A Beautiful Heist (5 page)

“So why do you care now?”

Jack sipped his whiskey again and attempted to formulate the words. It was a good question, one he’d asked himself many times. “Because he was my father, I suppose.” Jack left it at that, but it wasn’t that simple. Jack’s father had been a career criminal. And in spite of being the sort of man Jack came to despise, Jack knew there was one part of him that was honorable at its core. And it was something he’d died trying to do. That was the part Jack felt compelled to honor.

Jack had more than atoned for his father’s sins by becoming an FBI agent. But he had a different guilt to deal with now. He’d rejected his father. And in doing so, he’d broken his heart. Jack had been his only son, and they hadn’t spoken since the day Jack left home.

Jack’s stepmother had pleaded with him a few times to reconsider. He refused. And once she passed away, there was no further contact between father and son. They were estranged. There was a part of Jack that always assumed they would reconcile someday. It certainly didn’t occur to him that his father would die. Then one day Jack received a letter. After that, everything was his.

“Can we get on with things, here?” Jack said irritably.

“Sure thing, Jack.” Wesley smiled that toothy smile, like fingernails on a chalkboard for Jack. “So. There are two involved parties, other than us.”

Two parties?
Jack thought. He felt fresh doubt. Nothing about this was going to be simple. “Involved in what way?”

“The family that calls themselves Gorlovich is one party. They have the Fabergé Egg. But we don’t know where they’re keeping it.”

“And the other party?”

Wesley regarded him carefully. “Have you heard of the group known as the Caliga Rapio?”

Jack’s jaw tightened and he felt a prickle go up his spine. “I know about them.”

“Well, they’re the other party.”

Jack nodded grimly. This job had just become a lot more difficult. And dangerous. But how could he walk away now, after everything he’d heard? An image flashed in Jack’s mind of what would happen should the Caliga get their hands on the Gifts. His stomach turned sour.

“Are they here also?” Jack asked. “In Seattle?”

Wesley nodded. “They’re close. They know it’s here. They know the Gorlovich family has it. And, we’re afraid, they just might know its exact location. Which is what we’ve got to figure out.”

At this point Wesley handed Jack a file with further information. Jack began thumbing through pages of intel, photographs of the Gorlovich family members, details of their endless series of homes and office buildings and warehouses. This search was not going to be easy.

“So I’m wondering,” Wesley began as Jack scanned pages. “Sounds like you couldn’t stand being in the same room as your father. You gonna have a problem working with a thief now?”

Jack turned a page. “Not all criminals are unpleasant to spend time with,” he said. His mind flashed to a memory of sitting with Cat at a sunny sidewalk café. He was smiling, watching her pour endless packets of sugar into her cappuccino. Then the image changed and they were curled on a sofa watching a movie in his fire-warmed living room. He rubbed her feet while she cradled a giant bowl of butter-fragrant popcorn.

Wesley cracked his knuckles, frowning at Jack. And then a look of understanding dawned. “Oh, that’s
right.”
He smiled. “You were dating a crook. According to rumor anyway. Cat Montgomery?”

Jack’s head snapped up before he could curb his reflex.

“Yep, that’s the one,” Wesley said with a self-satisfied smile. “And—yeah, I remember now—you’re the one who let her off the hook in that Camelot job.” Wesley’s smile spread to a full, toothy grin. He let out a short bark of laughter. “The girl sure knew what she was doing, sleeping with you.”

Jack lunged across the coffee table, grabbed Wesley’s throat and pushed him back into the leather armchair. Wesley’s eyes popped.

“It wasn’t like that,” Jack said in a dangerously low voice. “And if I ever hear you saying anything like that again—”

“Okay, okay!” Wesley choked “Just a joke, dude.”

Jack forced himself to release Wesley. A few moments of silence passed. Jack looked away, frowning fiercely, willing himself to let it go. The nerve that Wesley had touched throbbed like a toothache.

The guy was wrong—completely wrong about Cat, about their relationship. But why did Jack care anyway? It was over. It didn’t matter anymore. Being with Cat had been a mistake. A huge mistake. But it was all in the past now.

After everything that happened with Cat, Jack had applied for a department transfer out of property crimes. He just couldn’t stand the conflict of interest, even though the only person who knew was him. He now worked in the Counterintelligence Task Force, Seattle division.

Being the low guy on the totem pole in that department, Jack was mostly shuffling paper around a desk these days. His supervisor was a hard-ass, and wasn’t letting him out in the field until he’d paid his dues. Which, when Jack thought about it, was probably going to work in his favor now. He could do what was essentially an office job with the FBI during the day, and work with Cole’s crew at night.

Wesley was rubbing his throat and straightening his jacket. Jack shook it off. He looked directly at the other man. “All right,” Jack said. “Unless I’m mistaken, we’ve got work to do. What’s our next move?”

Wesley stopped rubbing his throat and smiled. “Glad you asked.” He reached into a drawer and handed Jack a thick, engraved invitation, embossed with a small Venetian mask.

Jack read it and looked up. “What’s this? A masquerade ball? What’s this got to do with anything?”

“You’ll see.”

Jack stared back down at the invitation and rubbed the heavy card stock with his thumb. So it began. Question was, would he be able to live with himself, when it was all over?

I unpacked a bagful of pencils, charcoal, and erasers, and looked furtively around. I arranged my instruments on an easel in an art studio that was ablaze with the last rays of evening sun and wondered what I was going to do with it all. The studio smelled of chalk dust and oil paint and herbal tea.

If Templeton knew I was here he’d kill me. A pang of guilt and anxiety centered between my shoulder blades. He could never find out I came here.

I couldn’t leave it alone, though. It hadn’t taken me long to ferret out some personal information about the new FBI agent. And what I’d learned about Nicole Johnson was that she attended a figure drawing class every Thursday evening. I had attempted to go through proper channels with this information—called the right department at AB&T and everything—but they said they didn’t have the manpower to deal with it right now. Not a priority. So what was I supposed to do, just squander this opportunity?

The art instructor strolled over to me. He was short, almost hobbit-like, with a shaggy sweep of brown hair and round, wire glasses. He smelled strongly of cigarette smoke. “So you’ve studied figure drawing before?” he said, eyeing my pencils and other gear.

“Oh yes. Absolutely,” I said confidently. He nodded and wandered away to speak with the other artistes in the room.

The truth was, not only had I never studied figure drawing, I didn’t have the first idea what figure drawing actually was. But I’d faked more difficult things, I was sure.

In the class, I’d recognized Nicole Johnson right away from the photograph I’d found online. Heart-shaped face, sharp eyes, blond bob. It had taken a bit of musical chairs, but I’d managed to finagle a spot right next to her. I copied the way she attached paper to her easel and scanned my brain for a suitable opening line.

Before I had a chance to speak, an overweight man wearing a ratty brown robe strode to the center of the room and up onto the podium. It clicked then. Of course: figure drawing. We draw people. Okay, no problemo. And then, Mr. Plump dropped his robe. Now he was Mr. Nude.

I didn’t know where to look.
Are you kidding me?
He struck a catlike pose, without a hint of irony. There was just way too much flesh and bits and pieces and hair, and it was altogether an entirely alarming sight. The room was hushed. People were quietly contemplating his form, taking out their charcoal sticks and starting to sketch.

For me, contemplating and sketching the sight before me was the absolute last thing I wanted to do. My deepest wish right then was to squeeze my eyes tight and scrub away the image I feared was permanently seared onto my brain. Memo to self:
Wikipedia,
Cat. A little background research on what, exactly, is involved in figure drawing might have been useful preparation.

Somehow, I forced myself to raise my eyes again and hold my piece of charcoal as steadily as I could. Oh God. How do people do this? More importantly:
why?
I started moving my charcoal over the page, concentrating on his left foot.

“Okay, people,” the instructor called out with an artistic wave of his hand. “Remember: move your hand quickly. Fly over the page. Don’t just draw. I want you to capture the essence of the model’s gesture. Not just the physical body, but the
mood.”

I had my own approach: attempt to forget what I was looking at and instead pretend I was drawing a bowl of fruit. Okay, so it was a large, fleshy, hairy bowl of fruit, but still . . .

After a few minutes, Mr. Nude changed poses and settled into a reclining position on a chaise lounge. Everyone flipped to a blank page. I took the opportunity to turn to Nicole and glance at her first sketch.

“Hey, that’s really good,” I said.

Nicole flicked a brief glance in my direction. “Thank you.” Her voice was tight; she kept her torso turned away from me.

“That highlighted bit—how did you get that effect?” I asked, pointing to a body part I’d rather not name.

“Chalk.”

Hmm. This was going to be tricky. Somehow, I needed to get her to relax and open up. While I brainstormed on this, I kept drawing. The instructor advised us to stay loose and draw quickly, which I tried, until—
“Whoops
!” I cringed. “Oh, that’s not good,” I muttered to myself. “Pretty much every guy’s nightmare . . .” No man likes to see
that
particular piece of his anatomy portrayed at one-third its real size.

Nicole glanced at my drawing and a smile twitched on her lips. We made eye contact and both grinned, suppressing laughter.

But then, under her gaze I had a moment of panic. What if she’d seen a file on me? What if she recognized my face? It was a little late for these thoughts, of course. I was all in now.

I pointed to her sketch with my piece of charcoal. “Yours is good,” I said. “You’re an artist?”

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head dismissively. “I just do this for fun. My day job is much less artistic.”

“Oh? What do you do?” I kept my voice light and chatty.

She hesitated briefly. The guard had not been fully dismantled. “I work in criminal investigation, actually.”

“Cop?”

“FBI.”

“No kidding,” I said. I did my best to sound impressed and interested, while fighting down the natural impulse to flee in terror at the sound of someone introducing themselves as an FBI agent.

I did note that Nicole’s spine straightened as she said the word. She was still a little suspicious—normal for an agent, I imagined—and although she tried to be discreet, it was obvious she was proud of this.

“Yeah, I do this sort of thing as an escape,” she said, resuming her sketching. “Although I have to admit, some weeks are more pleasurable than others.” She leaned toward me and lowered her voice. “You should have seen the guy who was the model last week . . . .” She flashed me a wicked smile.

“Good?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

“Think Ryan Reynolds.”

“Wow,” I said, smiling back. “Nice.”

Hmm. So she had good taste in men. Interesting. We continued working on our sketches.

“So how about you?” she asked me. “What do you do?”

I suffered a sudden paroxysm of coughing, and then strove to keep my heart rate steady and my voice even as I said, “Oh, I’m a grad student at the University of Washington. French lit.”

Actually, this was true.

Naturally, I maintained a mild-mannered alter ego. Every self-respecting felon has a cover. Mine was a graduate student in nineteenth-century French literature, to be specific. Hugo, Flaubert, Dumas . . . all those great, romantic writers. For me it was more than a fake cover, however. I really did enjoy it.

I yanked the conversation back around to her. “So, being with the FBI must be pretty exciting,” I said. “Have you been doing that for long?”

“A few years.”

I nodded. I needed to pace my questions a little. “You hunt serial killers and stuff?”

“No, I’m in property crimes. I head the jewel theft team.”

“Wow, how cool is that?” My voice was unnaturally high. “A whole team for jewel theft.”

“Yeah. Although our department needs a bit of a whip-cracking. We’re completely disorganized, and totally bogged down with work.”

Perfect.
Disorganized was good. I smiled and then quickly schooled it. “Lots of jewel theft in Seattle?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Mmm,” I said, nodding, and concentrating hard on my drawing, hoping I wasn’t displaying an inappropriate response to that. “I’m sure I would.”

As I applied the finishing touches to a particular piece of male anatomy (and doing not a bad job, if I do say so myself), I stopped to consider my sketch, and started giggling.

“God, it’s a good thing I don’t have a boyfriend anymore,” I said offhandedly. “I’m not sure how thrilled he’d be that I’ve been staring at another man’s naked body for the past hour.”

She laughed. “My boyfriend thinks it’s hilarious.”

I looked at her; she was glowing. “Sounds like a good guy.” Must be nice to have one of those, I thought. Although I suppose I did, once upon a time. My mood darkened a shade, smeared over with charcoal.

“Yeah,” she said. “He is a good guy. He’s FBI also.”

“Really?” I said, turning to her. “You work together? Isn’t that difficult?”

“Sometimes. But it’s fun, too.”

“Huh,” I said, considering this. “I wouldn’t know about that. I’ve never actually dated anyone who does the same thing that I do.”

She looked at me with a frown. “But you’re a student. You’ve never dated another
student?
Ever?”

Shit.
I was supposed to be disarming her and getting her to open up—not the other way around. “Umm, no. I mean in my exact discipline. Other students, sure, but nobody in French studies.”

“Ah,” she said.

When the class ended, we packed up our supplies. Despite the fact that I was probably scarred for life from the experience of figure drawing, it was very fruitful talking with Nicole. Getting the inside track on your adversary was always time well spent.

We walked outside together. The sun had set now, and the sky shimmered with gauzy twilight. The air was fresh and cool.

“Hmm . . . where is he?” Nicole glanced around, frowning slightly.

“Who?”

“My boyfriend. He’s supposed to be picking me up . . . .” And then she smiled over my shoulder. “Oh, there he is. Hi, honey.”

I turned and found myself looking into the face of Jack Barlow. My ex. The man who, two months ago, completely crushed my heart.

Shocked, I dropped my portfolio. Out tumbled one of my drawings: a perfectly artless—but nonetheless recognizable—portrait of a big, fat, naked guy in full-frontal pose. It fluttered down like a feather and landed at Jack’s feet.

Jack bent down and picked it up with one long, carved arm. I froze as he studied it with a smirk. He looked into my face with those melting brown eyes that had so often turned my knees to syrup, and handed me the drawing. “Is this yours, miss?”

And just like that, I was dying.

 

I walked across the darkened parking lot in a trance; my cheeks still retained the remnants of a hot burn. At least I could comfort myself with the knowledge that Jack was not going to rat me out to Nicole. He’d kept up the charade that he didn’t know me.

Good guy,
I thought. And that, right there, was our problem. Right from day one.

It might seem improbable that a thief and an FBI agent could become romantically involved in the first place. But ours had been a pretty typical love story, really. You know how it goes: Boy meets Girl (by investigating the crime ring to which she secretly belongs). Boy and Girl fall in love (while Girl tries madly to keep her true vocation hidden from Boy). Boy loses Girl (partly due to his utter shock at catching her red-handed, but mostly due to his decision to arrest her for a major felony). Then, of course, we get: Boy covers for Girl, lies to his supervisors, arranges for her release because he’s realized that he really does love her after all and will somehow have to come to terms with her criminal tendencies but for now is simply going to whisk her away to Paris.

In other words: Boy wins Girl back and the two live happily ever after. Well, that’s what was supposed to happen. The happily-ever-after bit. Unfortunately, in the true version of the story, the romance ended rather prematurely, when Boy finally realized he just couldn’t tolerate Girl’s criminal lifestyle.

After our breakup I did consider giving up my career, leaving my life of crime. But I just couldn’t do it. Every time I contemplated it I felt repelled by the idea, like a reverse-polarity magnet was pushing me away. I’m sure it was because of Penny, because of promising myself that I wouldn’t quit until I’d made amends. Although, in my darkest moments, I’ve wondered if there was something else.

I didn’t stay long in that cozy triangle outside the art class, making small talk with Nicole and Jack. I extracted myself as quickly as possible. And now all I wanted to do was get to my car, get home, and nurse my wounds with a bubble bath and a vodka.

Midway through the parking lot I got a prickly feeling of being watched. I glanced around. Nothing moving. Nobody to be seen. Only a scattering of motionless cars and minivans, and a pair of battered garbage bins, barely illuminated by the single, dim yellow streetlight. Ruffling maple trees bordered the parking lot, their vibrant autumn colors transformed to black silhouette against the darkening sky.

Okay, Cat. Just your imagination. I kept walking.

And then all the hairs on the back of my neck lifted upward. There it was again.

I ducked down between two cars, crouching low. I scanned for moving shadows and listened hard for footfall. Still, nothing. I began creeping toward my car.

This parking lot was empty, I told myself. Deserted. Okay, fine, my sensors must have been thrown off from the trauma of seeing Jack again.

I reached my car. There was a note taped to the driver’s door:

I snatched the note and looked quickly around. I knew it. But still, I couldn’t see a soul anywhere nearby.

In spite of myself I was impressed. Whoever this was, he was good. I glanced back at the note. It was a small square of heavy bond. The message was scrawled in thick, fountain-pen black ink. I didn’t recognize the handwriting. It wasn’t Templeton. It wasn’t any of my friends or anyone else I knew.

Well, this guy certainly favored the cloak-and-dagger routine. Which was fine by me, of course. Cloak and dagger? Totally my thing.

I squinted across the street and spotted R
OXY’S
D
INER
written in neon, flickering slightly above a low building with glowing plate glass windows. Looked like my bubble bath would have to wait.