Going Rogue (27 page)

We all had ten gold coins in our pocket, actually. It’s just that mine were the real ones. Angelo had produced some amazing-looking fakes and distributed them to everyone else that morning. “We’ll have about five minutes before the police arrive to keep Dominic at bay,” he said.

“Assuming they don’t decide to go on strike,” Élodie grumbled. I could tell she had been in Paris for too long.

“We just need to keep Dominic in the museum,” Angelo said. “As soon as you hear the police arrive, get out. Go, take the car, take the tunnels, I do not care. But go.”

Ames looked around the room. “I’ll just say it,” he announced. “We’re going to play keep-away with a criminal mastermind in the Louvre? That’s our plan?”

“Yes,” Angelo said.

“Deadly,” Ames replied with a smile. “I love this game.”

As Angelo led the six of us up the stairs toward the Samothrace, I hurried to catch up to him. “Angelo,” I whispered, “this doesn’t feel right. I think this is a bad idea.”

“Don’t worry, darling,” he said. “This plan has many facets. And faces, actually.” He smiled down at me. “Are you ready for a new adventure?”

I looked up at him, trying to read behind the secrecy. There was something big happening behind his eyes, bigger
than a stupid plan of keep-away with Dominic and a bunch of fake gold coins.

“Third rule of being a spy?” Angelo asked me as we continued to climb.

“Don’t look back,” I answered.

“Good girl,” he said, then looked past me at someone in the distance.

“Let the games begin,” he said, and I turned to see Dominic Arment making his way into the museum.

We stood on the stairs as Dominic approached, fanned out in front of the Samothrace. Angelo was in front and the rest of us were a few steps behind him, almost like he was our shield into battle. People shoved past us on the way to see the statue, their cameras out and ready, but none of us moved. It was as if the tourists weren’t even there.

Dominic was wearing a suit. I suspected that he was one of those men who always wore a suit, even in these types of situations. It was hard to imagine him in an actual appropriate outfit, like maybe track pants and running shoes, but he looked clean-cut and like any other well-dressed Parisian. There were four men behind him, but I couldn’t tell if they were security or henchmen or hired ankle-breakers. Maybe they were even part of the Collective.

“Hello, Dominic,” Angelo said, as if he were greeting him over coffee at a café. “Lovely to see you, as always.”

“You are always so smooth, Angelo,” Dominic replied, his voice so deep and soft that it gave me shivers. “Except in
your plans, of course. I see you’ve assembled quite the ragtag bunch.” He nodded in my direction and smirked. “Maggie and Her Merry Band of Criminals. Where are my coins?”

“Ah, yes, the coins,” Angelo said, adjusting his watch a little as he glanced at it. “They’re very important to you, aren’t they? Suddenly everybody wants them: you, me, Maggie, our friends.” Angelo paused for a few seconds before adding, “A few gentlemen in Russia are also quite interested, from what I hear.”

Dominic blanched only a tiny bit. “Stop with the nonsense and give them to me,” he told Angelo. “And we can all go home.”

“You tried to kill me in my home,” I spoke up, and Angelo didn’t make a motion to stop me.

“You took what wasn’t yours,” Dominic replied. “Very naughty, Maggie.”

I felt Jesse tense up behind me, but I didn’t look back.

“Maggie has a point, though,” Angelo said, still so calm and steady that it was eerie. “We give you the coins and … what? You call off the Collective and let us go? Or you hunt us all down and make sure we never talk again? I know what I would do if I were you.”

“Lucky for us, you are not me,” Dominic said through gritted teeth.

Angelo pulled his phone out of his pocket and pressed a button. “I’ve just sent you three drafts of an e-mail,” he said. “One to Interpol, one to my contact at the Secret Service, and one to the Associated Press. Don’t you think that they would all be interested in this story? International
intrigue, scores of years spent slowly building one of the most secretive organizations in the world, only to have it fall to corruption? I name quite a lot of people in these e-mails. Everyone who attempted to use our good deeds for their own malicious intentions, in fact.”

My heart started to pound faster. What was Angelo talking about? He was bluffing. He had to be bluffing.

“I think this would make a wonderful story,” Angelo said. “The Collective finally revealed, along with all of its dirty misdeeds and indiscretions. Very naughty, Dominic.” Angelo’s voice ran cold as he repeated Dominic’s words back to him.

“You would never reveal the Collective.” Dominic laughed. “You are part of it. All of you are.” He narrowed his eyes at Roux and Jesse, which made me twitch. “You
all
are,” he repeated. “You reveal one of us, you reveal all of us.”

“Well, that might not be true,” Angelo said, then looked up and waved a couple forward. “Let’s see what my cohorts have to say about that.”

I followed Angelo’s gaze and then let out a small sob because dashing up the stairs, slightly out of breath and hair tousled from the rush, were my dorky, ridiculous, wonderful parents. Behind me, Roux made a tiny sound that sounded like “meep!” but I didn’t turn to look at her. I just watched as my parents came closer and fought the urge to hurl myself straight into their arms.

“Sorry we’re late,” my mother said. She sounded easy and breezy, but I was her kid. I could tell from her face that she was pissed and ready for a fight. Every kid could tell that about his or her own mom.

“Traffic, strikes, you know,” my father said. “Dominic, hello. I think the last time I saw you, we were all in school together. And then you tried to kill my family.”

Dominic looked from them to Angelo. “This is your plan? What, do you want to trade them for Maggie?” He began chuckling to himself. “Why have one useless person when you can have two, is that the logic?”

“Not quite,” Angelo said, still looking a little bemused. “The Collective has become infested with people like you. We think it’s time to remedy that.”

I heard Élodie take a deep breath behind me, and I remembered how Angelo had called her into his office earlier. Did she know what was going on?

“If you turn in the Collective,” Dominic said, still sounding unimpressed, “you turn yourselves in.”

“Darling,” Angelo said, turning to my mother. “Tell me. Was it hard to erase our identities from the database?”

“Not at all,” my mom replied, smiling sweetly at Dominic. “I was trained so well by the Collective. So,
so
well.”

“And you, sir,” Angelo said, turning to my dad. “Did you have a difficult time finding people like us who were a bit exhausted by all these recent antics?”

“Of course not. They were more than happy to help us steal files.”

The color was starting to drain from Dominic’s face as I felt the blood pulse through my temples. It was as if the Collective had a termite infestation. Angelo wasn’t just going to find the termites and kick them out: he was about to burn down the whole house.

Angelo held up his phone. “Once I send these e-mails,” he said, “you’ll have about five minutes before the police arrive to get the coins from us and get out of the Louvre. And if you don’t, well, I’m sure the Russians would love to listen to your explanations. Or maybe the Secret Service. Or Interpol. It’ll be a most interesting story either way. I, for one, wish I could be there to hear you tell it.”

“There are security cameras everywhere in here,” Dominic protested. “Like they would not see you.”

“Ah, that reminds me,” Angelo said, tapping his forehead. “Forgive me, I’m an old man now, I forget things. That’s why I have friends like the lovely Zelda here.” He beckoned someone out of the crowd and Zelda stepped forward, followed by Mathieu and Markus. “Zelda, love, tell us all what you did with the security cameras today.”

Zelda held up her right hand and made a scissoring motion with her fingers. “Snip snip,” she said, then grinned wickedly. “I’m so grateful for everything that I learned about replacing security film. I can never thank you enough, Dominic. Truly.”

Dominic’s breath was coming in short, fast gasps, and his men standing beside him looked like deer in headlights. Definitely hired help. They had no idea what the Collective was or why it had been important. And why it was about to go down in flames. “You wouldn’t,” he said to Angelo. “It would be a huge mistake for you.”

Angelo held up his phone, pretended to examine it, and then pressed a button. “Oops.”

Dominic took two steps and lunged for the phone, but
Angelo turned and tossed it to Ryo, who caught it and dashed up the stairs, Élodie hot on his heels.

This was the cue, I realized. This was the plan. It was time to run.

I grabbed Jesse’s hand and we turned and flew up the stairs, taking them two at a time as we shoved past tourists. Ames and Roux were behind us, dashing up past us, and Ryo and Élodie went up the left set of stairs as we took the right. One of Dominic’s henchmen followed them and I could hear the footsteps on the stairs behind us. Below, I saw my parents flying up after us, followed by Dominic, with Angelo hot on his heels.

The chase was on.

Jesse and I ran down one long hall filled with Impressionist paintings. “Do you know who has the real coins?” Jesse asked as we ran. I could see Roux and Ames darting past some sculptures and a long way away, I heard Ryo yell something unrepeatable.

I just looked at Jesse.

“Oh, great!” he cried. “Why is it
you
?”

“Because I don’t want it to be
you
!” I cried as we came to a sudden stop as Dominic appeared in the next gallery. “Go back, go back!” I yelled. We had to hold him off for another three and a half minutes before the police arrived. As it was, it was getting difficult to avoid security, who seemed flummoxed as to why a tour group was suddenly racing through the museum. “
Madame! Monsieur!
” we heard as we ran down a hallway filled with portraits, away from the
Mona Lisa
. It was by far the most crowded part
of the museum, like gridlock in the middle of a car chase, and we didn’t want to get stuck in it.

I saw Zelda and Mathieu zipping by, followed by one of Dominic’s hired men. Zelda had a huge smile on her face, like this was her favorite part of the job, and she waved at me as she ran past. I just spun around a corner, though, and saw Angelo and my parents running down a set of stairs back toward the first floor. We followed them, hurling ourselves back to the ground floor and around a corner. I had looked at a map of the Louvre, but now I was just trying to stay in motion, literally running out the clock.

Three minutes to go.

That’s when I realized I had lost Jesse.

He wasn’t behind me and I couldn’t see him in the crowd. My heart, which had been keeping up a steady beat, seemed to skid to a halt, and I whirled around to look for him, but he was gone. “He’s fine,” I told myself. “He’s fine. He doesn’t have the coins.” But I didn’t feel any calmer, and my anxiety started to climb as I ran toward the end of the building, looking for any boy with curly hair.

And then I saw it at the end of the hall. Dominic stood in front of the elevator, his hand on Jesse’s shoulder, squeezing just a bit too hard. Jesse was wincing a little and when he saw me, his face fell. “No, Mags,” he mouthed, but I shoved my way through the throng of tourists trying to see the
Venus de Milo
and arrived in front of both the love of my life and my archenemy.

“You don’t want him,” I told Dominic. “You want me.”

“You are so pathetic now that you are in love,” Dominic
hissed at me. The crowd waiting for the elevator was deep and loud—no one could hear us whispering back and forth. “I’ve been watching you for years, Maggie. You used to be great. Now you’re just useless.” He paused for a few seconds, then added, “Why Colton wanted you, I have no idea.”

I patted my hip, right where the coins rested in my pocket. “How useless am I now?” I said, trying to catch my breath after my mad dash through the museum.

Dominic’s eyes widened when he saw the outline of the coins, but he tried to hide his nerves. “I knew you’d have them,” he sneered. “You’d never let anyone else take the fall.” He squeezed Jesse’s neck hard and Jesse winced again.

“You want me,” I said again, not wanting to see Jesse in any pain ever again. “Let him go.”

A crowd of security guards came around the corner just as the elevator doors opened. All three of us took one look at the guards, then Dominic tossed Jesse away and grabbed me instead, hustling us into the elevator. “Mags!” Jesse yelled, and I saw my parents and Angelo round the corner, all of them watching in horror as the doors slid shut.

The elevator was hot and stuffy with tourists and Dominic tightened his grip on my wrist. “If you scream or say anything …” He didn’t have to finish his threat.

“Nice cuckoo clock collection,” I muttered back. “I bet your mistress loves them almost as much as your wife does.”

A muscle tightened in front of Dominic’s ear. The bones in my wrist were starting to ache under his clutch, but I didn’t say anything. I had only one minute now, and I knew Dominic was aware of the time as well. We both wanted this to be over with as fast as possible.

The minute the doors opened, Dominic shoved us out and down the hall, shifting his grip from my wrist to the back of my neck. I marched ahead of him but reached my hand under my shirt to grasp the necklace Jesse had given me, feeling the tiny knife and compass, cold against my fingers.

Dominic pushed me toward a set of doors that read NO ADMISSION. “Open it,” he said.

“I don’t have my tools,” I replied. “I can’t do it.”

He shoved me hard and I bounced into the door, losing my breath a little. “Do you think I am kidding?” he asked. “Do you think this is a time to be funny?”

Dominic, of course, knew what we all knew: I would never leave without my tools. “It might not work,” I said, pulling a pen cap out of my back pocket.