El closed her eyes for a moment and took a slow, steady breath. Huffing it out again, she shook her head. Not even wanting to go there, she changed the topic.
“I’m not surprised you’re using your skills to help people. I’ve always known you were a good man, James. Even before we started seeing each other you never hurt anyone. You’ve never been a party to violence. I’m glad, though, that you’re using your influence to assist others.”
“I’m a thief and a criminal.” While his tone was sharper than she’d expected, his blue eyes were cool and narrowed. “Don’t paint me into being some misunderstood, tarnished hero.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Similarly, don’t you try to blacken your character and expect me to believe you’re some greedy, nefarious villain, either. You’re a good man, James Waters. Stubborn, slippery and far too much of a bad influence on my professional focus, but an honest, reliable one nevertheless.”
James stood, crossed over to her and perched on the arm of the chair she sat in. He bent down, then cupped her jaw in the palm of his hand. It was as if he were unable to resist the contact, like he needed it. El could sympathize, her hands itched to touch him too, but she forced herself to act in a restrained manner.
Allowing her face to be tilted up to him, she held his gaze in a silent mini battle of wills.
“Damn, but you’re stubborn. Beautiful, miraculous, but so strong-willed I must be crazy,” he commented.
There was no heat or anger in his tone, so she remained quiet, not needing to say anything. James leaned down and they kissed tenderly. She moaned, relaxing into it and loving the feel of his lips pressing to hers, the smooth way they tried to consume each other. She lifted a hand to touch his knee, needing that extra piece of contact with him as they explored each other’s mouths.
All too soon he pulled back, sucking in a deep breath. He blew it out forcefully.
“And this isn’t helping you recover the painting,” he said with clear regret. “Okay, let’s get back on topic. I can check my messages, see if anyone is contacting me about the heist. What else would you like me to do?”
“Get into their heads and try to wrap this all up. What remains of the team are either not of use or stonewalling us. Any data we collect could be critical. If this was your heist, your team, where would you have put the painting? They only had ninety minutes between escaping the Gallery and meeting at the docks. Two hours at most. That limits the area they could have used.”
“Well if it had been my operation, there wouldn’t be a team, for starters,” James replied thoughtfully. “There has to be a reason Kent and Luke remained so hands on for this. Think about it logically—a team of five people going somewhere as high profile as the Gallery—that’s madness. One person, two at most would be my plan. Particularly when these two idiots are smugglers by trade. Out of practice fences at that. They’ve been managers for a while, from what you’ve said. Why come along on this particular heist? It’s not like they could add much to a smaller, more professional team. What made this heist, this painting, so special?”
El frowned, mentally replaying James’ words. He had a point, a good one. She stood and looked around the room, her gaze partially internal as she continued to try to play the process out in her head.
“Do you have a computer? Or laptop? And paper? I need to make notes on this and check their files. I can log on to the work server remotely.”
“Drag the coffee table closer to the couch,” James said as he walked from the room. El spotted the table pushed against one wall and began rearranging the furniture. James returned with his arms full. Together they spent a few minutes setting everything up.
El logged into her work account and brought up the dossiers on the three members of the crew from the heist. Splitting the screen to show them all, she turned the laptop so James had a clear view.
“Fresh eyes never hurt. Give me your impressions.”
James pulled the computer onto his lap and focused on reading. El started to jot down thoughts and ideas, mulling over the new angle James had given her. She wrote out Kent’s and Luke’s names on one side, Thaddeus, Chelsea and David in smaller letters beneath them, and created a kind of flow chart as her mind worked.
The shadowy figures of their clients, the Agency itself, and all the other parties involved in this heist, the Gallery and the painting itself she placed in the center of the page—center stage as the Cezanne appeared to be for this mission. The more detail she added into this chart, the more she came back to the painting. Its heist and subsequent auction was pivotal. El’s gut was adamant on that.
Not wanting to let her own preconceptions cloud the scene, she continued to scribble notes, questions and facts. The chart grew as she did this. El racked her brain, putting everything she could recall into her chart. When she thought she’d finished, she ripped the page from the notepad and in small, neat lettering rewrote it clearly so she could look at the big picture.
Why would Kent and Luke have remained so involved in a complex, but straightforward heist? Sure, the National Gallery wasn’t the average home invasion or small, independent store, but neither was it the Tower or protected like the Mint. More than the minimum necessary people didn’t make sense.
Unless there was more than recovering the painting at stake?
Chelsea and David hadn’t indicated that either man had a personal involvement with each other or Thaddeus, nor had there been time for them to contact anyone inside the Gallery itself. Chelsea had been their inside contact, and so had there been another connection somewhere she would have come across it.
It couldn’t be personal—so it must be the painting itself. Could the painting be that critical? Or perhaps those whom they were selling it to were powerful enough that Kent and Luke felt the need to oversee everything personally, to micromanage the job.
No, that didn’t fit properly. If they were afraid of their clients then they’d be scrupulous about the details and planning stage, but they wouldn’t risk being caught because their team was too large.
The painting was key, it was the only logical answer. It felt right.
“What could make a painting so important that these guys would risk the potential success of the mission to keep tabs on it, to steal it personally?”
Her question, though spoken aloud, was partly rhetorical. She felt no offense when James looked up at her, but then returned his gaze to the screen of the laptop and continued scrolling.
“It wasn’t ego,” she continued as she stared at her flow chart. “Both men have plenty of that, but they’re professionals. I can believe they’d be in on all the planning and behind the scenes stages, but they wouldn’t have risked exposure by coming along into the Gallery itself. They’re both physically strong and powerful in their smuggling circles, it doesn’t fit they were scared of their clients. No, it was the painting. Maybe they wanted to steal it literally with their own hands, or maybe it’s a talisman of some sort, a culmination of months of work. There’s a reason for their actions. We find it, and maybe we’ll find the painting.”
El jolted when she glanced up to find that James had scooted closer to her on the couch and now peered over her shoulder, seeming intrigued by her complicated diagram.
“Can I see this?” he murmured.
She grinned, but handed it over. He scanned the document, appearing to take in the whole before analyzing individual areas more closely.
“I’ve never thought to map out a heist like this,” he said without looking at her. “You’ve certainly captured the heart and many of the details. This is great.”
James appeared enraptured. He pressed a finger to his lips, clearly studying the chart. She wondered if it felt like an intellectual challenge to him, to piece together the steps of who fitted where in relation to the painting. Happy for him to chew over it, she picked up the laptop and brought it to her legs, scanning through the documents, having read them multiple times before.
She let her eyes wander the screen, scrolling down as she needed. Not reading it per se, she let her subconscious mind fill in the blanks, hoping to pick out the important facts. James remained engrossed in the chart, distracted from his study of the crew. Tabbing over to Luke’s dossier she remembered that he seemed to have been the brains behind the crew.
The ringleader, he’d hidden in plain sight, acting like the wing man for Kent, when in reality he’d been running the show all along.
“Luke was in charge,” she said, more to herself than James. “It was never Kent’s call, none of it was. Luke would have directed where they hid the painting. Somewhere close. Ninety minutes, even at that time of the evening, you can’t drive far in central London.”
Dimly she felt a frisson of energy, that tingle she often felt when a line tugged during an investigation connected with something. It felt right, solid. El returned to the top of the info pack and started to read carefully through the stats they had on Luke Calloway.
There, a dozen sentences in, was a list of his known kin.
He had a sister living in central London.
“Bullseye,” she said, looking up and nudging James. “Louise Calloway, Luke’s sister. She’s in easy driving distance of the Gallery. Luke and Kent could have made the trip out to her place, left the Cezanne behind and been at the docks with plenty of time to spare.”
James frowned, pursed his lips and seemed to think about it. A minute ticked by before he finally shook his head.
“I don’t know, El. That doesn’t sound right to me. Was there any indication Louise was involved in the smuggling?”
Uncertainty gnawed at her.
“No. No, I haven’t seen anything that links her with that side of his business. And I know Luke called his lawyer, not Louise, after he was arrested. But look here,” She pointed to the screen. “He’s based primarily in Dublin. All his contacts, his mates, the vast majority of the real estate he owns is in Ireland. There’s just a few scattered homes and warehouses along the coast of Wales and Scotland. There’s no indication he has anything permanent or safe here in London. But his sister lives here. Surely that means something? Who else could he turn to, and trust, with this painting? It’s logical, right?”
“I can see the logic,” James admitted, “but why would he leave something this important with his sister? If she isn’t a part of it… Well, it’s not like he can just drop in unexpectedly, give her a hug and ask her to watch the priceless piece of artwork for him over a quick cup of tea before leaving again, is it?”
“I think it’s worth asking her. Seeing her for ourselves and gauging her responses. It’s an idea—a solid, actionable lead. Maybe the fact it isn’t the smartest move for Luke to have made means it’s too easy to overlook. Besides, she’s family, and blood has to count for something, wouldn’t you think?”
James tilted his head to the side, twisting his mouth as he thought about it. He nodded, placed her papers in a neat pile on the coffee table and stood.
“It doesn’t have the zing of rightness for me, but that could be because we’ve only got part of the picture. It certainly can’t hurt to speak with her.”
Excitement sang through her blood. James had some good points, but they didn’t have a better idea just now. Finding a thread, anything worth following, was always a step in the right direction. They’d moved her jacket to the floor when they’d set up the coffee table. El strode over and picked it up. She shrugged into it, then took her mobile phone from the inner pocket.
She checked her messages out of habit, finding her inbox empty.
“I’m just going to call Robert,” she said. “Depending on how bored he is, or how badly he’s driving everyone back at the office crazy, he might want to join us.”
“I always wondered why the two of you didn’t hook up,” James said. He reached out, stroked his palm over her ponytail. El tilted her head slightly, enjoying the way James’ touch felt. He had this knack of caressing his fingers over her hair and down the nape of her neck. It drove her wild and made her shiver delightfully.
“In some ways we’re very similar,” she had to drag her mind back to the task at hand. “We both enjoy putting the pieces together, solving the puzzle and finding answers. We work well together—after so many years, we’re used to each other’s rhythm and flow. I love him like my brother, though, and he feels the same in return. We’re close, and there’s a bond there—but it’s platonic and I genuinely feel if we’d ever become sexually intimate we couldn’t work the same together. That faith and trust we have would become…different. We’d lose focus and that would be harmful to the job.”
“He’s protective of you. I’m not poking at it. I think it’s sweet and I can see he cares deeply about you. The two of you share something special and I’d not change that.”
“We’re protective of each other,” she agreed. “He’s strong and almost scarily intelligent. Rob… How can I explain it? He thinks on a different line to everyone else, almost non-linear. Sometimes he’ll put things together in a manner I never in a billion years would have thought of, but then something that is right in front of his nose, something every single human with an IQ over forty can comprehend, he will be completely blind to.”
“Really?” James looked stunned.
El chuckled.
“He has this friend, Sally… They’re both deeply in love and he can’t see it—he doesn’t even fully grasp the fact he adores her, and he’d never believe me if I explained she loved him in return. I’m determined to open his eyes, but things have been crazy lately.”
“He’s lucky to have such a caring partner like you.”
“I’m glad to have him too. Sometimes Rob can be a handful, especially when he gets the bit between his teeth. He went through a number of partners before we were paired up. I think Waldron was relieved when we got along so well. Now I have a feeling if either of us requested another partner—something that management is supposed to respect if anyone wishes for a change—we’d be denied and they’d move heaven and earth to keep us together. Not that we’d ever ask for it. It sounds conceited, but we kick arse together. We’re a good fit, professionally speaking.”