by A Caprice
Gio arched an eyebrow. “People can get sloppy with record-keeping. On the other hand, accounting discrepancies are a good indicator of embezzlement. And if there are thefts that have yet to be uncovered, that is a motive for murder. But why come after you now?”
“Well, we’re going through an audit now.”
“But you are not in the accounting department. Why are you involved?”
She idly drummed a pattern on the countertop with her fingers. “I don’t…wait.” She sat up straight. “The letters. The letters between ARC’s founders,” she clarified for Gio. “They’re basically a laundry list of the first art pieces and artifacts that started our archives. If someone has been stealing from us, and they took one of those pieces…”
“They wouldn’t want the one person who knows what the archives should be holding to notice the pieces were missing,” Gio finished. He held up her phone. “You say this inventory came from one of your directors?”
“Martin Chirac. And that email came from his personal account, not through the ARC server.”
“What do you know about him?” he asked.
“That he’s a pompous windbag. I told you.”
Gio sighed. “Let’s see if we can do better than that.” He led the way to his study and for the next half hour searched the internet for everything they could find on Chirac. He had search programs that dug out private information on the man that made Amanda squirm.
“You can find stuff like this out on anybody?”
“For my career, for both of them, retrieval and theft, this is very useful technology to have.”
“But you even know he has a peanut butter cup fetish.” She pointed to the data from his supermarket rewards card. “Is there no privacy at all anymore?”
He merely shrugged. “It is the modern age. But look. He appears to have a close relationship with several auction houses. Mostly he is a purchaser but he has sold some art, too. I can’t see what he bought and sold—”
“Aha! Some things are still private.”
He gave her a disappointed look. “But that is the information we need the most. To see if he is a thief.”
“Oh, yeah.” She chewed her bottom lip. “Well, he wants me to go to the archives and check the inventory for the years we’re being audited. He would probably only suggest it if he knows it will match up to the list he sent me. But if I check past years, and especially what the founders left to us, maybe I can find proof that thefts have at least occurred.”
“No. Too dangerous. If we’re right, this man has already tried to kill you.” He leaned back in his chair and settled his arms across his chest.
“Well, I can’t stay holed up here forever.”
Gio pondered that, his head tilted to the side.
“Gio!”
“Yes, yes. Of course we must do something.” He swiveled on his chair. “It takes a thief to catch a thief.”
“What?”
“A movie reference. But there are parallels. The idea is that since I am a thief as well, I will know best how this man thinks.” He gave her a lazy smile. “My role, by the way, was played by Cary Grant.”
“Of course. And did Cary catch his thief?” she asked.
“What do you think? Oh, and he got the girl as well.”
“While this movie history is all very fascinating,” Amanda said sarcastically, “what, in practical terms, do you propose to do to catch our thief?”
“Break into his house, of course.” He held up his hand to stop her protestations. “For someone to steal artwork, it means that they like to look at pretty things. Want to be surrounded by them. He wouldn’t just steal something to hide it away in a cellar. It would be somewhere he could see it frequently.”
Amanda got off the stool and started pacing. “He’s a director of a large organization. His home here in Geneva is frequently open for fundraisers, parties, meetings. It would be too risky to hang artwork he stole from ARC somewhere where anyone could see.”
Gio turned the computer screen toward her. “But his townhouse isn’t his only property. He also owns a home in Lausanne, about fifty kilometers away. Close enough to go see his pretties whenever he wants. If it were me, that is where I would keep the stolen art.”
Amanda narrowed her eyes and looked around. “Do you have another home somewhere?”
Gio didn’t reply, but a small smile curved his lips. He stood and moved to her. “Now, what I propose is that today, while Monsieur Chirac is busy at ARC, I go to his second home and have a look around.”
“You have the wrong pronoun there, buddy. We will go have a look around.”
“No, I think not. It is too dangerous.”
Amanda’s shoulders tensed. “But you’re bulletproof, I suppose.”
“I have experience breaking and entering. You are basically a librarian.” The expression in his eyes hardened. “Your heart and brain might be as big as Mont Blanc, but they are encased in a soft body. Soft bodies get hurt. You are staying here.” His firm voice indicated no compromise could be had.
She stalked to the window. Of course he wouldn’t want her with him. He might care for her, but he didn’t view her as an equal. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “So I just sit here and wait for you to take care of everything.” Her toneless voice made it a statement.
She heard him walk across the room then the soft whirling of the tumblers of a safe turning. He returned and placed something on the desk. “There is something you could do. Something important to me.”
Amanda turned. The Newton decoder lay next to a single sheet of paper. “You want me to decrypt your grandfather’s letter.” That letter was important to Gio, and a part of her was flattered he entrusted it to her.
Another part felt that this was just more busy work to keep her out of the way.
“Will you do that for me? Tonight when I get back, we can exchange what we learned.”
She chewed her bottom lip. “Gio…there’s something else you should know.” She hesitated.
“Yes?”
“It might be more dangerous than you think going to Chirac’s house. He’s not…we’re not normal.”
When she remained silent, he raised his hands, palms up. “I’m going to need more than that.”
She swallowed. This was it. The moment Gio would think her crazy. But he needed to know. It was too dangerous for him to go in blind. “Chirac and I belong to the Anagogic Research Council. Our organization isn’t just about researching paranormal phenomena. Some members have certain…powers that can be dangerous. Chirac might be dangerous.” She clenched her hand, her nails biting into her palm. “We’re not like you. We’re paranormal.”
She held her breath. A person’s reaction to her words had never been so important.
His lips struggled to stay even.
She narrowed her eyes. “Are you laughing?”
He coughed into his hand. “Of course not.” His mouth still twitched suspiciously. “It is just…you do not actually believe in such nonsense, do you? I think you have been working for ARC perhaps a little too long.”
She turned her back on him. An icy fist squeezed her heart. She blinked rapidly. She would not cry. She would not.
He clasped her shoulders and gently turned her to face him.
“I do not mean to make fun of you, but we do not have time for a philosophical discussion on witchcraft and sorcery. I must go. Will you stay here and decode my letter?” His eyes were kind, and she almost wished they weren’t.
Disgust, derision, those were emotions she could rail against. Tell him just where to stick his narrow-minded beliefs. But sympathy and pity? Those just left Amanda feeling hollow.
“Yes. I’ll do it.” A strange calm enveloped her. It was soothing once you let your hopes die.
She didn’t add that it wasn’t all she would do. They weren’t together. They would never be together. Gio didn’t need to know all her plans.
He
brushed his lips against hers. “Thank you.”
She sat behind his desk and listened to him leave. She wrote the translation of the letter on the notepad beside her, the words flowing automatically, her thoughts elsewhere.
On the other foster children she lived with growing up who ostracized her for being too smart. They didn’t know that her strange reading ability came from something other than brain power.
On her college roommates who thought she was pretentious for reading Plato in its original Greek.
On her colleagues who thought that she was an incidental employee, her talent useful to keep up ARC’s cover but not a part of keeping the world safe like they did.
There was nothing wrong with any of these people; they were all nice enough. Except for maybe some of her foster siblings, but, really, all kids can be jerks. The problem was with her. She allowed herself to be pigeonholed. She thought of herself as an outsider and let other people treat her as one.
Well, she was done with that.
She had hoped she had found a connection with Gio, an intimacy that had been missing from all of her other relationships. She was mistaken. She could understand his reaction to her confession about the paranormal. Understand it, although she sure as hell didn’t like it. But it took proof and time for people to come to grips with the fact that the world held more mysteries than they believed.
It was his dismissal of her assistance that cut. If he didn’t respect her enough to want her help, fine, but she was going to respect herself.
She called a cab and went to ARC headquarters. Somewhere in the archives was proof that Chirac had stolen from them. But when the elevator doors opened on the sub-basement, Amanda knew that the proof would be very hard to find.
She entered the large warehouse, her heels clicking eerily on the cement floor. When she passed one row of floor-to-ceiling shelves, twenty-foot ceilings no less, the lights for that row automatically clicked on, humming softly.
The upper archives where she spent most of her time could have been organized by Marie Kondo. Everything had its place, and the placement of each artifact was mapped electronically and recorded in an online card catalog. But this sub-basement was like a garage sale from hell.
Amanda knew when ARC moved to this building, efforts had been made to store the undisplayed artifacts by type, then provenance. But knowing the librarian as she did, she figured he spent no more than a day or two’s energy on keeping everything organized. He would have gotten bored quickly and started shoveling artifacts away with nary a care.
She headed for the paintings section, determined to see if she could find the Botticelli that wasn’t on Chirac’s inventory. She flipped back a tarp on a large, square painting. Then another. She was in the Renaissance section. She paused, studying a sketch by Michelangelo. There were some beautiful works down here that no one got to see. It would almost be better if someone like Gio did take these. They deserved to be appreciated.
Flipping through canvases, she quickly went through two stacks of paintings. She was in the middle of the next stack when the lights went out. She froze. Just the automatic lighting going off, she told herself. She waved her arms, hoping to trip the motion sensor.
It worked. The lights clicked back on.
Martin Chirac stood at the end of her row.
Amanda stifled a shriek and put a hand to her pounding chest. “Monsieur Chirac. You startled me.”
“I see you were not too sick to work today.” His wiry, gray hair gleamed under the fluorescent lights. He paced slowly toward her, his hands covered in black leather gloves.
A bead of sweat trickled down her spine. The older man had always looked unpleasant to her, but he’d never appeared dangerous.
Until now.
She took a step back, but her row ended against a wall. There was no escape, unless she climbed the shelves.
“I just wanted to get a jump on the work you wanted me to do.” Amanda’s head began to swim, her eyes losing focus. She shook her head. Chirac was now only ten feet away. “But perhaps I should go home again. I’m…not feeling so well.” She placed a hand on the shelf next to her. Her legs didn’t want to move to start the climb. The ground rushed up and she fell hard on her behind. “What…?”
“I’m afraid you are going to feel a whole lot worse, Miss Sullivan.”
Amanda squinted up at him, but his head and body were blurring. He looked a bit like the figure in Munch’s The Scream. She started to giggle but became too tired even for that.
Chirac’s mouth moved, but Amanda closed her eyes and heard no more.
Chapter Eight
Chirac’s house was ridiculously easy to access. One would think that as someone who was well familiar with the larcenous side of human nature, Chirac would have done a better job of safeguarding his house from intruders. Especially with all his pretties inside.
Gio paused in front of the Botticelli Amanda had mentioned, The Mystical Nativity. Beautiful, but not his style. He took a picture of it with his phone. Walking through Chirac’s home, Gio was surprised at how eclectic the man’s tastes were. The Botticelli, Michelangelo and Turner were all mainstream. But some of the other artwork bordered on the bizarre. Several paintings adorned his walls that looked as though they had been begun by old masters, but then were overlaid with images of demons and mystical creatures. Bookcases held not only old manuscripts but talismans and, was that a wand?
He entered the master bedroom, his footsteps silenced by the thick wall-to-wall carpeting. A massive four-poster bed was the focus of the opulent room, but Gio was drawn to a mirror on the side wall. It was large and square, about four feet around. A wooden frame overlaid the front of the mirror, creating a circle of the actual reflective surface. The wood was adorned with hieroglyphics and other symbols he didn’t recognize.
He smiled. Amanda would recognize them. The thought of her refocused Gio. He needed to find evidence that Chirac was also behind her explosion, not just that he was a thief. He turned to go, but movement caught his eye.
He peered at the mirror again. His reflection stared back at him. Nothing else in the room moved. Unsettled, Gio started to turn away again.
This time, the movement was clearer.
“What the hell…?” A symbol on the mirror’s frame had shifted. But it couldn’t have. He touched the wood frame. The symbols were painted on. No way that they could move.
Something warm tingled under his fingertips, and another symbol lazily transversed the wood in a clockwise direction.
He leapt backward, his heart racing. He rubbed his eyes. It was still moving. “Madonna mia!”
The glass of the mirror shimmered, and something tugged deep in his stomach. He took a step forward, mesmerized by the swirling patterns in the mirror. There was something, someone, hidden behind the glass, calling to him, drawing him in. He stretched his hand forward to touch the slick surface. Before it made contact, a noise sounded faintly through the house, and he yanked his hand back.
He shook his head, trying to clear the haze.
What. The. Hell?
Gio took to the shadows in the hallway, happy to leave the bedroom. His skin crawled, and even with a door and walls between him and the mirror, he could still feel it watching him.
Calling to him.
He shut those disturbing thoughts down. Now wasn’t the time to indulge in fancies. He was a practical man, and he’d worry about whatever the hell that had been later. Much later.
Chirac was home, and he was a threat to Amanda. That was real. That was what mattered.
Perhaps if he trailed the man he would find the proof he needed. He followed the sounds of movement down the stairs to the main floor. A coat and briefcase littered the floor of the marble front entry. He continued down a hall to the left, away from the sounds of Chirac in the kitchen.
A low light glowed under the door to one of the guest bedrooms.
He hesitated at the door. He should find a
dark room to hide in, to wait for Chirac to settle in for the night. But—
He inhaled sharply. The scent of his body wash from his guest bathroom tickled his nose. He inhaled again. The odor was faint, but the dread curdling in his gut told him what he didn’t want to believe.
Silently, he turned the knob and slipped inside.
His heart paused mid-beat. Stretched out on the bed, wrists handcuffed over her head, was an unconscious Amanda.
He rushed to her side and frantically felt for a pulse. It was slow but strong. “Amanda, wake up.” He tapped her cheek, but she didn’t respond. His adrenalin spiked, and he clenched his hands to keep them from shaking. “Do not worry, mi amor. I will get you out of here.”
He bent to examine the lock on her handcuffs, but blazing pain seared the back of his head. He collapsed on top of Amanda and was enveloped in her sweet scent before darkness overtook him.
Chapter Nine
The first thing Amanda became aware of was the stream of Italian whispering in her ear. Beautiful words of love and protection. Someone must be reciting a poem, she thought. Next, a hint of cinnamon and cloves teased her nose. Gio’s scent. She smiled sleepily.
A hard body rolled against hers. Gio. She was in bed with Gio. Comforted, Amanda decided to go back to sleep. She was just so tired.
An elbow to her jaw laid waste to that plan.
“Merda!”
She pried her gummy eyes open. Gio’s worried face hovered inches above hers. “What…?”
“I’m sorry, cara. I am working on my handcuffs and I knocked into you. But I’m almost free.”
Handcuffs? Amanda looked to the head of the bed. Both her and Gio’s hands were cuffed around metal railings that made up the headboard. “What’s going on?” Amanda pressed her tongue against the back of her lips. It felt thick. Numb. “Where are we?”
“At Chirac’s house in Lausanne.” He was focused on a little stick he wiggled in the handcuff’s lock. “I found you on this bed and then he hit me with something on the back of the head.”
