Epilogue
Reid
Playlist: Are You Gonna Be My Girl – Jet
“Iknow where the Mona Lisa is,” Avery tells me as she sits on my desk. “And you will help me steal it.”
“I will most certainly not commit a crime,” I say.
“Technically, it’s not a crime; we’re just returning an object of historic importance to the rightful owner.”
“Technically, you surely won’t return it and take it for yourself,” I tell her.
“Nah, I am reformed,” she says. “Haven’t stolen anything in the last two years.”
“That is not true, and you know it,” I say.
“Let me rephrase,” she says and smirks self-sufficiently, “I didn’t steal anything that wasn’t on your orders.”
“As if I could ever confirm,” I say.
“Just let me right.”
“No,” I say. “So where is it?”
“Here,” she says, rolls out a plan, and points at the penthouse of a skyscraper.
“Billionaire’s row,” I say.
“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah, not happening,” I say. “How do you believe you’re getting in there? And there is only a single exit.
“No, there are multiple exits; one would involve a helicopter, the other jumping from the terrace with a kite, and one using the window cleaning hooks.”
I stare at her.
“You’d jump from a fucking terrace with a kite?” I ask her incredulously.
“Terraces, roofs, windows. Done so many times when this got tight. Thought about that when I stole the hat. But you were too fast, and I apparently too drunk. So, are you in?”
“How valid is your intel?” I ask.
“You won’t get her the official way,” she says. “The moment that warrant is requested, she’ll be gone.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“Because that penthouse belongs to Theodor Hester Langley.”
I groan; she doesn’t even need to end her sentence.
That man is an untouchable pain in the is who is best friends with the current AG and his three predecessors.
“So, are you in?”
“One day we’ll sit in front of a commission because of you,” I say.
“You, not I.”
Breathe, I tell myself. Breathe in and out.
But breathing doesn’t do it at this point. Even after two years, she is driving me up the wall every day.
“Is that a yes?”
“I suppose,” I say.
“Good,” she says. “Then let’s go.”
“Now?”
“Yeah. I'll tell you the plan on the way.”
I stare at her.
Stare at the open laptop with the paperwork of my really quiet day.
Back at her.
Sigh.
Close the laptop.
“Do we need a team?”
“Nope, unless you’re throwing in the helicopter.”
“I won’t.”
“Too bad.”
We walk out of my office.
“Where are you heading to?” asks Rachel, calling after us. Things have been rather strange with her and me, because Avery shoots venomous comments at her all the time. Because my girlfriend is as possessive as it can get.
“None of your concern,” says Avery and walks straight past her. Rachel rolls her eyes.
“There is something she has to show me,” I tell Rachel, drawing up my shoulders, pretending as if I didn’t know that we’re about to break into private property.
“You know you don’t have to lie to her,” says Avery when we’re in the elevator.
“She doesn’t need to know,” I say. “The less people know what we’re doing, the better.”
“You are aware that Rachel has been my informant all those years, which is why I could evade you so well, yes?”
It takes the entire way down with the elevator until I have processed what she just told me, and if not for the bing of the arriving elevator, I would still stare.
But it rips me from my mind, and I explode.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I roar at a box and hit her in the chest. “You are telling me she has been leaking information to you for all those years?” She is a fucking mole?!?!”
“I thought you knew,” she says carelessly.
“You fucking didn’t! You waited until NOW to tell me? You had countless times to tell me! Why fucking now?”
My mind explodes as I realize she might have paid Rachel to befriend me—
“Did you make her—?”
“No,” she says, and her eyes narrow. “That happened after you two were, you know—“
I box her again.
“If you box me one more time, I am going to push you back into that elevator, choke you, and finger you until you can’t spell your own name anymore,” she says.
How dare she try to make this sexual?
“I hate you!” I shout at her.
“No, you don’t,” she says.
“I do! Because you are driving me CRAZY!”
“And you love it,” she says, brushes through my hair, pushes my head back, and kisses me.
“Your love language is sacrificing yourself for me; mine is annoying you as much as possible.”
“I hate you,” I mumble against her lips, as she does not stop kissing me, and pushes me into the garage wall.
“But you also love me,” she says.
“Unfortunately, I do,” I say with a growl.
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” she asks, pushes herself off me, and walks to my car. “Come on,” she says, “We have a painting to steal.”
She stands at the car and grins broadly.
Maybe it’s this moment where I see the delight shimmering in her eyes that I understand what she sacrificed for me when she stopped stealing and truly worked for and with me.
She gave up a part of herself for me.
A fact that makes me sadder than anything else, because if she had required me to give up being an agent—and she might have me one day investigate when I fail a routine polygraph, and they start an investigation into me—the thought of it makes me nervous every day.
I sit in the car, and she is in the passenger seat.
“What’s up?” she asks and turns to me.
“Nothing,” I say.
“Shaw,” she says warningly.
I roll my eyes.
“It’s just—“ I begin. “I’m sorry you had to give up what makes you happy.”
She chuckles, shakes her head, and one corner of her mouth tugs up knowingly as she leans over and grasps my face.
“You make me happy,” she says, “Nothing else matters.”
“But you had to give up everything you are.”
“So what?” she says. “I reinvented myself.”
“But you shouldn’t change for someone else—“ I say. “It’s—you once said you won’t change for anyone—and now—“
“Shaw,” she says sternly. “I changed because I wanted to change.”
“But—“
“It was my decision.”
“But—“ I begin, but she interrupts me again.
“I want to be here, end of discussion. Stop guilt-tripping yourself for my decision.”
“But I made you—”
“Shaw, respectfully, I am Avery Zayne. No one makes me do anything I don’t want.”
I have to laugh.
She has to laugh.
“Also,” she says with a chuckle as she sits back on her seat, “it’s quite refreshing being on the other side of the law here and there. Now, drive, we have laws to break.”
I give her one last look before I start the motor.
Our eyes meet.
And I know this will be forever.
Even if she drives me nuts every day.
Avery
Playlist: Ooh Ahh (My Life Be Like) – Grits, TobyMac
“What the hell are you doing?” Shaw asks as I sniff the painting.
“Checking if it’s fake,” I say.
“You can smell that?”
“Yes, because I am that good,” I say, and she rolls her eyes.
“Smells real,” I say.
I can’t tell if I have felt any more alive than right now, as I cover the most valuable canvas in the world and slip it into its transportation bag with the woman I love by my side. The woman I thought would never do this heist with me, but apparently, I had the best possible influence on her.
“Here,” I say and throw it at her.
“Will you stop throwing that thing around!”
“Relax, babe,” I say, knowing she won’t.
“Relax!” she shouts and walks up and down as I fumble in my pocket. “We broke into a fucking penthouse and are stealing the most notable painting there is!”
“Yes, and?” I ask her, solely for the purpose of teasing her.
“Are you quite done?”
“No need for hurry,” I say, and she turns away; apparently, she had had enough.
I sink to one knee.
“Babe,” I say.
“Fuck off,” she tells me without looking.
“Babe,” I say. “Will you marry me?”
She spins around, looks at me, her eyes wide, mouth slightly parted.
“You are out of your fucking mind,” she whispers.
“I might be. Still, marry me.”
She stares at me as she covers her mouth with her hands. It took her that long to process what I am doing.
“You planned this all along,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “For a long time. This was the moment.”
“Yes,” she breathes out with watery eyes.
“Yes?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” she says, and tears run down her cheeks as the Mona Lisa, luckily safely packed, rushes to the floor and she squats down to me and kisses me.
When we end the kiss, I grab her hand and put the ring on her finger.
“Got one for me, too,” I say, and lift the velvet inlay, with a second ring in it. She grabs it and puts it on my finger.
“They look quite different,” she says.
“On purpose,” I say. “So you don’t get into trouble.”
“I will anyway,” she says.
“Not if I can help it,” I say.
“You can’t help that polygraph,” she says. I know it’s her routine polygraph year, but I couldn’t care less.
“I can,” I say. “I can fool every test in the book; you can learn that, too.”
“But I don’t want to!” she shouts and jumps up.
“Then don’t,” I say, and get up. She walks up and down in front of me.
“I gave an oath; I am lying and breaking rules, and—“
“Do you think the AG doesn’t do it by tipping off his friends? Everyone has their secrets; you just don’t know them.”
She stops in her tracks.
“We are stealing the fucking Mona Lisa!” she shouts.
“Who you did drop onto the floor, by the way,” I say and point at it.
Horror flickers through her eyes as she flaps her hand in front of her mouth.
I only laugh.
“Let’s get outta here,” I say, and brush over her cheeks as I pick up the transportation back. “We’ll figure out the rest when it’s time.”
I walk her to the elevator.
“How did you do it?” she asks me when we walk through the garage.
“Do what?”
“We’re walking through surveilled areas—“
I point at the man who is currently repairing the garage gate.
She follows my gaze.
“Rossi,” she says.
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“That’s how you did them all?”
“The complicated ones, yes.”
We get into the car and drive past Rossi. When we stop, I open the door and slip him the small model of De Lumieres that I took from the penthouse.
“What was that?” Shaw asks immediately.
“Payment,” I say.
She rolls her eyes.
“Let’s get home,” I say when she turns onto the road.
“We’re not driving around with that canvas in the car,” she says.