REID
PLAYLIST: TROUBLE IN MIND – LARKIN POE
Isit at my office desk and stare at the wall, the clock ticking relentlessly, elbows digging into the hard surface as I bring my hands together in a praying position.
Not that I pray to any form of God, I am the biggest atheist existing, but I am praying for my own sanity.
I haven’t slept in two days.
My mind is wide awake and completely exhausted at the same time. I don’t know how I ended up here, but the day has been the most illuminating nightmare I've ever had.
That woman.
She knows too much.
She is arrogant and entitled.
Overstepping and already bending the rules in ways that keep me up at night.
And I got caught right in the middle of it.
A knock on my door.
Rachel.
I tilt my head, pointing for her to enter.
“What’s up with you?” she asks.
I rub my palms over my eyes.
“That bad, huh?”
“She’s getting onto my last nerve, on day one,” I say. “What are you still doing here?”
“I am cataloging the evidence from the Lagner estate,” she says. “I think we can close at least twenty of our cases.”
“I closed almost a hundred of them, at least for us for the time being,” I say.
“You did?
“It was all hers,” I say and throw the list to the end of my desk so Rachel can grab it.
“That’s pretty epic,” she says.
“Epic?” I almost shout out. “It’s a nightmare.
As if she’ll ever stop. I can already see it in her eyes; she’s waiting, preparing.
She isn’t doing this to get out of jail; she probably would’ve broken out of it in one day.
She wants something. And I don’t know what, why, or how.
It drives me nuts! She drives me nuts!” I jump up with my last words, the anger of the day floating through my chest.
“You caught Avery Zayne,” Rachel says. “Just let yourself feel the victory for a moment.”
“I am not so sure we really caught her,” I say.
“You think she’d go to all the lengths to insert herself into the unit?”
“I don’t know,” I say. I don’t know what to think or believe right now. “We have to be very, very careful with everything. She can’t go anywhere alone. Maybe she wants files or needs to go back to the storage, I don’t know.”
I swipe up my phone and open the tracking of her ankle monitor. She is at the address she took me to, stationery.
The logical explanation would be that she’s asleep.
But my gut tells me otherwise.
“Want my opinion?”
“No, but tell me anyway,” I say.
“It doesn’t matter if she wants something. Let her try to get it. We’ll be breathing down her neck the moment she tries. Let her test our security, let her mess up, and she’ll be off your plate. Let her help us, and we’ll go down as the ones who closed all open cases.”
I smirk and shake my head. Rachel has always been a pragmatist, one I have to keep in check here and there because our work is complex and has clear rules to follow.
“You’ll mark my words,” I say. “The day will come when our heads roll because of her.”
“Nah,” she says and sits on my table. “You are way too good for it.”
“She knows things,” I say. “It took her one second to figure out what’s going on with us. She probably had me watched for years. Her first name is arrogance, and her last is uncanny ability.”
Rachel laughs.
“Let her mess up then,” she says and gets up to leave. “Get some sleep,” she says with a knowing look as she closes the door to my office behind her.
I sigh as I get up and pack my stuff.
On my way outside, I stop by the security front desk and tell Mike to alert me immediately whenever Avery uses her card to enter the building.
Then I get to the garage and pick up my car. The greater the distance between the HQ and me as I drive to my place in Brooklyn, the more uneasy I feel.
I check the tracker again. It hasn’t moved.
“It’s late, after midnight,” I tell myself to quieten my mind. “She is sleeping.”
Yes, she is asleep.
You should sleep, too, I tell myself.
My phone rings and rips me from my sleep. I grab my phone with half an eye open. It’s still dark outside.
“Shaw,” I say.
“Turn on your TV,” says Rachel.
My heart beats into my throat immediately, and I am suddenly wide awake.
I knew it.
She did something.
She was up to something, and I didn’t listen to my intuition.
It takes the TV and an endless amount of time to start, and while I put Rachel on speaker, I check the ankle monitor's tracking. It’s still located where it was before.
“What channel?” I ask.
“Doesn’t matter, if it’s not National Geographic.”
I roll my eyes as the TV finally starts. The news is on.
Mega Heist! The Met is clueless as seven pieces have vanished from their collection. The most notable are a Stradivarius violin, worth $20 million, which was stolen alongside an Egyptian statue, a Da Vinci sketch, and an original Viking sword, all worth several million dollars.
“Goddamnit,” I curse out.
“I’m on my way there now,” says Rachel
“Be there in an hour,” I say and groan. We hang up, and I dial Avery’s number, watching the tracker closely.
“You call at ungodly hours,” she says sleepily without concerning herself with a hello when she answers the call.
“The Met was robbed,” I say. “I’m picking you up.”
“What was taken?” she asks, and I can hear her get out of bed and see the tracker moving in her apartment.
While that should quieten my mind to a certain degree, it does not.
The likelihood that she can pull off that heist without leaving her apartment is real.
That Rossi person, whom I can’t find anything about in any of our databases or cases.
“A Stradivarius, an Egyptian statue, a da Vinci drawing, and a Viking sword,” I repeat what I read in the news. “At least that’s what the Met has issued as missing in an official statement.”
“Huh,” she says.
“What?” I ask as I pull up my pants and close the button.
“It’s too random,” she says. “Unless it was a distraction.”
“For what?”
“Look at where the pieces are located in the Met. It’s either to split the heist into security risks or distract from what they really wanted.”
“Huh,” I say now and repeat her words unwillingly. “And what is it they were after? And who?”
“I’m extraordinarily good,” she says in her typical from-above manner, “But I am not a psychic.”
I bit my tongue so I don’t lose my mind.
“I’m picking you up in thirty-five,” I tell her.
“No need,” she says. “I have my own car.”
“Of course you have,” I say, and roll my eyes.
“Let’s meet at the corner of 5th and 80th,” she says and hangs up.
My fists clench because she is driving me nuts. I brush my teeth, loosen my hair with my fingers, and bring it up in a ponytail while I wait for my coffee.
When I arrive at the designated spot she told me to, dusk dips Central Park and the city in a light blue and a touch of orange.
Avery is already waiting for me. Dressed in black, wide high-waist pants, a black blouse with a wide V-neck, high heels, perfect hair, diamond earrings, retro sunglasses, leaning casually against a very expensive-looking black oldtimer Porsche.
Did I expect anything else? No. She is a collector of rare things, and so is her taste, as much as her car, of course.
“Here,” she says and hands me a paper bag.
I take it and glance inside.
My favorite bagel from the cart at the corner of Broadway.
“You know too much,” I say as I close the bag.
“You are a pain in the ass when hungry,” she says.
“And you know that how?” I ask angrily.
She removes her sunglasses and gives me a look with a drawn-up eyebrow.
“Yeah, alright,” I say.
Her mouth curves into a prideful smirk.
“Eat,” she says.
“We have a case,” I say, and don’t eat.
“We do,” she says. “One that starts right here. Also, you’re not allowed to eat inside, and I am not working with a grumpy gremlin.”
Breathe, I tell myself. But breathing isn’t enough in this case.
“Get your ass in there before I fire it into the next jail,” I say darkly at her.
She only laughs.
“What do you see?” she asks me, swirling with her finger, telling me to look around.
My gaze wanders around.
I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.
“Everything that was stolen came from the other side of the museum and the center. This wing here was untouched.”
“You know the target quite well,” I say.
“Are you accusing me of something?” she asks and draws up an eyebrow, building herself up in front of me.
“I know you were in your bed,” I say and wiggle the phone in my hand.
Her eyes narrow.
“You think I managed to remove the ankle monitor?” she says.
“I don’t. But as you managed to be the cause of half of our open cases, I am certain you have people who would do the dirty work for you.”
Her eyes harden.
“I operate alone,” she says, and removes herself from in front of me.
It seems to be a touchy subject for her. I make a mental note in case I need it to use against her.
“Working with Rossi doesn’t seem like you work alone,” I say.
“He is a source,” she says and then points at the roof. “I’ll bet a hundred bucks that they got in through the glass roof.”
“But why go all the way to the other end of the building to steal something there if the only thing they wanted is in this wing?”
“No wonder you never caught me,” she says silently.
“I caught you.”
“Because I was drunk.”
I just let her banter with me, because with every word she says, I learn more about her.
“Still, caught you.”
“I could be gone already.”
“Yet, you are here. So, why?”
“Because,” she says as if I were a stupid four-year-old, “They don’t want it known it’s gone.”
I mean, it makes sense, and a part of me wants her to be wrong, but I have seen too much in my career to dismiss what she just said.
“Let’s get inside,” I say and lead the way.
“Special Agent Shaw, FBI Art Crime, and consultant,” I say when we walk up to the guard and show him my badge.
He lets us in, and Rachel walks up to us.
“Give me the wrap,” I tell her.
“Someone had no breakfast, huh?” she asks, and I’d like to punch her in the face because Avery sucks in her lips so she doesn’t laugh out loud.
Breathe.
“They came in through the roof in the Rockefeller Wing,” Rachel says next, and I take another deep breath.