigating, so I’m inclined to just tuck all of this away somewhere and forget about it.”
“Which you would do if all the digital recordings from last week and tonight managed to disappear?”
Anna glared at him through narrowed eyes. “You would really have let your dad plaster my sister’s naked butt all over Chicago?”
He sighed and rubbed his temples. “I didn’t know about that until after he threatened her. That recording will obviously go away too.”
“It better,” she said menacingly. This fierce woman in a black cat suit was the sexiest, most fearless person I’d ever met.
Anna approached Sterling and stood with her hands on her hips. “Sterling Gray, my sister likes you.”
He scoffed. “Despite her criminal tendencies, I like her too.”
I laughed in uncomfortable awareness of the similarities between myself and Sterling Gray. He scowled at me, but Anna grinned, and my heart beat a little faster.
“So,” she said, returning her attention to Sterling, “I’m inclined to pretend nothing ever happened between my aunt and your dad if you and your dad are willing to forget there was ever a painting of two sisters hanging in this room.”
He looked up at the fake Manet on the wall, which, I had to admit, looked pretty great in the fancy gold frame, and then held out his hand to Anna. “Deal.” She shook it without hesitation.
“Shall I help you lose the files?” I asked Sterling.
He scowled at me then waved a hand toward the computer. “Have at it.” Then to Anna, he said, “I’ll have the thumb drive with my naked ass sent to your sister.”
“Or,” she said with a cheeky smile, “you can take her to a nice dinner and give it to her in person.”
He checked his watch. “Speaking of, it’s time for you people to leave so I can get back to my date.”
I was finishing up the file erasure as Anna walked out of the panic room with Sterling. “Do you ever go dancing with the ballerina down the hall?” she asked him.
“The naked one?” he answered. “But … it’s a statue.”
“Of course she’s a statue. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t dance …”
Their voices trailed off, and Shane turned to me with a laugh. “That woman is an absolute delight.”
“She’s the most remarkable person I’ve ever met,” I said.
46
Anna
“A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.”
Oscar Wilde
I woke up to a text from Shane summoning me to join a debrief meeting at Cipher Security. In deference to the fact that she and anyone else I encountered in the office would likely be wearing a suit, I dressed in my least holey jeans, a plain white linen shirt, and a long camel topcoat I found in a thrift store in Seattle.
A woman I hadn’t seen before was sitting at the downstairs desk. She looked up when I walked in, studied me for a moment, then picked up the phone. “Anna Collins is here.”
I held my hand out to her and smiled. “Hi, I’m Anna.”
“I know,” she said, shaking my hand. “Darius described the boots.”
I smirked. “Of course he did.”
“He also said you’re beautiful, and fierce, and funny as hell, and he has some things he wants to say to you after the meeting, if you’re interested,” Darius said as he entered the building.
I turned at the sound of his voice, and then my head exploded, but I was too busy laughing to pick up all the bits. Darius wore his usual gorgeous suit and tie combo, but the tie was neon pink and covered in tiny green dinosaurs.
“Nice tie,” the woman said completely without irony.
“Thanks, Dallas,” he said with a smirk. She cracked a smile then, and it transformed her face from pretty to breathtaking.
He motioned for me to lead the way to the hidden door. “It’s a secret staircase kind of day,” he said as I opened the door and preceded him inside.
“You look fabulous,” I said with genuine admiration.
“Yes, I do. I think I’ll wear it to Sunday roast next Monday.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, with fresh laughter at the thought of Silvana’s dress code for her sons. “I’d pay money to see the expression on your mom’s face if you show up with a dinosaur tie.”
“Good, then you’ll come?” He wasn’t teasing anymore, and his voice sounded … hopeful?
I looked over my shoulder at him and giggled at the sight of the dinosaurs dancing on the shiny fabric. “Is there some deeper message to the fact that you’re sporting tiny dinos?”
He raised his eyebrows and looked hopeful. “Maybe?”
I gestured for him to go on, and he took a breath. “I’m told people screw up a lot when they’re learning a new game, and I never really learned how to play this one before.”
“What’s the game?” I asked.
He looked up at me. “Coloring outside the lines. Making it up as I go along. Hide and seek in the dark. Truth or dare,” he said with complete seriousness.
The grin that spread across my face must have been catching, beca
use he got one just as big when I said, sincerely, “I love truth or dare.”
Then he poked my booty with a finger and said, “Go, they’re waiting for us, and the sooner we debrief, the sooner we can take the boat out.”
“Yes!” I ran the last few steps. “Race you!”
“Conference room,” he called as I sprinted down the hall.
I beat him by a mile, and the surprise on everyone’s faces when I burst into the room was worth the dignity points it cost me because I got to see Darius run.
Dan was grinning at Darius’s entrance, and the twitch at the corner of Quinn’s mouth gave away the hint of amusement he may have felt. Maybe.
“Now that we’re all,” Quinn looked pointedly at the dinosaur tie, “here, I’d like to close out our Gray file with the full facts as we know them.”
Once we had all settled with coffees, I told the assembled Cipher team about my aunt’s confession that had been written on the back of her twins painting and the threat of exposure against my sister. Quinn’s scowl deepened at that, and he shot a look at Gabriel. “Follow up with Alex Greene on that will you? Let’s get that file removed.”
I didn’t know who Alex Greene was, but the way he said “removed” made me think there might be some hacking skills involved.
Then Darius filled them in on his scout of the current Gray security system. “McCallum has been nosing around our contracts since he came to town last year,” Dan said, when Darius mentioned the new thermal cameras. “I want you to keep an eye on him and his company.”
“An internal case then?” Darius asked.
“Yeah. I have that itchy-ass feeling it won’t be for long though,” Dan said.
“You may want to get that checked,” I commented before I could stop myself, then screwed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t have to see the shock on anyone’s face.
But then Dan laughed, and I peeked through my lashes. “Sorry,” I said. “Broken filter.”
“I had mine removed. Fucking thing kept getting in the way of my best lines.”
“Anyway,” Darius continued with the slightest of smiles, “when it was clear to me that Anna was going back into Gray’s mansion to return the fake Manet, I arranged for her to overhear my conversation with Shane about the modifications. We were in a public venue discussing system alterations that we didn’t make to the system of a client that was no longer ours,” Darius continued, his expression serious. “It was well outside acceptable procedure, I’m aware.”
“But in this case, I believe it was warranted,” added Quinn, as though that was the last he wanted to hear on the subject.
I saw surprise and a little relief on Darius’s face, and I realized he had been worried about the breach in protocol. He had not only stepped over his own rules to make sure I got that information, he’d stepped over his company’s rules too. I nudged his foot with mine under the table, then gave him a small smile when he looked at me as he continued.
“Shane and I arrived at the Gray mansion just as Sterling Gray and Colette Collins were leaving, so we did not witness Anna’s rather remarkable free climb up the back of the house to the third floor balcony, nor did we see her entry into the house during the time the alarm was disengaged.”
Dan turned to me. “You free climbed three stories?”
“It’s brick. It wasn’t too hard.”
Darius slid a photo across the table to Dan, and I saw it was of the back of Gray’s mansion and included the Juliet balcony on the upper floor. Taken in the light of day, the climb did look a little daunting.
Dan’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and maybe respect. “Interesting skill set.”
“It’s useful for BASE jumping,” I said with a shrug. “And the odd B&E when a bounty’s being difficult.”
Dan shot a quick look to Quinn, who saw it and seemingly ignored it to turn his gaze back to me. “Describe your plan to return the painting to its frame.”
I went through the steps I’d planned and the ones I’d executed. The only raised eyebrow I got from Quinn was for the T. rex suit. Dan snickered, and Shane shared a look with Gabriel that told me they’d already laughed about it in private. Darius just looked pleased with me the whole time I spoke. He seemed … proud of me? Like maybe I wasn’t just one giant mistake waiting to happen?
Darius continued the story from the point where he and Shane followed Sterling into the mansion, and then we took turns describing the conversation with him after he’d caught me.
Quinn had a follow-up question for Darius about Markham Gray’s current whereabouts, which I answered with a look at my watch. “He’s in his office meeting with a Chinese investment firm about a development he wants to do in the Liaoning province.”
Dan’s eyebrows shot up, but Quinn actually narrowed his gaze. It was the biggest expression I’d seen on his face yet. “And you know this because …?”
“I have a guy,” I said simply.
“She has a guy,” Dan smirked.
I sent Dan a shrug and a smile. “I have people. Actually,” I said, including Darius in my gaze, “I got a message from a reporter in Boston. It’s possible Markham Gray might have some explaining to do about his parties at the Gardner museum thirty years ago. Somehow his name came up in a conversation with a former guard who is giving information to the police.”
“Excellent,” said Quinn. He exchanged some indefinable look with Dan as he stood and buttoned his jacket.
I stood too, because it seemed the polite thing to do.
“Ms. Collins,” he began.
“Anna, please. You know how I feel about Ms. Collins.”
“Anna,” he began again. “As your record remains clear, and given your rather … interesting skill set and connections, we’d like to use your services as a consultant on a per-case basis, with an hourly or weekly rate at market plus twenty percent and expenses. Is that acceptable to you?”
“Is it acceptable to you that I may be sleeping with one of your employees?” I asked out loud, totally on purpose.
The twitch at the corner of Quinn’s mouth indicated his amusement, even if his voice didn’t. “As long as your activities are consensual and not conducted on my time, it is of no interest to me what or who you do.”
I chuckled. “I knew you had a sense of humor under all that—” I waved my hand up and down, “alpha male. Yes, Cipher Security,” I included Dan in my gaze, “I graciously accept your generous offer of consultant work, and I’m grateful for the opportunity.”
Quinn shook my hand and then turned to Darius. “It seems to me that having a thief’s strategic brain testing a security designer’s plan could be a useful advantage.”
And then Dan stood, shook my hand, and grinned. “Maybe your guys and my guys are the same guys,” he said.
“Maybe,” I said with a grin, “but probably not, since most of my guys aren’t guys.”
Shane laughed at the confusion on Dan’s face as he and Quinn left the room, then she stood to give me a quick hug. “Sparky just built me a climbing foot. Will you teach me how to do what you do?”
I looked up at her. “If your arms get strong enough, with your height you’ll be more Honor-able than even me.”
She looked confused for exactly one second, and then she remembered the name of my D&D character. “Honor-able,” she said, pronouncing ‘able’ like the root word of ability. “Kind of like super-abled, instead of dis-abled,” she continued, with a glance down at her prosthetic leg. Then she looked at Gabriel. “I think I shall henceforth strive to be Honor-able in all things.”
I could see that Shane and I were going to have so much word fun as we figured out how to be friends.
When they were gone, and it was just me, Darius, and the dino tie, I turned to face him. “You mentioned something about a boat?”
47
Darius
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
Oscar Wilde
The wind had kicked up by the time we left the breakwater and the
clouds began to look a bit persuasive. “I don’t think we’ll be able to stay out for long,” I called to Anna, who was standing at the bow, riding the deck as though it were a surfboard.
“Take us out to that buoy and around it, just so we can race the waves,” she called, pointing to a red and white blob a few hundred meters away.
The wind whipped her hair around her head like Medusa’s snakes, and I pushed the throttle forward until we’d found the speed that allowed us to ride across the edges of the waves instead of over them.
“Look!” she called, pointing to a pair of geese flying off the port side of the boat that seemed to be riding the same wind we were. The birds dipped and dove and seemed almost to tumble with each other in the wind, and above them I could see the formation of the rest of the flock.
Anna watched the pair with rapt attention, and the joy on her face each time a goose shifted on the currents was utterly exquisite to see. She looked back at me with wonder shining bright in her eyes. “They’re having so much fun!”
As we neared the buoy marker, the pair of geese caught an upward draft and used it to rejoin their flock, settling into formation as the V continued its flight up the coast. Anna came back into the cockpit and looped her arms around my waist, snuggling in to warm herself against my body.
“Do you know that geese never leave a goose behind?” she said. “If one is injured, two will fly with it to support it until it either dies or rejoins the flock.”
“And those two just came down to ride the air currents and play,” I said.
“Being playful is important – vital even,” she said. “You get old if you don’t play.”
I held her with one arm and steered the boat with the other, rounding the buoy and heading back in to the safety of the harbor. Anna’s heart beat steadily against my ribcage, and then she slid her cold hands up my back, under my sweater.
Code of Honor Page 27