Was Bethany Stafford-Lyons hurting for money? Rumour said the divorce settlement hadn’t been kind to her. Sure, her address was in Kensington, but 122c Carlton Terrace was a tiny apartment, a far cry from the Surrey mansion she’d lived in previously. The change in lifestyle must have hurt. Had she been tempted to get involved with Pemberton’s side hustle to make some extra cash?
Alaric dropped back a few car lengths, letting Emmy take the lead through Chelsea. He hated to admit it, but the Aston fit in quite well there. They could swap positions after they left the area.
Where was Stafford-Lyons heading? He had no idea. The bug had picked up Pemberton talking on the phone earlier, and he confirmed he’d be sending his assistant to the meet with Red After Dark as previously arranged. Since the gallery manager was tied up with customers and the lazy brunette with the nicotine habit didn’t have a vehicle, that left Stafford-Lyons. Certainly she’d carried a box of the right size towards the rear exit of the gallery.
“You really think this woman can lead us to Emerald?” Emmy asked. “She seems kind of…virtuous.”
“You know who else seemed virtuous? Bernie Madoff.”
“Fair point. Care to give me a proper briefing yet? I’m not completely in the dark, but it’s definitely twilight.”
“I would’ve done it last night over dinner if you hadn’t lived up to your nickname and run out on me, Cinders.”
The moniker had come about after Emmy lost one of her high-heeled pumps in a wine bar on their first date. Red-lacquered soles, size six. His first two wilderness years excepted, Alaric had bought Emmy a pair of designer heels for every birthday, remembering Bradley’s instruction to go up a size in the Louboutins. Bradley was Emmy’s assistant, a man who knew more about fashion than Vogue and who’d been responsible for the Brioni suit habit Alaric had never been able to break.
“Believe me, I’d rather have sat around drinking wine until the early hours, but when some fucker breaks into one of the properties we monitor…”
“Did you get him?”
Silence. If Emmy had been sitting in the passenger seat, Alaric knew she’d have been wearing her snarky “what do you think?” face.
“Of course you got him.”
“I also got a lot of questions from the cops plus a whole ream of paperwork. They really don’t love it when bad guys trip down the stairs.”
“Hence the lack of sleep and the tetchiness?”
“I’m not tetchy.”
“Whatever you say, Cinders.”
“Briefing?”
Alaric swallowed a laugh. Nearly eight years, and Emmy hadn’t changed a bit. Not like him. In many ways, he was grateful for that. How many other women would step off a jet at Heathrow, spend the night fighting crime, and then go straight out on a job with barely an explanation? Plus she still trusted him while many others didn’t.
“Remember when Emerald went missing? That wasn’t the only painting the thieves took—there were four others stolen in the same heist.”
Collateral damage, no doubt snatched because of their proximity to the main prize. The Girl with the Emerald Ring had been the obvious target. Once held in the private collection of Ada and Gerhard Becker, it was moved to their namesake museum in Boston upon Ada’s death fifteen years ago. In her native Germany, Ada had grown up as the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, and with money no object, she’d spent years amassing art, a passion she’d inherited from her father and one that hadn’t diminished when she emigrated to the United States at the age of thirty-seven. In her will, she’d insisted her collection go on show for the nation to enjoy when she passed.
It was from the Becker Museum that Emerald had been stolen thirteen years ago in a daring robbery involving smoke canisters and a rooftop escape. None of the guards from the surveillance room downstairs noticed a thing until it was too late, mainly because they were far too busy chasing a squirrel through the sculpture hall, which it later emerged had been released by the thief or thieves. The police found a box hidden behind a life-sized model of Aphrodite, complete with a remote-controlled locking mechanism and a handful of macadamia nuts. Presumably a “visitor” had left it there. Nobody noticed, and why would they? The security team had been concerned with people taking things out of the gallery, not bringing them in.
“Yeah, I remember. But the others weren’t as valuable, were they?”
“No, but collectively they were still worth millions. And two weeks ago, a contact of mine believes they caught sight of Red After Dark in Hugo Pemberton’s studio.”
“That’s the one with the red-headed woman running into the forest?”
“You remember?” Alaric was impressed, but then again, Emmy was fond of art herself, although her tastes tended towards more modern pieces. Her ability to appreciate a painting’s beauty was yet another thing that had attracted him to her.
“We spent weeks looking for those paintings before you fucked off to who knows where. And Blackwood’s still looking for them. We never stopped.”
“Really?”
“Dude, I never give up.”
True. Emmy always had been a tenacious bitch, which was both a good thing and a bad thing, depending on the situation.
“That makes two of us. If it’s the last thing I do, I want to get Emerald back where she belongs and find out who took the pay-off as well.”
The pay-off. Alaric’s downfall. The day it disappeared had been both the best and worst of his life. After months of undercover work, he’d finally gotten a lead on Emerald, the jewel in the Becker Museum’s crown. Negotiating the purchase had taken weeks, and together with his colleagues at the Bureau, he’d planned an elaborate sting operation involving a yacht, a helicopter, and a payment of ten million dollars—one million in cash and the rest in diamonds. Except things hadn’t quite gone according to plan.
The first indication that the job was jinxed came when the helicopter the FBI had dredged up—the only one available that didn’t scream “law enforcement”—developed an engine problem. The doohickey to fix it wouldn’t be available for at least a week, apparently.
That presented a problem because when Alaric had spoken to the broker the evening before, he’d claimed to be in Florida, a thirteen-hour drive away but only two hours by air. If Dyson had men watching for Alaric’s arrival and he suddenly appeared in a car, rather than by helicopter as they’d previously discussed, that would arouse suspicions. Cue a call to Emmy, who’d offered up her Eurocopter plus a pilot for the short hop from her place near Richmond to Virginia Beach.
Issue number two had revealed itself the following morning as he ate breakfast with Emmy. The scheme called for two bikini-clad girls to accompany him—every rich asshole had them—but one of Alaric’s would-be deck ornaments had fallen down the stairs at the Chesapeake field office and broken her ankle yesterday afternoon. By the time she got out of surgery and somebody thought to inform Alaric, it was too late to arrange a replacement.
“We’re gonna have to call this off,” he said, groaning into his oatmeal. “We can’t go ahead without Gina.”
“Why not?”
The FBI’s team had been finely balanced—the staff that an unscrupulous businessman would be expected to travel with versus a team capable of taking down Dyson and his goons if the need arose. The few people who’d met the guy said he usually brought half a dozen men. As well as the bikini girls, Alaric’s alter ego, Joseph Delray, had a captain and a deckhand for his yacht, plus a butler and a bodyguard. Any more and they risked scaring Dyson off.