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“No.” I smiled. “No, it isn’t safe at all.” I paused. “There’s one other thing you should know.” And then I told them what I’d found in the folder, the coded identity of the person who had prepared the dossier.
Mary Alice was the first to speak. “What are we going to do about it?”
“Add another name to the hit list,” I said, picking up a marker that smelled like cotton candy.
I wrote the name in pink block capitals. Then I turned back. “Anybody got a problem with that?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The auction wasn’t for another week, and I was glad of the chance to work out the details. We started with what we knew for sure—the setting.
“This will be a big sale,” Mary Alice mused as we gathered in Constance’s study one evening after dinner. Akiko and Minka were in the kitchen clearing up and working on a duet fromTangled. Helen was skimming Tollemache’s website, looking for anything we might have missed, while Mary Alice flicked through the printouts we’d compiled. I was sitting behind Constance’s desk, idly turning pages in an art book I’d found on the shelf.The Art of the Female Painter.The title was sexist as hell, but I was hoping for some inspiration.
“Lots of people will be crowding in the sale, collectors, journalists,” Mary Alice went on.
“And a shit-ton of security,” Natalie said. “Clearances, CCTV, the works, and all of it state-of-the-art.”
“And livestreamed,” Helen said, pointing to a hyperlink on the website. “For people who want to watch or bid at home.”
I thought for a minute. “That’s a lot of witnesses—too many for an organization that prides itself on discretion. They’ll have to take us out and kill us somewhere else.”
“You think he’ll come in person? That’s a big risk,” Helen said.
“Vance is an arrogant SOB. And he’s been pissed at me since I poached his Nazi in Zanzibar. Of course he’ll come in person. He’ll underestimate us, and that’s our biggest advantage,” I said.
“So,” Mary Alice said, “we need a plan to get into Tollemache’s without alerting Vance’s people. Then we need a way to kill Vance without anybody noticing.”
“Surely it’s better to abduct him and kill him elsewhere,” Helen said. “Much more discreet.”
“Much more dangerous,” Nat corrected. “If we hustle him out, there’s always the chance we’ll be followed or he’ll escape. I say we hit him at the auction house.”
“With the whole world watching?” I raised a brow at her. “Not exactly subtle. And we can’t take the chance of bystanders getting hurt.”
Natalie’s face was wearing its stubborn expression, but she didn’t argue. The first rule of Museum work was that we never touched innocent people. It was a pain in the ass—there’s nothing easier than hurling a bomb into a crowd—but it forced us to be careful and creative in our missions.
I turned the page and stopped cold. It was a color plate of a painting I had only seen once before. I’d been in Venice, takinga few days’ leave after quietly killing the head of an Armenian crime syndicate who was there on his honeymoon. I had planned on seeing the sights, but the rains came and I spent most of my time wandering around museums to stay out of the wet. I had found myself in the Guggenheim late one afternoon, meandering from gallery to gallery, when I spotted it.
The caption identified it asShepherdess of the Sphinxesby Leonor Fini.
She’d been painted in 1941 but she had lavish ’80s hair, rising up tawny and tousled. She was wearing a sort of armored piece over her genitals, a metallic bathing suit if you squinted while you studied it. Between her legs, she held a shepherd’s crook like a witch preparing to mount her broomstick, and she was looking over her little flock with a calm, watchful gaze. Nothing would happen to her girls while she was around, although from the looks of things, the herd of sphinxes could take care of themselves. They had the bodies of lionesses but the pouty faces and poutier breasts of supermodels. Their expressions were serene as they surveyed their gentle pasture dotted with flowers and the bones of the dead men they’d eaten. It was ghoulish and beautiful, a perfect representation of the terrible feminine power of life and death. The sphinxes had crushed men to bone and sucked out the marrow, all without messing up their hair. I smiled as I looked from one to the other, noting the line of a lazy tail, the assessing gaze directed to a possible meal waiting just out of frame. And yet, they weren’t the predators. They were gathered in a herd, lovingly watched over and guarded. They weren’t evil, after all. They were simply true to their nature. Something inthe protective stance of the shepherdess had spoken to me, I guess. I’d bought a postcard of the painting in the gift shop, carrying it with me for years until it had gone soft with age and eventually I’d lost it.
I hadn’t thought of her in years, but here she was in all her ferocious glory. I remembered then something that Constance Halliday had told me the last time I had stood in that room. We had just gotten our orders for our first job, the mission out of Nice, targeting the Bulgarian. My nerves had been jangling, and Constance found me working out in the garden, throwing punches at the sparring dummy until my knuckles were bruised. She’d forced me to come in, ordering me to soak my hands until the swelling went down. I’d expected a lecture, but for the first time, she didn’t say anything. She had sat with me and given me a quiet, confident silence instead.
It unnerved me. I jerked my hands out of the basin of cold water and stared her down.
“Aren’t you going to give me some advice? Tell me how to handle this?” I demanded.
She got up and went to the door, giving me one last look.
“True leadership, Miss Webster, is not about trusting yourself. It is about trusting your team.”
Trusting your team.I looked at the painting in the book, running a fingertip over that beautiful, murderous herd of sphinxes.
I slammed the book shut. “I’ve got it.” The other three looked up expectantly. “You won’t like it. But it’s the only way. Here’s what we’re going to do...”
After I laid out the plan, we argued for a few hours beforethey gave in. I should have slept like a baby, considering the fact that I had just gotten my way, but instead I tossed and turned awhile before heading down to heat some milk. I don’t drink it—warm milk is disgusting. But you have to stir milk constantly to keep it from scorching and I do find that relaxing. I found Helen sitting at the table, address book in front of her, expression thoughtful.
“You got an idea?” I asked as I poured the milk down the sink and got out the bottle of brandy.
