Con heir, p.3
Con Heir, page 3
The knock that came at his door made him jerk his head upright, and spin his desk chair, pulling him out of the funk that threatened to drag him down whenever he began dwelling on Lexi.
“Yeah?”
Colin Lynch put his balding head around the glass door, half leaning in, not willing to make it a full step as he cast a curious gaze over Adam’s whiteboard while Adam carefully slid the newspaper cutting he’d made last week under his desk. He wasn’t ready to show anyone that yet; not until he’d convinced the boss he’d found the linchpin to the investigation.
The gap let in a steady stream of noise. Agents on the phone, keyboards clacking, conversation. Rhythmic, gentle, none of the boisterous toxic masculinity he’d heard in other departments, including his years as a detective. No, here they had their autonomy and quietly got on with their work, trusted and expected to deliver, not micromanaged. “Boss wants to see you,” said Colin.
“Now?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
The door shut with a soft click, Colin striding back to his desk on the other side of the office where he was working a fraud case with a big insurance firm, a promotion in his sights if he resolved it and brought the perpetrators to justice. He’d deserve it too. They’d thought about being partners when Adam joined the Major Crimes team but concluded they were both too big-headed and made better colleagues from a distance.
Adam paused for a moment, wondering if the boss wanted to talk about his research tacked to the whiteboard. He’d made a compelling case, he thought, with the information he’d sent and what he thought might happen imminently, but was it enough? He’d spent his time since joining the Major Crimes division diligently working through the caseload handed to him, putting in the hours, the time, the effort to make those crucial arrests. He’d made several. Arrests that got his name noticed, and won him praise. Some criminals were in prison now, serving lengthy sentences for felonies. Several others were in the pipeline, their criminal cases waiting to make it to court.
He’d brought some of these cases into the department, tapping into his network to find the cases, assessing the ones that had been brought in. Some of it was luck, some of it was the finely honed detective instinct he’d spent years developing.
He glanced one last time at the painting in the middle of his whiteboard and crossed his fingers, hoping luck was on his side today, and eased out of his chair, taking the clipping with him.
No one paid Adam any attention as he walked across the office, past the other glass-walled cubicles, until he reached the boss’s office. He gave a light rap on the door with his knuckles, a lifetime of habit, and waited to be waved inside.
Luis Garza had his desk phone pressed to his ear, grunting non-committal noises every few seconds in a surprisingly youthful voice that didn’t match his lined face or salt and peppered hair, as he pointed to the chair opposite, covered in files. Adam scooped them up, looking around for somewhere more convenient to put them, settling for the top of the filing cabinet, waiting a second to see if they would fall off. They didn’t, so he dropped into the chair and waited for Luis to wrap up his conversation, which he did moments later with a grunted “Keep me updated.”
“Dicks,” he said with a roll of his eyes.
“The suits upstairs?” asked Adam.
“Accounts.” Luis steepled his fingers together and gave Adam one of his long, cool looks. The type he didn’t like being interrupted. Adam had quickly learned it was best to let him get on with it, and then lead the conversation when there was a break.
“So, we have a career thief,” he said at last and Adam felt a breath of air he hadn’t realized he’d been holding ebb out of him.
“I believe so, sir.”
“I read your pitch, if I can call it that. There’s certainly a lot of similarities in the crimes but how can you be sure it’s the same person? Don’t tell me it’s a gut feeling.”
Adam grinned. “There’s that,” he admitted, “but every theft is so damn clean. It takes a lot of skill and experience to pull off those kinds of thefts. Money, too. What I’ve found may only be a fraction of the crimes committed.”
“I can believe that. Who do you think is behind it?” Luis began to toss out names. Two of them were on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. One was in the Top Ten. The others hadn’t made that climb yet but he recognized them, and knew they’d committed plenty of thefts between them. Two were in jail, one he figured was dead, another had gone to ground, one had found — of all things — Jesus, probably the only thing he couldn’t steal although he didn’t think the church would be safe for long. Yet there was a glaring problem with all of them.
They were all male.
“I think we have a new player,” said Adam. He coughed, and corrected himself. “A new-to-us player. She hasn’t been on our radar before.”
“She? How sure are you that it’s a woman?”
“I can’t say a hundred percent but I’m close. I’ve scoured hundreds of hours of footage, and read case files ten times over. On several occasions, only women were present immediately prior to the theft. I emailed some pictures.” Adam pointed to Luis’s computer and the older man leaned in, reaching for his mouse.
“What am I looking at?” he asked.
“At first glance, these women all look different but I think they’re disguises. Wigs, prosthetics, different clothes, clever studies of mannerisms. All designed to blend this woman into the background, to make her so bland that no one would ever remember her.”
“Yeah, well, that works,” said Luis, his finger running down the ancient mouse wheel. Adam knew he was taking in the poor photos, the back shots, the side profiles, the barely-caught images. Blond, brunette, faded redhead, mousy, plain, dowdy. In one, she seemed young in a threadbare varsity hoodie and jeans; in another, matronly in a beige mac and thick stockings. It was like she was old and young, trendy and dull. “Do you have anything on her? Name? Age? Nationality?”
Adam hated to shake his head. “Not yet, sir.”
“I hate being called sir,” Luis grumbled.
“I know, s—.” He stopped as Luis’s gaze rose, flickering to him, before returning to the computer screen. “I think I know what she’s going to go after next.”
“I’m all ears.” Luis didn’t ask how he had the information, but trusted that he had it, that he’d logged it, that he was building a case they could prosecute. Perhaps even swing a promotion from.
“There’s a painting in Paris. It belongs to a private collection but the ownership has been under dispute for years. Courts tossed it out but there’s been press alluding to the two families fighting over it. It’s on display in Paris, first time in a hundred years or something, then it’s going to be shipped to a museum in Zurich. I think she—” Adam pointed to the monitor, even though he couldn’t see the screen “—is going to steal it.”
CHAPTER THREE
Paris
Five days ago
Cass
“It’s a pretty big coincidence.” Nick unfolded his legs and crossed to the window, pushing his hands into the pockets of his tan chinos. Cass knew by his position, a quarter turned, that he was gazing at the Eiffel Tower, just visible from this corner of the elegant bachelor apartment, and probably one of her favorite structures in the whole world. She’d seen plenty. The Brandenburg Gate, The Burj al Khalifa, the Colosseum, and the Sydney Opera House. All of them filed away in her mind, and not one of them had she visited purely as a tourist. Officially, of course, she’d never been there.
She should change that. Take a vacation somewhere. Lounge on a beach, follow a map around a city, go visit some vineyards and drink in the sun.
Yeah, maybe she would do that.
That was the downside of the job: glamorous locations that she didn’t always get to see, scant miles away while she pored over maps, commissioned fabricated identity documents, and figured out her drop zones and exfiltration in case something went horribly wrong. It was where she hired a team or became a cat burglar, unseen while cities slept.
Nothing had gone that wrong yet, but there had been some close shaves.
Bullets fired at the LA Observatory, a knife under her ribs in the back streets of Hong Kong, and not one, not two, but an entire gang of muscled henchmen in Berlin all with murder in their eyes. It had been a particular pleasure to give them the runaround, watching them chase their tails like hungry dogs as she spun them in circles before she gave them the slip entirely.
“What is?”
“You and The Pandora in the same city at the same time, as it goes on public display for the first time in decades.”
“But it’s still a coincidence. I came here to do another job.”
“Which you still haven’t told me about.”
“And never will.” Cass and Nick smiled at each other, knowing that was partially true. They both took jobs each other knew nothing about, and always had, but somewhere down the line, they’d probably have a few drinks too many and skirt around boastful tales of their dangerous escapes or ask if the other had heard about the SD card theft in San Francisco or the bank vault heist in Dublin and what about the raid in Kuala Lumpur, huh?! Eventually, one of them would piece something together, realize what job the other had executed, and gape wide-eyed before the other went back to protesting their innocence. That was their thing and Cass enjoyed it.
That they’d never come to blows over any of it was nothing short of a miracle, but then Nick took the kinds of jobs Cass would never touch, and he wasn’t interested in hers either. That they could work together, and rely on each other, wasn’t even a compromise. It was a happy occurrence for both of them. They didn’t get to trust many people in this business, but they trusted each other, a trust that had been built upon years of mutual aid, sometimes arriving just in time for a breathless escape.
They were cats with nine lives each and Cass often wondered how many of those lives remained.
Nick rocked on his heels, his shoulders relaxed, glancing over at her as he said, “I heard some poor guy got robbed of a very expensive piece of jewelry yesterday. Get this, Cass, he stole it from his ex. Poetic justice, don’t you think?” He waited, watching her with a sparkle in his eyes that suggested he wanted to play the game again.
Cass smiled and winked. She didn’t even bother to mime zipping her mouth.
“Antoinette Quinlan is a big fish,” he said, returning to the topic she wanted his opinion on. Normally, she wouldn’t name the client, but Quinlan and the painting were inextricably linked. “Rich as Croesus. Inherited the company from her father and trimmed off the fat, turning over a sizable profit for the last decade. Papa Quinlan brought it back from the brink after a hostile takeover from his father. I hear she has a lovely Manet in her office.”
“What do you think?” she asked, tapping the pile of paperwork they’d reviewed over a breakfast of fresh croissants, exotic fruit, and strong coffee. She’d read it all after Antoinette Quinlan had deposited her less than a block from her apartment, and then again while she dined alone, the balcony doors open to the dusky sky, on the fifth floor of her ancient building in the heart of Paris. The apartment was less than a half hour’s walk from Nick’s place but she wondered if he’d ever given a thought to where she resided when in the city. Probably, but he’d never asked and was perfectly content to meet her at this place.
Nick gave every impression of owning the apartment but Cass had figured out two years ago that was a lie. He rented it whenever they needed to meet, clearing out by the end of the day. She knew that because, out of curiosity and a smidge of self-preservation despite the accrued trust, she’d realized there was nothing in any of the drawers or closets. So she waited and watched him leave, following him to a houseboat moored on the banks of the Seine. The Petite Chat was registered to a corporation, owned by another corporation and so on, but it was definitely Nick’s. Not that she’d tried getting aboard lest she risk tripping whatever security traps he’d cleverly placed.
If he’d noticed her following him, he’d never said, and, although she didn’t want to assume, she was fairly sure he hadn’t realized, which was his error. She simply wanted with the information because it didn’t matter how long she’d known Nick, people changed. He wouldn’t be the first and she’d long since realized it was far more sensible to always be one step ahead.
The houseboat and the rented apartment didn’t give her anything to worry about, but she’d been a lot more careful about the routes she took in arriving and departing now. It was all very well she knew about Nick’s real nest, in Paris anyway, but she was more fastidious about her own accommodation, preferring her anonymity. Not only that, but she had drop zones spread far and wide, just in case her studio was blown and she needed to run.
People like Antoinette Quinlan, several steps ahead of her already, ensured she never felt entirely safe.
Damn. She was probably going to have to ditch the apartment.
“Interesting stuff. Quite romantic,” Nick was saying. He moved around the large leather sofa to sit next to her, reaching for one of the photocopies.
“I thought so too. It gives every impression the artist loved the woman he painted.”
“I wonder if she was receptive?” He turned to her now, his face alive with interest just like she knew it would be when she showed him Antoinette’s letters. Cass’s research had proved the older woman had been telling the truth. The couple had once lived at Temperley Hall, a sprawling English estate. The artist, while not enormously sought after at the time, had been a frequent visitor. There were several articles from history and art buffs who variously claimed the illicit romance to be true or a fanciful fiction, commiserating with the husband and conjecturing on whether he knew and had his own mistress to occupy his time, leaving his wife lonely in the countryside.
There were a few other articles about The Pandora’s provenance in dispute, and speculation about where it might be, probably dusty and forgotten in a private collection. Numerous legal retrieval attempts had been made over the years, all of them rebuffed, and making little splash in the newspapers, and now Antoinette Quinlan wanted to seize the opportunity of its emergence, having exhausted all legal avenues.
If the legal system wasn’t on her side, perhaps justice by other means would be.
Cass’s interest was whetted.
“I’d love to read the other letters. I assume they still exist since we have these, and the articles I read refer to them, but that’s not what I’m asking. Do you think the story is real?” asked Cass.
“Maybe. It’s hard to tell. I have a guy that could look over the letters and authenticate them but he won’t be able to do that sufficiently from the photocopies. I’d need the originals.”
Cass reclined on the sofa, comfortable against the large, squashy cushions, the color a rich chocolate brown that made her feel like she was the filling in a chocolate cake. She’d considered authentication and had yet to come up with a way around it, without the originals. “I don’t think my client will hand them over. She says they’re stored at her London house. I looked it up,” she added with a whistle. The Kensington house had been obscenely large.
“Figures. Don’t they know we’re criminals? We don’t trust anyone, much less our clients.” Nick grinned then, pleased with his joking self-awareness.
“Not even each other?” Cass asked, knowing the answer wasn’t nearly simple enough for yes or no so she didn’t expect an answer. Instead, she winked and carried on, “I’m intrigued anyway. There’s enough to suggest my client’s evidence is all real.”
“How much time do you have?”
“The painting is only on display in Paris for another week before it gets put on a train to Zurich. If everything the client tells me is true, then I need to assemble a crew, get a plan together, and steal the damn thing in just a few days. I can’t do this by myself. It’s too big.”
“The painting is rather large.”
“I meant the job.”
“You can put the heist together in a week.”
“Less than a week,” Cass clarified although she wasn’t sure Nick had actually asked a question. He must have run the same calculations she had in her head: the time, the cost, the danger. She didn’t have enough time, but could swing the cost. The fee Antoinette had insisted on as fair was enormous. Most of it would go towards paying her crew and for whatever they needed to conduct the heist, but there would be a tidy sum left over. The danger was always there.
Yes, maybe she would book that vacation. Somewhere sunny and far from Europe. The US and Canada too. While the dust settled, she could sip mojitos.
“You’ve always loved a challenge.”
“True... but I also know my limits.”
Nick dropped onto the sofa next to her. “Pass me the letters again. I’ll give them another read-through while you investigate other channels. I assume you’re doing that?”
“Of course. I need to be sure my client hasn’t misled me in anyway.”
“She’d be a fool to do that.”
“You’re the best,” Cass said, meaning it.
Nick smiled lazily, shrugging the compliment away with a nudge of his shoulder. “I know.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Paris
Now
Adam
Adam turned his head, gazing up at the gloriously blue sky interspersed with soft puffs of white cloud, as the plane soared towards Charles de Gaulle. He’d only alighted at that airport a few hours ago, stubbled, bleary-eyed, and mildly revolted at the appalling airplane breakfast, and worse lunch, standing in queues and flashing his passport before he, and several hundred other new arrivals, spilled out in search of taxis.
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