by Kim Foster
It’s difficult to explain how I knew I was being followed. Except that I was always aware on a subconscious level of what was around me. So I could immediately tell when someone was not moving like they should.
It’s like watching a dance performance. If someone suddenly misses a step, your eyes go to them immediately. Even if you don’t know the steps, it doesn’t matter. It just messes with the overall movement of the performance, and it jars you into noticing.
Something was wrong. My breath quickened as I ran through the options in my mind.
The best way to shake a tail is the 180. A complete turnaround. It’s virtually impossible for a tail to continue following without utterly revealing himself.
But, although highly effective, it’s also aggressive. And risky. The tail will know you’re aware of their presence, and you may be forcing their hand. Their next move would depend on how desperate they were.
So I preferred to leave that tactic as a last resort. Besides, I didn’t want to just shake the tail. I wanted to know who exactly was following me. If I’d been busted or spotted in the Louvre, I needed to know.
I headed for the garden exit. A street with shops and cafés would offer more opportunities for stopping and changing directions as necessary.
I stepped out onto the Champs-Élysées, the bustling avenue of wide sidewalks and loud traffic and the smell of car exhaust. I walked a few blocks and paused in front of a bookstore.
As I gazed at the window display, I stretched my peripheral vision as much as possible. I spotted a figure stopping more abruptly than seemed natural and pausing at a shop window half a block back.
The figure was female, unmistakably. Something about the frame, the movements. I held my phone and pretended to check a message but instead snapped a photograph of her.
Okay, good. Now time to shake her. I could work on the ID later, but for now I was satisfied this wasn’t the thief I’d spotted in the Louvre.
I walked half a block farther, then quickly ducked into the next store I came to, a perfume store. I knew some of these stores had entrances at the front and the back. I hoped this was one of them.
The musky, flowery smells had a thickness I could taste. Glass bottles glittered on shelves; a handful of women browsed the shop, dressed in the finest couture. I, on the other hand, was not. Which was unfortunate. I preferred to blend in a little better when out in public, especially when attempting to dissolve into a crowd. I suspected my tourist garb wasn’t going to help me in that endeavor. Neither was the aroma of the dog poop that, I now realized, was stuck on my shoe from the garden.
Damn it. How was it that everyone in Paris didn’t have dog shit on their shoes? The city was practically paved with it. I had a fairly high degree of agility, I liked to think, but I obviously had nothing on the ninja-like poop-dodging skills of Parisian women.
Fashionless outfit and the aroma of feces notwithstanding, I beelined to the back of the store. I estimated ten seconds’ lead time on the tail before she entered the store herself. As I reached the back of the store, I heard the chime of the front door opening. I tucked around a freestanding display of perfume and . . . yes. There was a back entrance. I slipped outside.
I found myself in a courtyard with nowhere to go. The air was quiet, and plain buildings formed a stark square. I’d just entered a world of black and white and gray, like a reverse Wizard of Oz scene. A clutch of pigeons suddenly flew up toward the square of sky above. I was trapped. I needed another doorway back into civilization.
I darted along, hugging the buildings closely, and grabbed on to the next door I encountered. My hand closed around the brass knob, and I pulled. Locked.
Panic fluttered in my chest. I could pick the lock, but I wasn’t sure I had the time. I raced to the next door. The handle turned, mercifully. I slipped through the door and into the shop.
I repeated this process a couple of times, weaving my way through various shops—a shoe store, a china shop—and after a while, I knew I’d shaken the tail. It was over. At least for now.
I needed to get out of the First Arrondissement. I strode to the first Metro stop I spotted and darted underground. I stayed vigilant as I waited on the platform, but there was no sign of anyone following me anymore. The train arrived in a screech of engines and a whoosh of air. I rode it to the other side of town, to the Marais.
On the streets of the Marais, cobbled and narrow, in stark contrast to the Champs-Élysées, I walked to an area of market stalls. The stalls were piled high with vegetables, fruit, soft ripe cheeses, sausages, and golden loaves of bread.
And then my phone rang. Ah, good. Gladys must be getting back to me with that intel. I took the call, but unfortunately, instead of Gladys’s voice, I heard my mother’s.
“Catherine, my dear, where are you?”
“Um, I’m at a market, Mom,” I said, closing my eyes and pinching the bridge of my nose. I took a calming breath.
“You know what I mean,” she said with an impatient tone. “What city?”
“Well, er, Paris.”
She gave an annoyed sniff. “Yes, I thought it was something like that. Your father said you were rushing off to an airport. Don’t you think this is the sort of detail I, as your business manager, should know?”
“Mom? Not my business manager.”
She launched into a tirade about keeping communication lines open and then asked if I brought appropriate footwear with me on this trip. “You know how you always manage to bring the wrong shoes.”
While she carried on, I caught the attention of the vegetable merchant, requested three tomatoes, an eggplant, and a handful of mushrooms. My mother didn’t even notice the interruption.
As she talked, though, I started wondering something.
I wandered farther along the row of market stalls and stopped by a fresh baker’s stand, the heavenly scent swirling into my brain.
“Mom,” I said, interrupting her stream of consciousness. “Mom, have you ever had a panic attack?”
“What? Of course not,” she said, laughing. “What a question. Why?”
“Well, because I—”
“Are you having panic attacks, Catherine?”
“Well, it’s just that lately, I’ve been feeling off my game. When I’m working, specifically, my fear seems to be getting a little out of hand—”
“Fear? You have nothing to be afraid of. You put yourself on top of tall buildings all the time, yes? Regular people, of course, they would fall—horrible way to die, wouldn’t you think?—but you don’t have to worry about that. I mean, yes, you might encounter people with guns and weapons and the like. The rest of us might have trouble with that, get shot or stabbed or arrested or whatnot, but you’ve always told me you don’t have to worry about that. Isn’t that what you’ve trained to avoid?” She laughed dismissively here. “Of course, I know you don’t have superhuman skills or anything, but don’t they teach you at AB&T how to avoid bullets and that sort of thing? I mean, that’s what I’ve always told myself.”
I felt queasy.
“Darling, are you all right? You’re not saying anything.”
“Well, it’s just that I think you might be giving me a bit too much credit.”
Pause. “Are you saying you don’t have special skills? What are you saying, sweetheart? You could get killed in your line of work? Or maimed or blinded or other such things? Good heavens, I’ve never thought about it, but now that I’m thinking about it, I do not like the sound of all that . . . not one little bit.”
At that moment the baker handed me a baguette. I let my mom rant a little longer as I pointed to a few other items from the baker’s stall.
“Mom, I have to go,” I finally said. “I’ll call you later.”
“All right, dear. Well, stay safe. Don’t forget to double-check your knots. Oh, and carry an extra sweater, would you? I heard the weather is chilly in the spring, and I don’t want you to catch a cold.”
Admittedly, it was odd that my mom was
so accepting of my chosen profession. Sometimes it made me wonder about her. Did she have secrets in her family she was keeping from me? Had someone in her family been a thief, too?
I’d wondered about these things before. Surely I wasn’t the only one in my gene pool who had actually discovered these talents and put them to good—or, more accurately, bad—use. I mean, I got these skills from somewhere. Maybe I came by them more honestly than I realized.
I paid the baker and tore off a piece of baguette. I was hungry. I bit into the crisp, chewy bread, and it hit the spot. My shoulders relaxed immediately.
And then someone came up to stand right behind me. A warning prickled my neck. I had dropped my guard while on the phone with my mother.
“Hello, Cat. Didn’t think you could lose me that easily, did you? You’re slipping, sweetheart.”
I knew the voice right away. I closed my eyes. Damn.
Chapter 17
I turned, and there was Brooke Sinclair standing behind me. “Brooke, what the hell? Why were you tailing me?”
She gave me a wicked grin. It was one of the trademark expressions of her deceptively angelic face. Brooke looked the same: long raven hair and slender, curvy figure. Not only was Brooke highly competent in everything she did, but she was also drop-dead gorgeous.
And, I must say, irritating perfection is a quality one does not typically want in a rival. Tends to trash one’s self-esteem.
My relationship with Brooke Sinclair was, in a word, complicated. She was a jewel thief, too. She had, many years ago, been my mentor. Until she started to feel threatened by my growing skill. And then she’d stabbed me in the back. Rather skillfully, too. I had to give her credit even for that.
“Just messing with you, Cat,” she said, shrugging, as we stood in the street market. “Maybe testing you a little. Seeing where you are in terms of skills. And I gotta say, I’m noticing some spots that need polishing.”
“Okay, great. Well, thanks for that. I’ll be sure to read all about it in my report card,” I snapped.
“Hey, no need to get defensive. Just trying to help out a fellow professional.”
I regretted my reaction. She was right. Better to make mistakes with her than with somebody who truly meant me harm. “I know. Sorry.”
There had been many years when we’d been rivals and archenemies. That status was clinched when she ended up in prison, in part because of me.
The hatred was solidly mutual at that point. When she got out of prison, there were a lot of other unhappy emotions thrown into the mix, revenge being among the most fiery.
And it stayed that way for a while. Until I needed the sort of help only she could provide last fall, with the Fabergé job. Shockingly, she stepped up. It was a tough job, but we made it through together.
Of course, on the other side of that, I wasn’t completely sure where I stood with her. And I don’t think she knew, either. I mean, we were still rivals in the same industry, right?
After learning about our success with the Fabergé, her old agency, Larceny New York, offered her a job again. I hadn’t seen her in months. Until now.
I respected Brooke as a thief, and I was extremely grateful for the help she provided me in London. But I still didn’t know if I could fully trust her, because Brooke was who she was. She would always, I suspected, look out for herself first.
Or maybe not. Maybe I wasn’t giving her enough credit. Maybe she was different now. I’d always been somewhat skeptical about the idea of people truly changing. But maybe that was wrong of me.
We walked away from the market, and a cool breeze rustled the trees in the square. I pulled my sweater tighter.
I wasn’t sure I bought her story about just testing me. It was an awful lot of effort just for that. I’d watch carefully, reveal very little, and see what Brooke’s game was.
We sat on a park bench in the square, and I asked her what had brought her to Paris.
“I just did a big job in New York,” she said. “A close shave in the end. So LNY wanted me to get out of the country for a bit—so did I, to be honest—and Paris seemed like the perfect place. April in Paris, after all. Isn’t that what Sinatra sang?”
“So you’re just here laying low and killing time?”
“Can you think of a better place?”
“Fair enough.”
I hesitated, wondering how much I should tell her. I fiddled with the edge of my sweater and gazed around the square. People lounged on benches, reading books and nibbling sandwiches, while pigeons pecked at crumbs on the basalt cobbles. “So how did you know I was here, in Paris? And how did you find me, exactly?”
“I didn’t know you were in Paris. But I saw you when you were in the Louvre.”
“You just happened to be there, too?” How had I not seen her?
“Like moths to a flame, sugar. You think it’s weird for two professional thieves to happen to be in the Louvre at the same time?”
She had a point. “I guess not.”
Why was I being so edgy? I guess old habits are hard to crush. I’d had many years of feeling much worse than edgy around Brooke.
“Okay, so?” she asked. “What’s up with you being here in Paris, Cat? Were you casing the Louvre? Got a little something in mind?” She inspected her fingernails—a glossy dark red manicure—then looked up at me innocently.
I chewed the inside of my cheek. Maybe Brooke could help me. Maybe she could assist with this job. We could be partners again, like we were in London. She really had pulled through for me then, at great risk to herself. Maybe I could trust her.
“Yes. I was casing it,” I said.
Her eyes glittered at this. “Good girl,” she said. “Big job, though.”
“Yes. And, well, that’s maybe where you could help me. It’s not a regular job.”
“No?”
“There’s a little more riding on it than usual. And I’m not going to be making any money off this one.”
“This is another pro bono job? Cat, you’re going to go broke, doing all these good deeds.”
“This time it’s not a good deed. I’m saving my skin. My hands, more specifically.” I told her all about Faulkner and the deal we’d struck.
Her face clouded at the idea of a past mark coming to find a thief and demanding retribution. And she visibly recoiled at the hand-severing bit.
“So, obviously,” I said, “it’s a big job. And I could use some help.”
Brooke was quiet a moment. “You’ve really got yourself in a pickle this time around.”
“I know.”
She pulled out a MAC tube and touched up her lipstick. “And, although I’d really like to join in,” she said between swipes, “I’m going to have to politely decline this time around.”
“What? Why?”
“I work for LNY now,” she said. “And they are very clear in their contract. I am not to take on any outside work.”
“They don’t need to know,” I said. I hoped my voice didn’t carry any of the desperation I was starting to feel.
“They know I’m here. I can’t do it. They would find out. And then my professional life would be in ruins again. I can’t risk that.”
“AB&T knows I’m here, doing this. Maybe LNY would be fine with it.”
“Your Agency is not giving you a hard time, because they know it’s their fault you’re facing this problem. If they took the time to get their heads out of their asses, they would realize they should have prevented this from happening, or at the very least, should be making this problem go away.” She shook her head in disgust. “What ever happened to protecting your assets? Anyway, they’re not kicking up a fuss, because they figure the easiest thing to do is just let you do the damn job and end the case. LNY doesn’t have the same motivation. They wouldn’t support me helping you.”
She was making sense. The baguette sat like a hard lump in my stomach. Brooke would have been a great asset. But I was asking her to put her career in jeopardy just to save me. Well, me .
. . and my hands.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Brooke had made it no secret that her philosophy was every woman for herself.
I dropped it. It had been a good idea. I just needed to come up with a different good idea.
Brooke wished me luck, and we parted ways. As I left the square, I passed a fromagerie with an open door. The ripe smells of Brie and Camembert wafted out. At that moment my phone bleeped: a message was waiting.
It was from Templeton. He’d sent me a file of possible suspects. I scrolled through the images of faces on my iPhone. And then I stopped. Yes, that one. That was the guy. Those same icy eyes looked through me, giving me that same cold feeling.
I called Templeton and confirmed the guy’s identity. He went silent after I told him who it was. “This isn’t good, Catherine,” he said at length.
“It’s not?”
“No. The name of that thief is Sean Reilly. And he’s good. Really good. And . . . not very nice.”
“Templeton, I hate to break it to you, but we’re all crooks. Generally not considered to be the nice people of the world.”
“Yes, but there’s bad and then there’s bad. And this guy, well, he’s the second type.”
“Can you be more specific?” I asked, swallowing hard. This didn’t sound good.
“Sneaky, underhanded, rotten, unscrupulous. Not afraid to use violence, unconcerned if people get hurt. And people, in this scenario, could include you.”
Well, I didn’t like the sound of that. But it didn’t change much. A vague threat from another thief versus the very concrete threat coming from Albert Faulkner? I’d just have to take my chances with the vague threats.
I was just about to hail a cab back to my hotel when my phone bleeped again with another incoming message, this time from Gladys.
Pierre Severin’s home address: 3782 rue Dauphine, Paris.
