Chapter Twelve
Taddeo
The man outside the conservation laboratory knew Isolde's name, which eliminated almost every explanation Taddeo would have preferred and replaced them with a much narrower set of possibilities he disliked considerably more.
Random thieves did not cut power selectively, bypass a service alarm, enter through the museum's least visible loading route, and walk directly toward a conservation laboratory after public closing.
Even competent thieves who had studied the building would have no reason to call for a senior objects conservator through a locked door.
Whoever stood on the other side had come because Isolde was inside, and the fact that he knew exactly where to find her meant somebody had supplied more than a name.
Taddeo kept his weapon trained on the door while shifting farther into the open angle between the entrance and the masonry pier shielding her.
Amber emergency light flattened the laboratory into unfamiliar shapes, turning steel cabinets and worktables into cover while glass-fronted storage reflected movement in ways he didn't trust. Behind him, Isolde had gone quiet enough that he could hear the change in her breathing whenever the handle moved.
He preferred that to panic, but every breath had become something his body tracked without permission.
The man outside tested the door again. “Isolde, you don't need to make this difficult.”
Isolde remained behind the heavy worktable, pale beneath the emergency lights but visibly angry. “That's an interesting thing to say when you're the one who broke into my workplace with a gun.”
Taddeo glanced back just far enough to give her a look. “You're not helping.”
“I wasn't talking to you.”
A quiet laugh came from the corridor. “You're supposed to come with us.”
The wording changed the threat.
Supposed to.
Not we want you. Not come out. The man spoke as though Isolde's removal had already been decided somewhere else and he had arrived merely to complete the task.
Taddeo touched the radio at his shoulder. “Marco, status.”
Static answered first, followed by distant gunfire somewhere deeper in the service level. Marco's voice came through strained but controlled. “Rear service is compromised. One team made entry before the alarm propagated. We've got contact near collections.”
“How many?”
“Three confirmed inside. Could be four.”
Taddeo's gaze stayed on the laboratory door. “They knew our entry route.”
“I know.”
“Who outside knew the final movement?”
“I'm building that list now.”
Another metallic impact hit the door.
Isolde's eyes went toward Taddeo. “The route we used tonight wasn't in the normal museum schedule.”
“No.”
“Then somebody told them.”
“Yes.”
She absorbed that quickly, and he watched the conclusion arrive.
Only a limited number of Bellandi people had known when Isolde would return to the museum, how they would enter, and which portion of the building she intended to use.
Whoever planned this attack had not simply guessed that Corwin might have left something at her workplace.
They had known when she would be here to retrieve it.
The narrow glass panel beside the laboratory door exploded inward.
Taddeo moved before the sound finished. He crossed the distance to Isolde, caught her around the shoulders, and drove both of them behind the worktable as a round tore through the space where she'd been crouching seconds earlier.
Glass struck the steel tabletop and scattered across the floor, sharp fragments skittering beneath cabinets while Isolde hit the tile beneath him with a breathless curse.
“Stay down.” Taddeo shifted his weight over her until the table fully interrupted the shooter's angle, one arm braced beside her head while he brought his weapon toward the broken panel.
Another shot hit metal.
Isolde flinched beneath him but did not scream.
Taddeo fired once through the shattered opening when a shadow moved beyond it. The figure disappeared, and a man swore somewhere in the corridor.
“Are you hit?” he asked.
“No.”
“Check.”
“I would know if I'd been shot.”
“Check anyway.”
She gave him a look that under any other circumstance might have started an argument, then ran both hands quickly over her sweater, sides, hips, thighs, and arms. “I'm not hit.”
Taddeo examined her for himself, searching the dark fabric for wetness, her face and throat for glass cuts, the hair near her temple for blood. Nothing. He should have felt the pressure inside his chest loosen.
It didn't.
The attacker remained outside, and there were still too many unknowns between the laboratory and Luca's car.
“We need another exit,” he said.
Isolde looked toward the rear of the lab. “Prep room. It connects to the old inspection corridor.”
“Can you get us to loading?”
“Eventually.”
“Eventually isn't my favorite word right now.”
“It wasn't designed as an emergency escape route for mafia attacks.”
Despite everything, the answer almost pulled a reaction from him. Taddeo moved off her enough to cover the broken panel. “Go.”
Isolde crouched low and crossed behind the worktables while Taddeo held the entrance. She reached the secondary door, pulled once, then swore.
“Locked.”
“Can you open it?”
“Yes, with my badge.” She looked back at him. “The badge your people still haven't returned because apparently access to my own workplace became a security risk.”
“This is an excellent time for that argument.”
“I'm multitasking.”
Another shadow passed the broken glass.
Taddeo fired.
The movement vanished.
Isolde was already at the wall intercom beside her desk. “Marcus can override locally if security stayed up on backup power.”
She pressed the call switch.
Static filled the speaker.
Then a familiar male voice answered. “Conservation?”
“Marcus, it's Isolde.”
There was a pause long enough to imagine the security guard trying to reconcile her voice with the gunfire echoing through his museum. “Isolde? What the hell is going on?”
“I'll explain when no one's shooting at me. I need secondary prep unlocked.”
“There's a lockdown.”
“I know, Marcus. Open the door.”
A heavy impact shook the primary entrance.
Marcus swore through the speaker.
Keys clicked rapidly in the background before the access light beside the secondary door turned green.
“It's open,” Marcus said. “Isolde, who the fuck is in my building?”
Taddeo answered before she could. “Stay inside security and lock your door. Don't leave the enclosure until Marco reaches you.”
Silence followed.
Isolde looked at him. “You could try sounding less like a criminal giving orders in his museum.”
“Later.”
“That was very much the voice.”
“Isolde.”
“I heard you.”
She pulled the prep-room door open.
Taddeo backed after her, keeping his gun trained on the shattered laboratory entrance until the secondary door shut and Isolde engaged the manual lock.
The prep room was narrow and crowded with drying racks, archival board, boxes, and equipment Isolde navigated almost entirely from memory despite the low lighting.
She moved quickly without becoming reckless, cutting between workstations toward a door at the opposite end.
Taddeo followed close enough to catch her if she stumbled, and once they entered the older service corridor beyond, his hand settled against the center of her back.
“Stay in front of me. You know the building better than I do.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “That is generally the opposite of how security works.”
“You know where we're going.”
“Fair.”
The lack of argument unnerved him more than the argument would have.
They moved through the older portion of the museum where exposed brick, utility pipes, and worn floor tracks replaced renovated galleries.
Taddeo listened to Marco redirect the interior team through his radio while Isolde led them around a storage junction and toward a short stair disappearing into darkness.
“Three steps and then a landing,” she warned. “The right side dips.”
Taddeo switched on a compact flashlight. “You've complained about this building enough that I believe you.”
“The defects are historically significant.”
“The bad stair?”
“No. That's just negligence.”
Gunfire cracked somewhere behind them.
Both stopped.
Taddeo listened for pursuit, heard nothing close, and touched Isolde lightly between the shoulder blades. “Keep moving.”
She did.
The freight corridor bent toward an old inspection hall, and Isolde slowed before the final corner.
Taddeo noticed immediately. “Why?”
“There should be a maintenance passage beyond this.”
“Should?”
“The museum changes things. I haven't worked down here in months.”
“That sentence is not improving the evening.”
“I wasn't trying to reassure you.”
She leaned carefully around the brick corner.
Taddeo watched her body stiffen.
He moved beside her.
A man stood between two gray service doors less than twenty feet away. His dark jacket was zipped high around his throat, and a museum identification badge hung at his chest. At first glance he could have been maintenance responding to the power failure.
Then his eyes went directly to Isolde.
His hand moved toward his waist.
Taddeo fired.
The first round struck high in the man's chest and drove him backward against the electrical-room door. His pistol slipped from his hand and hit the floor near his foot.
The man reached for it.
Taddeo fired again.
The movement stopped.
The body folded against the wall and slid down, one leg caught awkwardly beneath him as blood spread across the front of his jacket and darkened the tile.
There was no hesitation after the shot, no suspended instant where Taddeo needed to decide what came next.
He stepped forward, kicked the weapon away, checked the opposite corridor, then turned back toward Isolde.
She had not moved.
Her face had gone white.
Her eyes were on the dead man.
Taddeo stepped into her line of sight. “Look at me.”
She didn't.
“Isolde.”
Her gaze finally lifted.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Anything hit you? Glass?”
“No.”