White Heat (30 page)

“Sure it wasn’t a Trapdoor or a Mouse spider? They look very simil—”

“It wasn’t,” Max said grimly, pushing away from the wail.

“Has the antivenin been administered?”

“The doc just gave it to her. We won’t know anything for another hour or so.”

“She’ll be all right, Max.”

“She better be.”

If Emily had been bitten en route to Montana, thousands of miles away from medical attention and the antivenom, the ending to this report might be chillingly different.

Left to its own devices, his brain wanted to connect Emily to his heart. Which was bullshit. He passed by the desk and laptop with a printer that Rifkin had set up outside Emily’s room. Max wasn’t leaving her, but he didn’t want to disturb her either. There’d be a parade of people from various divisions coming down to report their findings. The jigsaw puzzle pieces of the op were starting to come together. The picture wasn’t completely clear, but the image was starting to come into focus.

He’d been on ops where he’d lain in the wet grass/mud/water/ on a rooftop,
without moving,
barely breathing, for five hours straight. Now he fucking couldn’t stand still for a few minutes without feeling as though he was about to jump out of his own skin. To think he’d always thought of himself as a patient man.

Except when it came to Emily. It was an unwelcome revelation.

There were nine hundred steps to the end of the corridor. He’d walked it fifty-six times, encountered forty-four people in passing in his travels, consumed seven cups of coffee, drunk two bottles of water, gone to pee twice, and sat down once. His body was out here in the corridor, but his mind was behind that closed door with Emily and the doctors.

He could have sat dead still for hours if they’d damn well let him in there with her. Even though he had absolutely no imagination whatsoever, he couldn’t get the picture of Emily’s pale face out of his mind. She’d looked translucent. Insubstantial.

She’d looked, God damn it, as though she were seconds from being dead. That’s what his job had done to her. That’s what his trying to protect her had done.

Life vs. T-FLAC.

He realized that he hadn’t heard a word Dare had said.

“What are you doing?” He could hear Darius tapping at his keyboard.

“Clearly not sleeping,” Dare answered absently. “I’m cross.’. referencing. Let’s find out which of our suspects took a side trip to New South Wales recently while we wait. Call me the second you know about Emily.”

The phone went dead. Two seconds later it vibrated again. Max hadn’t even dropped it in his pocket yet. “Aries.” He made the turn at the end of the long hallway and headed back.

“Daklin. I have a four-one-one. Savage has the Black Rose tat on her back all right—”

Emily had been right. “No surprise there; is it any bigger or smaller than any others we’ve seen?”

“It’s not a rosebud,” Asher Daklin informed him. “It’s a fully open flower.”

“Jesus fuck,” Max breathed. They’d been able to ID Black Rose assets over the years because of the tightly furled rosebud tattooed in the small of their backs. The full-blown rose Savage sported was sure to indicate she was the
head
of the worldwide tango group. It was hard to believe she’d been operating right under T-FLAC’ noses, undetected, for years.

“The head of a tango group a T-FLAC operative? Shit. No wonder they were always two steps ahead of us. Savage had access to everything
we
knew about the Black Rose.”

Max was livid. She of course knew where every safe house was located. She was the one who’d hit Wiesbaden.

Savage had snuffed out the lives of the very people she was supposed to be protecting, and shielding and perpetuating the activities of the same people she was supposed to have been eliminating. “You better believe we’ll close that goddamned gap ASAP. From here on out everything is going to be even
more
compartmentalized around here. Hope they take the death penalty off the table. I want to know the traitorous bitch has concurrent life sentences and will remain locked up in a small cell until the day she dies.”

“You’ll get your wish.” Daklin didn’t sound any less furious than Max felt. “But don’t start mailing out congratulatory cards just yet. Savage had
two
tats in the small of her back.” He paused.

“The rose and a
lily
bud. Black Rose wasn’t the name of the entire group, Aries. It was merely the name of a
cell.
We have a sleeper tango organization, apparently called Black
Lily
that we knew fucking
nothing
about.”

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, MAX WAS
FINALLY
ALLOWED INTO EMILY’S room. While it had seemed like an eternity to him, he had to thank God for the speed and effectiveness of the antivenin.

He pushed open the door and strolled in. Mildly concerned, business as usual. She didn’t need to know the condition of his guts or the discomfort of the hole he’d gnawed in his cheek.

She was hooked up to a monitor and drip. The room was dim, and filled with a steady
beep-beep-beep.
Though she was still a little on the pale side, she smiled the second she saw him, and held out her hand. “Hi.”

Max looked at her beautiful face, a face he now knew better than his own, and his chest hurt. Despite the previous few hours, despite her wan smile, despite it all, her large expressive brown eyes shone with her love for him.

If you love someone, set them free ..
. The words came to mind out of nowhere. He didn’t know where he’d heard or read them, but the truth was unmistakable. He had to send Emily as far away from himself and his job as possible. If his enemies didn’t succeed in killing
her—eventually—his
own death would.

If she felt half as deeply as he did, his death would annihilate her. And in his line of work that wasn’t a possibility. It was a certainty.

He cleared his throat as he approached the bed. “Welcome back.” He took her hand, forcing himself not to gather her up against his heart—chest—and hug the hell out of her. Maybe not let go. He hooked a chair leg with his foot and dragged it up beside the bed. Still holding her hand, he sat down, his muscles relaxing for the first time since he’d watched her drop like a stone what felt like a year ago.

He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her soft palm. Her touch was a temporary balm to the widening ache inside him.

An hour. He’d give himself an hour. Then he’d rip himself away from her like a bandage from an open wound. Better that way. For her. For him.

Emily reached up and stroked the side of his chin with the back of her hand. The vulnerability, fear, and . . .
something
indefinable in her big brown eyes worked like a vise around his chest. “Thank God you weren’t bitten as well.”

He would willingly have fielded a hundred venomous spiders’ bites to protect her from the one. “Hide’s too tough. How are you feeling?” he asked, taking both hands in his so she’d stop making those distracting little circles with her knuckles on his jaw.

Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Like someone who almost died. Just guessing. It’s not like I’ve ever actually faced my own death before. How do you do it?”

“It’s my job. I’ve done it for so long that I don’t think about dying.” Until now.
Until you.
Fuck. “I’ve got—Hang on.” Max reluctantly let go of her hand, and reached into his pocket to retrieve his phone. Some ass was cutting into the most important hour of his life. “Aries,” he growled.

“We’ve got a problem,” Dare said.

No shit.
Max thought as he struggled to yank his attention away from the soft outline of Emily’s breasts as she breathed. He would carry a picture of her body, of her dolphins, of her lush mouth, into the next lifetime with him.

“Yo. Aries?”

“Yeah.” He got up and moved away from the bed so he could focus. “What’s the problem?”

“Just heard from La Mezquita. Samples from the point of detonation taken at the bomb site showed higher levels of radiation than would be expected.”

“Say what?” He really needed to concentrate. He rubbed a hand across his eyes. “The painting was rigged with nukes?”

“Nope, but it sure as hell wasn’t painted in fifteen hundred and whatever. According to the geek squad, the suspect painting had to be done after 1945. Something about worldwide, post-Hiroshima radiation levels being absorbed by white paint. Bottom line? Tillman, Norcroft, Tillman junior, or any combination of the three, were passing off copies as the originals.”

“So where are the originals?”

“Working on it.”

Max snapped his phone closed and shoved it back in his pocket.

Emily’s brow was pinched together as she struggled to sit up. “Originals?” she asked over the aggressive beeping of the monitor.

“Relax, okay?” Max helped her sit up, then shifted some of the wires and the tubing from her IV so it wasn’t obstructed. He stuffed several pillows behind her. “You’ll pull all this shit out of your arm if you flop around like that.”

She raised a brow. “Flop—? Never mind. Original
whats?”

“The painting that exploded in La Mezquita wasn’t the original, it was a copy. An excellent copy, but a copy nonetheless. It almost fooled the lab people.”

“Are you telling me that it was my copy hanging at La Mezquita? Not Mr. Tillman’s original? That would be wonderful! Losing the copy would be no loss at all. But there’s no way they would know that. With no modesty whatsoever, I can tell you that my copies can withstand the hardest, strongest scrutiny. It would take longer than a few hours to tell the difference. I’m good, Max. So was your father. We didn’t paint copies. We
replicated,
down to manufacturing our own pigments and dyes, down to producing our own canvases, down to tying our own brushes. The paintings we did were identical in almost every way possible to the original.”

“The fragments came here to the T-FLAC lab.”

She thought about that for a nanosecond, then said with a small smile, “Okay. Let’s say that they’re right, and they
could
authenticate that the painting that was blown up was my copy.” Her expression said she didn’t believe even T-FLAC was
that
good.
That
fast. She frowned as she leaned against the bank of pillows.

She chewed her lower lip as she pleated the sheet with her fingers. “The whole point of Tillman getting people to produce copies was so that he could donate the original and
keep
the copy.” She pushed her hair out of her face and sighed. “Okay. I can see by your expression that you believe the
Canigiani Holy Family was
my copy. But what if it wasn’t? Let’s say for a second that your lab is wrong. It wasn’t my copy, but
was
the original. Priceless paintings of that historical importance don’t just waltz out of a building once they’re in. There’s always heavy security and a chain of custody is carefully documented to protect a painting’s provenance.”

He cocked his head, listening, prepared to go with a different hypothesis even though he’d pit T-FLAC’s expertise—in anything— against that in the regular world. “What about before it reaches the building? How would that work?”

She pressed her lips together. “It wouldn’t. Unless the owner or curator was in on the fraud.”

Max sat on the chair beside the bed. “Suppose he was.”

“Tillman?” she asked. “You think Tillman’s donations were all a scam? That for whatever reason he had us make perfect copies, then donated the
copies
instead of his originals? To what end?” She ran her fingers through her hair and tugged. “I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just trying to make sense of it all.”

“For one thing, you and Daniel made exact replicas. It would take a normal lab weeks, if not months, to uncover the fraud. And because you’re that good, it would be almost impossible to tell the original from a copy. What if the plan was to donate those excellent copies all along? What if they knew the painting would be part of an explosion. An explosion that would destroy all the evidence? Why blow up an original when they could replace it with an excellent fake?”

Emily shook her head in disgust. “Think about his house. The man doesn’t exactly have discriminating taste. He wanted to look good to the media for whatever reason, but also wanted to hold onto his valuable paintings.” He watched as she put two and two together. “The son of a bitch had his cake and ate it, too. What a jerk.”

“That, too,” Max couldn’t help smiling because she was adorable when she was pissed. Pink bloomed in her cheeks and her dark eyes held a glint of fire.

I miss you already,
he thought tenderly. “I believe several of Till- man’s donated masterpieces, or their copies, have blown up in the last several months. Far too many to chalk up to coincidence.”

She bit her lower lip as she gave that some thought. “Okay. I’ll go there with you. But where’s the benefit to him? Why bother? You said he’s never had an altruistic bent until what was it—ten or so years ago? Why suddenly find religion and a conscience, and claim to want to give away his entire art collection? He wouldn’t do something like that for a tax break. The man’s got more money than Midas.”

“Pretend he didn’t. How would he go about switching copies for originals?”

“The switch would have to take place between the authentication process and the actual delivery. That could only happen if he handpicked the authenticator and got the receiving institution to agree to accept that authentication.”

Max reached up to brush a strand of hair off her cheek with his finger. The satin feel of her now-flushed skin broke his concentration. The only way he’d be able to focus was if he put some physical distance between them. Emily was just too much of a temptation.

He got up and went to lean one shoulder against the wall. “If you were Tillman, who would you use?”

“I can think of about a hundred possibilities for authenticators.”

“Can you narrow it down? Maybe concentrate on the Denver metropolitan area?”