Chapter Eleven
Isolde
Taddeo's definition of as soon as I know I can get you in and out safely turned out to mean twenty-eight hours, several conversations with Marco, a review of the museum's after-hours staff schedule, traffic-camera checks around the waterfront, and enough discussion of entrances that Isolde began to suspect the Crownport Maritime Museum was about to host either a conservator or a visiting head of state.
She learned most of it because Taddeo had stopped pretending her role in the investigation could be separated from the decisions being made around her.
There were still calls he took behind closed doors and Bellandi matters that vanished from conversation when she entered a room, but the possibility that Corwin had deliberately concealed something inside the Crownport Harbor Pilot and Tide Register had given Isolde a kind of leverage of her own.
Taddeo could send men to retrieve the book.
He could have the museum opened, the corridors watched, and the volume delivered to Northglass inside an armored vehicle if his imagination took him that far.
What he could not do was safely dismantle an old case binding without risking whatever Corwin might have hidden inside it.
If he wanted the book examined properly, he needed her.
The distinction did not make her free. It did, however, make it harder for Taddeo to reduce her to something being transported from one controlled environment to another, and Isolde noticed the difference the following morning when she entered the breakfast room and found him seated beside Marco with a museum floor plan spread across the table.
He wore a charcoal sweater with the sleeves pushed to his forearms, and her attention went automatically to the scar near his elbow before memory supplied the considerably less professional image of those same arms around her the night before.
She diverted herself toward the coffee before either man could notice, although the moment Taddeo looked up, his gaze touched her mouth briefly enough to tell her the previous night was not occupying her thoughts alone.
Marco enlarged the service level on his tablet.
“Nothing obvious has been sitting on the museum since yesterday.
We checked the public garage, staff entrance, loading lane, and the intersections around Mercer.
That doesn't mean nobody is watching, but we don't have a repeat vehicle or a fixed position.”
“After-hours access?” Taddeo asked.
Isolde added milk to her coffee before sitting across from him. “Security, facilities, conservation staff, some senior collections people. Electronic entry logs for the lab, although Marcus can open it manually if there's a legitimate reason.”
“Windows?”
“Sealed.”
“Roof?”
She looked at him over the rim of her cup. “The north drainage channel leaks badly enough in hard rain that anyone attempting a rooftop assault may be defeated by deferred municipal maintenance.”
Marco looked down at the tablet.
Taddeo did not. “I'm identifying access.”
“You're planning a museum visit like we're retrieving someone from hostile territory.”
“We don't know that it isn't hostile.”
The answer removed some of the humor from her before she could make another joke.
The sedan outside the museum on the night Corwin disappeared had not been imaginary.
Someone had known where she worked before Taddeo ever stopped her on Mercer Street, and now they had reason to believe her brother had left evidence there.
Isolde took another drink, then leaned toward the floor plan despite herself.
“The loading entrance is quieter after six,” she said. “Public galleries will be cleared by then, and most staff use the opposite side of the building. If we're trying not to turn this into a spectacle, that's the least visible route.”
Marco nodded. “That matches what we saw.”
Taddeo pointed toward the collections corridor. “Two inside. One here, one at the loading junction. Marco coordinates the building. Luca stays with the car, and two positions remain outside until we're clear.”
Isolde counted. “Seven.”
“Yes.”
“For a book.”
“For you and the book.”
The correction came without emphasis, but it changed the weight of the sentence. She sat back. “Seven is excessive.”
Marco hesitated in the careful way of a man who had probably made the same argument earlier. “It is heavy.”
Taddeo looked at him. “You can say you agree with her. I won't fire you.”
“That's reassuring.”
“It wasn't a promise about exterior west in bad weather.”
A small smile threatened at the corner of Isolde's mouth, but she suppressed it. “How long do I get?”
Taddeo looked back at her. “You tell us.”
“That isn't how conservation works. If Corwin slid a drive beneath a loose lining, it might take minutes. If somebody rebuilt part of the spine around something and used modern adhesive, I work until I can open it without destroying the original structure or whatever is underneath.”
“Four hours?” Marco asked.
“Probably less, but don't rush me because you put a schedule on paper.”
Taddeo closed his notebook. “Then no one rushes her.”
The matter-of-fact way he said it affected her more than it should have. He didn't present her expertise as impressive or unusual, and he didn't make a performance of respecting it. He simply adjusted the plan around the fact that she knew something he did not.
Marco left a few minutes later to finish the arrangements.
Taddeo remained at the table, reviewing something on his phone, while Isolde finished her coffee and tried not to think about how strange it felt to be included in a plan concerning her own movements after days of being informed about them after the decision had already been made.
“Taddeo.”
He looked up. “What?”
“If I decide when we get there that the book can't be safely opened tonight, we stop.”
“Yes.”
She waited, expecting qualification.
None came.
“And if I need equipment you didn't account for?”
“You tell me.”
“And nobody removes the book from the museum until I'm satisfied moving it won't damage it.”
His eyebrows lifted faintly. “Anything else?”
“Probably. I'll develop new demands as the evening progresses.”
“I assumed.”
That was close enough to agreement that Isolde stood before she could find a reason to turn it into an argument.
Elettra intercepted her near the stairs later that afternoon with a garment bag over one arm and a duffel in her hand. “Before you complain, I didn't choose any of it.”
Isolde stopped. “What is it?”
“Your things.”
For several seconds she didn't move.
Elettra held out the garment bag. Isolde recognized her own winter coat before she touched it, the dark wool softened from several seasons of wear and a faint repaired seam near one cuff where she'd caught it on a metal shelving bracket at work.
The duffel contained her jeans, a gray sweater she'd owned for years, her own boots, underwear, toiletries, and enough familiar pieces of her ordinary life to produce a reaction wildly disproportionate to clothing.
“They went into my apartment.”
“Taddeo sent someone with a list I gave him.”
“Of course he did.”
Elettra watched her carefully. “I thought you'd rather go back to work dressed like yourself.”
Isolde ran her fingertips along the worn cuff of the coat.
The new clothing upstairs had fit perfectly from the beginning, which was part of what made her hate it.
It had represented strangers studying her closely enough to construct a life she had not chosen.
Her own sweater had a snag beneath one arm she'd been meaning to mend for nearly a year.
Her jeans had softened around her knees.
The boots were scuffed in places that belonged specifically to her feet.
“They're only clothes,” she murmured.
“They're yours.”
That was the problem.
Isolde carried the bag upstairs and dressed slowly.
When she eventually looked into the mirror, the woman looking back resembled the person who had gone to work on Mercer Street before Taddeo entered her life: her own jeans, gray sweater, silver earrings, familiar coat waiting across the chair.
For several seconds it was possible to imagine that she might reach for her phone, pick up her keys, complain to Linnea about staying late again, and drive herself to the museum.
Then she remembered that she had neither phone nor keys.
The resemblance remained.
The illusion did not.
By six, the cars were waiting beneath the portico.
Taddeo stood in the entrance hall with Marco when Isolde came downstairs. He had changed into a black suit beneath a dark overcoat, and whatever he had been saying stopped when he looked up.
His attention stayed on her.
Not dramatically.
Long enough.
Marco continued speaking for another few seconds before realizing Taddeo was no longer listening. “No trailing vehicle into the loading level unless I call it.”
Taddeo's gaze shifted. “Repeat that.”
Isolde reached the bottom stair with a small smile. “That's unfortunate.”
Marco looked toward the doors with sudden concentration.
Taddeo's expression tightened. “What is?”
“You spent a full day designing an operation around every possible distraction and apparently forgot one.”
He looked back at her.
Isolde adjusted the strap of her conservation bag. “You stopped listening.”
“I was distracted.”
The admission was quieter than she expected.
Marco opened the front door before either of them could make the exchange worse.
Cold coastal air moved through the hall, carrying the smell of wet earth and salt.
Isolde crossed the threshold and stopped beneath the portico.
The main door stood open behind her. The driveway stretched ahead toward the outer gate.
No storm hid the property tonight, no one had forgotten she existed, and there was no possibility that she could walk across twenty-two acres without security responding.
Even so, standing outside with permission felt different enough to be uncomfortable.