Full Color (ORCA #3)

Chapter 5

CHAPTER

FIVE

QUIN

“Mr. Hunter.” Stefan Dasselaar held out his hand, and I shook it. “Your reputation precedes you, of course, as I’ve heard much about your gallery and the work you do.” He paused for a moment, waiting for me to react to his statement, but I said nothing. He frowned, then replaced the expression with a welcoming smile. “Thank you for meeting with me today. This way.”

Movement over his broad shoulder caught my eye, but he ushered me out of the main part of the gallery and into his office, where he gestured for me to sit in the leather visitor’s chair while he settled behind his massive desk. On a lesser man, I would have assumed the mahogany monstrosity he’d put between us was a sign he was compensating for something, but Dasselaar’s bulk was well-suited to the desk. Anything smaller would have made him look ridiculous.

He set his elbows on the arms of his tufted leather chair and steepled his fingers, assessing me with sharp eyes. I crossed an ankle over my knee and smoothed out a nonexistent wrinkle in my pants as I casually draped an arm along the armrest of my chair. Two could play the arrogant game. I kept my features impassive, but I studied Dasselaar right back. He looked just like the photos I’d studied on the plane ride to Amsterdam. He had dark hair streaked with gray and white that was expensively cut and styled. He wore a designer suit, but unlike Zwart’s, Dasselaar’s had been perfectly tailored to fit his broad shoulders and expanding waist. The lines of a man who used to be incredibly fit still lingered along the badger shifter’s frame, but they’d been liberally filled in by what could only be an excess of fine food and drink.

Another moment of charged silence passed between us, but I didn’t so much as shift in my seat. Stillness was one of my superpowers. I could wait him out forever if he made me.

Luckily, that wasn’t the case. He dropped his hands onto his desk. “I understand you have made Niels Zwart a great deal of money.”

I shrugged nonchalantly. “It was a simple negotiation, and in fairness, Zwart didn’t know what he had.”

Dasselaar laughed, the sound deep and rumbling, and I almost felt it through the floor. “That is his problem more often than not, but given what he told me, it doesn’t appear you took advantage of his lack of knowledge.”

“There was no need. The Lichtenstein is worth every penny his buyer is going to pay for it.”

Dasselaar nodded. “I regret that I didn’t have the opportunity to acquire that piece for myself.”

I raised an eyebrow. “That surprises me. From what I know of your gallery, you tend to favor the impressionists and neoclassical pieces.”

“You’ve done your research.” He smoothed his hands over his blotter. “You are not wrong. Nineteenth-century art is a weakness of mine. But to acquire a rare Lichtenstein would have been a thrill.”

“The market for pop art outside of Warhol is tricky.”

He laughed again, quieter this time. “Indeed it is.” He sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers again. “But my instincts tell me you are not in Amsterdam to discuss the art markets.”

“You’re right. I’m not. I was in town on business, meeting with several European contacts, as you know, since one of those contacts reached out to you.”

“And what exactly are you hoping to get from your time in Amsterdam?”

“Besides the one point two million dollars from closing Zwart’s deal, you mean?”

Dasselaar’s lips twitched and he nodded.

“I’m looking to increase my European client base, and Zwart mentioned you were hosting an event that might facilitate that goal.”

“Zwart mentioned it?”

“He did.”

The badger shifter’s eyes narrowed as he tried to suss out whether I was telling the truth about Zwart dropping a mention of Dasselaar’s gala into our conversation or if I knew because he’d invited Juno. “Interesting.”

My heartbeat picked up a little. Was there a chance Dasselaar knew why we were really here? “How so?”

“I invited your grandmother to the event Zwart mentioned.”

I schooled my features into a mask of slight surprise. “Did you?”

He inclined his head, scrutinizing me in a way that made me want to squirm, but I held still, doing my best to remain coolly professional. This was my first interaction with Dasselaar, but I was getting the sense he was already suspicious of my intent. Even though Cal and I looked pretty different from one another, it was impossible to deny the similarities, and Dasselaar wasn’t stupid. If he recognized me and made the connection to Cal, this op was dead in the water. He already knew I was connected to Juno and had since before I’d set foot on Dutch soil.

Dasselaar sat forward in his chair abruptly, reaching for the phone on his desk. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and he lifted the receiver to his ear and hit a button on the lit panel. Was he calling his security team to have me removed from the premises? Had I managed to blow the op? What misstep had I made?

But he wasn’t calling his security team. “Ilse, please bring the guest list for the gala and your notes to my office.”

He reset the handset in the cradle and returned to studying me.

Ilse walked through his office door a few moments later and set a blue file folder on his desk. He flipped it open, and I clenched my muscles to keep from leaning over the papers to see his guest list. Felix and Julius had still been unsuccessful in securing a copy.

Dasselaar ran his finger down the list. “Here. I sent her two invitations. One to her address in Alaska and a second via your gallery.”

Shit, shit, shit.

“Juno has been out of town for the better part of the month. Any mail she’s received has been left for her to address when she returns. If I did receive something on her behalf, I wouldn’t have paid it much attention.”

“So she will not be attending?”

“Not unless you also sent an invitation via carrier pigeon to the cruise ship she’s on in the middle of the Pacific.”

To my great relief, Dasselaar laughed. “I assume she’s enjoying her retirement?”

“Seems like it.”

Dasselaar went quiet, and I felt his gaze attempting to bore into me, so I pulled my professional armor a little tighter and gave him no quarter. After another long moment, he relaxed. “I’d like to show you something.” He pushed his bulk out of his chair and stood, waiting for me to do the same.

My heart hammered against my ribs so loudly I wondered if Dasselaar could hear it. I mentally crossed my fingers that what he wanted to show me wasn’t a pair of custom-made cement shoes at the edge of one of Amsterdam’s famous canals. For a second, I wished I’d taken Nero and Cal up on their offer to give me a comm device so they’d know what was happening.

Instead of taking me outside, he led me back into the main part of the gallery where Ilse was talking to a couple in front of a lovely landscape of the Dutch countryside covered in a carpet of bright red tulips. She smiled my way before I turned, following Dasselaar down a hallway that appeared to lead to the rear of the building.

He led me down a hallway toward the back of the building, then into a private gallery. The second I crossed the threshold, I knew why he was showing me this space. Every one of the dozen paintings that hung on the walls was stolen. I recognized each on sight, including a Renoir that had a small red sold sign hanging next to it. Cal had told me he and Jack had agreed to purchase Madeleine Leaning on her Elbow with Flowers in her Hair . It wasn’t my favorite Renoir, but it was the first time I’d seen it in person. The general public tended to assume paintings by the masters were mostly displayed in museums around the world. In reality, a lot of fine art was maintained in private collections. The Renoir I was looking at had been stolen from one such collection during a completely unsophisticated smash-and-grab job over a decade ago and had never been recovered. I dealt with stolen art every day, but coming across pieces I knew were stolen never ceased to surprise me. In this case, I knew Dasselaar had the Renoir, but to see it hanging in his gallery half a world away from where it had been taken was surreal, to say the least. It should have come through me before it ever got to him. And if it had, it wouldn’t be the original that was hanging on the wall. It would be my forgery.

“Unfortunately, that particular piece has already been sold.” Dasselaar had noticed where my eye had immediately gone.

“I’ve never had the privilege of seeing this painting in person. Forgive me in advance for the question I’m about to ask, but is it authentic?”

A sly smile spread across Dasselaar’s lips. “It is.” He gestured to the room at large. “They all are.”

I ran a quick mental tally. Assuming each of the twelve pieces in the room went for current market value, I was surrounded by over three hundred million dollars in stolen art. There were blank spaces on the wall where other pieces must have hung, and I wondered if the missing items would be making an appearance at the gala.

Moving slowly around the room, I studied each piece. Dasselaar’s inventory was a checklist of some of Interpol’s top unsolved thefts, and the part of me that had been raised by a master art and antiquities thief was dying to know how Dasselaar had come to be in possession of so many pieces.

But I didn’t let the question fall past my lips.

“They are all authentic, you say?”

“Do you doubt it?”

I tilted my head in a gesture meant to convey that I wasn’t convinced either way.

“Dimitri, come here.”

A young man who appeared to be in his early to mid-twenties stepped out from behind a partition wall at the back of the gallery. Brilliant chartreuse eyes flashed as they met mine, colors swirling through them so fast it made me dizzy even from across the room. He was tall, only a few inches shorter than me, though he stood with his shoulders slightly rounded as though he was trying to make himself smaller. He was slim and wiry, but as he moved toward us, I was taken in by the subtle grace of his movements. His body moved like silk flowing in a gentle breeze, and I thought I could watch him walk forever. He could make a killing working a runway in Paris or Milan, and that was before considering the absolute perfection of his face. His smooth, unblemished skin was a stunning bronze that almost seemed to glow in the overhead light. He had black hair that shone with shades of blue and green as he came closer, and I had to wonder if the colors I was seeing were natural or another trick of the light. The line of his jaw was sharp enough to cut glass and clean-shaven, and the planes of his aquiline nose spoke of Mediterranean heritage. His plush lips were full, the top one just a little thinner than the bottom, and a deep dusky pink, that made me think he spent a lot of time biting them.

I wanted to bite them.

But it was his eyes that held me captive more than anything. His bright green eyes were round and outlined with thick, dark lashes. They’d widened slightly when he’d noticed I was standing with Dasselaar, taking me in like he recognized me but was surprised to see me there. As he closed the last of the distance between us, his eyes never left mine, and it felt like his gaze reached through me and touched my soul.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach as he continued to stare at me, and for all I knew or cared Dasselaar had faded away into nothingness. Dimitri was all that mattered. He was so beautiful, and I ached to feel his skin under my fingers—to feel his body wrapped around mine—with an intensity I hadn’t felt for anything but my art in a long, long time. I’d never been hit by a craving as deep as the one that coiled in my belly, begging me to pull the younger man closer.

To keep him safe.

To claim him as my own.

That final thought made my breath catch in my chest as Dasselaar snapped at the man.

“Dimitri. Now.” Dasselaar’s tone made a growl rise up in my chest and my hands ball into fists. I bit back the primitive sound and relaxed my hands, unwilling to give away my reaction as I felt Dasselaar’s eyes on me as Dimitri moved across the room.

When Dimitri stopped in front of us where we stood next to a Cezanne landscape, Dasselaar gestured to the painting. Dimitri stepped forward and held out his hand, long fingers shaking as he lifted them toward the painting.

“The boy has a gift.” Dasselaar sounded like the predator he truly was behind the fine art and his farce of a gallery. “If a painting is authentic, Dimitri’s skin can adapt to the colors on the canvas.”

As I watched, the young man’s skin turned from a natural bronze to match the varied shades of green in the landscape. His hand almost disappeared, blending seamlessly into the colors of the painting.

When it came to art, I’d seen almost everything, but what Dimitri was doing was extraordinary. It left me nearly breathless. Dimitri wiggled his fingers and moved his hand around the canvas. The second he was still for more than a moment, the colors on his skin shifted adapting to whatever hues were under his palm.

Cal had tried to explain Dimitri’s talent to me, but he hadn’t done it justice at all.

“Fascinating.” I heard myself breathe the word without meaning to, and the young man’s gaze swung my way. When his eyes connected with mine, it felt like he was looking directly into my soul, and I never wanted him to look away.

Dasselaar grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the painting, and while I was typically not a violent person, I had the sudden urge to break every bone in every one of Dasselaar’s fingers where they gripped Dimitri’s bicep. Again, my fists clenched at my sides, and I breathed through the intense anger that flooded my veins seeing someone else’s hands on something that was mine.

Mine?

Dimitri wasn’t mine.

There was no way.

But my hand rubbed over my neck where the dark skin of my saddle patch was mostly concealed by my shirt. I was desperate to rip the fabric away so I could see if my reaction to Dimitri meant what I thought it might.

That he was my fated mate.

“Get the Vermeer.” Dasselaar let go of Dimitri and shoved him away. He went to the corner of the room where a partition was cleverly concealed and stepped behind it. When he was gone from view, my heart twisted in my chest. He returned a second later, a framed painting in hand.

Dasselaar took it from his hands and turned it to face me. An incredible forgery of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring stared back at me. To the untrained eye, it would have looked one hundred percent authentic, but I had spent years studying the way each of the masters put paint on their canvases, and the angle of the brush strokes was off by the tiniest fraction. While I knew the painting Dasselaar held was fake, I had no doubt the majority of art authenticators would have certified the painting as a genuine Vermeer.

“Show him.” Dasselaar nodded to the painting.

Dimitri had been watching me examine the painting, but at Dasselaar’s command, he stepped forward again, his hand outstretched. This time when his palm hovered over the painting, the colors on his skin split into shades that weren’t on the canvas like his skin couldn’t quite match the color. The rapid shift in hue made the colors that flashed on Dimitri’s skin seem cloudy.

“Since I’m sure you have a keen eye, you’ve no doubt recognized the Vermeer as an excellent forgery, but a forgery nonetheless. When a modern artist attempts to reproduce a piece, the medium is often a mix of several types of contemporary paint meant to mimic the shade, texture, and age of the original. Dimitri’s skin can detect those anomalies, leading to this.” He nodded to where Dimitri’s hand was still clearly visible in front of the painting. Unlike when he’d done the same with the Cezanne, this time the differences between the tones on his skin and the paint on the canvas were obvious.

Dasselaar passed the painting to Dimitri, who took it, stumbling a little under the weight of the frame, and disappeared to put it back behind the partition.

“That was fascinating and immensely helpful when it comes to your business pursuits, no doubt.” I spoke to Dasselaar but kept my eyes on where Dimitri had disappeared, hoping he would reemerge so I could see him again.

“Indeed.” Dasselaar brushed off his hands. “Now that you understand the caliber of merchandise in my collection, let’s talk about what you can do to help me get these pieces and those purchased at my gala shipped without detection.”