When the Shadows Fall by Elise Noble
CHAPTER 12 - EMMY
“I LOOK LIKE I’m constipated,” Mack complained.
She was right; she did. But it couldn’t be helped. The problem was that we’d had to build a collapsible frame for the painting, and once it was all rolled up and stuffed between Mack’s legs, it was kind of bulky.
“Most women would kill to have something that long and hard between their legs,” Dan said.
“It’s lumpy. Do most women want herpes?”
“Okay, I see your point.”
“Bless your freaking heart.”
“Just lean on Xav,” I suggested. “Maybe shuffle along?”
“Next time, I’m staying with my computer and you can strap the painting to your leg.”
“I’d have done it this time if I was four inches taller.”
The door opened, and Rafael stomped in. Hadn’t he just left? And why did he look as if he’d swallowed a wasp nest?
“Hallie, get your ass in a dress,” he said.
What the…?
“Wait, wait, wait. Where’s Sky?”
“Sick. Puking her guts up in the bathroom.”
“Since when?”
“Since five minutes ago. She wasn’t feeling great earlier, but she thought she’d be okay, and now she isn’t.”
Oh, fuckety fuck. Still, this was why we had backup plans and backup people. “Hallie, find a damn dress. Dan, can you help with her hair?”
“Sure.” She peered at Rafael’s hand. “What’s that? Why do you have a signed photo of Brock Keaton?”
“It’s nothing. I found it on the floor downstairs.”
“Throw it in the trash. Keaton’s an asshole.”
“Why do you say that?”
“His manager keeps asking Ethan to work with him, but one of Ethan’s session singers says Keaton assaulted her backstage at a charity gig. Stuck his hand up her dress. So Ethan told the manager hell would have to freeze over first, and yet still he keeps calling.”
“If he assaulted someone, he should face the consequences.”
“That’s what Ethan told his singer, but she said it would be her word against Keaton’s and she didn’t want her name dragged through the mud.”
“Ethan believed her?”
“Yeah, he did. But why does that matter to you?”
“Just curious.”
Now wasn’t the time or the place for this conversation. “Be curious another time, okay? Does Sky need a doctor?”
“She says not. It’s probably a virus.”
“Well, let’s hope it’s not food poisoning since we’re all about to eat dinner here.”
Hallie was in the bathroom now, complete with half a dozen spare dresses. For once, I wanted to kiss Bradley for the ridiculous amount of clothes he’d made us bring. Something would fit her. And she was naturally pretty, especially now that she’d filled out a bit, so her make-up wouldn’t take long.
“It’s the curse,” Alaric said in my ear. Nate had a live link to Riverley open so Alaric could hear everything we said. “Told you.”
“Shut the fuck up, Negative Nelly.” I didn’t need that shit, not tonight. “I’m gonna head downstairs with Black to check things out. Ravi, Dan, Xav, Ana, and Quinn—you come next in a group around Mack. Rafael and Hallie can bring up the rear.”
“I found a dress that works,” Hallie called through the door.
“Great. If you need jewellery, there’s plenty in my bag.”
Come on, come on.This was the part of the job I hated most. The waiting. The lull between all the planning and preparation being done and the actual execution. Tonight’s op wasn’t difficult, per se, but there was so much that could go wrong. So many people, any one of whom could react in an unexpected way. I’d almost prefer to face a group of terrorists than try to second-guess what David and Madeleine Fullbright from Connecticut might do when the party turned into a crime scene. At least terrorists were predictable. They shot at you, usually somewhat wildly, and then they lost their heads.
Black held out his arm, and I linked mine through it. I was still really fucking pissed at him. The anger had been simmering away ever since I found out he’d switched Emerald’s pay-off eight years ago, and it wouldn’t cool until he made amends. And by amends, I meant getting Emerald back into the Becker Museum and restoring Alaric’s reputation as far as possible. Half of the intelligence community still thought he was a thief. Black had a ways to go with fixing things, but he was making an effort, so I’d play my part. And even though I didn’t trust him the way I used to, he was the best team leader for the job tonight, of that I was confident.
Time to go.
I pasted on a smile as we walked through the hallways, nodding at the occasional person as we passed. I recognised a few from the fundraiser circuit. Usually, I found gala dinners tedious, but for a rare moment, I was glad we’d been to so many because it meant our presence here tonight wouldn’t be considered at all unusual.
Our table was in the third row back, second from the left as we faced the stage. Being closer would have been handy, but Laurelin Möller had accommodated us as a favour so we could hardly ask to move. When we’d spoken to her earlier, she’d smiled and explained that she thought we might like to sit near the Picasso, forgetting that it was ours so we saw it all the time anyway.
Black and I took our seats, a waiter leapt forward to pour us wine we wouldn’t drink, and I opened the gift bag left beside my chair. It contained a self-help book, a miniature bottle of gin, and a bottle of Chateau Miel’s ZingZing eye cream among other things. I’d need all of it if I survived tonight. In the meantime, the bags just gave us something else to trip over.
Mack and co. appeared in the doorway, and when I saw the two guards stationed there start turning towards her, I pushed my water glass off the table. Oops.
The tactic worked. The pair—and the other half-dozen members of the security team dotted around the room—all swung their heads in my direction, and Mack made it to her seat without incident.
Objective one: achieved.
The waitstaff cleared up the mess and replaced my glass, and I forced a giggle.
“A thousand apologies. I’m such a butterfingers.”
“Not a problem, ma’am. Accidents happen.”
A band struck up on stage, and rather than the usual classical, Laurelin had gone for rock-slash-pop. As a “special last-minute treat,” Brock Keaton got up and sang what I presumed were his greatest hits, but in my opinion, they weren’t so great. Perhaps I was getting old? The younger guests seemed to be enjoying the performance. Maybe Sky would have too if she’d been there? At thirty-four, I was technically old enough to be her mother, which was a terrifying thought. Although not as terrifying as actually being a mother. I was fine with parachuting into hostile territory to assassinate a well-guarded despot, but the idea of having responsibility for a tiny person I couldn’t communicate with scared the crap out of me.
Three, two, one, back in the room, bitch.
While Keaton sang or lip-synced or whatever, Mack extricated the rolled-up painting from under her skirt, and after we’d eaten our appetisers, we began the fiddly task of assembling the frame. Rune and Beth had designed it and spent the last week turning it into a reality—a wooden affair with tiny hidden clips that kept it rigid once they’d been slid into place. We’d spent half of Thursday practising with a dummy canvas under a table in the ballroom at Riverley, and now we knew how to assemble the thing with our eyes shut. The final step yesterday had been to attach the just-about-dry-enough forgery for one last run-through. As we went through the moves for real, the other guests were too busy watching Keaton and his hip thrusts to notice the slight movements of the tablecloth.
Objective two: achieved.
The waiters brought out the main course, slow-roasted lamb, which I didn’t feel at all inclined to eat. At least the chef had gone for quality over quantity. For the most part, I didn’t get nervous before jobs—I’d done too many of them now to consider wasting the energy—but this one mattered. Really mattered. I couldn’t erase the bad parts of Alaric’s past, but I wanted his future to be rosy.
That fucking painting.
We’d act after dessert was served. The guests would be preoccupied and tipsy, and hopefully the security team would have grown complacent, more concerned about an external threat than a bunch of slightly raucous partygoers. Black would make the final call, and I watched him as he watched the room.
“Could somebody pass the water?” Hallie asked.
“Still or sparkling?”
“Still.”
Rafael topped off her glass as a waiter set dessert in front of me. Chocolate Surprise, according to the menu, and the surprise was that it nearly blew my fucking head off. Who thought it would be a good idea to add chilli to chocolate mousse? I swallowed a whole glass of water.
Not long now.
“One minute,” Black murmured.
Nate began a countdown, and we switched to an open channel. Each of us wore a subvocal earpiece, small enough that it would pass a cursory inspection unnoticed. Ravi’s hands moved in his lap, and I knew he was arranging his tools. He had the job of extracting Spirit from her ornate gilt frame and replacing her with Xav’s version. Black was his bagman. The rest of us? We’d be running interference. I locked in on the nearest guard, memorised his position, calculated his likely path.
Ten, nine, eight…
I fished the smoke grenade out from between my legs and pulled the pin. Two faint metallic pings told me Dan and Ana had done the same.
Seven, six, five…
Xav, Quinn, and Rafael? They had flashbangs. When the girls rolled the smoke canisters on zero, Nate would count us three more seconds, enough time to close our eyes and cover our ears. Then the men would let loose.
Four, three, two…
Fuck, a waiter was on the move. I cut my eyes in his direction, and Ana answered with a nod. She was on it.
One…
The lights went out. The metal screens installed for the event acted as blackout blinds. Thanks to Nate’s activities during the week, the backup generators remained silent.
Zero…
I kicked my canister hard, and it skittered four tables away. The hiss of smoke was followed by gasps, then screams when the flashbangs went off. I leapt out of my seat and put myself on a course to intercept the guard. Felt rather than saw him ahead of me. Body-checked him hard enough that he landed on his ass.
“What the…?”
“Oh! I’m so sorry!”
If everything had gone according to plan, Ravi would be at the stage already. Beth had been unexpectedly brilliant in the run-up to tonight. When she delivered the Picasso to the hotel, she’d prattled on about her old job at the Pemberton gallery and talked up her art history degree, and the dude who’d brought Spirit was only too happy for her to take a closer look, front and back. Her body cam had recorded every detail of the painting and its frame, and she’d even managed to get her gloved hand in the picture for scale.
Black would be carrying the forgery across the room, holding it aloft so nobody walked into it by accident. At six feet seven, he was the tallest man at the gala apart from Rafael, and Rafael was busy bumping panicking guests out of Ravi’s way.
Terror, confusion, horrified shouts—we had it all. Someone tried using a flashlight, but the beam bounced uselessly off the smoke.
“I have Spirit,” Black announced.
Objective three: achieved.
“It’s a tight fit,” Ravi murmured.
I really didn’t want to hear those words at that moment.
“Will it go in?” Nate asked.
“That’s usually my line,” Carmen quipped.
A groan. Was that Dan? “Too much information.”
“It’s done,” Ravi said, and I let out the breath I’d been holding. Thank fuck for that.
“Places, everyone,” Nate ordered.
We fought our way through the fray so we ended up somewhere in the vicinity of our table. We’d spied on the setup and replicated the layout at Riverley, learned the number of steps between each obstacle, and practised walking around the ballroom for days with our eyes closed. I reached my seat just as the lights came on again.
Holy hell. The banquet hall was a war zone. Stray shoes, smashed glass, blood because the latter didn’t mix well with bare feet. Dazed diners stumbled around like zombies. On stage, Spirit looked untouched, and that was where the security team headed as soon as they found their feet. Would they notice the switch?
“The painting!” a woman shrieked. “It’s gone!”
Ah, shit.
I spun to look at her, but she wasn’t pointing at Spirit. No, her trembling finger was extended towards an empty spot on the side wall, three slots up from the Picasso.
To echo the guard’s words from earlier: What the…?
“Which painting’s gone?” a guard asked, and his voice held a hint of panic. Quite understandable, given the circumstances.
“The Shepherd’s Watch.”
“What’s going on?” Alaric asked. “Somebody took a different painting?”
“Sure looks that way,” I muttered under my breath.
“The Shepherd’s Watch?” Bethany echoed. “Oh my goodness! I studied it at university, and… My gosh! It was rumoured to have been stolen during the Holocaust. The alleged owner lost a court battle to get it back.”
Reality hit me like the proverbial freight train. Marshall had been used. We’d been used. The Master didn’t want Spirit; he wanted The Shepherd. This gala had been the obvious place for an attempt to steal both Spirit and The Shepherd, and our team’s efforts had been nothing but a distraction. A countermeasure. There had been a second crew here, and they’d got away with their prize.
That motherfucker had played us.
The hardening of Black’s expression showed me he’d realised the truth at the same time as I did. A silent promise passed between us.
Whoever the Master was, when we caught up with him, he was a dead man.