When the Shadows Fall by Elise Noble
CHAPTER 9 - ALARIC
“SO… THE TEAM?” Alaric said.
Monday morning, and planning was well underway. This afternoon, he’d fly to the UK with Bethany and Rune to pick up the Picasso and spend an hour or two with Chaucer, Beth’s beloved horse. Perhaps it was overkill for all three of them to travel, but after the events of last month, Alaric didn’t want either of his girls out of his sight for long. Time would heal—he had to believe that—but at this moment… Yeah, they’d be making the trip together.
In the meantime, Emmy and Black would carry on with the planning stateside as well as doing their regular jobs. Emmy had been sending out emails at one a.m. last night, and Alaric knew she’d got up to run at five. Black? He seemed kind of haggard too. Due to the workload? Or was something else eating at him? Maybe the humdinger of an argument he’d had with Emmy last month? In the fifteen years Alaric had known Black, he’d never looked anything less than put-together, but right now as he sipped his coffee? Rough.
“Me and Black will be on the team,” Emmy said, stating the obvious. “Plus Mack and her legs. She’ll need a date, and I was thinking Xav. He’s sneaky as fuck, and he knows art.”
“Agreed.”
Emmy had let Alaric in on Xavier’s secret after the meeting yesterday. That he’d adopted an alter ego to work as a relatively well-known artist for a few years until he’d conveniently died and been resurrected as Xavier Gray. Alaric had been wondering about the change of surname—the last time he’d seen the man was a decade ago, and he’d been Xavier Roth back then, also known as Smoke in the shadowy world of professional assassination. Now he was shacked up with a senator’s daughter and they had a little girl. How things changed.
“And Ravi. He’s good at stealing stuff, yes?”
An understatement. Ravi had grown up in the circus, but his parents’ primary source of income had been cat burglary. They’d begun teaching Ravi the tricks of the trade as soon as he could walk, but his ethics had never jibed with theirs. When they went to prison, he’d quit that game and started hanging out on the same Thai beach as Alaric. Secretly, Alaric had always wondered whether the capture of Mr. and Mrs. Wells was quite the fluke it appeared to be. Certainly Ravi had never seemed too upset by their sentences.
“Yes, Ravi’s good at stealing stuff.”
“So Ravi with Dan.”
“I figured she’d be in the mix somewhere.”
“But of course.”
“Who will I go with? Ana?”
Emmy shook her head. “Oh, no, no, no. Ana’s with Quinn. You’re not going.”
Was she kidding? “Yes, I am. And don’t give me some bullshit about being recognised by somebody from the Master’s team. I was wearing a disguise for the operation on the boat.” Coloured contact lenses. Fake teeth. A ridiculous moustache. “The only person who saw me up close was Marshall. And don’t forget, you were there too.”
Still Emmy shook her head. “I was window dressing in a bikini. Trust me, nobody was paying attention to my face. And that’s not why you’re staying here. Emerald’s put you through enough shit already. If anything goes wrong and the place ends up crawling with cops, I want your name kept out of it. Don’t jeopardise your future with Beth and Rune. This is non-negotiable, Prince.”
Oh, now she was playing hardball with his old nickname.
“Cinders, I’m used to taking risks.”
Although she did have a point. That cursed fucking painting had almost ruined his life twice now.
Black weighed in, and of course he agreed with his wife. “Emmy’s right. This time, the risk is Blackwood’s. You can listen on a live link.”
“Ravi doesn’t work for Blackwood.”
“Dude, stop splitting hairs,” Emmy said. “I’ll put you in the holding cell with Marshall if I have to.”
The holding cell in the basement was surprisingly comfortable now. They couldn’t risk releasing Marshall until after they found Emerald, but he wasn’t a typical prisoner either. They’d let him call his horses’ groom—who also happened to be a neighbour—to say he’d taken an impromptu vacation, and Bradley had jazzed up his temporary accommodation with a rug and beanbag chairs. Every few hours, someone took him for a walk, like a dog on a leash. But even though Marshall had a TV and plenty of books, Alaric still didn’t want to become his new roommate.
“Fine. But I want two-way comms.”
Emmy nodded. “That we can do. And speaking of comms, if Mack’s with us, we’ll need Nate and Luke on the wider team. One in the hotel and another here.”
Accommodation at the hotel had been scarce so close to the event, but they’d managed to book the honeymoon suite plus two more doubles for the weekend, plus a variety of rooms in the run-up. Cade, one of Emmy’s guys, was already there with his fiancée and their kid, checking the layout under the guise of a family vacation.
“How many for the wider team?” Black asked. “We’ll want a handful of people outside, plus more in the suite.”
“A dozen should do it. Possibly a couple more depending on whether Marshall’s bid for the job is accepted. If there’s a rival team there, we’ll need to intercept them.”
“When will we know? Is the ad in place?”
“Mack submitted it online yesterday, and it showed up this morning,” Alaric confirmed. He’d been checking every thirty minutes since dawn.
Dyson’s House Clearance Services.
No job too big or too small.
Over 600 satisfied customers.
Call to arrange a quote.
Of course, the number in the ad was out of service, but it didn’t matter. The key was the number of customers. Six hundred thousand bucks was Marshall’s bid. Spirit might have sold for eighteen million dollars at auction, but she wouldn’t achieve that on the black market. Hot paintings went for seven to ten percent of their worth, sometimes a little more if a private buyer was already lined up. Marshall had explained that he usually bid five percent, so the Master would be getting a discount.
“Let’s just hope the postal service doesn’t fuck up,” Black grumbled. “What next? Drug dealers using carrier pigeons?”
Said the man who still insisted on writing his notes with a pen and paper when everyone else in the room used a tablet.
“We still have two spaces left at the table,” Alaric reminded him.
“Rafael will take one of them. Emmy? Who do you want for the other?”
“Rafael’s date needs to be on the younger side, but at the moment, I’m undecided between Sky and Hallie.”
“Hallie’s steadier. Sky looked uneasy on Saturday night.”
“Any idea why?” Emmy questioned.
“I asked Rafael, and he said the setting intimidated her. I’m not sure taking her to another dinner is the best idea right now.”
“She got through it, didn’t she? And she has to learn. Plus she’s working nicely with Rafael. Did you know she stayed at his house last night?”
“She did?”
“He called me at eleven to say she’d fallen asleep on the sofa and he was leaving her there. At least she seems comfortable with him now.”
“She didn’t before?”
Emmy rolled her eyes. “You haven’t noticed that she’s twitchy around men?”
Clearly not, and neither had Alaric. Sky Malone didn’t seem the type to get intimidated, not by a man and certainly not by a banquet. Then again, Emmy had plucked her off the streets of London and transplanted her into another world, so was it any surprise if she was out of sorts?
“Hallie, then?”
“I don’t have to decide yet. Let’s see how Sky performs over the next two weeks.”
Two weeks.A ripple of apprehension ran through Alaric. In two weeks, they’d be either a step closer to Emerald or a step closer to yet another disaster. Sometimes—most of the time—he really hated that green-ringed bitch.