“Okay, we’ve got an exfil if this goes bad,” Grace said in Josh’s ear.
“Exfil?”Josh was surprised enough to vocalize.
“Trust us,” Grace said smugly.“You import Mr.Interpol Officer with the power of your tiny saggy ass and you expect no exfil?”
Josh wanted to groan.He’d wanted Liam left out of this.
The memory of that kiss suffused him.
Did you really?
I don’t need to be rescued.
No, but maybe he wants to be by your side.
And like that Josh found a tiny smile working its way through his game face.
“My ass isnotsaggy,” he murmured, barely loud enough for Grace to hear.
“Bony as a box of tossed chicken, boy-o,” came Liam’s voice, and he scowled to himself but, mindful that the procession of art goers trooping up the stairs could hear odd bits of conversation as they moved about in the space vault that was Celeste’s four converted floors of apartment, kept his retort locked firmly behind his lips.
Liam laughed softly, and Josh could hear the sound in echo and resisted the urge to glance wildly around.For one thing, his balance wasn’t what it had been before the cancer, and a wild glance around the loft could end up with him falling down the stairs and going splat.If it hadn’t been for his damnable pride, he could have asked to be in the party that took the elevator up, but Celeste didn’t know who Josh Salinger was, and she certainly didn’t know J.D.Morgan had only been in full remission for a couple of months.
He marched grimly on up the last set of stairs, and as he came to the landing where Celeste was holding court, he was aware that while Liam may have been somewhere in the procession to see the new painting, Andres Kadjic reallyhadshouldered his way to arrive on Josh’s heels, practically panting on the back of his neck.
Josh was very careful to take several steps forward, close enough for Celeste to point him out as she made her opening remarks as the “genius” who had unearthed a real Gertrude Abercrombie from the “pit of forgotten despair.”
Of course Celeste would think of an estate sale as the “pit of forgotten despair.”She probably planned to sit on her treasures like a vampire, until her firm thirty-fiveish skin shriveled like dampened crepe paper adhering to her skeletal frame.
Tall, willfully emaciated, with any extra body fat relocated to her lips, Celeste could have been a great beauty if she’d simply accepted that she was a human being and not a stick figure.Her hair had been dyed fire-engine red so many times, Josh had actually seen strands of it break and float down into the air like tiny feathered corpses to match the boa that trimmed her garish dress.For all that, the woman had been kind to Josh to the point of obsequy; he absolutely couldn’t be bitchy to her.He knew what her policy was—knew what her politics were—but until she was crass enough to use innuendo as opposed to her paycheck, sniping at her would get him kicked out of her circle, and this moment wouldn’t happen.
“Have you seen the picture?”Kadjic asked, up against Josh’s shoulder again.
Josh barely peered behind him.“Yes, this morning, when it was mounted.”
“Mounting can be an exciting moment,” Kadjic purred, and Josh was disgusted enough to glance over his shoulder and wrinkle his nose.
“Ew,” he said, meaning it with every fiber in his being.
Kadjic cackled, showing yellow teeth, as Celeste said, “And now, I present to you, the forgotten work of one of Chicago’s most famous native artists,Crown of Roses.”
And with a grand gesture (and a few woebegone feathers floating to the floor in sympathy), Celeste indicated the curtain hanging over the modern wood frame, mounted on the center load-bearing wall of the gallery level.
With the press of a button, Harvey, the head of security, unveiled the prize.
Josh turned from Kadjic to smile at it, taking in Tienne’s masterfully imitated brush strokes, the way he’d broken down the painting into visual and material component with perfect spacing, perfect color choice, a perfect eye.Nobody—nobody—not even Celeste’s authenticator, who was very good, would have been able to tell the painting was forged if they hadn’t seen the original and had known for a fact that the tiny letters, K, A, D and part of a J, were incorporated into the signature with a fine brush and a faint bit of white paint where no such device was part of the original.
“Remarkable,” said Kadjic by Josh’s shoulder.Everybody else had oohed and aahed and then stepped back to take in the painting, leaving Josh stuck here with the one guy he didn’t want to be near when the depth of the deception hit.
“Do you think so?”Josh asked blandly.“I’ve always thought she was… sad.Cats and owls could be so much more joyous, but here they seem to be a part of the artist’s emotional disconnection.”
“I like the shadows,” Kadjic said ruminatively.“I like how they appear where no shadows should be, and the forms that cast them, or the light that creates them, are lost somewhere in the past… the past….”
Kadjic squinted and leaned forward, eyes narrowed.“What… what in the hell…?”
And Josh found his character.“Sir, you need to back away from the frame or the alarm will go—”
With a squeal the alarm—light and sound—began to glare from around the painting, because Kadjichadset it off with his proximity, but the furious man didn’t seem to notice.
