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No.
I couldn’t let myself spiral like this. I had to somehow manage to pull my life back together. I’d done it before; I could do it again. That strength I had to leave the Crimson Ring, to find my way after my parents pushed me out, hadn’t gone anywhere. I still possessed it. Same way I still possessed my powers, which I’d been coming to accept and master with every new training session. I couldn’t let that progress go to waste.
Most of all, I couldn’t let Maddox keep thinking I was involved in stealing the paintings.
Trying not to think about his look of disappointment and hurt from last night, I toweled myself off, washed my face, and dumped my wrinkled boxers and T-shirt in the hamper, going for a fresh pair of clothes. I tugged on the shorts and pulled on the shirt.
Back in my room, I grabbed my laptop, and Lily looked up from her spot on the bed, giving an exhausted yawn before dropping her head back onto her paws. I sat down on the edge of the bed, opening my laptop and going straight for the folder holding all the information about the Moriarty paintings.
On my screen were photographs of the three paintings, their hypnotizing patterns and swirls of color looking like some kind of galaxy to me. If the Crimson Ring had stolen those two paintings, then that meant they already had all three. The lock could already be broken.
The thought sent a shiver down my spine.
I looked at the paintings, wondering if maybe I could discern what was underneath the swirls. They looked like abstract scenescapes when they were analyzed individually, each one focusing on a different gradient of colors. Blues shifted to teals shifted to greens that jumped to the second painting, where the greens shifted to yellows shifted to reds, which jumped to the other painting. That last one was more chaotic than the rest, mixing in strokes of inky black and reflective white. That had been the one we were missing. The first two…
Wait a second.
I zoomed in on the first painting. On the bottom left corner, right next to a swirl of baby blue paint—it was small but noticeable. Written in a delicate hand, the letters thin but flowy, was a single name: Moriarty. I set the laptop down on the bed and grabbed my phone from my pocket, pulling up the photo I had taken when I was in Maddox’s horde room.
I held it up next to the laptop screen. If it were one of those spot-the-difference games, I would have won instantly.
The painting in the horde room was missing a signature. The corner was bare.
The painting was a fake.
“I fucking knew it,” I said, Lily lifting her head again.
There was still a chance we could save this. The Crimson Ring didn’t have all three paintings. We had time. But where could that last one be?
I got up from the bed and went to the windows, opening the curtains and letting in the bright morning sun. My room was the only room in the apartment that had a small sliver of a balcony, so I opened the door to that. The sounds of the nearby freeway sounded like a distant ocean if I didn’t focus on the random bangs I’d hear from the occasional car crash.
I went back to my bed and dug through all of my notes. The thrill coursing through me was revitalizing. This was one of my favorite parts about being a detective. When a case began to fall into place, the picture became clearer and clearer with every passing minute. It made my thoughts clearer and my focus razor-sharp. I sifted through journal entries from Moriarty himself, from art collectors who had been hunting his paintings for decades, and from random forum posts on conspiracy websites.
It was in the emails I was sent from a museum curator here in Los Angeles that I found the key.
They had mentioned the painting being lost in transit. The owner was an older gentleman who lived in a penthouse apartment, one of the few in Los Angeles with its own attic space. He said he’d misplaced the painting and was never able to recover it. That was the same home where the Crimson Ring had set their trap, the day Maddox and I first met.
And then there was what Kyler said about the trap being set where they were sure an original would be. So Kyler thought the same. But we all left that attic without ever finding the real painting.
Maybe we just hadn’t looked hard enough? Could the real painting still be there?
I had to call Maddox. Had to tell him what I figured out. I pulled up his number and dialed, his face filling my screen. It was a picture I had taken of him on our first date in the gondola. He was looking to the side, a relaxed grin on his face, the sunlight bright against his sapphire-blue scales. Two tall palm trees perfectly framed him, the pop of sunshine-yellow house directly behind him. He looked happy. He looked like a superhero. My stomach twisted, my blood racing. I paced the small space between my bed and my dresser, back and forth.
