I check the tracker again. It hasn’t moved.
“It’s late, after midnight,” I tell myself to quieten my mind. “She is sleeping.”
Yes, she is asleep.
You should sleep, too,I tell myself.
My phone rings and rips me from my sleep. I grab my phone with half an eye open. It’s still dark outside.
“Shaw,” I say.
“Turn on your TV,” says Rachel.
My heart beats into my throat immediately, and I am suddenly wide awake.
I knew it.
She did something.
She was up to something, and I didn’t listen to my intuition.
It takes the TV and an endless amount of time to start, and while I put Rachel on speaker, I check the ankle monitor's tracking. It’s still located where it was before.
“What channel?” I ask.
“Doesn’t matter, if it’s not National Geographic.”
I roll my eyes as the TV finally starts. The news is on.
Mega Heist! The Met is clueless as seven pieces have vanished from their collection. The most notable are a Stradivarius violin, worth $20 million, which was stolen alongside an Egyptian statue, a Da Vinci sketch, and an original Viking sword, all worth several million dollars.
“Goddamnit,” I curse out.
“I’m on my way there now,” says Rachel
“Be there in an hour,” I say and groan. We hang up, and I dial Avery’s number, watching the tracker closely.
“You call at ungodly hours,” she says sleepily without concerning herself with a hello when she answers the call.
“The Met was robbed,” I say. “I’m picking you up.”
“What was taken?” she asks, and I can hear her get out of bed and see the tracker moving in her apartment. While that should quieten my mind to a certain degree, it does not. The likelihood that she can pull off that heist without leaving her apartment is real. That Rossi person, whom I can’t find anything about in any of our databases or cases.
“A Stradivarius, an Egyptian statue, a da Vinci drawing, and a Viking sword,” I repeat what I read in the news. “At least that’s what the Met has issued as missing in an official statement.”
“Huh,” she says.
“What?” I ask as I pull up my pants and close the button.
“It’s too random,” she says. “Unless it was a distraction.”
“For what?”
“Look at where the pieces are located in the Met. It’s either to split the heist into security risks or distract from what they really wanted.”
“Huh,” I say now and repeat her words unwillingly. “And what is it they were after? And who?”
“I’m extraordinarily good,” she says in her typical from-above manner, “But I am not a psychic.”
