Midnight Angels (35 page)

“You chose the work over her,” Kate said. “You made that very clear.”

“She
was
the work,” the Raven said, his voice betraying him with a small break. “That was what I could never convey to her. There was no separation between the two. Not in my eyes. I loved them both dearly. To this day I do. And now that I’ve cleansed my soul, I’m afraid it’s time to get to the matter before us. You know what it is I desire. All you need to do is tell me.”

Kate looked across the room at Marco, the two men holding him down, his legs hanging over the edges of the table, his upper body trembling, his eyes closed. “I wish I could,” she said. “I wish I could.”

The Raven took a deep breath and walked with his head down toward his employees. “Break two of his fingers,” he ordered, “and let her hear him scream.”

“Wait,” Kate pleaded from across the room, not sure what to say next, wondering just what signal Rumore was out there waiting to hear before moving in.

The Raven held up his right hand and, along with the two men, turned to face her.

“I can tell you where I hid them once we got them out of the corridor,” she said. “From there, maybe you and your men can figure a way to pick up the trail and locate them.”

“I’m afraid that’s not good enough,” the Raven said. “I’m an art hunter, not a detective.”

He glanced at one of the men and nodded. Within seconds Marco’s sharp scream echoed through the room and nearly brought Kate to her knees, tears forming at the corners of her eyes, her hands clasped across her mouth.

“I’m so sorry, Marco,” she whispered.

“Shall we continue?” the Raven asked.

Kate turned toward him, lowering her hands from her face, and then, fueled with anger and hate, she rushed him, her shoulders at chest level, sending them both to the ground. Rolling off of him, she got up and ran
toward the double doors leading to a small patio. She grabbed a thick, porcelain vase as she moved, avoided the reach of one of the Raven’s men, and swung the doors open, tossing the vase out the second-floor window and standing there as she heard it smash onto the rock garden pavement below. Then she peered out into the semidarkness, hoping to see some movement, hear the police presence as they pressed into action, but got nothing in return other than a warm breeze brushing her face. She froze when she felt the Raven wrap his arms around her waist.

“Now what did your little action accomplish?” he whispered, “other than ruining what I can only assume was a rather valuable vase?”

“You may as well kill me now,” Kate said, anger overcoming any fear. “I will never help you. Never. So do what it is you do best. Otherwise, know that I will make you taste defeat.”

“Finally, you sound like your mother,” the Raven said. “Perhaps there is hope for you after all.”

“Let Marco go,” she said. “This is between the Society and the Immortals, and he has no place in either group. Leave the fight where it belongs—between the two of us.”

“And if I agree, will I then hear from you what I need to know?” the Raven asked.

“You have my word,” Kate said.

The Raven released his grip on her and turned to step back into the room, leaving Kate standing alone on the patio. He looked over at the two men hovering uncertainly above Marco. “Let the boy go,” he said. “He is no longer of use to me.”

“That’s funny,” Rumore said, “I was about to say the very same thing. Just goes to show it might be true—criminal minds do think alike.”

He was standing in the open doorway, three heavily armed officers forming a tight circle behind him, the hallway beyond filled with cops with automatic weapons at the ready.

The Raven recovered quickly from his sudden shock. Assuming there were as many if not more officers outside, he assessed the situation and formulated the quickest escape path he could envision in the scant seconds available to him. He had been in the hunt for a long time, and learned years earlier that while the true professional needed to be prepared for the unexpected, it was only the very skilled who had the capacity
to improvise a successful plan. “And here I always thought Florence to be the safest city in Italy,” he said to Rumore. “I will make it a habit from this moment on to always lock my door.”

“It’s a good rule no matter what city you happen to be in,” Rumore said. He walked into the room and looked at Marco, now straddling the table, his damaged hand cradled in the palm of his good one. He made eye contact with Kate, still standing on the patio, then turned back to the Raven. “It would be another good idea if you had your men lay down whatever weapons they might have hidden under those clothes. With all these cops around, there’s sure to be one or two looking to take someone down, and your boys do seem to fit the profile.”

“It seems you have the upper hand,” the Raven said. “That does not often occur with me.”

“That request about the guns?” Rumore said. “That goes for you as well.”

The Raven held out his arms and kept his hands open, fingers spread.

“Okay, then,” Rumore said, taking several steps deeper into the room, “let’s try and take this nice and easy, shall we?”

“I await your orders,” the Raven said.

Rumore turned to one of the uniformed officers standing to his left. “Take the kid first,” he said. “Get him to a doctor and have that hand taken care of.”

The uniformed man nodded, hurried across the room and gently took Marco by his elbow. “Don’t worry about your shirt,” he told the boy. “We have blankets for you downstairs.”

As Marco walked slowly past Rumore, he glanced up at the detective. “I’m sorry if I let you down,” he said.

“You’re a lot tougher than you think,” Rumore assured him, with a pat on his shoulder. “You bought us time.”

“What about him?” Marco asked, tilting his head toward the Raven.

“Yes, please, what about me?” the Raven said. “Do you think you have enough to hold me longer than it will take my lawyer to drive up from his office in Rome?”

Rumore moved around the room, hands at his sides, the uniforms buzzing behind him, placed in position for a takedown. He was impressed by the calm exhibited by the Raven, at least on the surface. He had learned that one of the marks of a professional criminal was to act as
if he or she had the upper hand, no matter how dire the situation. The Raven’s henchmen lacked that skill, and stood with their shoulders sagged, waiting for the handcuffs to be slapped on. Marco was just happy to have survived an ordeal that could have easily ended up doing much more damage than it did. As for Kate, she had yet to move from her place on the patio. He was not sure if it was fear keeping her there or the fact that she thought it best to stay out of the way and let him and his officers do what they came to do.

But it was the Raven who concerned Rumore.

He was nothing at all as he had imagined him, despite all that he’d read of the man’s many rumored thefts and more heinous crimes. The Raven was athletic in build and moved with a dancer’s grace, each gesture measured, each action and reaction made to solicit a response he already seemed to anticipate. But more than anything, it was his calm demeanor that troubled Rumore. It seemed as if he knew what was going to happen next, long before anyone else had come even close to anticipating it.

“Maybe you should tell your lawyer to take his time coming to Florence,” Rumore said, eager to regain the momentum crucial in any confrontation. “The kidnapping charges alone will allow us to hold you for as long as necessary. Then, we tack on felony assault, maybe even stretch it to attempted murder and the threat to do bodily harm with intent, and the magistrate will have more than enough to seal the paperwork and hold you without bond.”

“In that case, you leave me with very little choice,” the Raven said.

“I don’t think I’m leaving you with
any
choice,” Rumore said.

“Trust me when I tell you, Detective,” the Raven said, flashing a cold smile, “there is
always
a choice, no matter the circumstances.”

“What’s yours?” Rumore asked.

The Raven stared at the detective for a quiet moment and then turned toward the patio and bolted. Rumore surprised, chased after him, watched him wrap an arm around Kate and whirl her so he stood behind her, his left arm around her waist. The revolver clutched in the Raven’s other hand was pointed at the young woman’s temple.

Rumore tried to maintain professional composure, doing his best to ignore the fact that he had allowed himself to be duped, falling into a conversational trap the man had so expertly weaved, instead of going by the police textbook and making the arrests as soon as he entered the room.
He had committed one of the cardinal sins of police work—never lose control of a situation. Now, the rules would be dictated by the criminal and not the cop, and he was helpless to do anything more than listen.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“It would seem obvious, no?” the Raven said. “I take the girl and depart your company. You can take solace in the fact that I’ll willingly leave behind my men to do with as you please. They are of no use to me.”

“There are at the very least twenty-five officers surrounding the house,” Rumore said, “and about another half dozen or so working the first two floors. And not one of them reports to me. I’m not from this city and I have limited jurisdiction, if that.”

“Not my problem,” the Raven said. “I either leave here with Kate or you can come and cradle her dying body. I would prefer the first solution, which seems so much cleaner. How about you?”

Rumore glared at the Raven and then turned to one of the uniformed officers. “Find your captain,” he said to him. “Explain the situation and ask him to have his men pull back from the house.”

“All
his men,” the Raven said. “I wouldn’t want any stray scopes pointed in my direction.”

Rumore looked at Kate, silent and shivering in the Raven’s grip. “You okay?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I’m sorry I screwed up,” Rumore said. “But I want you to know three things. I will find you. I will get you home safe. Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” Kate said.

“Oh, out of curiosity,” the Raven said, nearly glowing with his victory, “what’s the third?”

“That you won’t leave Florence alive,” Rumore said.

CHAPTER
11

E
DWARDS STOOD BESIDE CLARE JOHNSON AND STARED UP AT THE
magnificent structure of the Duomo. It was just past nine in the morning the day after the Raven had made his daring escape.

“It truly is a marvel,” he said. “A simple and elegant design, built not to last for decades, but for eternity. I’m always left amazed at the level of craftsmanship and never tire of looking at it, finding something new and unique each time I do.”

“Not everyone was so charmed,” Clare said. “Michelangelo hated it. He claimed it was nothing more than an inflated shelter for pigeons.”

“If it wasn’t touched by his hand, he considered
any
work insignificant,” Edwards said. “The burden of genius, I suppose.”

“While we’re on the subject of genius,” Clare said, “you seem to have been caught a bit flat-footed by our mutual friend. He has Kate now, which means he’s close to having the Angels. He had her targeted from the start, regardless of who actually possessed them. Which begs the question, what are you going to do about it?”

“What I always planned to do,” Edwards said. “The Raven wasn’t the only one who came into this with the goal of leaving town with the Angels.”

“Then the deal we have still holds?” Clare asked.

Edwards looked away from the Duomo and turned toward her. “How you manage to keep them all straight in your head is a wonder to me,” he said. “After all, is there anyone involved in this that you
don’t
have a deal with?”

She smiled and wiped stray strands of hair from her face. “I haven’t totally
locked in with the cops yet,” she said, “but give me a bit more time. Look, Richard, we each work our own way, using our own methods. I want those Angels as much as you, Kate, the Raven, or anyone else.”

“Well, you’re honest in that regard,” Edwards said.

“The only secrets of our trade involve finding where the art is hidden,” she said. “The rest of it—alliances, friendships, real or faked, who sits on whose side of the table—that all gets found out in less time than it takes to make the connections. I’ve never made any bones about how I go about my business. The best deal offered me is the one I’ll take.”

“Could you arrange a meeting between me and the Raven?” Edwards asked.

“I could,” Clare said, “but I won’t unless I know the reasons why, and not just those on the surface. You need to tell me as much as you can about what you have planned. You might be surprised—I could be of some help.”

“What is it you want?” Edwards asked. “I mean, besides the Angels? That’s the short-term goal. I’m asking about the long-range plans.”

“What makes you think I’ve made any?” she asked.

“I heard a story about your dad a few years back,” Edwards said. “He was planning a job, a fairly big one in a city he was unfamiliar with and with an alarm system that had yet to be broken.”

“Those aspects would have appealed to him,” Clare said with a smile.

They were now walking on the perimeter of the Duomo, past the stands hawking Florentine souvenirs and the tourists with their digital cameras pointed in all directions.

“It was a private museum, just outside Denver,” Edwards said. “The owner was an avid collector of modern art and a quiet buyer of stolen Renaissance works. Over the years, he had managed to latch onto about a dozen masterworks, some known, one or two only rumored to exist.”

“Which one was my dad going after?” Clare asked.

“All of them,” Edwards said. “Here he was, in a strange city, working against an alarm system that any sane person would tell him couldn’t be cracked, and he was going to clean this guy out of every black market painting he had in his collection. He knew it might end up being the toughest job he ever went out on, so he took time in the planning, worked and reworked every angle, read books about the city, articles about the man, studied the designs of the house, took mail order courses on advanced
alarm system technology. He worked that job for three years before he made his move. In other words, he was thinking long-term.”