Her tongue clicked, the creases around her eyes deepening as she extended her hand palm up.
I sighed and rolled my eyes but pulled the bracelet from my pocket and handed it over. I didn’t need it anymore, and it was one of those items that Carol owned because she liked to wear it. That was how I lifted it in the first place, during one of her dinner parties.
“How’d you know I’d be here?” I asked, tilting my head to the side with curiosity.
She gave a huff of laughter. “John, please. Don’t ask questions you already know the answers to. My people are everywhere.”
Good point. I envied their reach some days, but not enough that I’d ever sell my soul and work for them. I liked being the master of my own fate.
“Steal from me again, John, I’ll taxidermy your tight ass and mount you on my wall, Game or not. Are we clear?” Carol’s eyes narrowed, her elegant appearance nothing but a smoke screen for the accomplished assassin lurking beneath her skin. Retired or not, Carol was still a force to be reckoned with.
“Crystal clear,” I agreed with a toothy grin. “How’s—”
“None of your business,” she cut me off before I could inquire about her youngest child. “He’s too young.”
I shrugged one shoulder. “I started younger than him. Children have quick fingers and often go unnoticed.”
Her answering smile was brittle. “You didn’t have a choice, John. Koen does.” She checked her watch and gave a curse. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m late for a meeting with my other problem child.”
Amusement rolled through me as she stalked away across the hotel lobby. Carol had five children, but only two gave her wrinkles. They were my two favorite Atwoods.
Not five minutes after Carol disappeared, while I was helping myself to a Rolex straight off a man’s wrist while he waited for valet, my phone buzzed. Excited, I pocketed the thirty thousand dollar watch and checked my messages.
“Finally,” I muttered aloud, wandering away from my mark as I read through the instructions for my final task in the Game.
I already had a rough idea of what would be involved, from both my past wins and from life experience. My grandfather—Christophe Valenshek—had been one of the early winners of the Game. Since he’d gotten older he had transitioned onto the committee, dedicating all his time to crafting challenges for the new generation of world-class criminals. It’d been his passion, and he’d turned a simple competition between peers into a worldwide event. Now, it was like the Olympics for shady underworld figures, and while some rounds leaned more toward the assassination and espionage arena, most of the tasks favored career thieves.
This was the first Game to run since my grandfather died, but I had been confident they’d honor his legacy by sticking to his already mapped out Game levels. Not that he’d ever given me clues—Chris hated cheats just like I did—but I was observant.
“Van Gogh’s Poppy Flowers,” I murmured, reading the task again. The committee didn’t go making things easy. They provided the item details—its name, a photo, and its last official known location—a deadline that I needed to complete the task within, and my drop point. That was it.
That was all I needed, though. They couldn’t make things too easy or they’d never pick a winner.
Luckily, all my years upon years of watching black market art auctions was paying off, because I knew who currently owned Poppy Flowers and roughly where he might be keeping it. Of course, knowing where to find it was only a fraction of the challenge. This one was really going to test my skills just to lay eyes on the piece, and this time I wasn’t the only thief on the job.
It was the last task of the Game, so three of us would all be hunting the same prize. The deadline for this was irrelevant; whoever got it first would win. It’d better be me.
two
TRIS
TWO MONTHS LATER
I was late. I despised being late. But I’d had a half-decent Tinder date last night and slept through my alarm, so here I was. Late to my favorite class of the week, one that I’d taken over teaching when the professor, Dr. Bailey, had been hospitalized a few weeks earlier.
Everyone thought he would pull through, but he only seemed to be deteriorating, and it was just a matter of time before the university found a replacement. Until they did, I was making the most of my increased responsibility.
Or, I had been until last night's date had bought me my seventh mango daiquiri and I decided he was actually pretty hot after all. I vaguely remembered the sex being pretty great, too. Or, shit, it’d want to have been utterly mind blowing since it’d made me late this morning.
My brain was still buzzed enough that I needed a refresher of what I planned to teach today, so I scrolled through my notes on my phone at lightning speed while hurrying down the corridor of my elite school. How the hell I’d landed my position as Dr. Bailey’s teaching assistant, I had no clue, because it was a chance of a lifetime and definitely not one I intended to fuck up.
My focus was so engrossed with revising my teaching notes, I almost ran straight into a man standing in the middle of the fucking hallway.
“Shit,” I gasped, “sorry, didn’t see you there.”
He gave a small laugh. “I get that a lot.”
Something about the depth of his voice—and that hint of an accent--—made me pause and glance up. And up. And up.
“Somehow, I doubt that,” I muttered. The guy was enormous. How had I not seen him? He looked like some kind of Greek god who just landed on earth. Confused and totally off balance, I glanced around to see why he was just standing there. In the fucking way.
Then my brows hitched when I realized he was looking at a painting hung outside the administration office. It was framed in an awful, heavy gold thing that did the picture itself zero justice, but it matched the rest of the ostentatious old-man decor of the university, so whatever.
“Uh…” I indicated the painting. “Were you admiring the student art?”
His brow lifted slightly and he turned his face back to the painting. It was a big one, taking up a third of the wall space, and was done in Neoclassical style depicting a woman reclining on a chaise sofa while reading a leather-bound book.
“Admiring?” he repeated. His face was interesting, his nose slightly bent like it’d been broken and healed wrong, but his mouth…holy shit, those lips. “I don’t think I’d say admiring. I was actually wondering how on earth this was chosen for display at Boles University. It’s awful.”
My lips parted in shock while my mind quickly placed the accent as British. “It’s awful?” I peered at the award plaques mounted beside the golden frame. Somehow that word seemed so much more insulting in his accent. “Respectfully, sir, are you fucking blind? This is exquisite, and clearly I’m not the only one who thinks so.” I pointed out the awards, because maybe he was visually impaired and I was just being rude for no reason.
He just shrugged one of those massive shoulders. “There’s no accounting for taste on those panels. This painting is a clear mockery of classical art with a myriad of hidden elements designed to disrespect the viewer and the poor fools who awarded those accolades.”