“Bite me, morons,” Molly said amiably.“I’m stealing the diamonds to put on my own creation.One day this Marie Antoinette thing will be wearing Thieves’ Clothes, TM pending.”
“Ooh, did you already buy the name?”Grace asked.
“Mmmaybe,” Molly teased.“Liam, you there?”
“Do you people really talk to yourselves this much?”Liam asked irritably.
“It looks like we’re on our phones,” Josh said, which Liam knew, because he’d run ops before, but this… this was quite different.“Yay, Bluetooth.We don’t even need to touch our earpieces and glance over our shoulders.”
“You wankers are making my arse sweat,” Liam told them baldly, feeling cranky.My God, they never shut up.It was like they knocked over museums for kicks.
“Well, stop sweating,” Molly said.“I see Tienne coming.Josh, you almost at the target?”
“Just planted the goods,” Josh said.“Grace, you at your mark?”
“Sparkly acquired,” Grace purred.“Give me ten seconds to hit the alarm.”
Liam turned and started ambling toward the stairs.They’d clocked three minutes to get from the ancient worlds section to Josh’s spot by the old European masters—in particular, Rembrandt van Rijn.
Okay, then.So the guards would be coming from Liam’s left toward the stairs—mark.
“I’ve got the guard entrance from the south,” Molly murmured.“Mark.”
“I’ve got the east entrance,” Liam said.“Mark.”
And then, from nowhere, Tienne joined their comm-party.“It is me!I’m here.I’m running.Like planned.The guards are after me!Josh, is the underwear in the bathroom?”
Liam must have made a choking sound, because Stirling’s voice came next, sweet and indulgent.
“Don’t worry,” he said.“You’re all encrypted.Tienne, say ‘mark.’”
“Who’s Mark?”
And while everybody—including Liam—tried to control their laughter, a shattering alarm exploded the peace of the Louvre.
“Shit,” Josh muttered.“Grace!”
“I went early,” Grace said, sounding so pleased with himself Liam had to swallow the obvious retort.
Stirling had known Grace far longer.“Do you brag about that to your boyfriend?”he snapped.“Goddammit—the guards are comingnow!”
“Running faster!”Tienne hummed.“Mark’s coming early too!”
“Lucky Mark,” Liam muttered.
“Mark!”Tienne cried, and then Josh said “Oolf!”like he was supposed to, and then he whispered, “Dammit, Tienne, ouch—no, don’t stop—keep going to the bathroom!”
“Oh!Sorry!So sorry!”Tienne called—and it sounded like he was talking loudly, as though running away from the person he’d accidentally shoved up against a wall.“On my way!”
Liam’s guards had shown up by then, and he braced himself for impact in three-two-one—“Oolf!”He unobtrusively propelled himself underfoot at the same time Molly greeted her guards, the scuff of the guard’s hard-soled shoe against his shin painful and then forgotten.For a moment, the comms were full of the Liam and Molly show: “Oh my God, so sorry—no, let me help you up!Oh shit—didn’t mean to—oh no, I’m—oh wait—no!I’m just trying to help!”
The two of them, sacrificing their bodies and definitely their dignity, managed to trip up the guards rushing toward Grace’s burst alarm, and by strategic placing, managed to keep them out of the hall where Josh was hurriedly replacing a reproduction of a lost painting with the painting itself.
In Liam’s head he could hear Josh singing, “One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten-eleven-twe-el-elve!”with a familiar jingle in the numbers.Liam had to smile—it was the same counting jingle he’d hummed when they’d been working the night before.Liam had needed to learn the thieves’ bits just in case, and he assumed Molly could have stolen the diamond or dismantled the clear plexiglass frame for the painting almost as quickly as Josh or Grace too.
“Twelve?”Grace asked, intruding on Liam’s mental picture of unscrewing the tiny bolts, replacing the modestly sized sketch, and then fitting the bolts again.
“Twelve?”Molly whispered.
