Chapter Twenty-Six
MINA
Roux held the door to the dumbwaiter open, though his look was skeptical. “You sure about this?”
No, but for lack of a better plan…
I slipped off my heels and started folding myself into the dumbwaiter. “Just watch the door, please.”
We were in a storeroom in what had been the original part of the villa, before the superstructure had been updated and expanded.
The dumbwaiter was just as old — a vintage wooden model that ran on a pulley system.
The minute I transferred my weight into the tiny elevator, it creaked.
I froze, then continued more slowly, pulling in one leg, then the other.
Roux had knocked out the shelf in the middle of the compartment, but it was still a tight fit.
My mind filled with second thoughts. It was bad enough that I had become a mercenary and thief for the night. Now I was adding contortionist to the list. How on earth had I gotten myself into this?
“Just focus,” I muttered to myself.
Roux gave me a foul look that said, I’m always focused. I know no other state.
I had no doubt, and I told him as much. “I meant me. Anyway, I’m ready. Send me up, please. And listen for my signal.”
He didn’t look convinced. “Let me hear it again.”
I rapped my knuckles on the inner panel — once, twice, then two quicker knocks in succession.
He nodded, though he didn’t make a move. He just stood there exuding pessimism.
“Not a word,” I warned him.
If his brow furrowed any more deeply, he would injure himself.
“I get that this is important to you…” he started.
“Those are words. Lots of them,” I grumbled.
He went on, regardless. “But I’m weighing your wishes up against the pain Marius will inflict on me if you get caught.”
“Just send me up, dammit!” I tried to gesture to emphasize the point but only succeeded in banging my elbow.
Roux pushed my right knee in and took up the slack in the rope that raised and lowered the dumbwaiter.
“Okay. Hang on,” he said quietly.
My breath caught when the dumbwaiter lurched into motion, and it took everything I had not to shout Stop! Forget it!
“Watch your dress. And your knee,” he hissed, all annoyed. Like he was the one in the damn thing.
I pulled on the fabric, doing what I could in my two-inch range of motion. Roux kept hauling the rope, hand over hand, and the storeroom began to sink beneath me. I looked up, counting the seconds.
Fancy villas, I learned, were nowhere near as fancy from the inside.
Open brickwork and wiring slid past, and I clutched my dress even more tightly.
The dim light from the storeroom died out the farther I went, making space seem to shrink.
The walls gradually closed in on me like an undersized coffin.
It was so dark, I touched my face to check whether my eyes were open. Finally, a sliver of light appeared above and expanded.
Then, thump! The dumbwaiter hit its upper limit and swayed. I cringed, praying it wouldn’t collapse into the shaft below. Would the fall kill me, or would I lie trapped for hours before dying in misery?
Not dying, I barked at myself. Not tonight anyway.
I listened for a moment, then pushed at the double doors outlined by slivers of dim light.
Nothing.
I pushed harder. Still nothing.
I shimmied around to raise my foot and push harder. Crap. Was the door locked from the office side?
I pushed again, then kicked, then—
With a cry and a crash, I tumbled out onto a carpeted floor. I froze, convinced I would open my eyes to a ring of armed gunmen.
But, whew. Nobody there.
Getting to my hands and knees, I glanced around. Double whew. I’d emerged in the deserted office beside the library. The twin, floor-to-ceiling windows on the north wall were shuttered, but a little light filtered in from the adjacent loading area.
I tiptoed over to the library door and listened. Nothing there, but a scuffle sounded outside the windows, followed by a muffled thump. I froze again, listening.
At first, nothing happened. Then, whoosh! Fire roared, illuminating the night and casting flickering shadows over the walls.
Then, boom! Something exploded.
I ducked as the windows rattled. Not too far away, glass shattered. The distant sounds of the party stopped, interrupted by cries.
“Hurry!” Roux’s muffled warning sounded from the dumbwaiter shaft.
I stared at the windows, then hustled over to the dumbwaiter. “What was that?”
His voice was clearer there — clear enough for me to catch his sigh. “Marius’s idea of a diversion.”
I stared at the flames outside the windows. The fire was somewhere farther along the building, but still too close for comfort.
“Hurry!” Roux propelled me into motion.
I listened briefly, then eased open the door to the library.
I froze, spotting a figure there. One lone sentry left to guard the room after our heist attempt backfired.
Shit, shit, shit.
He was all the way over by the far door, talking into a headpiece. So, whew. He hadn’t noticed me.
I eased back into the office and stood still, my heart pounding.
Now what? The Van Gogh wasn’t far, but I couldn’t walk in there under the sentry’s nose and grab it unnoticed.
Unless…
My breath caught as the boldest — craziest? — plan of my life popped into my mind.
Shadow-walking.
I discarded the thought immediately. Shadow-walking in a sequined dress?
Good luck. Also, shadow-walking required maintaining a false image of myself in one location while sneaking over to another.
Misdirecting, in other words, the way an amateur magician did.
The key was to give your audience a false target to focus on, but I couldn’t reveal myself to the sentry.
I slumped against the wall, thinking. Could I get Roux up here to knock the guy out?
No, because Roux wouldn’t fit in the dumbwaiter.
And, yikes. The fact that that was my primary reason was really, really disturbing. I was definitely going over to the dark side.
Which left two options. Quitting and shadow-walking.
Quit, ninety-nine percent of my mind barked immediately.
But one percent held out. It could work…theoretically.
“Mina!” Roux’s voice carried up the dumbwaiter.
I pushed the doors to the contraption closed, afraid that the sentry might hear. Then I tiptoed back to the door and peeked through the keyhole.
The shelf I’d left the paintings on was barely two steps away. So near, yet so far.
Holding my breath, I eased the door to the library open. The room was dark — too dark for human eyes — except over by the main door, where the sentry stood. But for my eyes…
I could make him out easily. He cracked open the far door to peer down the hallway into the reception area, just like I spied on him from behind. I couldn’t hear the communications coming through his earpiece, but I could hear him muttering.
“Fire? There’s a goddamn fire now?”
Ha. Yes, thanks to Marius.
“Standing by,” he said grimly.
I eyed the shelf where I’d stashed the paintings, then the sentry, who focused on the commotion in the main part of the building. Meanwhile, the fire outside flared, illuminating the windows, and I could sense Roux’s mind tapping at mine. Hurry!
So I did. I ignored every paranoid cell in my body and started reconstructing the space around me. The soft rug under my feet. The slightly warmer air surrounding my body. The light draft moving from the library to the office…
Then, with a deep breath, I stepped into the library. I kept the image of myself upright behind the doorway, not because the sentry could see it, but because it blocked the glint of fire coming in through the office windows.
“Unit three, over,” the sentry said in reply to a summons on his earpiece. Then he turned, scanning the room.
I froze, but his eyes moved right over me.
“Negative. Nothing here,” he reported, turning back to the doorway. “But that fire sounds like it’s getting closer.”
Definitely, and the room was getting warmer. Yikes. How big was that fire?
I inched toward the shelf with the paintings, then reached out cautiously. My fingers tapped over a row of books, then touched wood — the frame of a painting.
“You’re evacuating the building?” the sentry said into his earpiece. “What about the art?”
Leave it, I urged him, wishing I could enthrall people the way Henrik did.
“We could leave it, you know,” he said.
My jaw dropped. Coincidence, or had I succeeded?
Either way, I had to get moving. I stepped even closer, using both hands to lift the heavy paintings. I bit my lip, sure the light creak would give me away. But someone shouted at the sentry from outside just then, covering the light scratch of wood over leather book bindings.
“Does the boss want this stuff evacuated or not?” the sentry barked to whomever it was.
I held both paintings against my body and hurried back into the office, then pushed the door shut behind me. I panted for a moment. Wow. I’d succeeded in shadow-walking. Okay, in a dark room with a distracted guard, but still. Pretty amazing.
I placed the Van Gogh and the fake Monet in the dumbwaiter and formed a fist to signal to Roux. One trip for the paintings, a second trip for me, and we would be out of here.
“Ready?” Roux hissed.
So, so ready.
“Ready,” I called.
The rope moved, and the pulley squeaked as the dumbwaiter started its downward journey. I peered down the shaft, watching it fade into darkness. I heard it thump into place, then a bump and a scrape as Roux extracted the artworks.
“What the…?” he muttered.
“Just send the dumbwaiter back up,” I called.
I glanced back at the door to the library, and that was my undoing, because I remembered the inlaid box that had caught Henrik’s fancy — and the bargain we’d struck.
I’d promised to get the box for him, and he’d sworn not to double-cross us to Baumann.
He’d even upped the ante with a second clause, making me swear not to open it, which I’d agreed to in exchange for a favor to be called in sometime in the future.