The doorman opens the door as we wheel the gurney in and the security guard jogs toward the elevator, motioning with this arm. “Right this way.”
I’m sure this is the most exciting thing to have happened here in a long time.
He enters the code to the private elevator entrance. When the doors open, I play dumb as we move inside. “Do you need to come up with us to let us in?”
The guard shakes his head. “This elevator opens right into his apartment, and I have to stay down here. But if you need anything, call. There’s a service phone right beside the elevator door when you get upstairs.”
“Merci,” I say with a nod before the door closes.
I pull out my phone to text Sin. “On our way up.”
She meets us at the elevator and I have to say I’m struck a bit dumb at the sight of her in that sexy red dress. It fits her body like a glove, the neckline plunging between her breasts. The skirt portion comes to mid-shin, but there’s a slit up to mid-thigh that shows her long expanse of smooth legs when she walks.
“He’s in the master bath,” she murmurs, voice pitched low so it doesn’t carry. Turning, she guides us that way. I grab one of the bags, and Neal grabs the other. We leave the gurney by the elevator entrance since we won’t need it.
Sin knocks gently on the water closet door where I assume our mark is holed up. He groans in response.
“James,” she calls. “The paramedics are here. Can you open the door?”
When he groans again, Sin calls. “James?”
“Um… can you be a love and wait in the bedroom? I don’t want you to see me like this,” he says. I don’t need to see his face to know how embarrassed he is to have brought a gorgeous, sexy woman to his apartment with the belief he was going to get a night of hot, sweaty sex and being stuck on the toilet instead.
“Of course,” Sin soothingly says. She winks at me. Our plan was never for her to stay in the bathroom with him.
When I hold my arm out, she takes the black duffel from me, then heads into the bedroom. Neal drops his bag on the floor, rifling through to pull out a stethoscope and a portable heart monitor. Today, William had given us some basic instructions. We’d role-played various scenarios on how to handle this situation.
Neal knocks on the door. With a fake French accent, which is surprisingly good, he calls, “Mr. Dennison? I’m one of the paramedics. Can I open the door?”
“Is Melanie gone?” Dennison piteously asks.
“Yes, she is,” Neal responds, his lips curved maliciously. He seems to be enjoying the man’s suffering.
“Okay,” Dennison replies, and Neal opens the door. The smell is not pleasant and I’m glad Neal is pulling point on this. I didn’t hand out the assignments—those came from William—and Neal hadn’t argued. He’d left me free to assist Sin, probably so he could judge if I knocked the rust off my skills.
I take a few steps backward, making sure Neal’s hulking frame in the doorway of the water closet obscures me, then pivot to head into the bedroom.
Sin already has the Renoir off the wall, and it is face-first on the bed beside the duffel. Her eyes rise to meet mine as I round the four-poster bed. “It’s your show now.”
I quickly undo the zipper and pull out a cardboard frame, setting it on the bed beside the painting. Nestled inside is the knock-off Renoir, the frame so expertly crafted I can’t tell the difference as I examine both. It’s an exact match down to the brown paper backing.
Reaching inside the bag again, I pull out a small handheld device Bebe had loaded me up with before I’d left Pittsburgh.
I depress a button on the side, holding it down until a red light emits a steady tone. Then I move it slowly along the back edge of the frame until I get a blinking green light and a tiny beep.
“Bingo,” I murmur.
Sin, like a surgeon’s apprentice, whips out a knife from God knows where. After flipping it open, she hands it to me hilt first.
I take it, gently pushing the tip under the edge of the paper backing. When I peel it back, I find the tiny GPS tracking device. All expensive works of art now have these planted in the frames.
Using the tip of the knife, I pop the tracking device off. Moving to the knockoff, I make a tiny slit at the edge on the same place on the frame. I insert it, push the paper down and decide that’s good enough for me.
Sin picks up the fake Renoir and hangs it on the wall while I pack the real deal into the cardboard frame. It goes into the duffel bag, but I don’t zip it up yet.
I hand it to Sin. Without comment, she takes it out to the gurney we’d left by the elevator.
Hurrying to the bathroom, I enter just as Neal is giving Dennison an injection. “You should get some pretty quick relief from that.”
“Thank you,” Dennison murmurs from his perch on the toilet.
Ideally, the man needs to have an IV started with saline solution and Zofran, but that’s impractical. He’ll have to make do with the injectable Zofran Neal had given him. While it was easy enough to teach Neal how to give an intramuscular injection, there was no way we had time to learn how to master an IV.
Regardless, it’s not necessary. All we have to do is get him feeling well enough to rest peacefully, so he doesn’t insist on going to the hospital. Whatever William gave Sin to spike his drink with is supposedly fast-acting with a short life. It’s why we have to work so quickly.
“Now,” Neal says. “Are you sure you don’t want us to take you to the hospital?”
They’ve apparently talked about this before now. To avoid suspicion, I imagine Neal pushed that as the best option, but also offered him medicine if he wanted to avoid the trip.
“I’m sure,” Dennison says. “And thank you. I’m horribly embarrassed by this.”
“Well, food poisoning is no joke,” Neal says with a smile—in a completely American accent. I hide my wince.
Frowning, Dennison looks from Neal to me, then back to Neal.
Idiot.
Pushing Neal out of the doorway, I ask Dennison. “What else can we do for you?”
“I think I’m good,” he says, then motions to the water closet door. “If you can give me a few moments to clean myself up, please.”
“And your… um… female guest?” I ask with a knowing smile.
“I’m afraid I’m not up to company tonight,” Dennison replies stiffly. “Think you could handle asking her to leave?”
“Of course,” I assure him. The heist is almost complete.
I incline my head before closing the door on him.
Looking to Neal, I give a sharp jerk of my chin to the door, indicating it’s time to hustle.
We find Sin waiting at the elevator, a purple-and-blue glass vase in her hand. “Do we need this?”
After all these years, it’s funny how Sin and I still think along the same lines, our brains always working on how to best cover our trails.
“Why would we need that?” Neal asks. “Is it worth something?”
“Probably cost around seven thousand U.S. dollars,” Sin says.
I ignore Neal, giving my attention to Sin. “Lord Dennison has asked me to pass along the message that he enjoyed his time with you, but he is in no condition to be proper company tonight.”