3. Avery
AVERY
PLAYLIST: HOLD ON, I’M COMIN’ – SAM we all know it, but he was good in his profession, and he almost got away with stealing the hat, if not for the five security mechanisms he didn’t plan for.”
“He is an idiot,” says Hedda. “How are you planning to do it?”
“The impersonation won’t work,” I say. “Which is why I was thinking more of a forceful version. With your support, of course. That distraction worked quite well in Paris.”
“And what do I get out of it?” she asks.
“You can have Lincoln’s hat,” I say. “I only need the sewn-in letter.”
“There is no letter sewn in,” Hedda says. “I would know—“
“Would you?” I ask. “Because there are only three people on this planet who know about this letter.”
“What’s the letter about?”
“It’s a letter from Abraham to John Wilkes Booth before his assassination.”
It’s a lie. One, I tell, because I need Hedda to be on board.
I need her to break into the holding facility because I am going to have her arrested in the act for the setup in Paris.
I now have every agency breathing down my neck, not that I had before, but the Mona Lisa is a different caliber.
One that makes many powerful people very nervous.
Setting her up does two things. Setting the record straight, I can find the original Rembrandt. I have zero interest in the Mona Lisa. It’s something way too hot for my taste.
“And why has no one ever talked about it?” asks Hedda. She isn’t one to be easily fooled. “It’s such a monumental part of American history.”
“Exactly,” I say, improvising. “Can you imagine nothing that would be in this letter? Imagine if all of it were plannend.”
Hedda is rendered silent.
“I’m in,” she says, and I fight the grin that appears on my face.
“Good,” I say. “I’ll be at your place in an hour; you'd better have more of that Pauillac.”
“Bring plans and dinner,” she says. “I believe that will take a night.”
I hang up and break into laughter. I have known Hedda for years now; she was the one who taught me how to crack a safe when I was seven. Back then, I admired her. My father’s best friend, whose name was known all over the world, and I knew her personally.
My father.
A stitch rushes through my chest.
He was a thief himself, the one who taught me to get whatever I desire.
Sadly, he died in his attempt to steal the Effigy of Eden. Shot in the chest thirty times. That’s what you get when you try to steal from Mafiosos.
He left me everything and nothing. I was fourteen. And I made my way through the underground world. Survived it. Thrived in it.
So I went from being a lost child, with no boundaries and the belief that I could own the world, to the known ghost I am now, with only a name.
Hedda and I have a difficult…relationship. We had a little fallout over a diamond collar I took straight under her nose while I fingered her, and since then, things have been tense. Or rather…playfully vindictive.
I grab a coat because the nights in October can get quite cold already, get the public construction plans for the building with the evidence-holding facility, and take my car keys. I have no interest in riding the subway more than I have to.
I throw the plans onto the passenger seat of my black 1972 911 2.4 Porsche, grab some sushi from the place around the corner, get back, remove my heels, and then start my beautiful lioness. I am a collector of rare things, and so is she.
I drive all the way to Brooklyn, and because the sushi smells so good, I fiddle with the box on the passenger seat, open it, and grab a roll with plain fingers.
As I pass over the Manhattan Bridge, I roll down the window and hold my hand into the cold night’s air. My six-cylinder girl purrs into my ears, and I let her roar several times.
I love this car.
I love Manhattan.
I love what I do.
And I love—
My eyes flash to the passenger seat.
A hollow sensation pulls at my chest, but I twitch my head and remove the sensation.
I pull up at Hedda’s, get out of the car, and walk up the stairs leading to her front door.
I don’t have to knock because the door is open for me before I reach the last step.
I slip inside and nod towards the red-haired woman in her tight dress who holds the door open for me. Her dress is so colorful it hurts my eyes. I like black. Gloss black, matte black, obsidian black, and more black.
Hedda is the complete opposite: eccentric and colorful. And so is her house. Stuffed with all of her collections.
I walk in without waiting for an invitation. I have already been in here anyway. I throw the plans onto the dinner table and place the sushi next to it.
“Come in,” says Hedda playfully.
“No need for formalities,” I say. “Let’s not pretend I haven’t been in here and you not in mine. I have it on camera.”
“Oh yes, where was it?”
“Not doing your job for you,” I say, using her own words against her.
Hedda chuckles and lifts the lid of the sushi box. She seems to agree, as she gets two wine glasses and the bottle I told her to have.
I tried it when I was here for the Rembrandt; it looked too good not to try.
She fills the glasses, we toast, drink, and eat.
“So these are the plans?” she asks as she unrolls the first plan.
“Construction plans from 23 Federal Plaza, yes. But what’s more interesting is this,” I say and take one of the other plans I brought and unroll it.
“It’s the sewerage plans for Worth Streets.
It happens that one pipe runs exactly underneath this—“ I search for a specific elevator shaft, “Shaft here, that leads to the 23rd floor.”
“Where the evidence hold is,” Hedda says.
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“I’m not crawling through sewage pipes,” Hedda says dismissively.
“You are an entitled bitch,” I say playfully.
“I love to be one,” she says, prideful in her typical arrogance. “I have standards and capabilities; there are other options to enter that building.”
“Oh yeah? Enlighten me,” I say.
“We’ll walk straight through the front entrance,” she says.
I snort.
“I most certainly won’t,” I say. “I will be identified before I can spill my name.”
“Exactly,” she says. “What do you think will happen if we walk straight into the FBI’s headquarters? Chaos will break loose. Chaos in which we can so easily get lost.
I suck in my lips.
Because while it will be the most risky stuff I have ever done, it will also be the most epic win I’ll ever make.
I could deliver Hedda straight to Reid Shaw.
I know she wants Hedda as badly as she wants me.
That poor woman is so obsessed with me; she wrote her thesis about me, quite accurate, I must admit, while she missed the most important parts entirely.
I love to play with her, because she is so much fun to tease.
“Can you black out the building from inside?” I ask.
“Yes. Will take me approximately—“ she checks the construction plans, “52 seconds.”
“Weirdly specific,” I say.
“I’ve been in this business a long time, dear,” she says. “And those facilities are meant to keep people in, not out. I mean, who is foolish enough to break into the FBI’s headquarters?”
“Tell me how,” I say.
Hedda shows me circuits and how most of them run via one main landline.
She also tells me how to trigger the vibrational alarms to set off a lockdown and create a minimum 90-second window of complete blackout, unless she manages to hit the landline, which will take them ages to restore power—the generator only powers the most important circuits.
I snigger. The sound of it alone gives me an adrenaline rush.
“So you’re in?” I ask.
“Depends,” she says, puts the plans aside, and gets up.
“Depends on what?” I ask. Hedda doesn’t answer, but grabs another bottle of wine from her wine rack, opens it, and pours us both another drink.
Then, she sits on the table quite close to me.
“Depends on whether you are willing to pay your debt from six years ago.”
With that, she puts one leg on the chair and opens her legs, her dress’s skirt sliding up.
I glance up at her, wide-eyed, because of all the things I thought would happen tonight, this was not it.
“Hedda, come on,” I say.
“You promised me,” she says, “and didn’t deliver. A promise is a promise and must be kept.”
“I fed you a lie to get the diamonds,” I say.
“I am quite aware,” she says. “But you will live up to it; otherwise, I am forced to believe you are telling me another lie.”
“Believe whatever you want,” I say, and aim to get up. “I am doing this with or without you.”
She grabs me by the hair before I can even rise.
“You won’t be doing anything if you don’t pay your debt. You fucked with me twice already, don’t be a princess now.”
Blind rage surges through me in an instant.
“I fucked with you because you had information I needed,” I tell her derogatorily.
My upper lip purses and twitches in disgust as she forces my head between her legs.
“I know,” she says coldly. “That’s why you’ll eat.”
I try to wiggle myself out; pain soars through my scalp, and then she brings her legs around my head.
“Eat,” she orders me.
My entire body revolts.
She has no underwear on and pushes my face into her pussy.
My mind goes so blank that I can’t move.
The only thing I know is that her scent disgusts me.
I want to vomit.
Murder her.
I dig my nails into her legs, but she only laughs and pulls a gun. It points directly at me.
“You will eat and not make a sound,” she threatens me while pulling my hair so harshly that tears find their way over my cheeks. “Lick, suck, and fuck me with your tongue. If you bite, I’ll make sure it’s the last thing you do.”
With it, the muzzle presses against my head.
My mind goes blank.
I have always been good at not feeling.
Driving away every emotion I ever felt.
And so I do now.
I just do what she tells me to do.
I lick.
I suck.
I fuck her with my tongue.
Eventually, she moans and rolls her hips.
I feel nothing.
Not even anger.
There is only coldness in me.
Coldness like death.
I just repeat what I do.
Lick.
Suck.
Fuck.
And then, she comes.
She squirts all over my face and finally lets go of me.
The moment she does, I get up like a robot.
I take my coat.
Walk outside.
And the moment I am on the sidewalk, I vomit.
The smell of her. It is the most disgusting thing I have ever smelled.
I wipe the fluid from my face and the vomit from my lips. I get into my car and drive on autopilot. When I reach my garage, my hands shake like crazy.
I get up into my studio, slip without undressing into the shower, and let the water run over me for what could be hours. I scrub myself five times, all over, before I can get out of the dress and shoes. Then I scrub myself again until my skin is red and peels.
I get out of the shower, brush my teeth several times, throw the brush head away, and get a new one from the drawer to brush again.
When I am done, I finally smell like myself again.
I lean on the vanity top. My fingertips dig painfully into the surface as I stare at myself in the mirror.
My hands tremble.
A feeling tries to crawl up on me. A feeling of being a failure. A worthless—
“No!” I shout at myself to stop the feeling, the thought. “Stop it right there. You don’t go there.”
So I don’t.
I swallow down.
The anger in my chest and the hollow sensation in my stomach disappear.
I draw back my shoulders.
My head twitches briefly.
And I am back to my baseline of cold and calculating.
I need to get that hat.
And I will.
I will get it tonight with the knowledge I got from Hedda.
I dry myself and then walk over to my drawer with the functional wear. Grab some clothes, pack a backpack with ropes, a harness, lockpicking tools, and everything else I might need, including a gun.
I grab a brand-new burner phone, the card, and dial the number.
“It’s me, Avery,” I say. “I’m ready to collect.”
“Yes,” answers the woman. The woman whose ass I once saved and who gave me the number, and thereby became a loose acquaintance over the years. “What do you need?”
“I need to break into 26 Federal Plaza. Tonight.”
A moment of silence.
“How?”
“Landline blackout, timed at exactly 11:43,” I say, glancing at my watch. “Can you do that?”
“What level are you aiming for?”
“23rd floor,” I say.
“I can blackout the entire area for fifteen minutes,” she says. “If you get the chance, Operation Blue Reef, Evidence Number 14.”
“Understood,” I say, and we hang up.
My mind is quiet and focused.
I am going to get the hat.
And then, I am going to get my revenge on Hedda for what she has done.
I have never killed.
Never felt any desire to.
But I am going to kill Hedda.
And if it is the last thing I do.