Stolen Goods (To Catch a Thief Book 2)

by Kay Marie

  Thank God I left my jeans on.

  He sighed, trying to figure out how to extricate himself from the situation, and Addison suddenly paused, pressing her palm flat against his stomach. He was half convinced flames would spontaneously erupt from the spot, but when she glanced up to meet his gaze, she was perfectly at ease. There was none of the embarrassment from the morning before, none of the discomfort. She seemed more self-assured, as though she’d come to a decision in the night without telling him the question or the answer. A soft smile sat across her lips. She looked at him as though it were any other day, as though she were immune to the inferno that had so thoroughly aroused him from sleep—and, well, aroused him. Full stop.

  “Morning,” she said, still drowsy.

  He cleared his throat. “Morning.”

  He shifted to indicate without words that they should get up, pack up, and start the day. But Addison remained where she was, leaving her head on his shoulder and keeping him in place.

  “Can I see it?” she asked.

  Bloody hell. He wasn’t British by any means, but the expletive seemed oddly appropriate for this moment and the way he practically jumped out of his skin. Could she see it? See what? Surely she wasn’t talking about… She couldn’t mean…

  Get your head out of the gutter, Ryder.

  “It’s only, I’ve been staring at it all morning wondering what it looks like, and I figured, why not? We’re alone. No one else is around.”

  Wait—was she talking about what he thought she was talking about?

  No.

  Definitely not.

  Just because his thoughts were focused in a very singular location didn’t mean hers were. There was no way. But she was acting strange, waking up all easygoing and relaxed, very unlike the woman he’d come to know—it was driving him crazy! Thad drew his brows together, thoroughly confused, as he stared at the curls tumbling over the back of her head and spilling across his stomach.

  And then he saw it—the art tube propped against the corner of the tent, exactly where he’d carefully placed it the night before.

  Of course, he realized. Everything became perfectly clear. She was talking about the Degas. Obviously, she was talking about the Degas. Though, he couldn’t for the life of him stop that little twinge of remorse that she wasn’t talking about something else.

  “Sure.” He forced the word out smoothly, with a nonchalance he certainly wasn’t feeling. “Why not?”

  Addison eased off his chest—thank the Lord—giving Thad space to reach for the art tube. During those few lonely days on the yacht he’d stolen to escape New York, he’d spent hours staring at the painting, dissecting every stroke and every splash of pastel color, yet still, his breath caught in his throat as he carefully unrolled the canvas. There were a handful of dancers in a dimly lit studio, a classic Degas portrayal of practicing ballerinas. Two main figures were caught mid-rehearsal, gracefully spinning before a mirror, with a third half-cut from the image dancing the same dance. A group of girls watched from behind, in various resting positions, stretching sore muscles, relacing shoes, watching in silence. In the light of the tent, their dresses appeared to be a soft blue. Thad remembered them as more of an ivory, though the difference hardly mattered. There was no lighting that could make a Degas anything less than majestic.

  “It’s beautiful,” Addison whispered. Her hand hovered over the image.

  “It is,” Thad agreed, then teasingly added, “Don’t touch.”

  She jerked her hand back, pressing it to her chest.

  “I was only kidding,” he said. She glanced up at him, a smile in her eyes, but kept her hand where it was. “You can hold it if you want. Just be careful not to touch the paint. Hold the blank edges of the canvas.”

  Addison shook her head no, but the subtle way she bit her lip revealed her interest.

  “Come on,” Thad urged. “When else in your life are you going to have the chance to hold thirty million dollars in your hands?”

  She exhaled sharply, but unclenched her fingers. Thad adjusted the canvas with a grin, lifting his arm around her shoulder to spread it across her lap. Their hands grazed and little sparks ignited, leaving a tingling sensation in their wake. Thad drew his fingers back, but remained where he was, with his stomach pressed lightly to her back, close enough for pulsing static to fill the space between, yet far enough to breathe. The edges of her curls tickled his chin.

  Addison swallowed. Her voice was almost breathless as she asked, “So, what makes this worth thirty million dollars?”

  “It’s a Degas,” he answered simply.

  “I know that.” She turned to look up at him, then froze. The tips of their noses were a hairsbreadth from touching. From this angle, her eyes seemed impossibly large, bright and full of wonder, flashing with a hint of something else as her gaze dropped to his mouth and jumped back up. “But why is a Degas, a Degas?”

  “Well…” Thad paused to take a breath, lowering his gaze to the painting. He couldn’t think with her face so close. “Like with all the masters, part of it is pure talent. I mean, he was a true artist, and not just with paint. Pastels were probably his second most popular medium, but he also drew and sculpted. Part of it is ingenuity. It’s hard to understand with our modern world, but at the time, a lot of the things he was doing with art were revolutionary. The way he framed his paintings was unlike anything before, like a snapshot in time, probably influenced by the emergence of photography. Like here”—he stopped to point at the third dancer, who was half-off the canvas—“he cropped the images close, so some figures were completed and some were cut off. He used unusual viewpoints, as though he were standing backstage watching a performance, or sitting in the crowd with his view partially blocked. And the last part is something intangible, something psychological. Good art is beautiful, but great art—great art makes you feel.”

  Thad studied the dramatic brushstrokes, his eye wandering around the canvas in the way Degas guided, from figure to empty void to figure, each element carefully placed despite the sense of reality, of happenstance. He leaned closer, reaching his arm around Addison, fingers dancing in the empty air a few inches above the canvas, tracing as he spoke. “There’s something lonely about his art, something everyone, at one point or another, relates to. If you see here, the girls in the background, they’re together, but not. They’re not talking to each other. They’re close but not interacting, in their own worlds. That one is stretching her sore calf muscles. That one seems lost in her thoughts. That one watches the dancing group studiously. That one is retying her shoes. When someone thinks of a ballerina, or of art for that matter, they think of the beauty and grace in the end result. They think of these girls before the mirror, with their swanlike arms, and billowing tutus, and carefully positioned legs. When someone thinks of Degas, they think of a Degas, the painting, the final outcome. But the endurance, the struggle, the hours and hours of lonely practice behind the art is what makes it beautiful. A lot of people don’t always see that, don’t always get that there’s an ugliness behind the beauty, a subtle dark edge, that makes it all the more glorious.” Thad blinked, realizing he’d gone off on a bit of a tangent, and lifted his hand away. “Of course, it could be the fancy dresses and pretty colors that people like. Who knows?”

  “No, I get it,” Addison said, letting go of the edge of the canvas to grab his hand before he could tug it fully away. Those sparkling eyes turned to find his again. “Beauty takes a long time to produce, but it’s consumed in seconds. Like when I make a wedding cake. At the reception, a few people stop and take photos and say how pretty it is, but then it’s on to the next thing. No one thinks about the late nights in the kitchen, or the hours spent sketching ideas, or the painstaking precision required. It’s just a pretty cake.”

  “Exactly.” Thad narrowed his eyes, taking her in, amazed at how easily she got it. “I don’t know if this is what Degas was after, but I think of it sometimes when I look at his work. That for these girls in the pain
ting, and for the painter behind the scenes, the art itself was their only companion. Not the people around them, but their passion, the one constant, always there, always churning, making sure they weren’t so alone.”

  “Helping them escape,” Addison added softly, turning back to the painting. She sighed. “Why did you keep it?”

  Thad frowned, sitting back, retreating. Keep wasn’t the word he expected there. Most people would’ve asked why he took it, why steal something so beautiful, knowing it would be kept hidden from the rest of the world? It was a question he’d asked himself many times before, one that haunted him. Art was meant to be shared, to be appreciated, not kept in underground vaults and dark, dank rooms. But the world didn’t always work the way it was supposed to—it didn’t always allow for beauty or grandiose ideals.

  He slid the painting from her lap, gently rolling it back up. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, why didn’t you hand it over to the Russians? Wouldn’t that have made them less apt to want to kill you? Why do you still have it?”

  “I guess…” He paused, thinking back to the morning two weeks ago. Running had been a split-second decision—the sudden awareness that if he didn’t, there was no doubt they’d kill him. Yet, he’d suspected for a long time that the Russians had wanted the Degas job to be his last in more ways than one. Not because of the painting, but because he’d seen their faces. Would it have made a difference if he’d dropped the painting to the floor before jumping out the window? If they were thirty million dollars richer, would they have let him disappear in peace? Probably not…but maybe. So why risk it? He didn’t have an answer. “I guess I don’t really know why I took it. I just did. There wasn’t a lot of time to think.”

  “You know what Jo told me on the phone that day?”

  Thad sighed and eased the rolled canvas back into the art tube. “What did Jo say?”

  “She said you’re a much better person than you give yourself credit for. That deep down, on some level, you’ve always known you’d do the right thing, in the end.”

  He snorted. “Oh, did she?”

  “I believe her.”

  “Addison…” He closed his eyes and paused, not sure why those three little words made his chest expand and contract at the same time, light and airy, yet somehow tight and painful all at once, a balloon about to pop.

  “I think you took the painting with you, because on some level, you knew whatever plans you had were unraveling, and you didn’t want them to have it. Because those men? They would never for one second see the true beauty in it, the true art. It’s nothing more than dollar signs to them, to be stuffed in a vault and kept in the dark. And you couldn’t bear to let that happen.”

  “Add—”

  “I think that when we get to Scottsdale, whatever happens, whether you hand yourself in or whether you run to the end of the world, you’ve known all along what you’re going to do with that painting. You’re going to give it back to the Feds, so they can return it to the owner, so that one day it can hang in a museum for everyone to enjoy.”

  Thad didn’t know what to say.

  Was she right? He didn’t know.

  Was she wrong? Something in his gut whispered, Not completely.

  Either way, his skin crawled with the faith laced through her words, the conviction. The problem with high standards was they had to be lived up to, and he didn’t know if he was ready for such a task.

  So, he stood and shrugged the art tube over his shoulder, not glancing back. “Come on. If we want to get to the Grand Canyon with time to spare, we need to leave now. Why don’t you go use the communal restrooms and see if there’s a vending machine for fresh drinks? I’ll take down the tent.”

  Her eyes burned a hole through his back, but she didn’t argue. She didn’t try to make him see something he couldn’t. She listened and walked away.

  Scottsdale, Thad thought as he yanked one of the metal poles out of the tent, releasing some tension. In Addison’s eyes, the stop at the Grand Canyon was probably something noble, a gift for her, a grand adventure. Sure, he loved going to new places, seeing new things. He was always up for a thrill. But he couldn’t fight the sense that this was something else—that he was stalling.

  There was a reason he’d never been to the Grand Canyon.

  A reason he’d never been in the state of Arizona.

  A reason he avoided the southwestern edge of the United States like the plague.

  Emma.

  Thad sighed. He’d promised himself a long time ago that he wouldn’t interrupt her life, wouldn’t flip it upside down, wouldn’t intrude. Yet here he was, thirty-six hours away from doing just that. Because she was in danger. Because if he didn’t see her now, maybe he never would. Because he’d made another promise to himself, and this one at least, he could fulfill.

  “Ready?” Addison called, holding up two iced teas like trophies as she approached the car. “I think it should take about five hours to get there.”

  He stuffed the name and the emotions and that whole tangled web deep inside and slammed the trunk with it. Then he pasted a grin to his face and took the bottle Addison was holding out, the promise of a truce in her understanding eyes, a reminder that for the next few hours, they could still be just two people who needed to get away. No past. No future. Only now.

  “Ready.”

  - 18 -

  Addison

  The closer and closer they drove to the Grand Canyon, the more her heart started to race, a wild thing inside her chest demanding release. It wasn’t just anticipation of the view, or the thrill of adventure, or the fact that she was finally—finally, after so many years of wishing and dreaming—checking a location off her list. There was something else too. A little countdown in the back of her mind, leading to what, she wasn’t sure, but something big. Something monumental. As they turned off the highway, and the mileage on the signs dropped and dropped, a little part of Addy couldn’t help but wonder if this was how Cinderella felt before the ball. Excited and nervous and aware on some level that by the time midnight struck her life would be different, changed in a way she never would’ve expected.

  “Hey, Addison?”

  “Yeah?” She turned from the window, jolting a little when she saw Thad. She’d forgotten that he’d put on a disguise before they left the last gas station—a sandy-blonde wig under a backward baseball cap, sunglasses with reflective blue lenses that were almost obnoxious they were so metallic, and a bright pink polo with the collar popped, of course. Addy was in a striped sundress they’d found at the gas station for ten bucks. According to Thad, one of the easiest ways to blend in with a crowd was to actively stand out. It was unexpected. And the more someone wanted to stare, the less they actually would, because the desire made the act inherently embarrassing. Something like that anyway. Addy was just happy to be in a dress again—the grimy athletic clothes had grown old, fast.

  “Can you put your seat back and lie down? Pretend to be sleeping? Just until we get through the entrance gate. You don’t have a wig or anything, and I want to keep your face off the cameras, just in case.”

  “Oh, right. Sure.”

  She swallowed and pulled the handle on the side of her chair, pushing the seat back until it was almost flat. Then she curled on her side and turned away, trying to keep her breath even as the car slowed.

  “Good afternoon,” a pleasant voice announced.

  “Afternoon,” Thad whispered, a twinge to his voice that was a little pompous, clearly an act. “My wife is sleeping. I told her not to have all that wine last night, but, well, you know. If she wants to be hung over for her first trip to the Grand Canyon, what can I do?”

  Addy rolled her eyes.

  “Right, sir,” the man answered, clearly bored and ready to move on to the next. “It’s thirty-five dollars per car.”

  “Of course, of course,” Thad murmured back. The swish of bills filled the silence. “Here you go.”

  “Thank you. Here’s a map and your
park permit. There’s more information in the visitor’s center. Enjoy the Grand Canyon.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  They rolled away. As soon as Thad put a hand on her shoulder, Addy sprang up like a prairie dog from its den, gaze fastened on the horizon. There was nothing but dense trees. Thick, evergreen and gorgeous, but not the sight she wanted to see.

  “Where is it?”

  Thad snorted. “I think we’ll know when we see.”

  “I know, but aren’t you excited?” Addy was practically bouncing in her seat. In the distance, she saw a row of parked cars, a small clearing in the trees, a stretch of expansive blue sky. “Oh my gosh! I think that’s the first lookout! Can’t you drive any faster, grandpa?”

  He slowed down.

  Addy glared across the seats.

  Thad didn’t bother to try to hide the dimples digging into his cheeks. But as he crawled into a parking spot and she caught her first view of the canyons, her annoyance vanished. Addy didn’t stop to think—her brain short-circuited. Instead, she jumped out of the car, ran down the path to the main viewing area, and barreled into the rail, gripping the cool metal in both palms like a lifeline. It was just as breathtaking as she’d always imagined.

  There were no words.

  No thoughts.

  As though a vacuum had attached to her lips, the air rushed out of her lungs, leaving her light-headed and in awe. The earth had fallen away and in its place was pure magic. Rich reds and ochres, bright against the sapphire sky, were staggered and tiered like a thousand-layer cake. Everywhere she looked the vista stretched, as deep as her eyes could see, as wide, as far. Space and time melted away as she fought and failed to take everything in. Addy jumped her gaze from one spot to another, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude, the sheer glory.

  Thad stepped up beside her and put his hands on the rail so the sides of their palms touched, electric. His voice was husky as he whispered, “Wow.”