Macey risked a look at the boy behind her. She couldn’t shake the feeling that he was at home there, but nervous. Like a veteran athlete who has been asked to play a new position. He seemed a little off his game.
“Cammie’s going to be mad she missed this,” Macey said to fill the silence.
“Excuse me?” Hale asked.
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “I just…I have a friend who really likes air vents. And dumbwaiter shafts. And laundry chutes. Of course, the last time I was in a laundry chute, Cammie and I fell about a dozen stories….”
“Well, that sounds like fun.”
“It was either that or get kidnapped by terrorists, so I guess we got off easy.”
Macey glanced back to see Hale’s flirty grin. “Somehow I find that very— Wait!” Hale snapped, and grabbed her ankle, held her in place so that she couldn’t move another inch.
Macey jerked her head around and saw why Hale had stopped her. Narrow red beams crisscrossed the empty shaft, shining in the darkness.
“Lasers,” Hale sighed.
“Lasers,” Macey repeated.
They eased away from the red flickering beams that covered the shaft and blocked their way, inching backward until they heard voices below. Through a grate in the ceiling they could see the masked men lingering near a closed door, leaning against an antique table and smoking European cigarettes as if they had all day.
“Okay, so clearly they don’t have access to the target, which means—” Hale started, and Macey cut him off with a “Shh!” She leaned closer to the vent and listened to the foreign words that filled the hallway beneath them.
“What is that?” Hale asked, leaning close to the vents. “Russian?”
“Albanian,” Macey said, and again, motioned for him to be quiet.
“Now I suppose you’re going to tell me they teach Albanian at your school.”
“Only for extra credit.” Macey leaned even closer, listened harder. “It’s a job for hire,” she translated. “They don’t know how to get past the security system.”
Hale wasn’t impressed. “Of course they can’t get past the security system. You see that sticker by the door. That unit is protected by the new Sterling system. I can’t even get past that.”
Macey rolled her eyes and kept her ear trained on the men in the hall. “The boss—I guess that is whoever hired them—he said the system would be off, but it’s not.”
Below, the men talked on. Their frustration grew. “What are they saying now?” Hale asked.
“Cusswords.” Macey cut her eyes at him. “Bad ones.”
“What are they waiting on?” Hale asked almost like he wasn’t expecting an answer. But then, as if on cue, the air vent was plunged into darkness.
In the hallway beneath Hale and Macey, only the emergency exit signs emitted any light, and the hall was covered in an eerie red haze as Clinton shattered the IN CASE OF FIRE glass and pulled an axe from the compartment inside. With two long strides he walked to the door and swung. A minute later the men in the masks were walking inside.
The red laser beams disappeared and Macey glanced back at Hale and said, “Come on.”
Even with the power off, the air shafts were hot in the middle of winter, and sweat beaded on Macey’s brow and ran down the side of her face as she crawled along ahead of Hale, past the point where the lasers had previously blocked their way.
Inching along, she glanced down through the grates into the room below. It was gorgeous and luxurious with a silk-covered fainting couch and a balcony overlooking the park. But even for the Athenia, it was too nice to be a regular room.
“It’s an apartment,” Hale said. “Did you know the Athenia had residences?”
Macey nodded. “They do for a few select clients.” But then something caught her attention. “Is that…” Macey started. She was staring at a painting on the wall.
“A Klimt?” Hale filled in, then sighed. “Oh yeah. But don’t get your hopes up. It’s a copy.”
“And you know this because…” Macey drew out the last word and looked at Hale even more skeptically than before.
“I saw the original at the Louvre last summer,” he said with a shrug.
“Oh,” she said, deflated.
The masked men were right below them, unloading gear and going to work on the opposite side of the opulent room, so Macey and Hale spoke in hushed whispers, pressed together in the tiny space. But Macey didn’t feel a charge, a spark. Handsome though he was, there was no doubt that W. W. Hale was otherwise engaged.
When the man in the Reagan mask pulled the Klimt from the wall, she felt Hale go cold and rigid as he studied the space behind where the print had been.
“Oh boy,” Hale whispered almost to himself.
“What?” Macey asked.
“The safe,” Hale said.
Macey looked back at the room, at the big metal box around which the masked men were gathered. “What about it?”
“It’s…good,” Hale admitted.
“Surely it’s not too much for a world-class art thief such as yourself?” Macey tried to tease, but Hale was already backing slowly away.
“No, Macey. It’s too good.” He shook his head. “Come on. We’ve got to find whoever lives here and figure out what these guys are after.”
“Don’t bother,” Macey said.
“Why…”
She looked at an oil painting that hung over the fireplace, a woman in a canary diamond necklace that was even more famous than she was. “Because she’s in the ballroom right now.”
Macey spoke slowly. “So if you were right and the necklace Mrs. Calloway wore to the ball was a fake…”
Hale nodded. “One guess where she’s keeping the real one.”
Macey peered through the vent at the place where the men were working. They were methodical as they unloaded their equipment, laying it all out on the coffee table like a surgical team preparing their tools.
There were a half dozen devices Macey hadn’t seen before but one small packet that was far too familiar.
“C4,” she whispered, and froze, staring down at the tiny but powerful explosive. “What will they do if they can’t crack the safe?”
“You don’t get it, Macey. They can’t crack that safe.”