Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense) (58 page)

I've been hearing that for almost three years now, ever since Leanne. It's a sore spot between us, and he knows it. It was the first time I ever stood up to him, even if it was only temporarily.

"Forms, for an hour. Then get in here. We need to go over the job."

That means solo practice. Slowly, at first, I step through the formalized motions, like a pre-recorded series of dance moves. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. By the time I finish I'm swinging the thing around so fast it blurs, practicing attacks I wonder if I'll ever be good enough to use. Kendo, Japanese fencing, is like a game of chess where both sides are always in check. One mistake and it's over.

Somewhere Dad has a vault where he keeps physical prizes he's kept from some of the jobs he's done, and in that vault is a real life samurai sword, over four hundred years old, and he knows how to use it. There isn't one for me, but he expects me to know how to do this anyway. Later in the day we'll work on Aikdo, a similar art. It was devised by a Japanese master and resembles sword fighting without a sword, if that makes any sense. I can arm myself with a bokken and take a swing at Dad and he'll lay me out, almost without touching me.

I'm not that good. Maybe one day I will be, but I have more of an urge to brawl, to get my hands on an opponent. It would get me in trouble, except I don't get the chance very often. A gentleman thief that ends up in fistfights isn't a very good gentleman thief, now is he?

Soaked with sweat and winded, I trudge up to the house and leave both practice swords leaning up against the back wall. When I get in the shower and let the hot water sluice down my back, all I have to do is close my eyes and Diana's face floats in front of my eyes.

Get a grip, Apollo.

That's exactly what I do. My imagination fills in the details, as in my mind's eye she emerges from the ocean sopping wet and glittering in the dusk, and casually undoes the knot behind her neck that holds up her bikini and lets it fall wet to the sand.

It doesn't take long. I end up panting, leaning against the shower wall, unsatisfied but tired. My legs feel like overstretched rubber bands.

Everything is set up in the attic. By everything I mean a cheap folding desk, a laptop, a work table, and some other equipment in cases. In movies people in our trade always have all these fancy gadgets and magical glass cutting tools. What I wouldn't give for a pair of gloves that let me climb up walls. The truth is, if the only way to physically get at something is to dangle from the roof and grab it, there are probably other, easier ways.

I mean, I could have rappelled from the top floor of the hotel into Vivienne's room and nicked the necklace, then exited via the stairwells, but it would be dangerous and difficult when I could just talk my way into having a lonely, desperate woman let me into the service corridors. I hope Brittany is okay and gets her life turned around. It was Brittany, right? Brenda? Something like that.

Dad's got it all laid out.

"We'd have an easier time getting into the Smithsonian, or the Louvre," he announces as soon as I step up into the attic. "This place is built like a fortress. NORAD doesn't have security like this."

"So we're going to have to get in another way.

"We're going to have to get in another way."

"What is it we're trying to move?"

"Nothing big or heavy. It's called 'Man washing his hands'. A lost Vermeer. There's supposed to be a dozen more floating around out there, and some of Vermeer's paintings are actually the work of other artists. They found this one last year in the wall of a house, if you can believe that. The owners are putting it on display at this museum by arrangement with the foundation that runs it."

"What foundation?"

"Started by Ellicot Montclaire."

"Never heard of him."

"Guy started the Ace Chemical Company. Did gunpowder, then invented a bunch of synthetic fibers. Ellicot III runs the show now. He's got more money than God and this museum is a family tradition, which is why it's out here in the middle of nowhere."

"Not really the middle of nowhere. We're what, a half hour from Philly?"

He nods. "I suppose. Usually these things are more centrally located. That makes the proposition of moving it both easier and difficult. In a city there's traffic, construction, all sorts
 
of problems we have to work around that keep us from moving the goods before somebody notices they're missing."

"Yeah, but out here we just drive away. So?"

"So that's it. Less traffic, fewer cars, higher chances of being waylaid or searched. This painting is basically priceless."

"Everything we steal is basically priceless. How much?"

"It's not really a matter of how much."

He stands up and looks at me, and he looks
old
. Maybe it's just the light in the attic catching all the lines and puffs in his face.

"What do you mean, it's not really an offer of how much?"

He sighs and leans forward, staring into the schematics on the table in front of him. He doesn't usually avoid looking at me like this. I can feel a nervous edge in his voice.

"The last job was sort of an audition. We're working on a contract, here. Think of it that way. I deliver the goods and the contract is fulfilled."

"Audition?"

"I had to prove we could pull off something like this. I need your head in the game. People like this don't fuck around. We slip up and we're in serious trouble. We make it through this, and we're done, we're out. No more jobs, no more running from place to place, just roots."

I sit down at the table, opposite him.

"I didn't know you wanted to settle down."

"I don't, but your mother did. I left you with her because it was her wish. She wanted a stable life for you, not this."

I blink a few times. Dad
never
talks about Mom, not so casually. There is bad blood between us about this and it has never been aired.

I'll be blunt. My mother needed money when she was dying. It was lung cancer, and it was bad. She never smoked, but it got her anyway. She was only thirty-four when she died in a hospital bed. I don't know what kind of treatments she could have gotten with Dad's money, and I'll never find out. He didn't show himself until after she was gone.

Sometimes I think he just didn't care to see her, sometimes I think he couldn't bear to. There have been other chances in his life, as many as I have, most of the time, and I mentioned the Czech escort he was shacked up with for a while, but she was helping him with some kind of a job. I mean, I don't like to think about what my Dad does to satisfy his urges, that's a little weird, but he doesn't seem to take any joy out of the company of women the way I do.

I mean I do, don't I?

Suddenly I feel bad about… Brenda. Yeah her name was Brenda. I'm not going to romanticize it, paint it as anything more than infatuation on her part, but she was looking at me like I was something more than I was going to be for her. I feel a pang of shame, just taking pleasure from her and leaving. At least I gave as good as I got, right?

There's a photo of Diana on the table. I tap my finger on it and slip it over, turn it around so I can study it. Dad looks up.

"What do you think?"

"About what?"

"Her."

"I told you my first impression."

"She's pretty," he says, in an oddly paternal way.

"Yeah, she is."

"Not much younger than you."

"Yeah."

He shrugs. "You ever think about another life? Living some other way? Staying in one place?"

"Going to school? Going to college? Getting a job and a house in the suburbs? Please."

I quit school when we started globe-trotting. My real education was five years of training in thieving and social engineering and hacking and fighting, delivered by a master of all these things. I am an apprentice as much as a son, and I'm ready to take over the family business.

"Sometimes you ask yourself where it ends," he says, and knocks me out of my thoughts.

I just listen. It's odd for him to open up like this.

"You know, I don't know if I want this for you. Where does it end? When do I stop stealing from people? When I get caught? When I steal from the wrong person and end up at the bottom of a river? There's not going to be a retirement for me."

"Oh come on," I break in. "You said it yourself. We're done after this. The Argentina thing sounds great. Maybe we can both pick up some Argentinian girl with a great ass and just quit. You've got all that cash in the accounts, right?"

"Right," he says, a touch of sadness in his voice. "Anyway. Basics. First principles. The painting is going to be moved to an exhibition wing in three weeks, but at night it will be moved back to the vault. We're not cracking this thing open short of some pretty serious explosives, and that's not an option."

"So, we need the combination."

"Right, but there's three levels of security on the vault door. One is a set of physical keys."

"Okay, steal it."

"The other is a set of codes. There's a passcode, which stays the same, and an encryption key that rotates. We need those codes?"

"Who has them?"

"Four people. Two board members, head of security, and the curator."

"Diana's mother."

He nods. "Carol Matthews."

"So what do we do?"

"We go on a date. Or rather, I go on a date. I need to get into Carol's bed."

I snort. I've read the dossier we have on this woman. "Good luck with that."

He looks up. "Son, where do you think
you
came from? I can handle this. I have an in." He checks his watch. "I have to get moving. There's a dinner at the museum tonight for donors. Our backers have secured a sizable donation."

"Think Diana will be there?"

"Maybe, maybe not. In any case, I'm working alone on this. I'll be in touch."

He pats my shoulder as he passes by, and jogs down the steps. By the time I get down to the first floor he's already fully dressed. It must be a black tie affair. He nods to me as he leaves and that's the last of it. There's car out front to pick him up.

Everything swirls in my mind at once. I head out to the back porch to get some air. It's cooled off considerably since the afternoon, and there's bugs flitting about, buzzing.

Backers?

We've never worked like this before. There's something he's not telling me. I get the feeling we've been completely set up here- he wouldn't rent a house like this in his own name, and who was driving that car?

I do wonder if Diana will be there. If it's an evening wear type event, she might be wearing something slinky and sexy that shows off those curves. For some reason picturing her in a black cocktail dress is more exciting than thinking about peeling that imaginary bathing suit off her.

She looked younger in person. Innocent, somehow. I'm not used to that.

Music wafts over, from the neighbor's yard. They're all outside, lit by the glow of those stinky candles that keep bugs away and paper lanterns and oil torches. A cookout, by the looks of it. A plump father, a homely mother in a long dress, two kids, a boy and a girl, and some extended family. I try not to stare but I write stories for all of them in my head. The other adults are aunts and uncles, grown cousins. There's laughter and happy words I can't hear.

Reminds me of trips to New York. I always seem to find some time to walk the nicer parts of the city. You can't go too far without ending up outside a big picture window looking into a fancy restaurant, and there's always couples inside on dates. I stand there and watch them acting goofy in public and feeding each other and doing couple things, and wonder what that's like.

I feel the same way now. I feel not like I'm on the outside looking in, but like I'm on the inside, and the whole world is moving on around me. When your life revolves around a trade built on secrecy and stealth, at the end of the day, no one knows who you are.

Chapter 4: Diana

When I wake up there's no note, no messages on my phone, no nothing. The Honda is in the garage and the house is empty, except for me.

It takes me a long while to reach my conclusion.

Last night, there was a small party hosted for donors to the museum foundation. Mom insisted on calling it a
gathering
. I don't think she acknowledges the existence of parties. If I was maybe two or three years younger I'd have been dragged along with her, forced into a demure dress and made to hang around all night like I had anything to talk about with a bunch of people twice my age.

I usually ended up spending most of these things avoiding a couple of the donors that seemed way, way too interested in little ol' jailbait me. They could really skeeve me out. I never bothered telling Mom. She'd just get offended on their behalf. I just hid.

Usually they were over by ten o'clock and we were back at the house by eleven. Usually.

As I wander through the empty house, finding her bedroom as she left it before she walked over to the museum to meet and greet, I come to the inexorable, unavoidable, and completely absurd conclusion that my mother did not come home last night.

Okay, I think I'm panicking.

She doesn't answer her phone. I know, because I call her five times. It just rings through to her voice mail. On the sixth call I hear it buzzing away in her office, though I can't get the desk drawer open. She keeps it locked. That's when I give up and call Bob.

He answers on the third ring.

"Diana?"

"Yeah, it's me," I pace through the house. "My mother didn't come home last night. Do you know where she is?"

"No idea. She was leaving with one of the guests, last I saw her."

"Who was she? The guest."

"She? It was a man."

"Wait,
what?
Are you telling me my mother left the party with a
man
and didn't come home all night?"

"Technically, you're telling me."

"Bob, this is serious. Where the hell is she?"

"Call her."

"I tried, you big lummox. That's why I'm calling you."

He laughs at me.

"She'll be fine. Trust me. Your mom knows what she's about. Listen, call me if you don't hear anything in an hour or so."