by Aitana Moore
“But Lee …” Cora leaned against her, turning up her face with a pout. “Try, try, try to make it this summer. Let’s just go swimming. I mean, don’t feel guilty or anything if you can’t, but try!”
It was going to be mid-June by the time Lee left rehab, hopefully with Bryce. It might be well into July before she got her hands on the diamond, and then she’d have to hand it over to Quinn and erase all traces of her new identity, making sure she had left no trail leading to her. She might not make it back to Switzerland before September, when Cora’s classes would start again. And school was all important.
They kissed and stood rocking each other until Cora had to go in. Her ponytail bounced again as she ran through the school gates, and she never looked back.
As Lee arrived back in Geneva that afternoon, she wondered how much time she had until Cora began disbelieving all her stories. Cora was innocent for her age, but it wouldn’t be long.
“Why the frown?” Quinn asked as he opened the door of his flat to her.
Lee made the effort to smooth her brow. She hadn’t realized her preoccupation was showing. But Quinn knew her well, and he was a keen observer.
“Thanks for the money,” she said airily as she walked past him.
“Pristine money. Shouldn’t cause you any trouble,” he said in his Irish lilt as he closed the door. “Don’t know about the next part. Millions of dollars …” He gave a low whistle.
“You won’t be able to handle that?”
“You forget who I am,” he said with a proud toss of his head, which he turned into a beckoning movement. They walked through creaky but polished old floors to his study as he added, “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
Glancing around the room, Lee chose to perch on the arm of a sturdy sofa, while Quinn took a seat behind a massive Art Deco desk that held three computer screens and had, it seemed, dozens of drawers.
He leaned back in his Eames chair, putting his hands behind his head. Quinn had small features that were almost too pretty for a man, and sharp hazel eyes. She didn’t blink under his scrutiny.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You’re on opioids, the man’s really smart and—”
“How do you know he’s really smart?”
“Would he have become a billionaire in a few years if he weren’t?”
“Well, he started out with stuff. And someone else invested his money.”
“True. It still took guts, to get rid of all the land and the houses. A thousand years of family history, blah-blah-blah. You know what twats the English are about that sort of thing. Have you seen the uncle wailing about it in YouTube?”
“That’s an old interview, but I’ve seen it. No interviews with Bryce.”
“Which proves my point. Any man with a remotely public life who can resist talking to journalists is smart. If they don’t fall for the pressure, vanity usually gets them, but not this bloke.”
She shrugged with one shoulder. “You’re just assuming.”
“All right. It’s likely that he’s less intelligent than you. But you have to give him props at least for being … daring?”
She thought of Bryce’s eyes again. Savage eyes.
“What are you saying?” she wondered slowly. “That I should give up?”
Quinn considered her for a moment. “No. That you should be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
He sat back and moved the chair in small half circles. “You’re careful always on the edge of being not careful.”
Lee laughed. “Is that so?”
“You have an impulsive side,” Quinn insisted without smiling. “At the end of the Al Madhi job, you jumped off the side of the yacht in the middle of the night and swam to shore.”
“He moved the yacht, and I just had to go. You know very well that sometimes things don’t go as you plan, and you gotta wing it.” She cocked her head at him. “It turned out all right, didn’t it?”
She would never tell Quinn that she had paraded in front of Al Madhi only three days ago to see if he would recognize her. That kind of thing was exactly what Quinn meant, and she knew he was right. But that’s why he worked from home, forging passports, hacking information and moving stolen goods — because he was good at that kind of controlled risk.
What she did was different.
“As long as the ring isn’t insured…” she said.
“Can’t find sign of insurance.” Quinn glanced at the screens of his several computers, as if the information about Bryce could suddenly change.
It was essential to find marks with jewels that were not insured, because the police of the different places where she stole would not go after her with any special dedication. They had too much to do. But big insurance companies would certainly be interested in the profile of a recurring female thief that cost them millions, and would be happy to pay private investigators to do nothing but look for her.
“Still,” Quinn went on, “I’d feel better if he were like most of the men, hiding the stuff from the greedy ex-wives trying to fleece them. If he doesn’t have that kind of reason not to insure the ring, he’d be wise to at least put it in a bank vault. But let’s believe he’s an eccentric, and that he’s meant to be grieving. Or at least very troubled.”
“That outdoorsy type …” Lee said, ignoring the slight sympathy for Bryce in Quinn’s tone. “Men like that don’t tend to worry about details. Someone has to push them to worry about that kind of thing. And in any case, I won’t do anything I’m not sure about.”
“There’s also the other matter.” Quinn looked at her meaningfully. “I mean, Britain isn’t Burundi, and if the police cleared him of murder, he probably didn’t do it. But still, he has a temper.”
“I get that he’s different,” Lee said. “Except that, in the end, everyone is alike.”
“I didn’t say he was different, I said — I meant he might be dangerous. But it’s your call.”
She gave a small smile. “I won’t come crying to you.”
“And I won’t visit you in prison. I have a living to make.” Quinn opened a drawer and removed a US passport from it, which he handed to her. “This is as good as they come, but use your French one to cross borders.”
“I’ll have to use this one, if Bryce invites me to England. Which is the idea.” Lee flipped through it. It had entry stamps that looked real, including one for Italy — and she wasn’t even there yet.
Her associate pursed his lips. “The passport should hold up, even at Heathrow or Gatwick. Just don’t use it if you don’t have to, and never go to America with it.”
“I’m never going there again,” she said in a low voice.
When it was time for her to leave and they had reached the door, he repeated, “Be careful.”
Lee kissed his cheek, and Quinn said nothing else as she left.
Back at the hotel, as she cut tags off the new, elegant clothes she had bought for Vivien, Lee wondered whether what she had told Cora was true. Could she run faster than Bryce?
Could she fool him and disappear with his diamond?
She locked the suitcase with two determined clicks and placed it on the floor, getting into bed with her phone. Once again, she found the information on Bryce and scrolled through the photographs, until she found the image of a heartachingly beautiful woman with eyes and hair of deep black.
Mia Archer, top model and Bryce’s wife.
The ring had been a present for her on her twenty-fifth birthday, a year ago almost to the day. A rare diamond for a rare beauty.
That had been three weeks before Mia was found smashed at the bottom of a cliff.
FOUR
Lee didn’t mind the calming effect of the Tramadol as she drove on the Sun Highway between Rome and Milan. Near Assisi, she exited toward Perugia and took smaller roads to enjoy the sight of rolling green hills, stone farmhouses and fields of flowers.
She could now imagine what it would be like for an addict to give
up the drugs coursing through his system, but her horror of depending on anything was much greater than a need for comfort or false euphoria. It would be good to let go of the Tramadol.
The sign on an old wall told her that she had reached the clinic at Villa Balbina, and her mind focused on the present. There was strict security at the gate; she had to get out of the car to show her documents and open the boot. They took her luggage — probably to make sure that she didn’t have a second phone, or any medication hidden in it — and waved her through with smiles. She followed a sinuous gravel path to the fifteenth-century monastery that was now an exclusive rehab facility.
At the door of the main building, an attendant who had been waiting ran down the steps.
"Buon giorno," Lee said with a faint smile.
It wouldn't do to look happy, or to show interest in the beautiful view or in the arches of the old cloister, since she was supposed to be coming to them in distress.
The attendant took the keys of the car and told her in good English that she would find her luggage in the room. She took a deep breath before climbing the steps to the reception, but there was no need to do anything else than hand over the passport and cell phone to a serene girl, then follow a nurse who shook her hand and asked if she had come alone.
Family support was an important factor in rehabilitation, but there were people who checked themselves into a place like that without saying a word to anyone. Lee was going to be one of them.
"Better this way," she said, and the nurse nodded.
The woman led Lee to the clinic, housed in the adjacent building. Quinn's email-hacking had disclosed that Bryce was already there. As she walked with the nurse, listening to her explanation about what the next days would hold, Lee kept her eyes open for Room 14.
She heard Bryce before she ever saw him.
"I’m not a bloody child!”
The cursing was followed by the noise of glass breaking, and the nurse gave a quiet, apologetic smile.
"Sometimes ..." Instead of finishing the sentence, she added, "It doesn't happen very often."
Lee made no comment as she was taken to a different corridor, to room 36. It was a spare but elegant room, in keeping with the medieval character of the place. After weaning off the drugs, she would be moved into the main building for therapy.
The nurse asked her if she had any jewels on her for safekeeping, and Lee answered truthfully, "I never wear any."
No, she only ever held them for a moment before she passed them on. A fancy vivid blue diamond of flawless internal clarity: she would let it flash on her finger before she handed it to Quinn. There would be poignancy to that fugitive, solitary pleasure. It would be a moment of beauty, and beauty provoked pain or indifference if one tried to hold on to it.
Despite the Tramadol, after the nurse left Lee lay in bed feeling a light film of sweat cover her. A corridor away there was an angry, hurt man — and she was going to relieve him of precious things he didn't need. She realized with a pang that she was afraid of a man she hadn’t yet met, but she liked that fear. It was a challenge.
Her heart began to thump as she thought of James St. Bryce. She reminded herself that there was still a week to get through before she met him and hoped with a sort of dark courage that weaning off Tramadol should prove painful for her, so that she would feel what he felt.
FIVE
What will it be like this time?
It was a question Lee always asked before meeting a mark, and she asked ten days later, as she walked to the addiction group she was supposed to attend every morning.
The psychiatrists of Balbina had suggested that she should also join an anger management group. Dr. Grether, who had first spoken to her, had detected unresolved issues that made her angry beneath the surface. He didn’t know the half of it; but then, wouldn't a professional of the mind have heard everything?
Anger management was a bonus because they had also assigned Bryce to it. She was now in two of her mark’s groups and would probably coincide in other therapies. There had already been a distant glimpse of him limping with the aid of a cane as he walked in the garden.
They would meet each other at the pool or in the dining hall, when he stopped taking his meals privately. She didn't know how often he would use the common rooms, but the medical staff had proclaimed solitude to be a no-no. Bryce was something of a renegade, and she wondered if he would insist on keeping to himself. And if he did, would they consider his treatment pointless and invite him to leave?
What will it be like this time? Lee wondered again. Familiar butterflies stirred in her stomach as if she were going to meet a lover, but there was also a hollow sensation of dread in her. Sometimes she perspired, and her heartbeat accelerated. She must remind herself that it was only because she had stopped taking Tramadol. Bryce must be feeling a lot worse.
She entered the meeting room, and there he was.
Lee had seen him online many times since Quinn’s presentation. What struck her, however, was how vivid he seemed in the flesh. People often looked smaller, fainter and more faded than their likenesses, but Bryce had gone through two knee surgeries and an addiction to painkillers and still appeared ready to dive to the bottom of the ocean or climb the summit of mountains — if it weren’t for the cane he was holding.
His hair had the rich darkness of a classical painting, and his profile an austere nobility she would have expected from an ancient Roman rather than a modern Englishman. He was tall and straight, and his expensive but discreet clothes could not hide the lean strength of his body. His skin was burnished, not tanned — as if he had spent so much time outdoors that it could never turn pale again.
He was a very beautiful man. She almost felt like saying a very beautiful animal. Not because he seemed brutal in his good clothes, with his elegant bones, but because she had hardly ever seen any creature that compelling.
Most eyes were either trained on him or kept returning to him, as if the people in the room had to check again and again that he was real. He did not have the vapid air of most handsome men, that overripe love of self which made them demand the same amount of attention from others that they found natural to give themselves.
No. There was, instead, a pensive but sharp intelligence on his face.
When those present began to sit, his eyes swept by her without lingering as he stood with polite patience. Could he be waiting for the women to take their seats? To the manners born, Lee supposed.
But his knee clearly pained him as he found his place, half a circle away from her.
The villa was a haven where the rich and famous could dwell in their problems. In the room there was a famous British actress in her late forties, her face transformed by surgery, an Olympian athlete and an old rock star. Lee peeked at them covertly. It would make more sense for her to be curious about people who were famous in America than about an English aristocrat whose feats and scandals hadn't translated to the tabloids at home.
It was probably not the first stint in group therapy for most patients, as they didn’t need much prodding to talk about their problems — the actress crying fat tears, the rock star with self-deprecating irony, the athlete blaming himself for his own lack of discipline. Then it was the turn of two women and a balding man who were addicted to sex. They spoke about looking for love in the wrong places.
Bryce had been quiet during the session, neither nodding nor murmuring anything like everyone else. Dr. Faure, the therapist who led the addiction meetings, must have sensed that he was not willing to participate.
"James, would you like to share something?" she asked.
The reply was swift, "I'd like to give up my turn in favor of hearing more sex stories."
There was laughter in the room, mostly from the Europeans, but Faure frowned. "Come on, James."
Bryce nodded, accepting the mild rebuke, but he still said, "I'd like to pass for today.”
"Fair enough," Faure said, looking around the circle for someone else.
&
nbsp; “Vivien” didn’t speak, although Lee had a story ready for her. A year ago, Vivien had hurt her back in a fall from a flight of stairs, and with the determination of a self-made woman she had pushed through the pain to keep working. She had begun to rely on Tramadol without even realizing it, and now she was dedicating a whole summer to get rid of the addiction. There were issues of neglect in her fake family—a distant father and a mother profoundly dissatisfied with life—which might point to an underlying tendency to depend on opioids, or to get angry. That might make her more like Bryce.
But the ninety minutes were soon over, and people got up to have a coffee break before their next session.
At the anger management group, however, Bryce was as quiet as before. The athlete and the businessman were there as well, and Lee decided to speak. She needed to call Bryce’s attention somehow, as he seemed uninclined to making eye contact with anyone.
"I was surprised, actually, that you suggested this therapy to me, but you told me I hold my anger in check," she told Dr. Grether. "I must hold it so much in check that I don't even know that I'm angry."
"Then you feel it's a mistake that you're here?" he asked.
She swung her leg a couple of times, stopping the movement with the tip of her ballerina slipper. Bryce watched her foot as everyone waited for her answer.
"I guess I’m angry that—I'm angry that at some point we were all told that things were a certain way, but then we learn that it isn’t quite like that. We’re told about Santa Claus, but then we’re allowed to find out he’s not real. But about these other things, the big things in life like unconditional love? It’s as if we can’t look around at each other and say, ‘This isn’t true, is it? You know that too, don’t you?’ We can’t do that anywhere, except maybe in a place like this. Everywhere else, we must keep pretending that it’s real.”
She was out of breath, but she had said something like the truth. Bryce looked directly at her, with purpose. His eyes were penetrating, like the blue in an X-ray, and they made Lee hold her breath, afraid that he could read her thoughts.
