“Would you mind stepping out from behind that desk and showing me some ID?” Roman said.
This was pivotal. There was a button beneath the desk that sounded the security alarm. It was the only one in the building. Once they got the guard away from that button, they were safe.
Aaron Roberts stepped out from behind his desk.
“I’m not this Dean guy,” he said, pulling out his wallet. He tugged his driver’s license loose and flashed it at Roman. “See?”
Roman barely glanced at it. “Sure you’re not.” He unclipped a pair of heavy-duty handcuffs from his belt, nodding at the wall. “To be safe, why don’t you go ahead and face the wall for me, Mr. Roberts. Just until we get this all cleared up.”
The security guard turned automatically. “But I didn’t do anything.”
“Don’t worry, son. As long as you cooperate you won’t be in any trouble at all.” Roman clipped the handcuffs over Roberts’s wrists.
Dorothy smothered a smile. It amused her to hear Roman call a man older than him “son.”
“What the hell?” murmured a voice behind them.
Security guard number two, Dorothy thought. It was happening just like she’d read it would, just like she’d planned. It felt a bit like playing God.
She wanted to smile, but she bit the inside of her cheek, stopping herself. Moving her lip seemed to dislodge the mustache, and she couldn’t risk blowing her cover, not when they were this close.
Nothing she’d read had mentioned the second security guard’s name or anything about him, so she hadn’t known what to expect until this moment. She turned—
And breathed a sigh of relief. He was barely older than they were, with long, gangly limbs and a spattering of acne on his forehead. Not a threat.
He looked at Roberts. “Aaron—?”
“There’s been some kinda disturbance,” Roberts muttered. Then, frowning, he added, “You didn’t frisk me. Aren’t you supposed to—”
“Sir, I’m going to need you to come here and stand next to your partner,” Roman said, cutting off Roberts. “We’ll have to call your names in before we move on.”
Guard Number Two was staring at Dorothy, eyes narrowed.
“Sir?” Roman said again, approaching him.
The guard pointed. “His mustache is falling off.”
Blast.
It seemed to Dorothy that Roman stiffened as her own fingers flew to her face. Sure enough, the damn mustache was askew. Her first impulse was to fix it, but it was too late. The second guard was already shaking his head, backing away. His eyes flicked to the security desk. The alarm.
She felt Roman’s eyes on her, questioning, and she could hear what he was thinking as clearly as if he’d actually spoken the words out loud. It’s not supposed to happen like this.
History was supposed to be on their side. Dorothy had spent so long preparing. Night after night falling asleep with a musty old book as a pillow. Hours spent staring at a computer screen, until the words all blurred and a dull headache beat at her skull. They weren’t going to be caught. They couldn’t be.
Dorothy moved between the guard and the alarm, reflexively. He was larger than she was, and she saw his eyes narrow as they moved over her body, sizing her up. He could push through her, he was thinking.
Well, he could try to.
Dorothy had learned many things during the last year she’d spent with the Black Cirkus, but perhaps the most useful was the location of the esophagus. There was a spot on the human body where the esophagus peeked out from behind the collarbone, all frail and weak, and if she happened to, say, jam her fingers into that spot, she could make a man twice her size cry for his mother.
This man was not twice Dorothy’s size, but he still lurched at her, and so she calmly stuck two fingers into that tender spot just below his neck and hooked them in and down.
He jerked backward, gasping, hands grabbing at his throat. “What the—”
Dorothy used that second of surprise to spin him around, wrenching both arms behind his back. He twisted, all red-faced and wide-eyed, trying to see her face.
He looked at her then, really looked at her, and she saw him take in the scar. The white hair.
“Jesus,” he choked out. “You’re not a—”
Before he could finish, she’d jerked his arm upward so it would hurt.
“Watch it!” the guard shouted, but he didn’t fight as she slapped the cuffs over his wrists. “You’re not even a cop, are you?”
“Not remotely,” said Dorothy. She shoved the guard up against the wall, beside his partner. Now that they were both cuffed, they were no longer a threat. “This is a robbery. You don’t know it yet, but it will go down in history as the greatest robbery ever performed.”
Dorothy and Roman led the guards to the basement, handcuffed them to pipes, and wrapped duct tape around their hands, feet, and heads. Then they headed upstairs to the Dutch Room.
Dorothy had practically memorized the Dutch Room. She’d spent hours poring over photographs, wondering if the tile floor would cause her to trip in her oversize boots, if their voices would carry through the high, arched windows and into the courtyard below, if they’d be able to see in the near-perfect dark.
Her flashlight’s beam bounced off green brocade walls and gilded gold frames holding the most famous artwork in the history of the world. Chairs and heavy wooden furniture had been pushed up against the walls, almost like someone had cleared the center of the room for a dance. Dorothy grinned a little at the thought. It was the 1990s. The kind of dancing she was thinking of hadn’t been popular for a hundred years and the nonsense that had taken its place . . .
Well. It seemed more like convulsing than dancing, to her.
“We have a little over an hour,” she said as Roman headed for a framed Vermeer.
“You’re the boss.” Roman pulled a box cutter out of his pocket and began cutting the painting from its frame.
Isabella Stewart Gardner had bought that Vermeer in 1892, for 29,000 francs, Dorothy thought, remembering her research. Now it was worth millions.
She tilted her head to the side, studying it. It was smaller than she’d expected it to be. Why was everything so much smaller in real life?
They packed up paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas, and Manet, along with an ancient Chinese gu vase and a bronze eagle finial that had sat atop a framed Napoleonic flag (the flag stayed stubbornly attached to the wall, no matter how hard they tried to remove it).
Finally, Roman checked his watch. “It’s been seventy-nine minutes.”
“Fine,” Dorothy said, stowing the final painting away in her bag. “Let’s go.”
His eyes narrowed. “And the guards?”
“The police will be here in six hours. I’m sure they’ll let them out.”
“You’re terrible,” Roman said. But he smiled in an amused sort of way that let Dorothy know he approved.
“Come on,” she said, hitching her duffel farther up her shoulder as she started for the museum doors.
The Black Crow waited for them in a nearby park, its bullet-shaped body and finned tail hidden by tree branches, tall grass, and the night’s long shadows. Roman loaded the stolen artwork into the cargo hold while Dorothy climbed into the cockpit and began their preflight check. Roman had spent the last year teaching her to fly the time machine. She couldn’t handle the ship quite as well as he could yet, but she was getting better every day.