The Masterpiecers (Masterful #1) (32 page)

“Back inside,” the security guard says. “We’ll go out another entrance.”

He grabs my arm again, but I shrug him off, scanning the crowd more intently. If only I knew my driver’s name. Like a mirage, he materializes in front of me, elbowing his way through the mass of bodies.

“Grab on to my waist,” he says, and I do, and I don’t let go until we’ve reached his gleaming black bike.

I plop the helmet on my head and straddle the motorcycle, the backpack flush against my stomach.

“Hang on,” he says, revving up the engine.

The euphoria swirling through me is so great that I squeeze the roaring, sun-warmed frame between my thighs and experience the high of a lifetime. That’s not to say I’m changing profession to become a world-class crook, but I understand the thrill. It feels as though I’ve cheated death.

Is that why Aster stole the diamond? The thought unfortunately sobers me up.

Chapter Forty-Five

Aster

After she finishes reading the document I signed giving my sister power of attorney over my life, Robyn accompanies me back to my cell and instructs the guard on duty to let me rest unperturbed. Although I would never have expected to sleep, the second my head touches the pillow, all of me shuts down. When I wake up some time later, my forehead throbs. Since I can’t stop visualizing my hand signing the destructive paper, I force my eyes open. I stare at the ceiling for a long while, and then I roll onto my side and study the closed door and the quiet hallway.

I spot a cardboard box inside my cell. I sit up and plod toward it. It’s already sliced open, so I lift the flaps. Inside are rows and rows of granola bars. My stomach growls so I reach in and rip one open, then another. As I chew, my mind returns to the form and my throat tightens. A clump of oat flakes goes down the wrong hole and I cough so many times and so hard that I think blood will sputter out. It doesn’t. I keep coughing; I’m going to choke. I suddenly clamp my lips shut and will that death-by-granola be quick, but it doesn’t happen.

It reminds me of one of my mother’s exes who choked on a piece of steak. He was standing by the kitchen counter, picking large pieces of meat from a Tupperware container with his grubby fingers and shoving them inside his mouth. I was doing my homework on the kitchen table. Although I knew what to do to clear his airway, I couldn’t get myself to move and hug his torso. I feared it would make him hug me back and I didn’t want him to touch me. The man survived by heaving himself against the back of a chair. The meat rocketed out of his mouth and onto my calculus notebook. It looked like a piece of his own flesh. He broke up with my mother soon after, telling her how insensitive I was. Mom, who already blamed me for everything that went wrong in her life, hated me even more after that.

“Aster,” a soft voice calls out through the bars of my gate. It’s Gill. Her forehead is creased with worry lines. “How are you?”

“Better. Much better.”

“I’ve been going crazy. No one wanted to tell me what was going on.”

I don’t approach the door for fear she will try to kiss me. “I’ve been sleeping.”

“Good. That must have been what you needed. You look better. Not that you ever looked bad, but you have color in your cheeks again.”

I’m tempted to snort, because deep down, I feel more awful now than I did this morning.

“I saw a bit of the show. It was crazy,” she says.

I don’t want to talk about the show, but I can’t tell her that without explaining, so I listen quietly.

“The test was stealing art! Crazy, huh? I’m not sure what sort of message that sends out to the world.”

“Did Ivy make it?”

Her eyes glow like two pieces of amber. “Yes! She was in the MoMA and this mob of people…” As Gill rambles on about my sister’s prowess, I swallow thickly. “She’s really resourceful,” she concludes.

I sigh. “That she is.”

“I don’t know if she’s a finalist, though. I just caught her bit and a few minutes of Chase’s. I don’t know how Lincoln did. Do you want me to go find out? Or we could go together…I’m sure they’ll grant you permission to go to the dayroom—”

“I can’t. Robyn wants me to meditate in her office.”

“Can I come? I really enjoyed it last time.”

“I should go alone.”

The enthusiasm, which made her eyes sparkle, wilts off her face. “Oh.”

“I can’t concentrate when you’re around,” I add, attempting to cheer Gill up.

“I have that effect on women.” She winks at me.

“I should get going.”

“Do you want me to call a guard?”

“No, I’ll do it,” I say, before realizing that to do so, I must walk over to the gate to enter my request on the digital box.

Gill moistens her lips with her tongue. Taking a breath, I move forward, like a criminal headed for the gallows. After I’ve pressed on the call button, she grips my wrist and spreads my fingers with hers, and then she tugs me close. Her lips come at me like a freight train. I don’t move. I don’t breathe. She cares about me, unlike Ivy. I let her kiss me even though I feel the granola bar rise. Her mouth opens a little and her tongue prods mine. For a second, I’m disgusted. But then, I get this overwhelming urge to feel something other than misery.

In my peripheral vision, I spot black boots. I jolt away from Gill.

“You called, Inmate?” Officer Landry says. His face is stoplight-red.

“Miss Pierce is waiting for me.”

Gill backs up so he can open my gate. As soon as I step out of the cell, she skims my ear with her lips. “I’ll catch you later,” she murmurs. “I’m not done with you.”

Swallowing hard, I tread past the rigid officer. Gill doesn’t know this was our one and only kiss, but she’ll figure it out before the day ends.

***

When I leave Robyn’s office later that evening, I know exactly what I must do to crush Gill’s interest in me.

“I’d like to go to the dayroom, please,” I tell Kim.

“I need to run this past the warden,” she says, her long fishtail braid swishing from one side of her back to the other.

“He’s on board.”

She turns and bunches up her eyebrows that are in dire need of plucking. “I need to run this past the warden,” she repeats.

“Fine. Let’s go to his office now, so that he can confirm what I’ve just told you.”

“Don’t be snarky with me, Inmate, or we won’t pass by his office.”

I don’t apologize, but I also don’t speak the rest of the way.

When we arrive in front of his door, Kim knocks. “Commander Collins?”

“Come in.”

She cracks the door open, but doesn’t step in. Neither do I, but I make sure he can see me.

“Inmate Redd is asking for permission to go to the dayroom,” she says.

His gaze meets mine. “Okay.”

Kim blinks back in surprise. Even though I warned her he would accept, she clearly thought I was bluffing. “How long, sir, may she stay?”

“’Till her sister’s show’s over. Right? That’s why you want to go, Aster, correct?”

I nod.

“Really?” Kim asks.

“Yes, Officer, really.” His tone is sharp. “Anything else?”

“No,” she says quietly.

Right before she closes the door, I say, “I’ve been meaning to tell you what great taste you have in art.”

From the way his eyes jut out, I fathom he’s realized that my compliment isn’t directed at the print in the plastic frame hanging by his window.

Chapter Forty-Six

Ivy

Leila is jubilant tonight, probably because I accomplished the heist. She smiles as she brushes shimmery powder onto my cheeks and lines my eyes with black kohl. She doesn’t lay it on as thick as on herself, but she does use quite a bit more than usual. She keeps the rest of my face neutral, down to my lips and nails that she paints a nude color.

Amy twists my silky hair into a sleek knot that suits the simple black sheath I am to wear to the ceremony tonight. I’m no longer as confident as I was on my way back to the Met, because we all succeeded. Who passes to the next round is a mystery. Possibly, it will depend on how long it took us to accomplish the theft—which would not work in my favor considering I was the last to return—or possibly they will base their assessment on our creativity. I’m hoping for the latter.

Lincoln and Chase look like they’ve walked off some glamorous fifties movie set, what with her pinned curls and his open collared tux. When his eyes touch mine, I look down at the crosshatched floorboards and will my pulse to decelerate. No point in wasting heartbeats on someone who doesn’t care about me.

Cara leads the way down to the Temple room. Tonight, burgundy candles rise from massive bronze candelabrums and red roses, in various stages of bloom, dangle from transparent threads attached to the glass ceiling. The effect is sumptuous.

“Don’t you feel like we should be wearing masks and nothing else?” Lincoln tells both Chase and me with a brazen smile.

Chase’s facial expression tightens. “It’s an art show, Lincoln, not an orgy.”

“Geez, Jackson, lighten up. It was just a joke,” she says. When she spots Brook a few paces ahead of us, she scampers off to join him.

Although smiling, he shifts away from her when she tries to touch him. I wonder if it’s because there are cameras around, or if it’s because last night, he kissed her to get her off my case.

“You look very pretty tonight,” Chase says, drawing my attention away from them.

“As opposed to all the other nights?” I ask, attempting humor.

“Why would you say that?”

“I’m weird about personal compliments.”

Chase smiles.

For a second, I forget how rude he was to me last night. But only for a second. “I’m not into games, Chase. Maybe you get off on toying with women, and good for you if that’s your thing, but it isn’t mine.”

The smile drops off his lips.

“We should get on stage,” I say and walk away, toward the Egyptian stone temples to take my place on one of the three chairs.

Lincoln sashays up the steps to sit next to me. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes sparkle with excitement. Has Brook told her she was still in the running or did he promise her a repeat of last night’s performance?

Chase arrives and takes his seat just as Dominic hops onto the platform in a great flourish that reminds me of the first night. Brook joins him, debonair in his burgundy tuxedo that matches the silk scarf wrapped around Dominic’s neck. I don’t see Josephine, but can only imagine she’s still working the crowd. The audience quiets down and settles around the tables as the anthem resounds.

Dominic raises the microphone to his mouth. “Lift up your hands if you guessed today’s challenge?”

Arms shoot up left and right. Dominic leaps off the platform and walks over to the first table. He holds the microphone in front of a set of heavily botoxed lips.

“I’m listening, Arabella,” he says.

Smiling, the woman says, “An art heist.”

“Yes! However did you guess?” He moves away before she can answer and dashes back onto his stage. “They were given some rules though: don’t get caught
and
don’t damage the pieces. Without further ado, our first winner is…”

There’s a drumroll from the orchestra along the far wall. I bite my lip, but quickly release it so I don’t spoil my lipstick.

“Jeb, shoot us the image,” Dominic says.

The lights dim and the surrounding screens light up with Chase’s face. It’s the portrait of him they used the night they announced the contestants on national television. Aster had made popcorn, which I’d nervously noshed on as Dominic revealed the eight winners. When my name failed to appear on the screen, I’d gone to get a tub of pistachio ice cream from the freezer.

“Don’t be sad,” she’d said.

“Sad? Why would I be sad?”

Aster had seemed pleased I hadn’t won. I tried not to let it get to me. A few weeks later, there had been this news brief about Kevin’s disqualification, followed by the judges’ new pick—
me.

As Chase’s face fades off the screen, so does the memory of that fateful day. Jeb has assembled scenes from his hidden camera. They’ve even added some spy movie soundtrack that makes the wobbly, amateurish images resemble a Hollywood feature. His performance is excellent. He banters with a young, overly made-up intern and swipes her keycard without her noticing. Then he makes his way toward the vault, greeting people left and right, stopping to ask them about their children, dogs, girlfriends. Everyone—and I’m not blowing this out of proportion—is thrilled to see him. He gets smiles and hugs and pats on the back and flirtatious winks. It’s insane how much people are drawn to him. Either he’s a great actor, or he’s nice to everyone but me.

Finally, Chase enters the safe and searches for the Zara Mach piece. It takes him a few minutes to locate the Plexiglas box. When he does, he seizes it and strolls through the auction house with it in the crook of his arm. Once outside, he places it inside his backpack. The screen goes dark.

“You just walked out with it?” Lincoln whispers, voicing my own thoughts.

He nods, just as Dominic says, “How come no one stopped you?”

“I told them my mother wanted to see what the cotton castanets would look like on her chimney mantle before she went ahead and bid on them.”

“Was it true?” Dominic asks.

A corner of his lips curves up. “No. I just thought that hiding in plain sight would work best.”

Dominic grins so widely it slants his eyes. “And work best it did,” he exclaims. “Your brother’s a genius, Brook.”

Brook nods stiffly.

“Before we announce the second, and last, finalist, we will show you the footage. Girls, are you ready?”

Lincoln smiles while I clasp my hands on my lap to keep them from shaking.

Jeb has split the screens in half: on the right side, I’m entering the MoMA; on the left, Lincoln is entering a private gallery. Since I know what I did, I watch Lincoln’s footage. I watch her flirt with the young salesperson, introduce herself as a contestant on
The Masterpiecers
, explain how she’s gathering inspiration for today’s test. So he shows her around, unlocking the basement in which there’s a special room designed for viewing art pieces. She asks him to see the miniature chair collection and he obliges. He sets everything on the Corian table and adjusts the lighting. She handles each piece with great care, oohing and aahing profusely, while he launches into painstaking details on the manufacturing process of each piece.