Chapter 15
Dario was not thinking about Frederica. Not at all. He was a professional with a job to do. Hooking up with dangerous people wasn't a part of it. Not this time anyway.
He was making more coffee in the Alesci kitchen at seven in the morning, enjoying the silence as much as he could before the day started.
He would be ready, and focused, and wouldn't obsess over the fact that he had kissed Frederica against the terrace railing under a sky full of stars, and she had kissed him back like she had been waiting for an excuse.
He had told her it wouldn't happen again because she made him forget every smooth move he had cultivated over the years.
The thing between them was manageable and didn't require further examination. It meant nothing.
Heat of the moment, as you said…so much heat. Fuck.
The problem was that the version of Dario who had said those words was a reasonable, measured adult who understood consequences, and the version of him currently standing in the kitchen with a coffee cup and no peace of mind was the version that kept replaying the sound she had made when he pulled her in close.
Those insanely soft lips and berry scented…
"Basta," he scolded himself.
Dario said he wouldn't chase or beg, but he had been close. Hell, if Frederica had asked him to, he would have thrown all of those consequences to the wind, bent her over the railing, and fucked her right there under the stars.
He poured more coffee and drank it down, hoping that it would jolt him out of this hell spiral he was in.
The files were already spread across the kitchen table—Tore's records, the intel Altun and Serapis had worked through the night to compile, and a hand-drawn floor plan that Tore had produced in twenty minutes because he had stolen from so many churches and museums in his time he considered sketching detailed maps a marketable skill.
Dario pulled the nearest chair out and sat down to look over the first thing on their list of things to steal.
The Tears of Theotokos. A Byzantine reliquary, ninth century, cataloged but rarely examined, currently in the basement archive of a small museum attached to the Church of Saint John in the valley outside Selcuk.
The church sat on land that had once been sacred to Artemis. The original great temple to her had been one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and even after it was gone, the ground remembered their goddess.
In 431 AD, the Council of Ephesus gathered there and officially declared Mary the Theotokos, the God-bearer, and the same sacred ground absorbed that history, too, because it wasn't going to part with its goddess, no matter what face she wore.
Protective power layered on protective power, generation after generation, pagan and Christian, and something older than both.
The reliquary was said to contain the magical tears Mother Mary shed on Golgotha as she watched her son die. Grief for the death of one god was apparently good fuel to help birth another, and Agrippa needed the power it had to fuel his ascension.
Dario was still reading about it when Frederica came in through the back door. He finished the paragraph he was on, and he looked up, because he wasn't going to look away. He had a feeling that too many people did that to her. Besides, he liked looking at her.
Frederica was in training clothes. Dark, close-fitting tights and a T-shirt, her hair up in a ponytail that swished enticingly as she walked. She had already been outside for a walk or a run because there was a faint flush in her cheeks and sweat across her brow.
"Tell me there's some of that coffee left," she said, by way of good morning.
"Behind you. I made extra."
She poured a cup, turned, and surveyed the table. "You've been up for a while, too?"
"Tore and the others left notes, and I wanted to read them before we talked."
She pulled out the chair across from him and sat before picking up the floor plan and studying it. "You ever been to Ephesus?"
"Once, with my father when I was twelve. He liked ruins and history in general. Amazing place."
Frederica turned the floor plan ninety degrees, reorienting something in her head.
"Basement access to the museum is the issue.
There are two stairwells—one from the main gallery, one from a service corridor that runs behind the restoration office.
The service corridor connects to the back of the building. "
"Which isn't accessible during regular hours."
"The charity dinner in two days changes that. Catering, event staff, and additional people moving through the service areas." She set the floor plan down. "Someone with a catering uniform and a reason to be near the restoration office wouldn't get a second look."
"Until she disappeared into the basement for fifteen minutes," he pointed out.
"Which is where you come in," she said simply.
Something settled in Dario's chest that had been restless since the night before. He could do this. This had rules he understood.
"Tell me about the event," he said, leaning forward to rest his arms on the table.
"Annual fundraiser for the church restoration project. A mix of local academics, Turkish cultural foundation donors, and a few international collectors who give money to look respectable. Black tie, open bar, speeches about Byzantine heritage." Her eyes moved to him. "It will be your kind of room."
"Very much my kind of room," he agreed. "The collector crowd is useful. People who buy and sell old religious artifacts don't ask careful questions about where the artifacts come from. That's common ground."
"The museum director will be there. His name is Polat. According to Tore's contact, he responds well to flattery about the collection and poorly to anyone who questions its documentation or authenticity."
"So I should question the documentation if we get in a tight spot?"
"Why would you—"
"Because if he's defensive, he's distracted. A defensive man watches the person annoying him, not the rest of the room." He picked up his coffee. "What's the guard rotation like on the basement level?"
She slid a separate sheet across the table. "Two guards during the event. One stationed at the gallery stairwell, one doing a circuit of the service corridor. The circuit is twelve minutes. I can work within twelve minutes if the corridor guard is pulled off rotation."
"What pulls him off rotation?"
"Ideally, something on the other end of the building that requires his attention." She looked at Dario with the direct, assessing gaze she used when she was calculating variables. "Something loud enough to notice and investigate, minor enough not to escalate."
"Like a drunk collector having a crisis and getting defensive over some imagined slight?"
"That can work." She picked up her coffee again. "Tore also noted that the reliquary is in a climate-controlled cabinet with a mechanical lock. Older style. I can open it."
"How long will it take you?"
Frederica frowned in thought. "Probably ninety seconds if the intel is still correct."
"So we need at least three minutes clear in the corridor for you to get in, open it, and get out."
"With a thirty-second buffer."
Dario pulled the floor plan back toward him. Twelve-minute circuit. A drunk scene on the far side of the building. He ran the timing in his head, checking for gaps, stress points, and the places where the plan would bend under pressure.
There. He tapped the paper. "The catering station. It's positioned between the service corridor entrance and the main gallery. If the corridor guard does a partial circuit and doubles back early, your exit line is blocked."
Frederica leaned forward to see where he was pointing. "He won't double back early unless there is reason to."
"In case there is, I'm going to make sure Iz or Leo can get a check on it before we risk it.
" He looked up and found she had leaned across the table, and they were perhaps thirty centimeters apart, both looking at the same floor plan.
He ignored the way his pulse skipped a beat.
"We need a second exit option. A window, a service door, something. "
"There's a window in the document storage room two doors down from the archive. Ground level. It opens onto a utility alley."
"Passable?"
"I've fit through smaller."
"Then that's the secondary exit. Worst case, you go out the window, I pick you up at the alley entrance on foot." He straightened. "Which means I need to know the building's external layout well enough to get there in under four minutes."
"I'm sure Iz can get you the exterior plans by this afternoon."
"Good."
She was still watching him with that evaluating look. He waited for some smart-ass comment that didn't come.
"You ask good questions," she said finally.
"Don't sound so surprised."
"I'm not surprised." She picked up the floor plan again. "Now, we should go over the guest list. If you're running the social scene, you need to know who you're going to be dealing with."
They worked through the morning at the kitchen table. Despina appeared at one point, assessed the spread of papers across the kitchen table, and proceeded to make poached eggs without being asked.
Tore sat with them for forty minutes, answered questions about the museum's layout because he had cased it at some point in the past, and then drifted off to his study without trying to push his own ideas onto them.
By midmorning, they had a plan. It was good. It had contingencies, a secondary exit, and a clear division of tasks that played to both their strengths.
Dario knew his role, and Frederica had her timing down to the minute.
Unfortunately, Dario also knew that if she had come to his bedroom last night instead of going upstairs, he would have given her anything she asked for.
He said kissing her wouldn't happen again because that was what she needed to hear to keep from freaking out on him. He hadn't said anything about not wanting her.
Dario gathered the papers into order and tapped them against the table to straighten the stack. Frederica was making notes in the margin of the guest list, short lines next to each name: useful, irrelevant, avoid.
"We should source the catering uniform today," she said, without looking up. "In case we need alterations like an extra pocket."
"I'll ask Tore if he works with someone in Turkey. If not, I know a guy."
"He does, because I've used them before, and they are reliable." She capped her pen. "Two days isn't much preparation time."
"It's enough for pros like us."
She held his eyes for a moment before she nodded once and went back to the guest list.
Dario pretended to be going over the floor plan of the church again.
He told himself the new restlessness in his chest was the usual pre-job kind and had nothing to do with the woman across the table.
He would get the job done, go back to Italy, and hope that, once he was far enough away from her, he could start believing it.