Cutting Loose
Page 26
And it still wasn’t enough, not even close.
She rose to her feet, leaving Otto to squirm on the floor. He’d left his suitcase open on the bed, and it took her about thirty seconds to search through his clothes and the rest of his dog collars. He had a penchant for spikes and studs.
She had a penchant for fine art, the stolen variety, and she wasn’t finding any packed in his suitcase. Oh, hell, no—that would have been too easy.
Reaching into her tote bag, she pulled out a knife and thumbed it open, then started in on the suitcase itself. She kept to the edges, inside and out, running the blade close to the frame and carefully pulling back the linings and fabric covering.
No art.
Specifically, no Jakob Meinhard’s 1910 Model in Blue, an Expressionist masterpiece last seen in Munich in 1937 as part of the Entartete Kunst exhibit, the Degenerate Art exhibit, and believed burned in Berlin in 1939. Her father had been on the painting’s trail since word of its survival had surfaced four years ago.
Four years of following the painting. Six months of following Otto, including the two months needed to set up a “sale” in Denver, and about five minutes in a hotel room to set almost seven decades of loss right—not to mention saving her dad’s butt. Again.
Dammit. She let out a short sigh and thumbed the knife closed, her gaze searching the room. All Otto had brought with him, that she could see, was the suitcase and the clothes on his back.
She dropped a glance at the mostly naked man trussed at her feet. Without the black leather thong he’d strapped on with all its buckles and snaps, he’d be completely naked.
She was so grateful for the thong.
The rest of his clothes were in a neatly folded stack on the bed—except for his suit jacket.
She looked to the open closet near the door leading out into the hall. Sure enough, he’d hung up his jacket, and it was looking very tidy in the closet. Very tidy, indeed, and rather stiff.
Walking over to the closet, she opened the knife again in a single, smooth move.
“Policia.” She heard the man outside the door talking again, the guy with no towels. “Abra la puerta, por favor.”
Open the door, he’d said, and Esmee could see her time was running out damn fast. He was obviously speaking to somebody with a key, and given his choice of language, she was guessing one of the maids. Everybody manning the front desk spoke English.
Without rushing, she didn’t waste a second, taking hold of Otto’s suit jacket and neatly slicing open the side seam. Her hand went in between the silk lining and the English tweed, and her smile came out—voila! Success.
She slipped the painting free from its hiding place, took a quick look, and rolled it into a tight tube. She was heading toward the window that opened onto the alley even as she was sliding the painting into the cardboard sleeve she’d brought with her in her tote bag.
The Oxford was an old historic hotel, and the windows did open. In room 215, where fifty bucks to the reservation clerk had guaranteed Otto would be put, the window not only opened, it opened onto an old fire escape that she’d personally checked out two nights ago. It had held her then, and it held her tonight.
By the time she heard the commotion of the no-towel-guy and the maid discovering a dog-collared, thong-clad foreigner leashed to the bed, she was in the alley, disappearing into the shadows.
ALSO BY TARA JANZEN
Crazy Hot
Crazy Cool
Crazy Wild
Crazy Kisses
Crazy Love
Crazy Sweet
On the Loose
CUTTING LOOSE
A Dell Book/January 2008
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2008 by Tara Janzen
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Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-440-33734-8
v3.0