Mockingbird (A Stepbrother Romance) (3 page)

"Now I take care of it. You stay here."

Oh. Great.

He packs up the goods, both the necklace and the other items I stole. I count the cash now- minus my cookies and snacks, it comes in at just under fourteen thousand, plus whatever the sale of the various baubles I stole brings me back. Dad has connections with dozens of fences; the necklace was a special job. A buyer approached him through an intermediary.

I kill the time showering, and eating the breakfast of champions- hot dogs and cupcakes, microwaved Pop Tarts and then a beer. Thievery works up quite an appetite.

It's after four in the morning when he gets back. My cut is in a brown paper bag. He tosses it to me and I count it out. Ten grand, not bad. I put the rest with it and hold it in my hand, staring at just shy of twenty-five thousand before I peel some off to fill my wallet and wrap up the rest in the paper back and stash it with my things.

"How much for the necklace?"

"Two point five, as the buyer promised. Minus the Frenchman's cut, that's two million, three hundred thousand dollars, wired to our accounts at Credit Suissie. Fifty percent is yours, of course.

I nod. I've been building quite a nest egg, working with my father. He's showed me the balances. For now the cash and sale of smaller goods is enough. I'm saving the rest, letting it grow. By the time I'm his age, I'll be retired, and living comfortably. I've been looking at Argentina. It seems like a really nice place, and more important, we've never worked there.

Dad drops a folder on my lap

"Study."

It's not schoolwork. It's another job.

Already? Usually after a score like this we take at least a month off.

"What's the game?"

"Art theft. We're stealing a painting."

"How?"

"Access to a vault. I think a social engineering approach is going to be our best bet. The curator of the collection is a woman."

"Yeah? I'm to use my rakish charms on her, then?"

"No."

I look up, raising an eyebrow.

He smirks. "I am."

I open the folder and flip through the pages. It's a dossier, information gathered from a variety of legal and illegal sources on a mark. Everything is here- school records, info from a hacked facebook account. This doesn't look like a museum curator. She turned eighteen last month, just graduated from
 
high school. I flip through the pages.

She's gorgeous. I find myself staring at the photo.

"She doesn't look like a museum curator."

"She's not. The curator is Carol Mathews. That's her daughter. Diana."

"Diana."

She would be, wouldn't she?

Chapter 2: Diana

One of the privileges of
 
being a museum curator's daughter is after-hours access.

Yay. Woohoo. Go me.

I grew up in this place. The Western Heritage Museum is one of the largest private collections of art, historical artifacts and other such junk in the world. The full story is available on our website, in our newsletter, and on the drink cups in the gift shop, so I'll give you the cliff notes version instead. One hundred and fifty years ago-ish, a very rich chemical baron from East Bumblescum Pennsylvania took part of his fortune and established a trust to operate a museum. It got bigger, acquired more stuff, became a major tourist attraction close to Philadelphia, and a bunch of other boring things happened.

A long time passed, my Mom and Dad divorced, and my Mom married the Museum. I swear she spends more time with it than she does with me. Most of the time I'm just an inconvenience. I had to fight with her for most of my life to socialize or spend any time with people my own age. If she had her way, I'd spend all my time wandering around this dusty smelling collection of paintings and sculptures and weapons.

My mother would have me spend the rest of my life here. She wants me to major in history with a concentration in history of American art, at her alma mater, a small private college. As far as she's concerned, it's
going
to happen. Nevermind that with my grades and recommendations I could go anywhere I wanted. I filled out the application, just like she said. Application in this case is a bit of an exaggeration. It's more like I'm signing up. I've had to hear many, many times how she's called in all her favors and even made a donation to make sure I get a seat in the freshman class.

Frankly, I have zero interest in any of this stuff. The only part of the museum that ever interested me was the science wing, and that got boring when I was, say, nine. It's a kid's attraction, full of "hands on" stuff. The field trips love it. Somebody on the board of trustees wanted to bring in an IMAX theater, but Mom put the brakes on that one. Too costly, and the big domed building would ruin the aesthetics of the grounds, she said.

Anyway.

At some point I'm going to have to drop the truth bomb on her.

I'm not doing it. I'm not going. Completely on my own, I filled out applications to schools
I
am interested in attending, where I can study a program that interests
me
, not
her.

It's going to be an argument to rock the ages, I know. I can feel it in my bones, like a distant storm on the other side of the mountains. My mother does not compromise, she does not negotiate, she does not bend. She does not feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and she will not stop, ever, until I am a history major.

This is a bad time for the
discussion
.

There's a delivery coming in tonight. The security guy is here. The foundation that runs the museum goes all out on securing the collection. The head of security is a guy with the uninteresting name of Bob Anderson, a big imposing slab of a man who used to play football and who is now charged with twisting the limbs off anybody who tries to lift something from the museum, not that anyone would. The security system here is top notch. The skylights are all protected by motion sensors, glass breakage sensors, and infrared beams, as are all the windows. At night, steel shutters seal the ground floor windows, and all the panes have been replaced with that Lexan stuff. It won't break even if it's hit with a sledgehammer. All the doors have steel cores and bolt into the floor at night, and the hallways are patrolled by a pack of the cutest, cuddliest doberman pincers ever. I mean, if you're me, or my mother, or the dog wrangler. If you don't belong in here they'll tear your arm off.

Tonight the dogs are penned up. We're getting a delivery. A van has docked at the loading gate around the back of the museum where the public is not allowed to go, and it looks like that scene at the beginning of that movie where they're delivering the velociraptor and they have an airlock for it to through and everything.

Mom stands overseeing it all, whipcord thin and severe, a slight frown on her face. She'd be pretty if she tried but she prefers a more masculine look and cut to her clothes, and wears her dark hair in a tight bun that pulls her normally curly hair smooth. If she grew it out it would be thick brown ringlets like mine. I haven't cut mine since I was twelve and it hangs on my back in a big thick mop unless I put it up. It's a pain in the ass sometimes, but I think it's my best feature.

Mom is busy overseeing the transfer, mostly ignoring me as I try to fade into the background. I know this is important to her, and now is not the time to drop the truth bomb, but I graduated last week and I have to respond to admission letters by the end of June.

You'd think this thing was the Ark of the Covenant from the way the workmen carry it. A crate that looks like it would hold a big laptop, four guys bear the thing like it's made of glass and it will shatter if they drop it. When it's been moved all the way inside and set on a workbench, they finally open it. Inside, in a glass case, is a framed painting about a foot and a half high by a foot wide of a man washing his hands in a little bowl. It might be Pontius Pilate or something, I don't know. I'm pretty sure this is the painting Mom's been talking about with the board of trustees for a year now. She's been calling it "The Lost Vermeer".

It's a nice painting. I prefer Bob Ross.

There's some other stuff on the truck, none of which is treated with the same pomp and circumstance. A pile of junk that goes to the Outsider Art collection, some more paintings, a statue of two naked people, and the ugliest thing I've ever seen, a chunk of black quartz carved in the shape of a skull, wrapped up in a coiled snake made out of jade. Just looking at it makes me uncomfortable. One of the snake's little eyes is made of white stone, marble or alabaster, and the other is a chunk of jade set in jade. Funny, that. I have the same condition, it's called
heterochromia iridium
. My right eye is brown, my left eye is hazel, but most people have to be very close to look.

After that, another crate of weapons for the armory. The Montclaire Estate houses one of the largest collections of pre-modern arms and armor in North America, all kinds of swords and shields and armor and maces and wicked looking things with hooks and barbs. Now
that
part of history I always found fascinating, but if you want to study at the undergraduate or graduate level in humanities, be prepared to study and discuss nothing but economics and social mores and chairs. One of mom's friends wrote her dissertation on one kind of Colonial American
table
.

I'm not knocking anybody's work here, but that's just not me.

The Shop, that's what everybody calls the off-limits areas of the museum, is not a very impressive place. It reminds me of the workshop at my high school, really. Big and well lit but somehow dark at the same time, with a smell of oil and sawdust. I only took a design class that was held in the shop for some reason, but the place always creeped me out. I don't like band saws, they look like they crave fingers.

Mom stares at the painting like it's a lost child. It's sealed in some kind of case within the crate, a block of protective material to keep anything from touching it.

"It's exquisite," she coos, to no one in particular. "Let's get it into the vault."

The vault is the dominating feature of the Shop. It was in a bank, once, but when the bank closed during the Depression the museum bought the thing and had a crane drag it out of the bank, and it was brought here and a big concrete bunker cast around it. It takes two people entering an access code and encryption key to get in… Mom's key opens a little door, and Mom puts in the key code and a second code that's some kind of encryption key, that gets rotated every two weeks. Somebody else has to stand at the far side and do the same thing, too far apart for two people to reach.

I don't know what either code is. I think only Mom and some board members and Anderson know the codes. When she opens the door it
hisses
as cool, dry air seeps out, curling around my ankles like invisible fingers. The new acquisitions go inside where they rest in prepared places on sturdy shelves, and then the big door slams closed and locks with a heavy, hollow
thunk
as bolts as big around as my head slide home in equally robust, uh, bolt holes.

After that, the truck leaves, the staff is dismissed, and Mom walks me to her office.

That means a trip outside. It's muggy out here, and dark. The museum grounds are well lit, but that only makes the darkness in the world around us that much deeper, and washes out the stars. I've always felt uneasy being outside in this place, and I've lived here since I was seven. I don't think I'll ever feel at ease on the grounds. We live in the original servant's quarters, long since converted into office and housing for the curator and their family, though Mom has a house down at Rehoboth Beach that her sister has named Fort Alimony, since that's what paid for it. We don't spend much time there.

Mom opens the five locks and lets me in, then closes it and looks at me.

"Isn't it exciting? We'll be displaying a lost Vermeer
here
. Attendance levels will double, I'm telling you. The board will be thrilled."

Yes, I'm terribly excited.

The house might not be part of the museum, but it feels like one. The antiques and the subtle, masculine air of the leather and dark panelling and rich carpets make me feel like an outsider. Thankfully the rooms upstairs are ours and I don't have to live in a room that looks like the Ghost of Christmas Future will pop in any time to pay me a visit in the middle of the night. (Look, I know that movie is cheesy as hell, but it scared the
shit
out of me when I was six). For now I follow her to her office, still carrying my messenger bag and its cargo of secret acceptance letters. I got a few rejections and I've already sent cordial thank you letters, but every letter in my bag comes with an offer of at least a half ride scholarship and four of them offer a full ride, so she can't throw it in my face that she's going to be paying for my education. One of the places is even closer than where she wants to send me. I don't see how I can object.

Ha, right.

She looks tiny when she sits in the huge antique chair behind her huge antique battleship of a desk, but somehow the room doesn't swallow her, she fills it like it's choking on her aura. I sit in one of the guest chairs and wring my hands.

"Well? What's got you so nervous?"

I take the letters out and lean over to rest them on the leather panel in the middle of her desk. She keeps her work area completely neat and organized, like no one is ever in here at all. It's amazing, sometimes, and a little scary. I feel sacrilegious profaning the clean space with the letters. Mom picks them up, and flicks through them one by one, like a card sharp arranging her hand. She pulls one letter from its envelope, smoothes it on the desk with a nervous intensity, and looks up at me after scanning the contents.

"You've been applying to other schools."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I've been offered scholarships-"

"I've already secured a scholarship and a grant for you."

"Yes, to major in history at the school you picked for me. I'm not sure I want to do that."

She removes her hands from the letter and it lifts up a little, folding along the lines where it was creased and stuffed into the envelope.