Unearthed Treasure (13 page)

“Greer, you sew up this ring and you and Atchison can take three weeks off with my blessing.”

“So you just need our call?” David checked.

“I’ve had teams on standby for the last few days, on amber light preparedness since you sent the beacon earlier today. All the Dublin and Cardiff rings are surrounded and being monitored, and the crew who will pick up Thaddeus, Luke and Kent are moving into position as we speak. Once we get a bead on this Boss, the central leader of all the smaller rings, then we’ll be good to go.”

“Great,” David replied, pleased it was finally coming to a head. He cast a look at Chelsea, who nodded. She reached behind him and took the shirt he’d left on the doorknob and carefully began to push her arms into the sleeves, then slowly pulled it up over her head.

“Well then, I guess this is it. Make sure your team knows we can’t be contacted until after we leave. Have they got eyes and ears?”

“They’ll be able to listen to what you say, but not get a message to you. But they will be able to hear, so be as descriptive as you can without giving yourselves away.”

“Will do. See you on the other side, McIlroy.”

“Be safe.”

David hung up the phone and switched it off. He turned to find Chelsea staring at him. He smiled at her.

“What?”

“Will they be able to see and hear us?” she asked him.

He nodded. “Yep, so if I figure as long as we’re verbose but careful about it this should be fine. This is the last stage, darling. Then we get three weeks of that beach-side hot monkey sex you promised me.”

She laughed, which was why he’d said it. Wrapping her in a warm hug, David held her close, loving the way she felt in his arms. He never wanted to let her go.

Sadly, reality and work called. Indulging for just a brief moment, he kissed her. His body heated, needing her with a growing intensity he hated to deny. When they were both breathless, he pulled back.

“Let’s go,” he said in a soft tone.

Chapter Eight

Chelsea pulled her jacket more tightly around her body, then winced as the action tugged painfully on her wound and stitches. She felt, rather than saw, David’s gaze upon her.

“Bloody stitches,” she complained.

Tiredness lapped at her. In truth, she was secretly grateful they wouldn’t need to do any chasing or following tonight. Her energy reserves were depleted.

David closed his hand around hers, and for a wonderful moment she let herself draw strength from him. They walked down the Docklands, making their way to the meeting point. The night was bitterly cold, a breeze coming off the water and dropping the temperature another couple of degrees.

There’ll be snow before too much longer,
she figured.

“Should be just here, up ahead,” David said. He squeezed her fingers one more time then let it go.

Chelsea glanced around, curious as to where the other agents might be. Out of sight, obviously, but they’d need to be near enough to follow at a moment’s notice.

“Wonder what frequency they’re on,” she pondered idly. They rounded a corner and saw Luke and Kent. Not altering their pace, they made their way up to them. Phillipe still had the large artist’s folder, presumably with the Cézanne inside it.

David made a minor show of checking his watch. They were almost exactly five minutes early.

“You guys been here long?” she asked.

Kent shook his head. “Couple of minutes. We wanted to check out the drop site.”

Chelsea shrugged, a flicker crossing her face as even the movement of her good shoulder pulled slightly on her wound.

“How’d you both get out?”

“Wasn’t hard,” David said smoothly, sounding almost bored. “We walked out of the front door. Wish we’d been able to take photos. Was quite a scene Thaddeus left out there. Sections of the building crumbled, car on fire. Looked like his kind of party.”

“He certainly appeared to have had fun,” Kent agreed.

A silence descended between them. While not strained, it was not quite comfortable either. Chelsea had the impression that there were many things very consciously not being said—by all of them. Questions being restrained and accusations being kept in check.

After the first minute some of the tension seemed to ease.

“So you two want to take a crack on your own?” Luke asked. Chelsea nodded, remaining silent. David spoke up. They’d agreed she’d step in if things got too awkward, but for tonight he’d take the lead for the most part. Still pretty doped up on painkillers she wasn’t at her intellectual best.

“We might fall flat on our face and come crawling back for work,” he said. “But we’re an…independent partnership. And we think we have plenty to offer. We’d like to at least make our case to the Boss, see what he has to say about it.”

“So make your case,” Luke replied.

Chelsea frowned, not understanding. She exchanged a look with David, who seemed equally puzzled.

“We don’t need to justify ourselves to you, nor highlight our finer points,” she said carefully.

Her instincts screamed caution to her. In no way did she want to pander to this man, but neither did she want to appear disrespectful. Something warned her there were currents of change around them, and until she had a complete handle on the situation she didn’t want to burn any bridges. Besides, if possible they wanted to leave here with all their reputations intact, in case they needed these contacts at a later date.

“You’ve seen our work, seen what we’re capable of and know our work ethic. We’ve been on the same crew for close to a year now. Anyway, it’s not you we need to explain this to, it’s Phillipe’s Boss. If we needed to get your approval to strike out on our own we’d have done it weeks ago.”

“I’m aware of that,” Luke replied. “That’s why I’ve been drawing this out. We needed your contacts and information inside the Gallery to make this heist. I couldn’t risk you losing interest and carrying out something different. Added on to that, I just didn’t trust either one of you. I’m still not a hundred per cent on board. Something about you both just sets my internal radar off.”

Chelsea realised Luke was doing all the talking. Phillipe stood beside him, yes, and Phillipe carried the painting, but usually Luke was quiet if not silent. Phillipe was the crew leader, Luke his friend and quasi-second in command.

She understood why the currents of power seemed different tonight. Phillipe was deferring to Luke, not the other way around. In a flash she put the pieces of the puzzle together, to create a startling larger picture.

“You’re the Boss,” David said, seeming to understand at the same time as her. “It’s been you all along. Kent glances at you when delicate decisions are made. You use him as a mouthpiece.”

“I don’t use him,” Luke demurred. “We simply let everyone see what they wish to. Kent is in truth the leader of his cell. He makes those calls. I just find it fun to keep my hand in the game on a more elemental level—I started out as a thief and find nothing gives me that same thrill and jolt of being somewhere I ought not. Situations like this, where I’m not completely on board with someone or a scenario, I find I can gather a lot more information being in the background, present but overlooked, rather than on display as ‘the Boss’. It’s a win-win situation really.”

“Well then, you know us, obviously,” Chelsea said. “What do you think?”

Chelsea tossed her hair back from her face, hoping that her sudden onset of nerves weren’t betrayed by her tone or body language. She couldn’t help but madly think back, wonder if there’d been even the slightest indication of something not being kosher. She didn’t think she’d said or done anything embarrassing or wrong in Luke’s presence, but so much of the time she’d overlooked him—focused on the larger picture—she couldn’t be sure.

“I think…that I just can’t trust you,” Luke replied grimly as he pulled a large handgun from the small of his back.

Instantly, as it always did in the heat of battle, everything simultaneously sped up and slowed right down to a crawl.

They all pulled out guns, almost at identical times. Phillipe screamed out, “Thaddeus!” and Chelsea cringed.

The large blond man was fucking crazy. Knowing he was in the darkness somewhere, likely with half an arsenal and an eager grin on his face, she expected a flame-thrower to blast out any second now. She didn’t let that stop her, however.

Focusing her sights on Phillipe, she thought of how casually he’d left her and David to fend for themselves in the Gallery, of how he’d blithely ordered Thad to attack the hell out of the place in broad daylight with hundreds of innocent tourists and schoolchildren scattered around.

Kent Phillipe was a bully and a coward. If she could only pull her trigger once, she wanted it to count. In the few seconds she had, she steadied her gaze, lined up her shot, and pulled the trigger. As she heard the explosion, saw the bullet hit its mark—his lower thigh, just above the kneecap—she watched him fall with no real sense of satisfaction. Indeed, she didn’t feel much of anything except tiredness.

As if the world had come crashing back to her she heard bullets whizzing around her. David and Luke exchanged a volley of shots, Luke falling after a couple of seconds, clutching his chest. Before she could react or check if David was unharmed she heard the heavy sound of booted feet running towards them.

Whirling around, she then lifted her gun, fully expecting to see Thaddeus coming after them with some ungodly weapon drawn, about to fry them into ashes. Despite the fact that her heart thundered, and she genuinely thought she’d die in the next few seconds, she didn’t have time to be afraid or regret how little time she’d been given to share with David.

A man whom she didn’t recognise at all—not Thaddeus, as she’d assumed—rushed towards them.

“Stop right there!” she said, cocking her gun and ready to shoot this stranger to protect herself and David. Dressed head to foot in black, he filled out his body armour with some impressive muscles. He was not winded in the least from running. His skin was pale and if the growth of stubble was any indication he was light-haired.

“I’m with McIlroy and Preston Jones,” the man said, holding his gun up and away from his body. He’d stopped running, but continued to walk towards them, taking in the messy scene in a swift glance. “My colleagues already have Thaddeus. That’s why he didn’t come just now. He has an impressive number of toys. He got quite annoyed when we took the flame-thrower away from him. Kept insisting he’d only just received it and had been dying to give a demonstration. He’s not quite with it, is he?”

“No,” David agreed, lowering his gun but not putting it away. “What took you so long?”

The blond man gave him a sour look. Glancing at his watch, he shook his head.

“I’ve just run almost half a mile in less than three minutes—when I got the message all the parties were present and the scene was about to go shit,” he replied. Despite the curtness of his words Chelsea couldn’t mistake the laughter in his tone. “I’d say it wasn’t me taking my time, but rather you who didn’t stall these arseholes long enough once you knew Calloway was the Boss and so-called missing link.”

Chelsea looked from David to the other man, understanding that macho stupidity would have them verbally sparring and neither giving ground until one or the other broke. Losing patience, she made the decision for them, she holstered her gun, took two cable ties out of her pocket and moved over to where Phillipe writhed on the ground, clutching his leg and trying to stem the flow of blood.

“Hurts like a fucking bitch, doesn’t it?” she ground out, feeling no sympathy for him. “You deserve that for leaving us to take the heat for you. There was no reason for us to separate out of the Gallery—it’s in large part your fault I got shot.”

“You useless fucking bitch…” he started. Knowing nothing but more venom would come from the large man, Chelsea dug a hand into her bag and pulled out a roll of tape while he continued to speak.

“I’m going to kill you, you and that arsehole you think none of us realise you’re fucking every which way when our backs are turned. I should have—”

In quick motions while he ranted on, she tore off a long strip, then slapped it firmly over Kent’s mouth. It gagged him perfectly. She restrained his hands and feet next, not trusting him to realise he was defeated. The movements hurt her, but she continued anyway, merely hissing in pain as the action pulled on her shoulder.

When she turned back to David and the other agent they seemed to have reached some kind of understanding. David hauled Luke to his feet and handed him over. Half a dozen more black-clad men and a few women arrived from all directions. The Agency seemed to have a handle on the mopping up of the scene.

“If we don’t want to be writing reports and debriefing for the next twelve hours I suggest we disappear right now, before someone comes to ask us the first of a hundred questions,” David suggested.

Chelsea glanced down at Phillipe, still writhing and trying to shout behind his gag. Looking back at David she smiled gently, the first relaxed, carefree grin she’d felt in months. Reaching out her good hand, she felt lighter just at his touch.

“Take me away?” she asked, knowing what his response would be.

“Anywhere,” he replied.

Without a backward glance she let him lead her away from their captives and along the riverfront.

“Excuse me! Mr Greer, Ms Atchison? I have a Mr McIlroy on my mobile phone.” The same blond man ran to catch up with them as they left the scene. “Says he’s from the Dublin office and—”

They both stopped walking, turning half around so the man could catch them.

“Give me that,” David said. He held out his other hand. Chelsea liked that he wasn’t willing to relinquish her fingers just yet.

“You promised us three weeks,” David said firmly into the phone, not letting McIlroy get a single word out. “We’re taking it. As of this very moment. In a day or two—once Chelsea is well on her way to being healed and we’ve both had a solid twelve hours’ sleep—we’ll debrief to your heart’s content and write a veritable thesis on the entire case. My word on it. But for now, unless the world is about to end or a nuclear holocaust is in the making, with all due respect, go fuck yourself.”