The Spy (King’s Security #3)

Chapter 9

9

FIONA

I explained the situation to Willow and couldn’t help smiling as she said what she’d like to do to Bergen. Willow came across as calm and collected, but she had a hidden fire that had served her well. She was also surprisingly creative in thinking of ways to punish men who deserved it.

“How has it been working with Zeke?” she asked. “I know you and him don’t get along very well.”

“It’s been better than I expected,” I admitted. “It annoys me that he’s not sold on the idea of Bergen being behind it, but I know it’s probably smart to keep an open mind.”

“Yeah.” Willow grimaced. “I was determined to see Ronan as the enemy when he was looking to take over Lennox Securities, but the more I learned about him, the more I realized I was wrong. Being open-minded isn’t easy, but it pays off.”

“Let’s hope so.” Although honestly, I wasn’t completely ready to let go of the possibility of nailing Bergen. I stood. “Let’s see what those men are up to. ”

She gave me a quick hug. “We’ll get this figured out.”

I closed my eyes and allowed myself to enjoy the embrace. I wasn’t usually much of a hugger, but today, I needed them from anyone who was willing to give them. We left the meeting room, and Zeke stuck his head out of Ronan’s office to wave us in. There weren’t enough seats for both of us around the table so I stayed standing with Willow beside me.

Zeke looked me straight in the eye. “If you had to, could you paint a replica of Daisies ?”

The breath whooshed out of my lungs. “Excuse me?”

He didn’t repeat himself, just gazed at me levelly.

“Why are you asking?” We’d already discussed this in the context of the theft four years ago.

“Just answer the question.”

I frowned and crossed my arms protectively over my chest. “I could paint something that might look like Daisies at first glance, but it wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny if anyone took more than a couple of seconds to study it. I already told you; Bergen is a better artist than me and he’s better at mimicking famous works of art. He sees it as a challenge.” I glanced at Willow and muttered, “Perhaps I should have realized that was a red flag.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Maybe. But hindsight is twenty-twenty.”

She wasn’t wrong. I could see so many things now that I’d overlooked at the time. In the days and weeks following the Black Swan theft, I’d raked through my relationship with Bergen to uncover every one of them, and I’d beaten myself up over them mercilessly.

“Will you show me your work?” Zeke asked.

My frown deepened and I shifted uncomfortably. “Why?”

He shrugged. “So I can get a feel for it. ”

Or so he could figure out whether I was lying about being a forger. But whatever. I had nothing to hide.

“Everything I have is at my apartment.” I’d sold off most of my work over the past four years and I hadn’t created anything new. I’d tried a few times but whenever I stood at a canvas or touched a paintbrush I was brought back to the night I’d spent in that holding cell, and the awful things that people I’d thought were friends had believed about me. The gossip they’d spread. The lies the police had bought into. I could never bring myself to make more than a few brush strokes before stopping.

He got to his feet and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Let’s go then.”

“Call me if you need me,” Willow murmured. “I can come with you now, if you’d like.”

“No, but thank you. We’ll talk soon.”

“Keep us in the loop,” Ronan called as Zeke guided me out of the office.

“I didn’t do this,” I muttered as soon as we were out of their hearing.

“I know.” His tone was soothing, but his expression could have been carved from stone. “You should have told us about your college thesis though.”

I cocked my head. “You mean the essay I wrote about Springtime ?”

“I don’t know what it was called,” he replied. “But it was by Monet. You know, the same guy who made the painting you’re suspected of stealing.”

“It was ages ago, and studying a painting isn’t the same thing as being able to reproduce it.” If I were capable of creating paintings like Monet, I sure as hell wouldn’t be working as a personal assistant.

“It’s still relevant.” His tone brooked no argument. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me? ”

“I’m sure there’s plenty I haven’t told you, but I can’t think of anything that relates to the Monet.” I waved my arms emphatically. “I’m not trying to hide things from you, but I had a whole career in art before I came to work here, and there could be dozens of coincidences that I haven’t thought of.”

“Well, if anything does cross your mind, let me know.”

“Fine.” I winced, hating how petulant I sounded.

We didn’t talk on the journey to my apartment. When I let us in, Zeke instructed me to wait by the door while he checked each room for intruders. I didn’t know who he expected to find, but he was back soon after and seemed satisfied. He locked the door from the inside.

“Show me your paintings.”

“They’re in the spare room.” I brushed past him and headed to the smaller room opposite mine. It could be used as either a small bedroom or an office, but I used it primarily for storage. I switched the light on and carefully lifted the sheet that covered the canvases resting against one wall.

“These are all you have?” Zeke asked.

“Yeah. I sold everything else a while ago.” I’d needed every bit of money I could get, and while my name had been smeared in the art world, casual buyers didn’t know my reputation so it had been easy enough to sell the paintings online, although I hadn’t made as much as I would have from a gallery sale with a collector who fully recognized their value. “These are the ones I couldn’t sell. A couple of them were too similar to others I’d done, a couple aren’t at the standard I prefer, and one I held onto for sentimental reasons. Then there’s this.” I picked up one of the canvases and turned it to face him. It was a reproduction of a Degas that featured young girls dancing. “Bergen challenged me to see who could make the more accurate copy. It was stupid to play along with him, but I did it anyway.”

His eyebrows shot up. “That’s a forgery?”

I winced. “‘Forgery’ is such an ugly word. It’s a poor copy. I never intended for anyone to actually believe it was an original. If you see here”—I pointed near the center—“this girl is wearing a pink sash. That wasn’t part of the original. It’s my way of differentiating it, although any art afficionado would be able to tell it isn’t actually by Degas even without the sash.” I sighed. “I could copy his work all I like, but I’d never have his skill.”

Zeke squinted at the painting, studying it carefully. “It’s beautiful.”

I laughed. “You should see the original.”

“Show me.”

I brought a photo of the painting up on my phone and offered it to him. “Seeing it in person is far better, but this will have to do.”

He scanned the screen, then looked back at my painting and made a thoughtful sound.

“Not the same, right?” I prompted.

“No,” he agreed. “But at first glance, the uninitiated might not notice the difference.”

I smirked. The chance of anyone mistaking my work for a Degas was infinitesimal, but it was nice to have my ego stroked.

“Let’s see the others,” he said, returning my phone and turning back to the wall of canvases.

I showed him the painting I’d done of a bouquet of wildflowers, which I hadn’t felt able to sell because I’d done another of the same bouquet from a different angle. Next was the painting of the Chicago skyline that I’d botched and not been able to fix properly. He took a moment to study each, as well as the others. His gaze lingered on the final painting, an image of the mirror from my old bedroom with my reflection showing in the glass. I’d based it off a photo Bergen had snapped of me from behind, and there was something about it that meant I hadn’t been able to bring myself to get rid of it.

“Jesus, Fi,” Zeke breathed. “You’re so talented. You should be doing this for a living, not answering phones and replying to emails.”

I bit my lip and tried not to let his words get to me. I would have liked to be painting, but I’d let Bergen steal my credibility and my enjoyment of the process. Maybe there was a chance that if everything worked out, I’d be able to get it back.

ZEKE

I was stunned by Fiona’s talent. I’d always known she was a competent woman, but she gave the impression of being all about efficiency and realism. These paintings were something else. They had an almost dreamlike quality. And they were her leftovers. What did that say about the ones she’d sold?

“Unfortunately, there aren’t many galleries who’d be willing to work with an artist with my reputation,” she said ruefully.

I kicked myself. I should have thought of that before I opened my mouth. “I’m sorry.”

She started to turn the paintings back around. “It is what it is.”

“Wait.” I touched her hand to still her, and a jolt of electricity sizzled through me .

“What?” she asked breathlessly.

I did my best to ignore the attraction zinging between us. “Do you have a signature? A way of identifying your work?”

“Here.” She pointed to a small squiggle in the bottom left corner of the canvas in her hand. If I squinted and cocked my head, I supposed it looked like an F and an R.

“What about Bergen? Does he have one?”

“Most artists do.” She placed the canvas down and tapped on her phone, then handed it to me. “Here.” She pointed at the corner of a painting of a path through a park that filled the screen. This is his.”

The signature was larger than Fiona’s, and more obvious, with a looping B.

“He does this on everything he paints?” I asked.

Her lips twisted. “He did it on all of his commercial pieces, but if he was trying to pass off a forgery, he wouldn’t sign it. He might have an ego but he isn’t stupid.”

“Would he do something to leave his mark on it though?” I was getting a feel for who Bergen Cole was, and men like him liked to put their stamp on things. Their self-centered attitude could be their downfall.

Fiona’s expressive face shifted as she considered the possibility. “Maybe,” she allowed. “But he already has a distinctive brush stroke pattern that isn’t totally aligned with painters such as Monet. Unless he’s changed that over the past four years, he would already have a signature of sorts on the forgery.”

“Interesting.” I leaned against the wall. “Would you recognize his work without a signature?”

She pursed her lips. “If you gave me a few paintings and told me he’d done one of them, I’d probably be able to pick it, but without any context, I doubt it.”

Damn. It would have been helpful to know she could identify his work if we could somehow get our hands on a photo of the forgery from either the Monet or the Black Swan case.

I twisted one of the rings on my left hand absent-mindedly. “If you wanted to sell a piece of stolen art on the black market, how would you go about it?”

She didn’t even pause to think. “I’d try to find a fence.”

“Do you know any fences?” Because if she did, that would make my job much easier.

“No.” She sighed. “Or at least, if I do, I don’t know what they are, if you get what I mean.”

“I do.” I twisted the ring the other way. “I’ll have my team put out some feelers. Assuming, for a moment, that Bergen has the Monet, where do you think he’d store it?”

“Somewhere with a lot of security that he controls.”

“Like a bank vault?” I asked.

“God, no. Bergen is paranoid. He’d find a place no one else knew about and install the best electronic system he could find. He wouldn’t want to risk even a single person knowing what he had. It would have to also be somewhere the painting couldn’t be damaged. Maybe an industrial or commercial building rented under an alias, or even a second apartment, although that would be riskier if there’s a chance the super might drop by.”

I thought on that. If I was trying to hide a priceless painting, I’d probably choose a derelict storefront and make sure it was absolutely impenetrable. The trouble was, there were too many possibilities in Chicago for us to sift through them all, and there was nothing to say the painting was even still in the city.

Of course, if Bergen was the guilty party, and if he was as paranoid as Fiona claimed, there was one thing he’d almost certainly be doing, and that was keeping a very close eye on her .

“I have an idea,” I told her. “I need you to trust me though. Can you do that?”

“Um…” She looked confused. “Like, with my life, or what?”

I shook my head. “Just stay here. I need to step outside. Don’t leave the apartment. If you have to feel like you’re doing something useful then write out some ideas for how you’d go about the crime if you were going to commit it.”

She put a hand on her hip. “How long will you be gone?”

“Hopefully not too long.” I shot her a smile. “I’m not abandoning you, okay? I’m testing a theory.”

“Fine.” She looked reluctant, but hey, agreement was agreement.

“Great.” I backtracked out of the room. “Lock up behind me, and don’t open the door without making sure you know who’s on the other side.”

She rolled her eyes and mock saluted. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

I tapped the end of her nose. “You’re so cute when you’re snarky.”

Her lips parted in shock. Before she could snap out a comeback, I made my exit. I waited outside until I heard the lock engage, and then glanced around. Based on what I knew of Bergen, I suspected he’d have eyes on Fiona. I walked away, hoping it looked as though I was leaving for the day, then slipped through the fire escape into a shaded alcove and waited.

Minutes passed, and I stayed as still as if I’d been carved from stone. Just when I was beginning to think I might have been mistaken, I saw movement in the alley below. A man appeared, his features hidden by a ski mask. I remained in place, waiting as he climbed the stairs, a backpack slung over one shoulder and something cylindrical clutched in his hand. The hairs on the back of my neck rose. Somehow, I knew this was our guy.

He looked up as he reached the floor beneath me and stiffened. He’d seen me.

He took off, taking the stairs two at a time. I raced after him, grabbing the handrail to make sure I didn’t slip and fall. Metal clanged as the object in his hand knocked into the railing, and he glanced over his shoulder. My eyes locked on his, brown against brown, and then he tore his gaze away and leaped over the side of the railing, falling the last several feet and landing safely on the concrete. I dove after him, making it to the ground just in time to grab onto the backpack hanging off his shoulder.

He spun around and raised the object in his hand. Something flew out and stung my eyes. I squeezed them shut, but the stinging didn’t ease. The backpack was yanked out of my grasp. I tried to open my eyes as I reached for him again, but they were sticky and all I could see was fog as the man in the ski mask made his escape.