A Magnificent Crime (15 page)

Once you've made a getaway, and once you're clear, the key is to blend into the crowd. You need to keep putting distance between yourself and the scene of the crime, but not in a rushed way. You don't want to draw anyone's attention.

I strolled with Ethan in the Latin Quarter, moving at a good pace but not hurriedly. We walked with a purpose, like we were on our way to lunch and had a decent appetite. Not like we were late for a train. Or escaping the police.

Ethan steered me toward an entrance to the Metro. We passed underneath the ornate art nouveau Metropolitan sign, headed down the staircase, and bought tickets for zone 1. The platform smelled of grease and three-day-old urine.

Once on the train, seated on worn brown vinyl, I breathed a sigh of relief as the train accelerated away from the platform. We were safe.

I turned to Ethan. “What the hell are you doing here in Paris?”

He grinned. “Rescuing you. What does it look like?”

“Okay, but . . . how did you know?”

He hesitated a beat. It didn't matter. I knew the answer.

“Templeton told you, didn't he?”

Ethan nodded.

My cheeks burned with shame. What kind of thief was I, needing to be rescued? My insides squirmed with discomfort, like they were wearing Spanx that were two sizes too small.

The train flew into the next station, paused for a minute, then continued on.

Ethan watched me closely. “Montgomery, don't sweat it. It's
Albert Faulkner.
There's no shame in that. Any of us would need help if we were dealing with him.”

I smiled. Ethan coming here to help me was incredible. And that escape had been truly awesome, let's face it. A warm spark ignited in my chest.

“So, anyway,” he said, “what were you in there for?”

“Fingerprints.”

His eyebrows rose. “And did you get them?”

“I did get them.”

“Great.”

“But I didn't get
all
of them. I only got nine. I'm missing the left thumb.”

He winced. “Oh.”

My shiny feeling over our victorious escape was now tinged with rust. I exhaled. “The problem is, now Severin will be on even more heightened alert. As if he wasn't wound tightly enough as it was. I don't know if I'm going to get another chance.” The train lurched to the left, and my body jostled against Ethan's.

“Don't worry about it, Montgomery. We'll figure it out.”

I looked at him carefully. “We?”

“You don't think I'm just going to leave you hanging like this?”

A glimmer of hope. On an otherwise bleak landscape.

 

Ethan insisted on escorting me back to my hotel, an extra pair of eyes. I was staying at the Four Seasons George V in the Eighth Arrondissement. I invited him up to my suite so we could discuss the job in more detail and figure out the next move.

As I unlocked the door for us, I felt a twinge of doubt. Was this inappropriate? But it was ridiculous. We were colleagues. And we had important private matters to discuss.

I flopped down in an armchair, cracked open a bottle of water, and took a long sip. The morning's exertions had left me mighty dehydrated. Meanwhile, Ethan went into the bathroom to shower and scrub off the grime from his stint as a street sweeper.

The phone on the nightstand rang.

“Hey, hon. How is the City of Lights?” Jack's voice came down the phone, warm and comforting, like hot chocolate for my soul.

“Jack! I'm so happy to hear your voice.” And then my eyes slid to the bathroom door. A twist of guilt centered in my stomach. “Yes, Paris is amazing, of course. As always. But it would be so much better if you were here.”

“I know,” he said. “And I'm hoping, actually, that things wrap up here soon and maybe I can fly over for a couple days. We can walk by the Seine, get crepes, have coffee at Les Deux Magots, drink wine, and poke into bookshops in the Latin Quarter.... How does that sound?”

It sounded amazing. It sounded perfect. And if I didn't have this impossible job to do, there was nothing I'd love more.

“Jack, I—”

At that moment Ethan emerged from the bathroom, wet and shirtless, with only a towel around his waist. “Montgomery, have you got any Band-Aids?” he asked, his voice loud over the sound of the bathroom fan. He was examining a scrape on his left knuckles, presumably from the roof tiles.

I stopped breathing. There was silence on the line for a second.

“Cat, who's that?” Jack asked. “Is that Ethan Jones? Is Ethan there with you?”

Shit.

“Ethan's here just helping me a little with this job,” I said brightly. I wanted to sound casual. I wanted to sound like I wasn't doing anything wrong. Which I wasn't, of course. Unfortunately, my voice came too stridently to meet either of those goals.

The tension down the phone line was audible. I could hear his struggle. I could feel him wanting to say something, yet not wanting to say something.

Ethan was still standing there, flexing and examining his knuckles, waiting for me to locate the Band-Aids. I sent out a brief prayer of thanks that this wasn't a video call, and silently pointed to a small first-aid kit on the desk.

“Oh. Well, I'm sure he's being helpful,” Jack said. I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic. Either way, there was a little too much emphasis on the “helpful.”

“He's staying at the Ritz, you know. Not even staying at the Four Seasons,” I added hastily and then realized how ridiculous and defensive that sounded.

Just shut up, Cat. You have nothing to feel guilty about. Nothing.

I just didn't want Jack to get the wrong idea.

“Uh-huh. Whatever, Cat. Listen, I gotta go.”

He got off the line quickly after that. Which was like a punch in the stomach.

Seattle

 

You are an ass,
Jack thought.

Acting like a jealous fishwife was the last thing he wanted to do when Cat was so far away. Of course Ethan was there. Why wouldn't he be? They were both in the same profession. They had a working relationship. Jack was going to have to find a way to come to terms with that.

He stood outside in the grungy darkness of an airport motel parking lot. Airplanes roared overhead, and the smell of jet fuel filled the air. It was late—close to midnight—and he'd gone to the lobby to get a coffee from the complimentary carafe next to the check-in desk. He took a sip. Unfortunately, it was stale and bitter—barely worth the effort of walking down from the room. The room where he and Hendrickx were interrogating a suspect.

While walking to the lobby, he'd spontaneously decided to call Cat. The time zone difference made it challenging to catch her at a moment when they were both awake. So he'd taken the opportunity when he'd glanced at his watch and realized it was nine in the morning in Paris.

Big mistake.

Why was this bothering Jack so much? Didn't he trust Cat?

Trust.
Ha.
Funny. Cat, a professional liar, thief, and cheat.

He stopped himself. Those were ungenerous, unkind thoughts. Where had they come from?
Okay, enough.
Right now was not the time for this. Right now, he needed to get back to the interrogation.

Jack walked along the second-level outdoor corridor and knocked on door 209.

At least they were making headway on their case, he and Hendrickx. Jack had finally hunted Snyder down at this motel just outside town. So he'd called Hendrickx to come in and interrogate with him.

This was not exactly proper police procedure, and Jack knew it. But he also knew they didn't have a lot of choice. He wasn't ready to make this official with his supervisor, not yet.

The motel room smelled like stale cigarettes and three-week-old pizza. Every surface was covered with sticky garbage—old take-out containers, half-finished soda cups. The carpet was industrial, the bedspread polyester, and the armchair vinyl. The whole place would go up in an instant fireball if anyone lit a match.

“Why am I here?” Snyder demanded. “You can't hold me. I haven't done anything wrong.”

“We're not holding you. We're just having a chat,” Jack said.

“What can you tell us about the Gargoyle?” Hendrickx said.

Snyder went white as milk. “I don't know who that is.”

“What makes you think the Gargoyle is a person?” said Henrickx, with a curl of a smile. “We didn't say that, did we, Jack?” He looked at Jack innocently.

“Nope. Nothing about a person.” Jack crossed his arms and shrugged. “Could have been a place. Name of a boat. But thank you for supplying that bit of information.”

“So now that we know
you know
the Gargoyle, why don't you just make this easy and tell us everything?” Hendrickx said.

Snyder sat silently.

“We can protect you,” Jack said. “If you help us. Don't you think the Gargoyle is going to find out you were brought in here? Don't you think he's going to assume you cooperated, anyway? You're protecting someone who is going to remove your internal organs one by one.”

Snyder's face went slack.

Jack kept pressing. “Face it, you're blown, Snyder. Don't you think the Gargoyle deals with loose ends like you in a highly professional manner, first chance?”

Snyder was breaking; Jack could tell. He estimated two, three minutes tops, and the guy would talk.

They pushed and probed. And finally, Snyder's face crumpled and his shoulders slumped.

“I've never met him,” Snyder said, blurting it out. With that, Jack knew he was theirs. Now they could really dig in and get some solid intel. “I don't even know what he looks like. Or what he sounds like. He calls me on the phone, but his voice is changed, all warped and everything with one of those voice-altering software things.”

“That's good. That's a start,” Hendrickx said. “Now, you must be able to tell us something else. What's he involved with? What's he into right now?”

“A lot of shit. He's involved in everything. And he doesn't care. He's ruthless. His ambition knows no bounds. You don't understand. You won't be able to get to him.”

Something still wasn't sitting right with Jack every time they mentioned the Gargoyle. But they were getting major traction now. So they kept going.

“Why don't you tell us what you were working on for him?”

Snyder looked like he was going to start blubbering. “Don't make me tell you. I'd be incriminating myself. I can't go to prison.”

Hendrickx sat back, unmoved. “Right. Well, like we said, we could protect you. But it's take your chances with that or take your chances with the Gargoyle. Would you have the ability to cut off your own arm to survive if you had to, like that kid who got stuck in those rocks? Think of yourself as that kid, Snyder.” He looked at Jack and grabbed a handful of pretzels. “What was that guy's name?”

Jack shrugged. “Aaron something maybe?”

Hendrickx crunched loudly on the pretzels. “That's right. Aaron something. He cut his own arm off to survive. You're like that. So, are you going to take your chances with us or with the Gargoyle?”

Snyder looked like he was going to throw up.

After that, he fell apart like a dime watch. He told them everything he knew. Which, unfortunately, was not a lot.

“He's planning a job. A big job. Stealing something big. Something that is going to fund a lot of operations. There are a lot of people who the Gargoyle owes money to, and they're getting restless. If this job goes through, he's in business. If it fails, the Gargoyle could be in trouble.”

“Okay, so where is this job happening?” Jack asked.

“I don't know for sure, but I did hear something about the Gargoyle going to Paris. I think that's where the job is happening.”

At the mention of Paris, Jack recoiled.

No.

Paris? What were the chances? But it was a big city. Plenty of stuff went down there, he was sure. It didn't necessarily follow that Cat was involved in this. But . . . could it really be a coincidence?

Jack and Hendrickx left the motel room, reviewing the scanty bits of information they'd learned, and walked to their respective cars.

“So what next?” Jack asked.

Hendrickx unlocked his door. “I'm going to Paris,” he said dispassionately. “To hunt down the Gargoyle.”

Jack raked a hand through his hair. “Oh,” he said. “Okay, well, I guess I can put in for a short leave at headquarters—”

“No, Jack. Not you. Just me.”

Jack folded his arms across his chest. “What are you talking about?”

“You know you can't come,” Hendrickx said. “You have no jurisdiction overseas. And you're not on Interpol's payroll. We will continue this investigation without you. You were helpful when this was an American investigation. But no longer.”

Hendrickx stated this with indifference, like the cold fish Jack had come to realize he was. Jack protested, more or less gnashing his teeth as he did so, but Hendrickx remained unmoved.

“Barlow, forget it. Just go back to doing whatever it was you were doing for the FBI.”

And just like that, Jack was cut out of things. Again.

After Hendrickx drove away, Jack thrust his hands in his pockets and walked to his car in the deserted parking lot. Underneath a lone flickering streetlight, he passed a Dumpster that emanated foul smells of garbage.

He slid into the driver's seat and was about to put the key in the ignition when his phone vibrated. He pulled it out. Wesley again, on an encrypted line.

Jack pressed the answer button. “So, how's the weather in Dubai?”

“Actually, Jack, I'm in Amsterdam now,” Wesley said. “The Fabergé didn't stay long in the Middle East. We're back to Europe.”

Jack said nothing.

“And remember that underground group I talked to you about? The one protecting the Gifts all along?”

“Sure.”

“They're real. They've been around for centuries. In fact, it appears they were the ones who brought the Gifts to Peter Carl Fabergé a hundred years ago and concealed them within the Aurora egg.”

Jack nodded. That piece of the puzzle had always been a mystery to him.

Wesley continued. “The modern name they use for themselves is the DOA.”

“Dead on Arrival?”

“Nope. The Department of Antiquities.”

Jack thought for a moment. “It sounds like we have similar ideals. Maybe they'd be open to working together. Have you approached them?”

“Nope. They don't see us as much different from Caliga. We're thieves, criminals. They will try to protect the egg from us as much as from Caliga.”

It was frustrating, but Jack understood the urge to draw that line in the sand. He worked with many people in the FBI who needed to think in terms of
us
and
them.
Good and bad.

Jack was beginning to realize it was much more complicated than that. Not everyone who bent or broke the rules of the law was inherently evil.

Caliga was a different case, though. They were cut from a different cloth than other thief guilds. They wanted the Fabergé, and the Gifts of the Magi hidden inside, for the power. And what made Caliga dangerous—whether you believed in the mystical power allegedly contained within the Gifts or not—was their willingness to hurt a lot of people to unlock that power.

“We're getting close, Jack. You ready to reconsider? It could be just a matter of days before we have it pinpointed.”

Jack tightened a hand around the steering wheel. The timing was fortuitous. The Gargoyle case was drying up. Jack was being cut out by Interpol, and the FBI had forbidden him to follow his leads. He was out. He had nothing to do but paperwork. Flying overseas to join Wesley would get him back in the game. It would be something he could contribute to, be a part of.

But if he crossed over this line right now, if he flew to Amsterdam, could he even still consider himself a cop? Could he even say any small part of him was legitimate?

“Wes, you're making a good case,” he said at last. “But the thing is, I'm right in the middle of something big here. They really need me.” Jack caught a glimpse of his lying eyes in the rearview mirror.

Wesley was a good sport about the rejection. But he didn't make the same offer as before, to call if Jack changed his mind.

Message received. He wouldn't be calling Jack again.

After hanging up, Jack sat in his car and stared through the windshield into the dark sky. He threw a question out to the darkness.
What now?

No answers came.