A Brilliant Deception (5 page)

J
ack’s housekeeper, Evelyn, woke him a few minutes past noon. He was alone in his bed. After the corner store incident the night before, instead of bringing Madison back to his place to share the bottle of Prosecco like they’d planned, he’d dropped her off at home. He wanted to be alone.

Evelyn threw open the curtains, and harsh sunlight poured into his room. Jack groaned and covered his eyes with a down pillow. His head throbbed.

“It’s the afternoon,” Evelyn said plainly, a statement of fact, no judgment tucked inside.

It was a ridiculous hour of the day to be crawling out of bed, but Jack couldn’t find it in himself to care. All he wanted to do was nurse his hangover. Just because he’d taken Madison home didn’t mean he’d stopped drinking.

He dragged his sorry ass out of bed and into the bathroom. In the mirror, Jack barely recognized himself—face pale and slack, dark smudges under his eyes. He looked away in disgust and twisted the shower nozzle on.

After his shower, starting to feel more human, Jack dressed and went into the kitchen to find that Evelyn had food waiting for him—eggs and bacon and hot coffee. For the hundredth time he wondered what he would do without her. The thought triggered a pang of guilt. He knew the only reason he had the means to afford a housekeeper and this penthouse was because of his father. Or more specifically, his father’s illicit and lucrative lifestyle. Jack had inherited a fortune because of it.

Evelyn bustled around the kitchen as he sipped coffee and left the food untouched. Then, she came over and stood in front of him. He looked up to see her glaring down at him, hands planted on her hips.

“You need help, Jack,” she said to him flatly. Jack said nothing. He continued sipping his coffee.

But Evelyn wasn’t to be deterred. “Ever since you came back from Paris you’ve been different.”

He put his mug down on the table and looked up at her. “You mean ever since my career went down the drain? Yeah, you could say that’s when things went to shit.”

“It’s not only about your career and you know it,” she said.

He grumbled. He knew she was talking about Cat.

“This isn’t you. This kind of lifestyle—it’s not worthy of you.”

Jack ignored her and pretended to read the newspaper. But he wasn’t focusing on the words. He was thousands of miles away, back in Paris.

After Cat had left Jack on the banks of the Seine three months ago, crushing his heart into the cobblestones, he’d pretended to be okay with it all. Pretended he felt only respect for her decision.

After a week of moping around at home, brooding on the whole thing, he’d decided he was done with relationships. Never again would he let someone destroy his heart. From then on, he’d just have fun. Nothing complicated. So he started dating, with a vengeance. He soon discovered it was a great distraction.

Especially after everything else went to shit, too. Shortly after returning home from Paris, Jack had been dismissed from the FBI. Well, not exactly. His supervisor, Victoria Sullivan, had filed a formal report recommending his dismissal. Jack had known what would come next: a long and drawn-out procedure, during which they’d scrutinize Jack’s behavior. His transgressions, his tendency to do things not exactly by the book.

Jack just didn’t have the stomach for it. So he voluntarily surrendered his badge.

Evelyn’s voice pulled him back to the present. “Wesley called again,” she said pointedly.

Jack remained stony-faced. “I’ve already told you. I’m not calling him back.”

He was not getting dragged back into all that again. Wesley was the AB&T operative who was heading up the search for the Fabergé egg that contained the Gifts of the Magi. For a long time the Fabergé quest had given Jack drive, supplying him with a purpose that made it worth getting out of bed in the morning. But Wesley and Jack had failed so far in every attempt to recapture the Fabergé egg. It had slipped through their fingers and now it was gone.

Wesley had tried to involve him in the search for the Gifts again and, more importantly, for the lost portion of gold that had become separated from the other two Gifts at some point. It was something they’d learned about from Esmerelda, a French agent with the enigmatic Department of Antiquities who had helped them with the Louvre job.

But after everything that had happened with Cat in Paris, Jack had turned his back on anything remotely connected with Cat’s world. He didn’t have the heart for it.

After that, he’d grown restless and idle. Rudderless. Not long afterward he’d started drinking. Gambling a little more than usual. But Jack would get all that under control . . . eventually.

“Just think about it, Jack,” Evelyn said. “You need to find your direction again, or you’re going to destroy yourself.”

 

After breakfast, Jack left the apartment and went out for a walk. He stopped to get a coffee at Starbucks and then strolled downtown. The Seattle streets were the epitome of Northwest cool. Laid-back, nobody in a major rush to get anywhere, everyone carrying steaming paper cups. The sidewalks were unusually dry; it hadn’t rained in days. A freshening sea breeze came in off Puget Sound.

Jack sipped his coffee as he walked past the Seattle Art Museum.

There was a delivery truck parked outside in the back lane, in the loading bay, with the back door rolled entirely open. Inside the truck lay paintings wrapped and packed for shipping. Two deliverymen were bringing them in one by one, and they looked like they were in a rush. As they worked in tandem, there was a moment, each time, when the precious cargo was left unattended, the back of the truck open. Jack overheard them arguing about it. It wasn’t protocol to leave the truck unguarded, even for a second, but it sounded like the man in charge was keen to finish early.

Jack knew he could use those slivers of opportunity if he wanted. He could stroll over, pluck a painting from the truck, and walk away. He glanced around—he was having fun now, imagining, playing this game—and he mapped his escape route. Yes, that alley there. He could make it to that alley before they saw him. And from there, he could escape through the neighboring building.

He glanced up. No CCTV.

Definitely doable.

The art in the truck was not likely to be Rembrandt or anything. But it must have had value. The SAM wasn’t some crummy local gallery. It would be so easy; it required just the right amount of panache. A large part of him was tempted to do it.

Jack thought of his father, John Robie. A career criminal, one of the best jewel thieves the world had seen. It might have been something to be proud of—if it hadn’t ruined Jack’s childhood. If it hadn’t meant their estrangement, and his father’s death before they’d had a chance to reconcile. Layers of complicated emotion pressed down on Jack, clouding his vision. He pushed it all away, shoved it back in the dark corner from whence it came.

Jack hovered. He waited by the truck for the next moment of opportunity, pretending to be reading a text and sipping his coffee.

The moment came. The truck was unattended again and Jack walked over. He knew nobody was watching as he climbed up easily into the cargo compartment and plucked the nearest canvas from the stack. It felt good in his hand.

The urge to take it right out of the truck was intense, like a powerful ocean current. Like a seductive beckoning.

Then Jack put the canvas down, returning it to exactly the same spot. He hopped down from the truck and strode quickly away. The delivery guy returned just as Jack rounded the corner out of the alley. He didn’t cast Jack the slightest glance.

As Jack strolled away, he tossed his coffee cup in the trash. He turned south on Union Street toward the waterfront, catching glimpses of Puget Sound between the city’s high-rises.

Jack had put the painting back because he didn’t need it. What he did need, however, was to feel alive. And for a moment, when he had picked up that canvas, he had.

 

E
than swung the hammer. The last nail.
There
. The frame was done. Now they could take a break. The schoolhouse would be finished before the end of the week.

The sun baked his neck, and blow flies hovered and buzzed around his sweaty bandanna. Ethan wiped his forehead and looked to the horizon, where the packed earth of the village gave way to the grassy savannah of the Maasai Mara. The hint of a dusky mountain range rose above it in the distance.

Ethan made his way to a nearby picnic table, grabbing a sandwich and a bottle of water from the cooler printed with the NGO’s logo and name: Global Life. He sat down beside two other men. One of them was a new guy—a young hipster with muttonchop sideburns and long bow legs, like a cowboy. Gary was the other, older man. During the three months Ethan had been there, Gary had become his friend. He was balding, with droopy puppy-dog eyes and the hint of a beer belly, but he was sharp as an arrowhead.

The new guy, Ryan, was talking about where he’d been before this. He’d done a stint with Greenpeace in the Congo, and before that with the Peace Corps in Colombia. He wasn’t the first such person—a lifer—Ethan had met, but it never ceased to amaze him that there were people who spent their whole lives nomadically volunteering.

Ryan asked Gary about his previous life. “Schoolteacher,” Gary said.

Ethan knew the story. Gary had worked at a private school in a privileged neighborhood of New Hampshire. Until one day he got fed up with all the bratty, snotty kids—and their even worse parents—and signed up with Global Life. That had been three years ago. He had no intention of ever going back.

“So how about you?” Ryan asked Ethan. “What did you do before coming here?”

Ethan unwrapped his sandwich. “You know . . . a little of this, a little of that.”

Ryan laughed. “Sounds suspicious. What? Were you a criminal or something?” He laughed even harder.

Ethan smiled but couldn’t bring himself to laugh, much.

“So what are
you
running from?” Gary asked Ryan.

“What makes you think I’m running from something?”

Gary shrugged. “Most people who end up here are running from something. Something ugly in the past—bad family life, career failure, got fired or quit or whatever. So they end up here. Or places like this.”

Ryan scoffed. “People can’t volunteer out of a sense of the greater good?”

Gary took a bite of his sandwich. “Maybe. But usually there’s something else, too.”

Ethan squinted into the distance and sipped his water, saying nothing. After Paris, after successfully robbing the Louvre together with Cat, he’d stayed in France for a short while, wondering what to do next. The idea of going back to his old life had lost the appeal it once held.

And then, one day while he’d been poking around bookshops in the Latin Quarter, he’d come upon a protest underway. It was a peaceful protest—not an unusual sight for Paris. People were always rallying for some cause or other.

The protest was being run by Global Life. He’d started chatting to one of the canvassers and the next thing he knew, he was signing up and boarding a plane.

So here he was. Building a schoolhouse for orphans in Kenya with his bare hands.

He enjoyed the fieldwork. There was something deeply satisfying about rolling up his sleeves and helping people who were truly in need. It was something he never thought was in him.

Once the break ended and it was back to building, Ethan found himself working side by side with Gary, sawing boards. It was now the full, searing heat of the day, and they sipped water constantly. It felt like it was evaporating straight out of their skin as soon as it went in.

A young woman in shorts and work boots approached their workbench and Ethan looked up from his work. She wore sunglasses, and a golden braid swung down her back. “You boys okay for water?” she asked Ethan with a gleaming smile, holding up two frosty bottles of water.

Ethan squinted into the sun. “We’re good,” he said simply, inclining his head to the full cooler beside them. “Thanks.”

She shrugged. “Okay, just say the word,” she said with a lilt in her voice. “Whatever you need.” She strolled away, gazing at Ethan over her shoulder.

“She’s got a thing for you, dude,” said Gary.

“Not interested.”

The other man stood up straight and laughed. “Ah, there it is.”

“What?”

“The thing you’re running from. The reason you’re here.”

Ethan shook his head dismissively. “Right. Whatever.”

“You got burned, golden boy. I can see it now.”

Ethan ignored him, hoping he’d shut up eventually.

Gary laughed. “Yep, that’s it. Burned by a woman. Shit, she really must have broken your heart.”

Ethan scowled and bent his head to his work. Technically, Cat hadn’t broken Ethan’s heart. She’d just said . . . she needed some time alone. The exact same thing she’d said to Jack. But Ethan would be damned if he was going to sit around and wait for her to make a choice, only to watch her eventually ride off into the sunset with Jack.

No, thank you.

“Well, I hate to tell you, but you’re going to have to come up with a new way of escaping your life, and the girl—whoever she is.”

“I’m not escaping—” Ethan began. Then he straightened and narrowed his eyes at Gary. “Wait, why? What do you mean?”

“Because they’re shutting us down,” Gary said. “What—you hadn’t heard?”

Ethan stared. “Are you serious?”

“Truth,” Gary said. He put down his saw. “Word is, the funding ran out.”

It was a kick in the stomach. “What about the schoolhouse? The villagers? Who’s going to help them?”

Gary shrugged. “It’s the shitty thing about NGOs. If somebody decides to pull the plug, it’s over.”

Ethan rubbed the back of his neck. There had to be something he could do. He’d have to find out more. For now, they had boards to finish cutting. They continued working for a while and then Ryan approached their work area. He looked at Ethan. “Jones—you’re wanted in the main office.”

“What about?”

Ryan shrugged. “I don’t know. Go see for yourself.”

Ethan put down his saw and walked a dirt path up the dusty hill, toward the camp. A cluster of semipermanent safari tents made a circle around a firepit. Smells of cooking—some kind of rice and bean dish, probably—emanated from the kitchen tent. Dinner wasn’t far off.

The hinged screen door of the office tent creaked when he pulled it open. Ethan’s boots clomped on the plywood floor. Inside the tent was Ethan’s field supervisor, a man in his early forties wearing khakis and a retro graphic Batman T-shirt, with a whiskered, leathery face and deep smile lines.

Ethan’s gaze slid automatically to the man beside him. It was someone Ethan knew on sight, and the last person he expected to see here.

Looking incredibly out of place, in his three-piece suit, sipping a cup of tea, was Templeton.