Josh had always thought the paintings (like much of Gertrude Abercrombie’s work) had been lonely and haunted, and that the cat had represented emotional connection of any kind, and this one was no exception.Tienne had grimaced when he’d seen it and had remarked that while she was talented, it would be one of his easiest forgeries.
It was important that the forgery be perfect down to every last detail so the false signature would be so much more jarring.
Besides being made to be forged, the painting was also perfect because Abercrombie had a connection with Dizzy Gillespie, the jazz musician, and Kadjic had a weakness for jazz.
Throwing a giant reception in Celeste’s quarters and then taking everybody upstairs to premier the new painting in her collection should be the perfect bait to pull Kadjic from his foxhunt in Finland and into the Salinger hunting fields.
He’d spilled enough of their blood, had been the boogeyman in enough of their stories.It was time they madehimthe fox and ran him to ground.
But the timing had been tricky.Celestehad to be the last person to see the painting in its special display alcove, with her security consultant, Harvey Merritt, in her company.Stirling could disable and loop the cameras, Josh could fool the temperature sensors, and Grace could (and did) loosen all the screws in the frame and hide the forgery so Josh could have easy access, but the security really started at the door to the twentieth floor, where Celeste’s four floors of apartments began.Hunter and Molly could get away with being on the catering team, and Julia and Josh’s uncle, Leon di Rossi, could crash the party on reputation alone, but nobody else on the team would have any reason to be upstairs while the party was in full swing and before the presentation of the painting.
Except Josh.
So Josh had retired to the restroom, scaled the wall, replaced the painting, and leaped back down to the balcony outside the bathroom, and now he had to mingle with the elite, the moneyed, and the beautiful as though nothing had happened.
It was a good thing he’d grown up doing this.
When he was a child, Felix, Julia, and Danny—tired of putting on a show for the elite in Chicago—had taken Josh on a tour of Europe.For Josh’s mother, the freedom had beenexhilarating.Never in her life had she been able to get up in the morning, take a walk down by the river, and flirt with a handsome man while buying baguettes and cheese for breakfast.And Danny and Felix had been such fun companions.They bantered to amuse themselves, and Julia, so relieved to live without her father’s constant efforts to control her life, had reveled in their foolery.Josh had been along for the ride, and the four of them had lied, stolen, and grifted their way across the continent, learning the languages they didn’t know and practicing the languages they’d learned, and all of them giving money to the poor and righting the wrongs nobody else would, simply because they could.
Josh wasn’t afraid of crowds or of getting caught with a false name.He knew how to brazen out a lie, and while he’d never meant for it to be his livelihood, he’d been on the professional stage for much of his adolescence and young adulthood.
And of course Danny had taught him everything he knew.
So he could smile charmingly at a matron, flirt harmlessly with her daughter, and offer a firm handshake to the sugar daddy who bankrolled them, making a good impression—but hopefully not a memorable one.He knew he was pretty, but he was a lackey for this production.An art dealer should never be in the forefront; the art should be the star.
He’d immersed himself back into the role effortlessly, was in fact enjoying one of the canapes Hunter had offered him, with a chaser of sparkling water so Josh could knock back the ibuprofen hidden in the flap of prosciutto, when he sensed a disturbance at the door.
“Remember,” Hunter murmured, “one of us needs to be next to him for the count of twenty.”
Josh didn’t even nod.He knew that part of the plan.It had been his idea.
He glanced over casually and then returned his eyes to the modern, arresting painting by Armani Howard he’d procured for Celeste before the Abercrombie had fallen into their laps.TitledRapture,the work featured electric humanoids rising to an apocalyptic sky from a bucolic earth, and Josh rather mourned that he hadn’t been able to get it for his parents’ display of artwork, because he loved it.
But that one casual glance had been all he’d needed to see that their trap had sprung.
Celeste’s tasteful (and oh my Godvast) display apartment space was entered by private elevator.Her living quarters and dining room were on the floors between the gallery and this cavernous living room, and while her party wasverywell attended, it was easy to spot the newcomers.
The man crossing the space, his hard-soled shoes ringing on the tile along with the shoes of the giant bodyguards on his flanks, was not “brutally handsome” like Josh’s Uncle Leon.Instead his looks were simply “brutal.”At fifty, his flushed skin was coarsened—apparently by drink and sun and scowling—and his wiry hair was slicked back from a deeply receded widow’s peak.The crevasses between his eyebrows and the bridge of his nose did not appear to be cleaned, harboring flakes of skin that Josh was going to have tonotstare at, and his blue eyes were practically hidden by his brows and his cheeks, which were sagging into jowls.
He walked like he was sex on legs and knew it, and once, perhaps twenty years ago, Andres Kadjichad beenbrutally handsome.Now Josh had to control his revulsion, particularly that this man had ever touched his Uncle Danny.
Josh knew enough to not let his eyes linger, to pick up the details on one casual swoop as though looking for somebody behind his target and not the target himself.Personally, Josh was dressed to disappear in a black suit, chic but conservatively cut, with a black pocket square—
As he glanced down automatically, Josh’s eyes widened.Rather than the black square he’d chosen originally, a turquoise bit of silk now poked from his vest pocket, and he had to fight not to yank it out and hide it in his pants pocket instead.
Liam!
Josh had caught him, too, in his sweep of the room, having a casual interaction with Hunter, probably to ask if Josh had gotten the painkiller for his shoulder.That turquoise scarf hanging at Liam’s waist like a pirate’s sash still looked dashing, and Josh had to take a deep breath not to stalk across the room and start a wholly irrational argument with him.
You want to play romance games when I’m in the middle of a job?
But then Liam met his eyes, and there was no play in him.Then Josh got it.The pocket square wasn’t some sort of bullshit power play—it was a reminder.
No matter what happened, Josh wasn’t alone.
Josh turned his attention back to the painting, the internal shaking he’d been fighting since he’d smacked into the wall on the descent finally easing up.
Not alone.
