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“This is the best part,?
? I told her. “You glue one strip onto each canvas—the lower left corner, left as you face the canvas, very important. Crucial. And then . . . you overpaint it, hide it. But not too well. You know, so it can’t be seen, but if you look for it—boom! There it is!”
Monique shook her head. “What the fuck, Riley, you mean you want people to know these are fakes?”
Showing all my teeth in a savage grin I really felt, I nodded. “That, my darling, is the entire fucking point.”
Monique kept her eyes fixed on mine, but I didn’t say anything more. She knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t, either. So she sighed, shook her head, and said, “All right, sure, why not. I’ll make two perfect fakes and make sure people know they’re fakes. But someday, maybe you’ll tell me why?”
I just smiled. “Maybe,” I said. Then I clapped my hands together and got serious again. “So!” I said. “Can you do it?”
“Hmp,” Monique said. I could tell she was still just a little pissed I wouldn’t tell her. “You said three weeks?”
“To be safe,” I said. “Like I said, it’s hard to be really sure. You know how these things go.”
“No, I don’t know, Riley, because I’ve got no idea what ‘these things’ are this time.”
I just shrugged. We both knew I wasn’t going to tell her. “Can you do it?”
She looked at me a little longer. Then she picked up the photos. “Well,” she said thoughtfully, “a couple of days to finish the Mary Cassatt, then a week each for these two . . . I mean, if nothing goes wrong?” she started.
“What could go wrong?” I said. “Two people who are the greatest on earth at what they do—what the hell could go wrong, Monique?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Global warming might drive up the price of paint.” But she couldn’t help one more try at opening me up. “But damn it, Riley—this is routine stuff. I mean—it’s really going to shake the whole fucking world?”
I smiled. I was feeling the excitement again. “Let’s just say these paintings are going to open a door?”
Monique shook her head wearily. She knew there was no point in asking for any more detail. “All right, fine, we’ll open your goddamn door,” she said. “Three weeks, usual rates. And then what? If your door actually opens?”
I couldn’t help it. Like I said, I was really feeling it. And I wanted Monique to feel it with me. I crept closer, just a half step, but she didn’t back away. I locked eyes with her, and my voice dropped to an intense purr just above a whisper. “Then, Monique,” I said, and I saw the hair go up on her neck and arms. “Then you will make me something amazing, something absolutely spectacular, and I will use it to perform the most astonishing disappearing act the world has ever seen.”
Monique shivered. Her eyes never left mine, and for just a second she leaned forward, toward me. But as I swayed forward to meet her, something snapped awake inside, and Monique shook herself and stepped back. She took a breath and put on a face that told me she wasn’t getting sucked in by animal magnetism and melodrama. “And what’s the payoff, after all these ifs?”
I felt the shark smile spread onto my face again. “Eight figures,” I told her.
“Not bad,” she said.
“That’s just your end, Monique,” I said.
For a moment Monique forgot to breathe. She stared at me like she wanted to see some sign that I was kidding. And of course, I wasn’t. She saw that. “Jesus Christ, Riley,” she said after a long pause. “What could possibly—”
I held up a hand. “It’s all hypothetical,” I said. “For now.”
“Jesus Christ,” she said again. She knew there was no point in asking for any more information. So she thought about it for a minute. I could see the wheels turning, and she started chewing on her lip as she figured it. She looked incredibly hot when she did that, and I wanted to help her. But I didn’t. I let her work it through—eight figures. That meant . . . ten million dollars? Twenty? Which meant my end would be—
“For Christ’s sake,” she finally burst out. “What in the name of God could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars?”
I just shook my head.
“You do mean dollars?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Dollars,” I said happily. “In cash, untraceable. More dollars than you have ever seen before or will ever see again.”
Monique took a slightly shaky breath.
“Well?” I said. “Are you in?”
“Hell yes,” she said in a husky voice just one step away from sex.
