by Elise Noble
“At least nobody got hurt.”
Not badly, anyway. Half a dozen cut feet from the broken glass, some bruises from bumping into tables, and one woman had sprained an ankle when she fell out of her heels.
More cops arrived, including several female officers, and everyone got searched. Ravi’s tools were split between my bra and Dan’s, and nobody was confident enough to give us a really good grope. And Mack was in the clear now, the only evidence of her earlier subterfuge an overly complex garter belt whipped up by Bradley on his Janome.
Where the fuck was The Shepherd? The windows were all blocked off by the screens. The guards on the doors had secured the room as soon as the lights went out, and they swore nobody had gone past. Either they were dirty, or they were incompetent, or the painting was still in the room. Fuck, I hoped they didn’t search too thoroughly, because The Shepherd wasn’t the only hot painting located where it shouldn’t have been.
“How big was the missing painting?” Dan asked. “Small, right? Like a foot square?”
“Eight inches,” Beth said in our ears. “But it had quite an ornate frame.”
“Eight inches?” I muttered. “Measured by a man or a woman?”
Dan jerked her head towards a pillar sticking out from the wall. “Small enough to fit through that AC duct?”
I followed her gaze and saw what she’d noticed. The grille was held in place by three screws.
She answered my unasked question. “Earlier, there were four screws.”
And that was why Dan was the investigator and I was the assassin.
“Black.” I nudged him, and he turned around. “Dan’s worked out how they did it.” We quickly explained. “Want to tell the police? Or keep quiet?”
“Might as well tell them. I can almost guarantee the School’s people will have got away clean, and it might help us to get home at a reasonable hour.”
He waved the nearest cop over. So far they’d been more concerned with the grenades than anything else, but that wouldn’t help them. Even if they managed to trace them via their serial numbers, those serial numbers would show they’d disappeared somewhere in Russia. They were part of a stash we’d liberated from a Siberian army base a couple of years ago. And there would be no fingerprints. We’d kept the grenades wrapped in handkerchiefs until we rolled them across the floor.
“Will we get coffee?” a woman at the next table asked. “The menu said there’d be coffee.”
For crying out loud, lady. Weren’t there more important things to worry about?
“Perhaps the staff have other priorities right now?” I told her.
She pointed behind me. “That person has coffee.”
The old dear at the table behind us didn’t look in great shape, but when the medics diagnosed mild psychological shock and tried to take her to the hospital, she’d refused to go. A waiter had fetched her a hot drink instead.
In different company, I’d have made a crack about the whiner having her head stuck up her own arse, but today, I kept my mouth shut. Things were quite fraught enough in that room already. Black let the cop know who we were and explained our suspicions, and the pair of them went to inform his colleagues.
“Sky’s not answering her phone,” Rafael said.
“If she wasn’t feeling well, she’s probably taking a nap.”
“In the middle of this?”
Why not? She probably figured we had it handled. There wasn’t anything else she could do to help, and I’d instilled the importance of sleeping whenever she could.
“I doubt they’ve got around to searching every guest room yet.”
Nate and co. would be packed up by now, just in case. His tools were long gone, and all he had left was laptops and the usual accoutrements a man brought with him on vacation.
A forensics team arrived and started taking fingerprints with a mobile scanner. If they wanted mine, they could fight my attorney. They were on a hiding to nothing anyway. Any thief worth his salt would have worn gloves the way Ravi did. His were stuffed into his underwear now, which didn’t do his reputation with the ladies any harm. Unlike Brock Keaton. I’d noticed him trying to hide the damp patch on the front of his trousers.
Who had done this? If I had to guess, I’d say one of the waitstaff, but I wasn’t ruling out a guest either. After all, we were guests and we’d pinched a painting too. Nate would have recorded everyone arriving and leaving, and tomorrow, Blackwood’s investigative team would start the process of matching faces with names while I sharpened my claws.
Black came back half an hour later. The initial excitement had faded and people were starting to sober up by then. Getting tetchy.
“Any news?” I asked.
“Dan was right. They found an access panel unscrewed in the basement, and the fire door wasn’t properly closed. It’s meant to be alarmed, but the alarm hasn’t worked for years, and apparently all the staff know that. Some of them use it as a shortcut to the parking lot.”
Guess Laurelin’s security team hadn’t been quite as thorough as they thought—they should have spotted that.
“So the cops think it was a staff member?”
“One of the waiters is missing. Not one from the event; he was scheduled to work in the main restaurant this evening.”
“He must have had an accomplice.”
“They’re going to keep the rest of the staff here for further questioning.” Black beckoned to Laurelin, and she headed in our direction. “How are you holding up?”
She managed a nod that could have meant she was okay or it could have meant she was about to burst into tears.
“The police are going to start letting people go soon,” Black told her. “I’ve got half a dozen of our own security people on their way, and they’re going to watch the remaining paintings until they get packed up tomorrow. I’ve already cleared it with the police captain.”
“Th-thank you.”
“And we’d also like to donate an extra fifty thousand dollars to your foundation. The world is a poorer place for Derek’s passing.”
Now Laurelin did start crying, and Black passed her a handkerchief. Ironically, one I’d wrapped around a grenade earlier. He always had been creative about getting rid of evidence.
“You’ve got my number. Call if there’s anything else we can do.”
Finally, finally, they let us go, and we regrouped in the honeymoon suite. Black and I would head to a different hotel along with Xav, Dan, Mack, Hallie, and Ravi as soon as we’d had a debrief. The first thing I did was neck the gin from my goody bag.
“What a shitshow.”
“Be positive,” Carmen said. “You got Spirit, and nobody’s in jail.”
Black took a seat on the sofa by the balcony. “But do we need Spirit? It’s clear now that she wasn’t the Master’s main objective.”
“You think he’ll try to stiff us?” Dan asked.
“It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Motherfucker,” Nate cursed. My sentiments exactly. “At least we’ve got a definite pool of suspects. Nobody left the room during the drama, which means the accomplice was one of the people still inside at the end of it. We’ve got video of everyone. It’ll take time, but we can narrow it down.”
Nate still had one laptop open, and Alaric was on the screen. “I told you that painting’s—”
“Don’t say it!” Dan warned. “An inanimate object can’t be cursed.”
“At least we’re further forward than we were before,” I told him.
“This never ends.”
“It’ll end.”
A knock sounded at the door, and Hallie got up to let Rafael in. He’d been pretty much expressionless downstairs, but now he looked…worried.
“What’s up?”
“Sky’s gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you tried calling her again?”
“Her phone’s in the room. Along with the rest of her belongings.”
> “Maybe she went to, I don’t know, get a drink?”
“I checked the restaurant. She’s not there. And the receptionist hasn’t seen her.”
Nate was a suspicious asshole, and of course his mind went from zero to conspiracy theory in two seconds flat.
“How well do you know this girl?”
“Forget it, Nate.”
“She turned up out of the blue, and she had a stolen painting in the trunk of her car.”
“Beth’s car. Sky nicked it, remember? Beth put the painting in the boot.”
“It was mighty convenient, that’s all I’m saying.”
“You’re wrong,” Rafael practically growled at him.
“Don’t you accuse Beth of being a part of this,” Alaric snapped.
Nate ignored Alaric and zeroed his gaze in on Rafael. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because I know why she left, and it was nothing to do with the damn painting.”
“Why did she leave?” I asked softly. Somebody had to be the voice of reason.
“She thought she’d let us down.”
“By skipping dinner?”
“Yes.”
“You said she was sick,” Black pointed out. “You lied?”
Pot. Kettle. Black. Seemed nobody in the whole fucking Blackwood ecosystem was capable of telling the truth.
“There’s an issue. We were working through it. I didn’t think she’d just leave, nor did I want to put her under additional pressure by having everyone ask questions.”
“What issue?”
Rafael paused, and I thought for a minute that he wasn’t going to tell me. Emotions swirled in his eyes, and when he saw me watching him, he closed them for a long moment. He was hurt, wasn’t he? Hurt that Sky had run out on him without a word. But he finally gave me a version of what might have been the truth.
“Some time ago, Sky had a run-in with a guest at tonight’s gala. She didn’t want to risk causing a scene that might jeopardise the operation.”
“Why didn’t you just say that?”
“Her past isn’t something she likes to discuss.”
“Fine.” A sigh slipped between my lips. “So now we have two problems. We need to track down yet another bloody painting, and we also need to find Sky.”
“Sky’s resourceful,” Alaric said. “She’ll show up eventually.”
Having done a runner once myself when things got too much for me, I understood that sometimes a person needed space. But seeing somebody she once knew at dinner was hardly a crisis, was it? I liked Sky. She reminded me of myself fifteen years ago. But now I had concerns. Could she handle the pressure of the job we wanted her to do? Or were we all wasting a hell of a lot of time and effort in training her?
CHAPTER 15 - SKY
HOW FAR WAS this sodding waiter planning to drive? We’d been going for almost a hundred miles already, first on I-81 and then on I-64, and now I was about to have a problem. The Ferrari might have been a dream to drive, but fuel economy wasn’t one of its strong points. I was almost out of petrol. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I had no money and no phone either. While I drove, I’d checked every nook and cranny of the passenger compartment, and there wasn’t so much as a stray dollar bill.
The satnav built into the dash told me we were heading for Charlottesville. Was that our final destination? I sure hoped so. Did I mention that I also needed to pee? This fucking job. How long did I have left? I guessed twenty miles max, which meant I had a choice to make. Should I carry on following the Audi—and it definitely was an Audi, although the driver had carefully dirtied up the licence plate so I couldn’t read it—and hope that we got to wherever we were going before the Ferrari sputtered to a halt? Or should I try to stop somewhere for gas?
I zoomed out on the map and traced my way along the next stretch of I-64. The nearest gas station would come up in ten miles, assuming we didn’t turn off first. But if I stopped, the waiter would be long gone by the time I filled up. Unless… What if I took a chance? How many exits were there between us and the gas station? Only one, it looked like. If I assumed that my prey would carry on along I-64 until the gas station at least, then I could go on ahead. He wouldn’t need to stop, of that I was certain. Because I knew now that he hadn’t just stolen a handbag. He’d nicked another bloody painting. I’d turned on the radio, and the host had been talking about a daring heist at the Grove Hotel and Country Club for the last half hour. It seemed that Team Blackwood hadn’t been the only ones planning a theft tonight. I bet Emmy was pissed. Really pissed.
Fuck it. I pressed the loud pedal to the floor and sped past the Audi like my wheels were on fire. If there was a cop on this stretch of highway, I was buggered, but with any luck, they were all back at the Grove, trying to work out what the hell happened. Good luck with that. I still hadn’t put all the pieces together, and my jigsaw had come partially assembled.
The Audi’s headlights faded into the distance as the speedometer passed a hundred. One-ten. One-twenty. The waiter had been doing a steady sixty-five the whole way, and soon he was left in the dust. The Ferrari ate up the miles, and it was running on fumes when I finally reached the rickety gas station. A floodlight blinked on and off overhead as I pulled up behind a decrepit Ford. My plan was to fill the Ferrari up, speed off, then mail the cash to the manager once I got back to civilisation. Except when I climbed out, I realised I wasn’t the first person to have that idea, and probably the other assholes hadn’t sent the money either.
A handwritten sign was taped to the pump: Pay first, gas second.
Shit.
I couldn’t even beg the driver of the Ford for a loan because he was already in the kiosk, talking to the guy behind the counter. Fuck. And if I went inside and tried to negotiate, the waiter would vanish into the night. I glanced across at the Ford in case a miracle happened and the driver had left a fifty on the passenger seat. No such luck.
But he’d gone one better.
The window was open and the keys were in the ignition. I didn’t hesitate. I couldn’t, not when the owner was halfway to the door. I jumped into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine coughed and died. I tried again, and the owner suddenly realised what was happening and started running towards me. Brilliant. Start, you piece of crap! The engine caught on the fourth attempt, just as the driver reached for the door handle.
“Enjoy the Ferrari,” I shouted and lobbed the key at him. It hit him square in the chest, which made him pause long enough for me to floor it off the forecourt. And in a masterpiece of timing, the waiter had just gone past.
In the rear-view mirror, I saw the owner of the Ford pick up the Ferrari key and stare at it. Then he got smaller, smaller, smaller until he disappeared.
I followed the Audi into the night.
The Ford clunked along for another forty miles before we turned off somewhere past Culpeper. The roads grew narrower and bumpier, the signs of life sparser. The radio faded into a hiss of static so I turned it off. Then the rain started—the perfect end to a perfect evening. The windscreen wipers screeched across the glass as the blurry tail lights of the Audi faded in and out of sight. Surely we had to be reaching the end of the road, both literally and metaphorically?
A moment later, the lights disappeared. One second they were there, and the next they were gone. Had I been spotted? What if the waiter had pulled over to hide? I turned off the Ford’s headlights and proceeded with caution. Should I get out and walk? I didn’t have a weapon. Nothing. Not even a pen. Emmy once told me that if I trained hard enough, I would become the weapon, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t there yet.
I crept forward with the engine on tick-over, my heart thumping so loudly I could hear it over the rain. Where was my quarry? Then I saw it. A driveway, half-hidden by the trees. Their boughs met overhead, leading to a beyond-creepy tunnel effect. The moon shone off wet tarmac, shadows chasing across the pitted surface as leaves blew in the wind. A wooden sign was fixed to one of the imposing stone pillars that held
a pair of chunky wrought-iron gates. I risked flicking the headlights back on.
And when I saw what the sign said, I laughed and I laughed and I laughed.
CHAPTER 16 - EMMY
“EMMY? I KNOW you’re marked as ‘do not disturb’ this evening, but I have a caller who won’t take no for an answer.”
I paused halfway to the door of the hotel suite. Tiredness had sapped my resolve, and when Black’s arm crept around my waist, I’d given in and left it there. The Blackwood switchboard operator who’d phoned me sounded nervous, and understandably so. I counted to five before I answered so I didn’t bite her head off.
“Who is it?”
“A Sky Malone? She says you know her.”
Sky? Relief flooded through me, but why the hell was she calling the switchboard? Oh, who was I kidding? This was Sky. Anything but predictable.
“Put her through.”
“I’ll do it right away.”
A second passed, and I put the phone on speaker.
“Emmy?”
“Where are you?”
“Eddie’s Roadhouse.”
“Elaborate.”
“It’s a dive bar in Culpeper. Can someone pick me up?”
“What the hell are you doing in Culpeper?”
“You won’t believe the answer.”
This was Sky. A fucking piñata of surprises. “Try me.”
“I found the School of Shadows.”
“You’re joking?”
“I’m not.”
“How do you know?”
“Because according to the sign outside, it’s an actual bloody school. Shadow Falls Academy.”
“Come again?”
“It has to be the place, right? I mean, I followed the guy right there.”
“What guy?”
“A waiter from the Grove. I went outside to get some air, and he came out of the basement fire exit with a bag under his arm. A woman’s handbag. I thought he was just a dirty thief, but then the car radio said someone nicked another painting. A shepherd?” Sky laughed. “Bet you didn’t see that one coming, eh?”
That brat. I didn’t know whether to hug her or shake her. As usual, she’d broken every rule, but in doing so, she’d also broken the case. I loved that girl, and yes, I felt a little bit smug for bringing her to Virginia at that moment.
