Chapter Thirty-One
Mary Alice flung herself at Nat, nearly knocking her off her feet.
Nat winced. “Easy, girl. I’ve got a dislocated shoulder and about seventeen other injuries.”
“We thought you were dead,” Mary Alice said through snotty tears.
“Hell, I almost was. That bitch knocked me straight into a metal panel on the edge of the viaduct. If it hadn’t held, I’d have gone all the way over.” The rest of us hugged her tight, ignoring her protests. We were all hurting, and I felt old as something from the Pleistocene. But Nat was there, bruised and bothered and alive.
“You saved Nula!” she exclaimed, cuddling her chicken with her good arm.
“You are not getting that thing home,” Mary Alice warned her.
“Watch me.”
They fell to bickering gently as somebody behind us cleared her throat.
“Naomi! What the hell are you doing in Montenegro?” I demanded.
“Following my mole,” she said. She was dressed in a moto suit of padded black leather, sleek and chic, like she meant business.
I gestured towards her outfit. “You should wear that to the office. Biker Fridays.”
“Office nothing. I’m keeping this to wear at home,” she said. “Dennis won’t know what hit him.” She pointed up the mountain to the nearest railway bridge, so small it looked like a toy. “You came from up there?”
“After we bailed out of a moving train,” Mary Alice told her.
“Galina?”
“Handled,” I told her. “Along with her bodyguard.”
“Good,” Naomi said. “Now I just have to find our mole.” She reached for her phone and pulled up a picture of a dark-haired young woman wearing a seafoam green taffeta dress and an expression that said she’d rather be anywhere else. “Lyndsay really was at her sister’s wedding. I felt so bad for suspecting her, I had to give her a raise. And a better benefits package.”
Maybe I wouldn’t send her a muffin basket, after all. Some extra PTO was a lot better than pastries.
“The mole is Marilyn Carstairs,” I told her.
She grinned, the kind of grin a cobra shows a mouse. “Oh, I know. I’ve got some plans for her.”
“We handled her too,” Helen put in.
Naomi’s brows rose. “Permanently?”
“We locked her in a compartment with a man who was missing his head,” Mary Alice said. “Muri?’s courier. Marilyn will be sitting in a cell by now, trying to explain that to the Montenegrin police.”
Naomi gave a soundless whistle. “Permanent enough.”
“Will you get her out?” I asked.
Naomi made her expression carefully blank. “Get who out? I’m afraid I don’t know anybody in Montenegro.”
Chapter closed on Marilyn Carstairs, then. She had set us up to die and had been perfectly content with the murders of Lilian Flanders and Jovan Muri?’s henchman. I was okay with her being tossed into a Montenegrin jail. If the conditions didn’t kill her, Muri?’s connections probably would. Word travels fast in the Balkans. There was always a chance I might feel bad about it later, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t.
I reached into the pocket of my jacket and pulled out a small navy blue Smythson notebook. I held it out to Naomi.
“Pasha Lazarov’s planner. I know we’ve wrapped everything up here, but maybe your department can find something useful in his business contacts. It belongs in Provenance.”
She took it and dropped it into her bag. “Thank you. But we haven’t wrapped everything up here. I still don’t know exactly what Marilyn and Galina were doing on this train. If they were in business together, we’ve got to clean that up. No loose ends.”
“I think we can help with that,” I told Naomi. I gestured towards Helen and she dropped the backpack gently at my feet. She held it open while Mary Alice pulled out the case. She handed it to me, and I opened it. I didn’t have to say a word. Naomi had been in Provenance all of her career. She knew everything about the ones that had gotten away.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. She put out a hand to touch Leda , just as I had. And just as I had, she drew back reverently. “Where has she been?”
I shrugged. “With Jovan Muri?, most recently. Before that, who knows?”
“We’re officially handing her over to you for repatriation,” Mary Alice said.
Naomi nodded. “The family she was looted from is in Stockholm now. I’ll see to it they get her back before I go back stateside.”
“What about us?” Nat asked.
“What about you?”
“Marilyn Carstairs gets a heaping helping of Montenegrin justice. The family in Sweden gets their painting back. What do we get? I mean, I just got flung off a train and nearly killed. Mary Alice and Helen are bleeding all over the place, and the way Billie is holding her side, I’m guessing she’s got broken ribs—”
Naomi held up a hand. “Point taken. What do you want?”
“Bonuses,” Mary Alice said quickly.
“Housing stipend,” Helen added. “I’ve got to find somewhere to live while I rebuild Benscombe.”
I looked at her and grinned. “Maybe a flat in Brussels?”
She grinned back. “Maybe for a little while.”
“And pensions,” Nat piped up.
Naomi turned to me, clearly getting impatient. “Anything else, since I’m apparently taking orders like a Hardee’s drive-thru?”
“I agree about the pensions,” I said. “But it needs to be official. I want us on the books as having retired from the Museum. In good standing.”
Her expression softened. “I can do that. I’ll push through everything you’ve asked for. And I’ll arrange for your return home as well—first class. On the company’s dime, of course.”
“Not straightaway,” Mary Alice said quickly. “We need to head back to Venice first.”
“Akiko is fine,” Naomi assured her. “I saw her on my way here. But Wolfie is still there,” she warned us.
“We’ll take care of him,” Helen promised.
Naomi hadn’t put the painting away yet. The morning sun fell across the canvas, illuminating it. “Raphael painted her in oils more than five hundred years ago,” Naomi said quietly. “And she still looks like she could talk to you if she wanted.” The four of us stood next to Naomi, looking at Leda as she looked back at us. I knew we’d probably never see Leda again. She’d be sent to the family that had lost her and they would hang her on their walls or stick her in a vault somewhere. They might even auction her off—anyone would be at least tempted by the kind of money Leda would bring in. She had once hung on the walls of a king’s palace; maybe her next home would be an apartment in Stockholm or a penthouse in Shanghai. Wherever she ended up, I hoped she would be with people who loved her. She deserved it.
As Naomi zipped up the backpack, the rider who had been carrying Nat pillion lowered the kickstand of his bike and dismounted, pulling off his helmet. He set it on his seat and came to me. My broken ribs ached and every square inch of my body felt bruised and lacerated, but a gleaming sun was coming up over the mountain. Another day was dawning and I was there to see it. He opened his arms and I went into them, resting my head in the crook of his neck.
“You good?” His voice rumbled in his chest and I nodded, thinking of the day I’d left Greece, the day he’d promised me that when the job was finished, he’d be there. Well, the job was done, Naomi had been briefed, and here he was.
“You’ve got good timing, English.”
He tipped his head. “Do I?”
I looked at his bike and grinned as I raised my face for him to kiss me.
“Yeah. I think maybe I needed a little rescuing this time.”
I couldn’t lift my arms high enough to hug him back, but he did the job well enough for both of us. When he’d finished, he strapped a spare helmet on me and helped me onto the bike. The others were all settled behind the rest of the riders Taverner and Naomi had brought—Museum contacts from around the Balkans, I found out later.
I leaned back and Taverner climbed onto the bike, shielding me with his body. I looped a few fingers through his belt loop and rested my head on his back.
“Ready?” he shouted.
“Take me home, English.”