Chapter 34
COLE
Over at the freeport, Nilsson has arranged everything.
A small moving van waits outside the fence with two men sitting in the cab.
After an extensive check of the movers’ credentials, the van is allowed to roll past the gate.
A thorough search of the vehicle then ensues, conducted by four men, one of whom handles a ferocious German shepherd.
I don’t know if they’re searching for contraband or explosives, but the van finally passes the test. With strict instructions not to leave the path and one armed guard joining them in the cab, the movers make their way to the gallery building.
Trap Prince is nowhere in sight, but we’re met by a platoon of six more guards. Two have clearly been instructed to stay with me at all times; the other four take up posts between the entrance to the building and my individual storage space.
As I open the biometric locks, I’m fully aware this will be the last time I ever set foot on freeport property. I’m surprised by the rush of emotion that tightens my gut. Or maybe that’s just deep bruising setting in, from Trap’s fists.
Nilsson walks the two men through the gallery, indicating everything that needs to be transported.
After a thorough review, the movers hold their own whispered conversation.
Plan finally set, they ferry a number of supplies from the truck—wooden crates for the paintings, plastic boxes for everything else, an entire forest’s worth of packing paper, and several armfuls of heavy, quilted blankets.
It takes them less than an hour to pack.
I don’t know where Nilsson found the crew—maybe they work for a museum, or an auction house, or some shipping company that caters to the world’s elite.
They clearly have experience, and not a single item in my extensive collection raises even a flicker of surprise.
As the movers work, a skeletal young man trails behind them, taking notes on a laptop.
Occasionally, he apologizes profusely and interrupts the flow of movement, stepping in to take photographs with his phone.
He’s been sent by Trap’s legal department, and his inventory will trigger the tax tsunami that will drown me.
The movers fill the van with the same efficiency they used to pack my goods.
The paintings go first, taking most of the space.
The plastic crates are stacked with precision.
Everything is protected by quilted mats before it’s tied down.
The last thing the movers load is the black velvet curtain that hung at the front of my gallery.
The hardware is in a heavy-duty paper bag.
The cadaver from Legal approaches with his computer. Refusing to look me in the eye, he offers the machine, saying, “We just need you to review the inventory and confirm that it matches your own records.”
It’s a reasonable request, but I’m not inclined to load a single bullet into the gun Prince has pointed at my head. I refuse to take the computer.
The unfortunate messenger turns to Nilsson. “Sir?” he asks, extending the machine.
Nilsson eyes him as if he’s the scum around a particularly disgusting drain. “I would prefer not,” he finally says.
“I… Gentlemen…” The hapless clerk looks toward the guards, but he’s clearly not authorized to launch a war.
Kate shoulders past me. “All right, then. Give it here.”
I could stop her, but the endgame would be Prince emerging from his office or his home or wherever he’s waiting on the freeport grounds. And given the fact that I have absolutely no legal or socially acceptable argument to fall back on, I have zero desire to see Trap Prince.
Kate moves through the document quickly. She finds one discrepancy—a Rolex Sea-Dweller recorded as a Submariner. The representative from Legal quickly makes the change, and Kate signs off on the document.
“We’ll want an electronic copy now. And you can follow up with paper in the post.”
Prince’s minion agrees readily, clearly eager to escape to his cubicle in the office tower. As he eases his way past the phalanx of guards, Kate catches me giving her a studious look.
“What?” she asks.
“I didn’t realize you were paying such close attention.”
“I’m Barry Lynch’s daughter. I know a thousand different ways to cook the books.”
The movers are waiting with push brooms and plastic trash bags. There’s little for them to clean up, but they take their job seriously. When they’re finished, the gallery is stripped down to bare concrete floor and walls.
I leave the door open.
The reverse process goes even faster at the bank. A nervous manager waits for us outside the building, his bald head sweating in the June heat. He’s flanked by two armed security guards. The movers have everything stashed in the vault in less than half an hour.
Kate’s phone rings as the manager starts to spin shut the vault door. She glances at the screen and frowns. “Hold on, Breagha,” she says. “I need a better signal.”
Nilsson takes care of tipping the workers, peeling off stacks of hundred-dollar bills for each of them. He hands five hundred to the bank manager who, flustered, tries to give it back. Nilsson insists.
I exit the bank to find Kate shouting into her phone. “Mam! Mam, I don’t care about your migraine! Listen to me, Mam. You can’t do this. You cannot lock her up. Ma—”
Kate looks up from her phone, clearly stunned. “She hung up.”
As Nilsson sends the movers on their way, I ask, “Your mother?”
Kate nods, still staring at her phone as if she’s never seen one before. “They’re locking my sister in the basement. Same as they did me, before we were married.”
“Breagha?” That doesn’t make sense. Breagha is the good Lynch daughter. She follows all the rules.
Kate’s eyes are so wide I can barely see the green around her irises. “She told them about Nate Cohen. He proposed last night, and she said yes.”
“She’s breaking her engagement to Tarasov?” I’m torn between admiring her courage and questioning her sanity.
“She is. But Mam and Da aren’t having any of it. Please,” she says. “We have to go to Baltimore.”
My jaw feels like someone used it for a battering ram.
The ache in my gut tells me I’ve spent far too many hours driving back and forth to DC, and I might need to climb into bed for a week.
I just consigned a fortune to makeshift storage, and even as we stand here, auditors at the IRS are receiving an invitation to destroy me.
But Kate needs me. So I turn to Nilsson, where he’s waiting patiently beside my Jaguar. “I’ll need the Land Rover a while longer.”
“Of course,” he says. “Sir.”
“We’ll see you back at the house this afternoon.”
“Certainly, sir.”
It takes almost two hours to drive from Dover to Baltimore. Along the way, Kate tells me about Nate Cohen, the grad student Breagha has decided to ruin her life for.
“And there’s something else you should know,” she says.
I wait as she stares out the window. Her fingers twist in her lap. Her shoulders look like they’re braced for the roof of the Land Rover to cave in. “Go on,” I finally say.
“Last night…”
I knew this was too easy. I arrived with coffee and an apology. She said she was sorry too. We both managed to laugh about my ne’er-do-well con artist of a sister.
But that’s not enough to get past our fight. Something still waits for us. Something bad, from the tortured look on Kate’s face.
“Last night,” I repeat. My foot stays steady on the gas pedal. The speedometer clocks precisely sixty-two miles an hour.
“I gave Viktor to Tarasov.”
The Land Rover swerves into the next lane of traffic, and a horn sounds behind us, long and loud.
I look away from Kate for long enough to keep from crashing.
Once the vehicle is back under control, I say, “Tarasov tricked his way into my home… He stole my Picasso… He knows about the fake paintings... He’d never trust a line of code I wrote. ”
She looks like she’s chewing on aspirin. “I convinced him.”
“How?”
Her throat works. She starts three separate explanations and abandons each of them. Finally, she says, “I told him I hated you for leaving me at the freeport. I said I was betraying you.”
She’s my wife. She’s my sub. Sometime in the past three months, I’ve learned to parse every expression on her face. She isn’t telling me the truth. Or, at least, she’s not telling all of it.
I can challenge her. Instead, I say, “He’s a fucking idiot.”
“He’s a vicious, rabid dog,” she counters. “And we’re the ones putting him down. He’s already using Viktor. I’ve seen the logs.”
“That’s good enough for me.” I watch the tension in her shoulders ease.
We don’t speak again until we arrive at her father’s stronghold in Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood. The guards at the gate recognize Kate, and they wave us through. We find Barry and Orla Lynch upstairs, huddled in his office.
Barry’s face is scarlet as he shouts into his phone.
Sweat streams down his cheeks. “And I’m telling you, Monsignor.
My daughter will be wed tomorrow, or St. Brigid’s will never see another penny from the Lynch clan.
” Barry listens. Splutters. Then he bellows, “We’ll see if the bishop is as tied to tradition as you are!
” He slams the phone down so hard the plastic casing cracks.
Orla leaps to her feet when she spies us. “Thank God you’re here,” she says. “That feckin’ gowl is about to ruin everything. Cole, we need your help.”
Kate’s own parents don’t even acknowledge she’s in the room. I take a step back to avoid the claws Orla attempts to dig into my biceps.
“Cole, dear,” she says, the Irish in her voice bleaching to a wheedling Baltimore accent. “I’m afraid Breagha has decided to imitate her sister at the worst possible time. She’s set her hat for a totally unacceptable boy.”
Kate pushes past me, refusing to be ignored.