Chapter 15
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Paris really is beautiful in the fall.
Shades of amber and dots of bright yellow shift in the breeze, rustling and fluttering like thousands of birds flapping their wings.
The Eiffel Tower has turned off for the night, but the rest of the skyline is alive with warm, flickering lights and the occasional multi-hued glint of a neon sign from a bar or club.
Too bad I’m hunched beside one of the bronze statues, craning over the stone lip to watch my one-armed companion ascend.
Making the climb to the roof was easy, despite my raw fingertips from several meters of free soloing—it’s not necessarily outside the scope of my skills—but the rest of this is almost completely new to me.
Alright, sneaking around rooftops and descending into a building isn’t exactly new territory. But it never felt like this.
Eventually, Graham reaches the top and hauls himself over the lip with a grunt.
In a perfect world, the Consultant will catch wind of this particular heist, and we won’t need to attempt to pull off something as insane as the Louvre.
Two birds with one stone. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself to explain the giddy thrills that have been shooting down my spine since I started scaling the museum wall.
It’s the excitement over potentially getting this whole thing over with. Convenience and adrenaline—that’s all.
Once he recovers, Graham gathers the rope and his device, motioning for me to follow.
We practically duck walk along the edge, hiding from the road behind the lip.
My thighs scream at me the whole way. They’re veering on overexertion from the climb alone, which is embarrassing given that this is something he must regularly do.
No wonder he’s so built, I find myself thinking, the muscles of his back working beneath his sweater. This is the guy that got caught so easily?
I vividly remember that section of his file.
Graham attempted to rob the Metropolitan Museum of Art one evening in November.
He utilized all his typical methods, only…
sloppier. His fingerprints were all over the scene.
He’d knocked out the guards with gas, but didn’t bother with the CCTV or hiding his face from the cameras.
On his route home, he chose to travel by bus, the large, square canvas bag strapped to his back the entire way.
Rumor has it that he was sipping tea and staring at the stolen Degas on his kitchen table when the NYPD burst through his door.
Upon first reading, I’d thought it was hubris. The notorious gentleman thief, who evaded capture for so many years, was felled by his own ego. That explanation doesn’t fit, though. He’s arrogant, sure, but not unchecked like Petyr or Raffaele.
Of course, maybe thieves can grow tired and careless, not unlike agents.
But nothing about Graham Baudelaire shouts tired and careless. He’s calculated, moving like a well-oiled machine, and I can hardly keep up—although I’ll never admit it to him.
“Careful,” Graham whispers, snapping me from my thoughts.
We’re transitioning from the stone roof to the massive, glass dome that arches over the central exhibit room. My boots squeak against the glass, and my stomach does a tiny swoop when I register the expanse of open air underfoot. I suck in a sharp breath.
“Stick to the frame.” Graham tosses me a look over his shoulder. “It would be rather inconvenient if you waited until now to divulge some deep-seated, crippling fear of heights.”
“I scaled ten stories less than twenty minutes ago,” I hiss back with a glare.
The iron groans beneath our weight. I focus on my heartrate, the distant thump of music, the frigid gusts cutting straight through my sweater. This is nothing, I reassure myself. I’ve jumped out of helicopters and hung off the face of a cliff.
But I had an entire agency at my back.
That untethered feeling—the excitement I sensed on the balcony the other night—also means I’ll freefall if I misstep.
After a couple minutes, we climbed halfway up the dome, which is where Graham halts and crouches, feet braced nimbly on the iron frame.
I match his stance on the adjacent beam and watch him flip his bag to the front.
He tosses me a tube without warning. I catch it and read the label. Solvent industriel.
“For the adhesive,” he explains, voice low. “You don’t want to get that on your hands—trust me.”
Graham rises and noiselessly jogs away. He climbs the rest of the dome with ease, securing one end of his rope around the massive finial sticking up from the center.
When he turns around, I unscrew the cap and carefully dispense a thin trail along the seam where glass meets iron.
I toss it back to him and he readily catches it, stooping to work on his side.
“No alarms?” I murmur, admiring the bubbles appearing at the tips of my boots.
He slips the tube back into his bag once he’s finished and presses two large suction cup lifters at diagonal corners. “Not up here.”
“Because no one’s stupid enough to do this?”
Our gazes lock across the glass.
“Possibly,” he replies with a self-satisfied grin. “Grab that end.”
My fingers curl around the handle of the suction cup when I think to look down again. Beneath us—at least forty meters, by my estimation—a flashlight’s bobbing through the maze of displayed artwork. “There’s a guard,” I hiss, mostly to myself. “How did I forget about that?”
Graham lifts his sleeve and peers at his watch. “I didn’t,” he replies.
“That wasn’t?—”
“Now.” He motions to the suction cups, grabbing hold of his with his good arm. “Lift now.”
“What about the?—”
“Do shut up and allow me to do what I’m best at, yes, Agent?”
My eye twitches. “I hate you,” I mutter, bracing as we lift in tandem and gently place the loose pane over a cross section of framework. It’s at least a hundred pounds. I have no idea how he was planning on lifting that with an injured shoulder.
No alarm sounds. The flashlight has vanished, leaving the main exhibit room dark.
Graham stands, casually balancing over the open air like he’s not completely unattached to any safety system. He begins unclasping the harness from his hips. He’s unclasping the harness from his hips.
I look up at him as he extends the harness to me, fabric and metal swinging lazily in the air.
“Now I know you’ve gone insane,” I whisper. “Didn’t you just say this is what you’re best at?”
“You’re such a good listener.”
A flush of anger blooms up my neck. “Do what you came to do, Graham.” My voice is as cold as the iron beneath my soles. “Get this over with,” I snap.
“It’s only that I’m no longer positive I can pull it off.” He feigns a wince and grabs his injured arm.
“You were planning on doing this all alone before I showed up.”
Graham shrugs. “Plans change.”
My eyes flick down to the shadowy, behemoth of an exhibit room below. The wind whistles gently over the gap.
I quietly clear my throat. “The security cameras.”
“You honestly think I didn’t consider that?”
“Graham—” I start, my tone sharp.
“There’s no need to worry, I picked up a small trick from the CIA,” he explains, except that doesn’t exactly make me worry less. “Five minutes until the next guard comes ‘round.” He pointedly checks his watch again. “Four minutes and fifty seconds.”
“Why? Why do you want me to do this?”
“Because—” He swings the harness on one finger. “—I have a hunch that you might have fun, Sloane.”
I waste far too long glaring at him. Ludicrous, I’m thinking as I clasp the harness around my hips and he secures the device to the free end of the rope, feeding enough inside that it’s taut. Fun? That’s why he gallivants from country to country with no regard for laws?
It almost makes me hate him more.
“This will be easy, we’re positioned right over the painting, ” Graham explains over the sound of rushing blood.
A thick carabiner hanging from the device gets clasped to my harness. The loose end of the rope drops and dangles below, where I’ll be soon. My hands are numb.
“One lift and you’ll come back up. The exhibit walls are temporary—the only sensors are on the floors. All you’ve got to do is avoid dropping your feet to the ground, and you’ll smash it,” he continues.
Lowering myself to the frame again, I perch so that my legs are swinging in the open air. A strange swooping sensation yanks at my stomach. As if I’m about to take flight.
“Three minutes,” he says, offering me something else. “Just in case.”
“Not helping.” I accept the hood of black fabric from him, a balaclava, and tug it over my head. He hands me his gloves next, which are warm and loose on my fingers. “What, exactly, am I looking for?” My gaze darts across the maze below. “There’s at least four paintings in each section.”
“It’s a portrait of a bride—you won’t be able to miss it.”
I swallow and peer into the shadowy exhibit, like that will spontaneously light the way. “Here goes nothing,” I grumble.
My eyelids slide shut for a half-second. I draw a steadying breath in through my nose and out through my mouth. I feel my pulse slow.
This is the mission now.
Gripping the frame, I lower myself into the open space, stomach writhing when I let go. I drop a few inches but don’t fall. That’s a good sign, I think, responding to Graham’s thumbs up with a less-than-professional gesture.
With a loose grasp on the rope, the device hums to life and begins lowering me into the air above the exhibit. I scan the perimeter, the surrounding sections, the balcony that wraps around the room. No sign of another guard—yet.
Once I’m halfway down, I crane my neck and try to spot where I’m headed. My eyes have adjusted to the darkness. A couple landscapes, two or three portraits that are most certainly not my target.
I swivel, careful not to send myself rocking like a pendulum. There—below my feet and to the right, illuminated by a sliver of moonlight—a brunette woman in a white dress stares into the darkness.
Two minutes, I think as I draw closer.
The device groans and sputters. Beeps, then halts entirely. I curse silently and look up at Graham. He’s stooped into the opening, hands braced on the frame, the whites of his eyes visible from all the way down here.
I’m out of rope. The painting is three feet away at an angle, and I’m out of rope.
And I’m dangling in the air like live bait.