Take Me Two Times Read online

  Avy Hunt typed furiously into her BlackBerry. Dressed in slim, dark leather pants and a snug T-shirt, her light brown hair piled messily on top of her head, she did own the place—or at least half of it.

  Little blond Chloe Atwell seemed hip and studious with her rectangular, trendy black eyewear and smooth asymmetrical haircut. As usual, she had a Starbucks cup in her hand.

  Valeria Costas wore a smug feline expression, her black hair gleaming blue under the fluorescent lighting. She looked well massaged and oiled, as if she’d just stepped out of an exclusive spa. As she dug into her Vuitton satchel, the diamonds on her fingers glittering, Gwen couldn’t help but hope that Cato would go after her next.

  They all waited for Dante to start the meeting. Avy glanced at her watch and then at him.

  Dante met her gaze calmly and took his time, maneuvering on his crutches to the laptop computer that would run his PowerPoint presentation. “Lights, please.”

  Gwen got up to hit them, but Sheila chose that moment to pop in. “Communiqué from Kelso.” Over her bizarre reading glasses she gave a look that was a little self-important.

  “And what does our fearless and invisible leader have to say?” Avy asked. Nobody had ever seen Kelso, though he owned fifty-one percent of the company. He operated off the grid and out of the ether—rather like Liam, Avy’s former-thief fiancé.

  Sheila employed a hot-pink nail to shove the reading glasses higher on her nose. “Word on the street, Ave, is that the Greek ambassador you got arrested is out for revenge. Kelso doesn’t know how or when, but he says to keep your eyes open. Possible Mob connections.”

  Avy nodded. “Is that it?”

  Sheila stared at her. “Yeah, sweet cheeks. The Mob could be after you, that’s all. No biggie.”

  Avy’s face remained serene. “Okay. The phone’s ringing. Will you shut the door on your way out, please?”

  “I serve at your pleasure,” Sheila growled.

  “And you give me so much of that, Kofsky.” Avy said it with a grin.

  Sheila snorted and stomped out.

  “Ambassador?” Gwen asked.

  Avy nodded. “Three years ago, way before we brought you in to train, I did a recovery through Lloyd’s of London that ended with the arrest of Constantin Tzekas, the U.S. ambassador from Greece. He was prosecuted for the theft of a Masaccio painting and deported in disgrace.”

  “And now he’s out to get you?”

  Avy shrugged, seeming unconcerned. “Apparently so.”

  Gwen shivered. Avy was her former college roommate at Sweet Briar. She was close to fearless, but Gwen was not. She didn’t like the idea of anyone being after her best friend. Particularly not anyone with Mob connections.

  Dante looked concerned as well. He gestured with his head toward the lights, though, and Gwen turned them off. The first slide flashed up on the screen. “Toulouse-Lautrec,” Dante said, “circa 1892. Worth just shy of eight hundred thousand.” A damning portrait of a night on the town in turn-of-the-century Paris, the painting exhibited the ghoulish, overly painted faces of tawdry women in a nightclub and the men who leered at them. The hues were weird and bluish, the contour lines exaggerated—half-witty, half-menacing.

  “This was stolen from the home of an elderly couple in Paris. There was no sign of a break-in, and one of the possible suspects is their bachelor nephew. They want this kept quiet—no police. Chloe, you’ll take this one. The insurer is Giroux Freres.”

  Chloe nodded, looking pleased, and Dante slid a file down the long table toward her.

  “McDougal, you’re going to Scotland.” Dante flashed the next slide. “An entire suit of armor, sixteenth century, has walked out of the great hall at Edinloch Castle. It belonged to the current Duke of Edinloch’s ancestor, who fought in the Battle of Arkinholm while wearing it, so he wants it back. It’s not insured.”

  Dante’s lips twitched. “As he put it, ‘Ach! Why the fook would I insure a bloody bit o’ tin?’ So he’s paying us a flat ten-percent fee for the recovery, plus expenses.”

  “Just tell me the ancestor’s bones aren’t still rattling around in there,” said McDougal, yawning. “What’s the Tin Man worth?”

  “Conservative estimates put it at four hundred thousand.”

  Dante sent another file folder spinning toward McDougal, who didn’t look as pleased as Chloe.

  Poor guy, he’d collect a mere forty thousand for his troubles. Gwen would be lucky if they gave her a piece with a five- or ten-thousand-dollar commission.

  The sight of the next slide produced a couple of audible gasps within the room.

  A Venetian mask stared sightlessly out at them. It was not made out of painted paper, but of pure gold, with stylized peacock feathers picked out around the eyes in diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds. A fringe of faceted diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds poured like a priceless waterfall from the bottom of it and would completely obscure the face of the wearer.

  “You are gazing at five-point-four million dollars,” Dante said. “This mask is a Columbina Oriente dating to 1508. It was created for a cousin of the Borgia family who resided in Venice. He was being cuckolded by his wife, who had a much younger lover.

  “While the wife enjoyed her fresh meat—please pardon the expression—the husband plotted revenge. He had the inside of the mask painted with a lethal poison, just in time for the Venetian Carnevale, a celebration before Lent.

  “Not coincidentally,” Dante added in a dry tone, “the term carnevale means literally ‘to remove meat.’”

  A ripple of laughter went through the room.

  “Eccolo,” he continued, “the wife’s lover, delighted to receive such a lovely gift from his inamorata, donned it immediately and paraded about—only to die writhing in agony hours later. And voilà,” Dante said with a flash of white teeth and a flourish. “The husband’s rival meat was . . . removed.”

  As Avy’s BlackBerry vibrated on the conference table, Valeria said avidly, “I want this recovery.”

  Dante didn’t even cast his hooded eyes toward her as he shook his dark head. “The mask, as the plum assignment, goes to Avy.”

  Avy wasn’t even listening, her gaze intent on the screen of her BlackBerry. She began to type a response with her thumbs.

  Valeria blew out an audible breath of resentment and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Of course. I should have known.”

  “This mask was, until recently, part of the corporate art collection at Jaworski Labs, right here on Brickell. It was stolen from there two nights ago—”

  “Wait,” Gwen interrupted. “Why would a pharmaceutical company have an art collection? Isn’t that odd?”

  “Not at all,” Dante said. “Banks, insurance companies, technology giants—many of them seek to diversify their assets through acquiring art. And in the case of Ed Jaworski, the founder of the lab, his wife was an artist. So the old man began stockpiling art in the seventies, before the insanity of the eighties market. Smart move. That art collection is one of the only reasons the company has been able to ride out some of its storms.”

  “Like the recall of their cholesterol drug and the resulting class action suit,” McDougal said.

  Chloe frowned. “Wasn’t there some kind of scandal with Jaworski about a year ago, something about a painting?”

  Avy finally punched send on her BlackBerry and looked up. “Yeah, you could say that. The CEO of Jaworski was taking great care of a Renoir original acquired with company funds—he hung it over the couch in the living room of his Fisher Island home. He claimed, of course, that he only had it at his place for safekeeping.”

  “Nice,” Gwen murmured.

  Avy stood up and shoved her BlackBerry into her battered Dior saddlebag. “They found other irregularities, too. Old Jaworski is still on the board, and he made sure the man got canned. He brought in some whiz kid to run things. The guy’s only thirty-five.”

  She looked around the table and drummed her fingers on top of the file folder Dante had sl
id down to her. “I’m sorry, but I have to catch a plane. I’ll be in Europe for a couple of weeks, but I’ll stay in touch.”

  Her eyes came to rest on Gwen’s face. She nodded once decisively, and then turned to Dante. “Give the mask assignment to Gwen. She can handle it.”

  Dante’s jaw went slack as he stared at her. “Gwen is a rookie!”

  “Green as a goddamned salad!” said McDougal.

  Around her, Gwen could feel the resentment pulsing in the room as the other agents simmered. She couldn’t really fault them. “Ave, I don’t think—”

  “Gwen will do the recovery on the mask,” Avy repeated. “This isn’t up for debate.”

  Valeria stared coldly at Gwen. Her eyes were baleful and promised trouble. She turned her gaze back on Avy. It didn’t get any friendlier.

  “You’re the boss,” Dante said at last.

  Avy headed for the door. “Glad you remember that.” Her departure didn’t ease the tension in the room and nobody would look at Gwen.

  She felt exhilarated. Guilty. Terrified. Alive. And possibly unworthy. Her first assignment had a commission of more than half a million dollars? Crazy.

  Dante switched to the next slide. “Valeria, you’re going to Brazil. . . .”

  Gwen opened the file folder Avy had pushed at her and stared down in silence at the mask. The thing was breath-takingly beautiful, the epitome of mystery and glamour. It spoke of sultry Venetian nights, elegant debauchery, freely flowing wine . . . and evil.

  The mask was instantly recognizable. Once the alert went out and it got listed on the international Art Loss Register, the mask would be impossible for anyone to sell on the open market. It would be almost as challenging to unload the piece on the black market. So who had stolen it—and why?

  chapter 2

  Quinn Lawson, president and CEO of Jaworski Labs, ordinarily thrived on having his feet held to the fire. The open flame got his juices flowing and warmed up his many and varied arguments for change in the business environment. And if his toes got a little charred in the process, well, that was the price of progress.

  But today took him right back to when he was age ten, the spit drying up in his mouth as he prepared for a paddling in the principal’s office at Fullerton Junior High in Nowata, Oklahoma. He had that same funny feeling that things weren’t right—that the man behind the desk had an agenda for taking Quinn’s pants down.

  Of course, this Palm Beach Mediterranean-style mansion with its private beach and full staff was a far cry from the Fullerton Junior High administrative offices, with their shiny, puke green linoleum floors, faux-wood-grain desks, and cheap framed educational posters.

  Nobody at Fullerton had ever offered him bourbon in a Baccarat decanter on a silver tray, either. Go figure.

  But old Ed Jaworski, like Principal Goodwin, took an implacable inventory of Quinn, as if he’d like to strip him of his full head of dark blond hair (Ed was down to about three wispy gray strands), his muscular build, and his hard-earned, full-scholarship-funded double degrees from Stanford: BA and MBA.

  Ed was nine days older than God. He didn’t like the way Quinn did things, his lack of respect for tradition. But he hadn’t been able to argue with his results—until now. And even now, the results had nothing to do with numbers, which always turned to music in Quinn’s hands.

  “You’ll get the Borgia mask back, or you’re fired,” Ed said. “I will personally see to it.”

  And he could, as the still-powerful founder of the company. It didn’t matter that he’d be cutting off his nose to spite his face; that the old son of a bitch would have to undergo an exhaustive executive search for another CEO.

  A man like Jaworski didn’t care about the consequences of flexing his muscle—he just wanted to show that even withered and gray, with the prime of his life behind him, he could do it. Ed wanted to show that he could still get it up, so to speak.

  “I can promise you that the mask isn’t hanging over my couch,” Quinn said in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

  That failed miserably.

  “Gross negligence!” Ed thundered. “The security of Jaworski Labs has been compromised under your watch.”

  “If you recall, I recommended an overhaul of the entire security system soon after I accepted the position.” Quinn gazed at him for a beat too long before adding, “Sir.”

  “If you can’t keep the art collection safe, then how is the board supposed to have confidence that you can keep the research and development of this company’s products safe?” Ed overrode him, choosing to conveniently forget the meeting in which he’d pooh-poohed Quinn’s concerns.

  In other words, Principal Ed was telling him to bend over. It didn’t matter that the meeting was documented. Ed could screw his career here six ways to Sunday.

  Quinn gripped the arms of his chair and fought to keep his temper under control, because if he lost it, Jaworski could add gross insubordination to his list of reasons to get rid of the whiz-kid CEO that he’d had to have at any price and now couldn’t abide. With anyone else, Quinn would bark right back. With this old man, it was more effective to keep his cool.

  It briefly crossed his mind that Jaworski himself could have had the mask stolen to set Quinn up. But that seemed a bit extreme, even for him.

  “I’ll get the mask recovered.” Quinn said it quietly but firmly. “I have ARTemis on it already. Avy Hunt is handling this personally.”

  Jaworski nodded grudgingly. “She has a good reputation.”

  “In the meantime, sir, the theft can only back up my original argument that our security needs updating. The system is”—as old as you are—“antiquated. It’s my understanding that it’s the same one that’s been in place since you retired.”

  Old Ed’s eyes snapped as Quinn deftly pointed out who was truly responsible for allowing the breach. “You’ve got a lot of nerve.”

  “Yes, sir.” He kept his voice neutral. “That comes in handy when running a company.”

  Jaworski glared at him.

  “So I assume that I’ll have your full support now in authorizing funds for a total overhaul of headquarters security.” Quinn smiled. Now who’s got whom bent over, you old bastard?

  Ed made a strangled noise. “Get the hell out of my house,” the old man growled. “And don’t come back until my five million dollars’ worth of art has, too.”

  Quinn stood up and calmly exited. He’d learned a few things over the years since he’d been in Principal Goodwin’s office. He’d learned not to bend over for anyone, no matter what their authority.

  Because once your pants are down, it’s hard to defend yourself—in school, in love, in life.

  Goodwin had violated every moral, ethical, and social code he supposedly stood for that day. But who would have believed a dirty, troubled, bastard kid whose grandfather was the town drunk?

  Quinn had taken care of himself. He’d stabbed the principal with his own letter opener, but nobody had bothered to ask why—and Quinn certainly hadn’t volunteered the shameful information. They said he was just a violent punk and expelled him.

  He’d then had a choice: a publicly funded military school or running away. But he’d known even at age thirteen that running wouldn’t solve any of his problems; it would just intensify them.

  Ironically, military school had been the making of Quinn. When he’d graduated, he’d put on his dress uniform and paid a visit to his old friend Principal Goodwin. Watched him shake like a leaf. But that was in the past.

  Today was all that mattered, and Quinn refused to let Jaworski get to him. Quinn had hired the best there was in the art recovery business, and if ARTemis couldn’t find the mask, then he’d damn well go after it himself. Sure . . . in all his spare time.

  He left Jaworski’s expensive Palm Beach air-conditioning and drove his Mercedes the hour and a half to the lab’s corporate headquarters in the Martinez-Rochas Tower on Brickell Avenue.

  The buildings in downtown Miami, like the people, all
seemed to wear designer sunglasses that kept them anonymous. The Martinez-Rochas Tower, like all the others, was tall, white, and full of tinted glass to keep the sun out and cool air in. It was facelessly modern, without any particular architectural significance. The interior attracted more attention, because of the art.

  As he walked in, Quinn’s eyes swept the rotunda that housed the lab’s corporate art collection, which included a range of pieces as diverse as original sheet music by Puccini to studies of dancers by Degas to works of minor German expressionists.

  He braced himself to see the mask’s empty niche. Despite his calm demeanor in front of the old man, the empty niche drove him crazy. It was as if someone had thrown a brick through his own living room window, and he had to step over the mess every day without sweeping it up.

  He gritted his teeth and fervently hoped that ARTemis was going to rectify the situation, and fast, so that he could turn his attention back to the business at hand. He was an expert at supply chain development and management, market positioning, competitive positioning, pricing, and financial analysis. He could design a business infrastructure and innovate cost-management strategies.

  What he could not do was understand the insane art market or comprehend why anyone in their right mind would pay fifty-four? fifty-six? million dollars for a single painting by van Gogh, van Went, or van Gone with the Wind. A few daubs of paint by a lunatic.

  Quinn also didn’t understand why anyone would pay five million bucks for a silly Venetian mask, no matter what its provenance, which was a fancy word for where it had originated and who’d owned it in the five centuries since then.

  Besides Jaworski’s art consultant, the enterprising Angeline Le Fevre—who was driven by fat commissions—only one person had ever tried to explain art to him. He thought of her as little as possible.

  He shook his head as he approached El Chivo, his nickname for the bronze sculpture that stood in the center of the rotunda. Maybe some artistic type would accuse him of lacking a soul, but the thing looked to him like a kid had smushed together a bunch of mud and stuck two horns at the top.