The Art of Possession Read online

  A few people had been cool with it, and those few were the ones I went back to when I needed a connection too much to ignore it. I only reached out between jobs, though, which meant I hadn’t been with another person in… God, since before the Laughton job. And that had been more out of a sense of desperation than fun.

  I’d worked that job as a bodyguard, and the person I’d been hired to guard had survived, but the damage to the innocent bystanders around him had been….

  I should have seen it coming. I hadn’t.

  Don’t think about that now. I had enough to worry about on my current job without delving into the past. I grabbed Patricia’s tablet and looked through her tabs until I got to the one on Corday, then settled in to read.

  There wasn’t much on her origin, not that I’d expected much. Thought to be Israeli, possibly ex-Mossad—if that was true, I had some contacts I could check in with, but I couldn’t imagine I had connections in my back pocket that Robert couldn’t double. No clue about her family, although given how expertly she wrangled her coworkers, I’d be willing to bet she had siblings, and her age was guessed to be around thirty.

  Professionally, Corday was a serious piece of work, stealing from museums on nearly every continent, but her specialty seemed to be targeting private collectors. She was beautiful and as good at changing her appearance as a chameleon. She had a rotating roster of backup dancers: sometimes a sniper, sometimes a hacker, sometimes another person on the front end to be the distraction while she got the work done herself. She never worked alone, but it also looked like she never worked with any one person for more than one job in a row, or two or three jobs in a year—at most. And while some of her jobs might take a month’s worth of planning, none of them ever took more than a few days to pull off. She had a high tolerance for risk, it seemed, but a low tolerance for waiting around.

  Good. Then maybe she and Fawkes would be at each other’s throats before another day had passed and they’d take each other out. Or… I looked a little more closely at the stats listed—they weren’t as complete as I’d have liked—and shut down that line of thinking. It looked like the only person she could tolerate for longer than a week at a time was Fawkes, if the stretch from Cologne to Rome last year was accurate.

  Shit. I was going to give myself a headache staring at this any longer. I glanced at the clock—not quite four. Too early here for me to call and bother Robert. He slept almost as badly as I did most of the time, so if he was getting rest the last thing he needed was me interrupting it. He had people working on our problem. We would find Corday, we’d follow her, and we’d get what we needed.

  And if she or Fawkes raised a weapon to Mal again, so help me fucking God, I would make them regret being born.

  I couldn’t work, I couldn’t sleep, and I wasn’t in the mood to try to lose myself in a book—when my mind was on the job, it resisted the distraction of words on the page. I was too sore to do my exercises as well, but… I glanced toward the kitchen. Cooking was a decent distraction, one that kept me moving but didn’t require me to think too hard about what I was doing, and at the end of it—voilà, something for people to eat. I got up, ambled over to the kitchen, and looked in the cupboards.

  Walnuts. Nice.

  Five hours later, every countertop had at least one dish on it and there was hardly a clean bowl left in the place. I had maybe gone a little crazy with the baking. On the other hand….

  The look on Mal’s face when he walked downstairs and took in the spread was somewhere between wonder and confusion. He still looked a little rumpled, wearing nothing but a plain white undershirt and a pair of boxers. I wanted to grab one of his restless hands and reel him in tight, but I restrained myself.

  “Goodness, did you order in?”

  “Nope. All homemade.”

  “By you?”

  I had to laugh. “It sure as hell wasn’t Patricia. Why do you think she eats out for breakfast all the time?”

  “Because she’s a workaholic like all the rest of you KIS people?” he countered, but Patricia arrived just in time to back me up.

  “Au contraire,” she said, swanning into the kitchen in a sky-blue romper and wide gold bangles around her wrists and in her ears. “I usually insist on at least a week off between jobs. Of course, there’s no time limit attached to the ones I work, and those can drag on and on if we’re not lucky, but we usually are. Ooh!” She accepted an espresso from me and looked avidly at the dish just to my right. “Is that your coffee cake?”

  “It is.”

  “You do love me.”

  “I do.” I cut her a piece, took another for myself, then looked at Mal. “There’s a bacon and egg quiche too, if you’re not into sweets.”

  He leaned in get a better look, which meant he leaned in closer to me. “Normally I’m not, but that smells… exceptionally good.”

  He ended up with some of each, which was good because otherwise no one was going to eat the quiche—my stomach didn’t feel up to something so heavy, even though my brain had insisted on making it. We sat down together at the table, him with his tea and me with my coffee, and the juxtaposition of a feeling of intense domesticity and actually enjoying myself threatened to knock me out of my chair for a moment. This wasn’t… I wasn’t….

  This wasn’t what I did. I didn’t live a life that lent itself to quiet nights in or lazy mornings. I especially didn’t do these things with someone I was attracted to. There was no sense in sugarcoating the kind of person I was. My work was my life—hell, I’d put everything I cared enough about to keep into storage a year ago and had been living out of hotels and Airbnbs ever since. And it had been fine. I liked it that way.

  Mal took a bite of the quiche and smiled appreciatively at me, and I swallowed hard. Fuck. Seemed like I liked it this way too, at least with him.

  Robert’s sudden call was like a holy intercession, designed to keep me from looking to closely into a part of myself I didn’t want to see. I practically bolted up from the table when Patricia said who it was.

  “Relax,” she added, raising that one, irritatingly knowing eyebrow at me. “I’ll put him on speaker.” She laid the phone down in the middle of the table. “Robert, we’re all listening, what have you got for us?”

  “Corday and Fawkes are on the move.”

  “Both of them? Together?”

  “Both of them, not quite together. She’s on a plane bound for Accra, he’s flying straight into Lomé.”

  “That means the trouble will be in Lomé,” I said. It made sense—she couldn’t look joined at the hip to her support, it would diminish her position of dominance, but she wasn’t going to set up a deal for the scepter without backup. And Togo, a small country sandwiched between Ghana and Benin in West Africa, was as good a place as any to do a deal, and better than many. Its capital, Lomé, was right on the coast. It was also the only deep-water port in the area, and a fantastic place to smuggle things in and out of.

  “Agreed. Our techs are noticing movement among several of the bigger international cartels in the area, as well as some shady politicians and businessmen. Apparently, there’s going to be a last-minute, invitation-only conference on corporate security hosted by our target in two days, location to be announced.”

  “That’s a good find.” It was more than I thought they’d get so fast, honestly.

  “It is, which probably means she’s expecting us to find out about it.”

  “You think it’s a red herring?”

  I could practically hear his shrug. “She can’t jerk a lot of dirty politicians and crime bosses around without consequences, so not exactly. I do think it means she’s going to have a few extra foot soldiers on alert for anyone out of the ordinary. So no—”

  “No flying into Accra or Lomé when we head after her,” I finished.

  “I’d stay out of Porto-Novo too.”

  “That makes sense.”

  Mal was looking at me apprehensively. Before I could overthink it, I reached out and too
k his hand. “It’s going to be fine,” I said. “We’ll have backup too. Robert, do you still have any connections in the American Embassy in Lomé?”

  “I know the head of the marines stationed on guard there, but you know I can’t ask them to intervene for us.”

  “I know, but maybe he’s got some local contacts we could trust?”

  Robert was silent for a moment. “It’s better than flying our people in,” he said finally. “I’ll see what he can do. How do you want to get there?”

  I knew how I’d prefer to get there—as part of an armed convoy with enough munitions to take out anyone who got in our way. But there was no way we wouldn’t catch hell for that kind of aggressive presence, and I got that. Better to rely on infrastructure we had in place already. “Let me call a friend, and I’ll get back to you.”

  Robert hummed thoughtfully. “Is Carter still stationed in Niger?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I see. All right, call me back in twenty.” He ended the call, and I was left with both Patricia and Mal staring at me.

  “What?” I asked, a little defensive.

  “You aren’t really going to call Carter, are you?” Patricia asked, just as Mal said, “Who is Carter?”

  “Carter is an active-duty Green Beret stationed in Ouallam who might be able to facilitate our trip to Togo.”

  “Carter is also his ex,” Patricia informed Mal archly.

  “He’s not my ex. We didn’t have that formal a relationship.” Which didn’t mean I hadn’t wanted to make a go of it with him—he was the only guy outside my usual type I’d ever gone for, and I’d gone hard—but after I was medically retired, it just wasn’t a feasible relationship. Carter wasn’t about to commit to anything as crazy as being an actual, acknowledged couple, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around in Niger pretending to be a military spouse and nursing my wounds while he got used to the idea.

  Okay, so maybe it had been serious for a while there, but that still didn’t make him my ex.

  Mal slipped his hand out from under mine, and I only just realized I’d still been holding on to him. “What is it that we need from him, exactly?” he asked.

  “We need a fast way to get from wherever we land to Lomé, and Carter could give Robert a run for his money when it comes to making and keeping connections. He’s a brilliant military trainer and has a lot of pull with the local government because of the work he’s done with their troops. He also keeps his hand in with local Americans, so….” I exhaled loudly. “He’s a good person to work with, is what I’m getting at.”

  “With an overinflated ego and all the inherent compassion of a fruit fly,” Patricia added.

  “He sounds like someone Gerard would appreciate,” Mal said.

  I laughed before I could help myself. “They would kill each other. Too many peacocks in the same room.” I still liked Carter, a lot—I had loved him once, although I’d never admitted it to him. Hell, I’d hardly admitted it to myself. “Let’s call him up and see if he can actually help before we waste too much time on him, okay?” I reached for Patricia’s phone and put in Carter’s personal number. I had a fifty-fifty chance of him picking up—he tended not to remember to charge his crappy little flip phone. I could call the base, but the fewer people who knew about our mission, the better, and I’d never get to talk to Carter without giving information up if I went through the chain of command.

  One ring… two… three… four… I was about to give it up as a lost cause before a fumbled crackle came over the line, followed by Carter’s bright, “Who dis!”

  “Do you talk to your mother that way?” I asked, deadpan. Carter laughed.

  “No, that’s just for weird callers with French country codes. What the hell are you doing in France, Alex?”

  “Work.”

  “Duh.” He laughed again. “It’s always about work with you, baby, but what kind of work?”

  I rolled my eyes at the nickname. “The kind that’s bringing me to your neck of the woods, actually. I need to get to Lomé without flying there directly, and the more checkpoints and border security I can avoid, the better.”

  “And he won’t be alone,” Mal interjected without looking at me, sounding utterly calm and professional, but I thought I could detect a bit of snip to his voice. “So whatever you come up with, it will have to suffice for two.”

  There was silence over the phone for a long moment. “And you are?” Carter finally asked, sounding more than a little frosty himself.

  “Dr. Malcolm Armstrong, Professor of Ancient History and Museum Studies, with the British Museum.” He caught my eye and blushed a bit, but didn’t back down.

  “Oookay… why?”

  “Why did I devote my adult life to the pursuit of knowledge and the dissemination of crucial history, or why am I a part of Alex’s mission?” Mal asked.

  “I’m going with door number two.”

  “Ah.” Mal nodded even though Carter couldn’t see it. “That’s need to know, I’m afraid.” Patricia was laughing silently in her chair, one hand clapped over her mouth to keep the snorts quiet.

  “Alex, what the hell—”

  “Don’t worry about the details, it’s just a retrieval job,” I said, after sending both my companions warning looks. The last thing I needed right now was for Carter to get pissy. “We need to get to Lomé in the next couple of days but can’t fly into the airport, and you know how the private airfields are.”

  “Yeah, not private at all.” He paused. “Is this a serious retrieval job?”

  “We’re not going after hostages, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But you still think someone might stalk you at the airport.”

  “It’s about money, not people.” I held up a hand to forestall Mal’s inevitable explosion about how the scepter was worth far more than the sum of its parts. “Listen, do you know someone headed that way or not?”

  “I might, actually. The regional director for security for the Peace Corps is doing a loop of his countries right now. I bet I can get you a lift with him.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “How the hell did you meet this guy?”

  “He drinks at a hotel I like in Niamey. That’s how he spends most of his time, honestly. He’s former embassy security, but he’s been doing the Peace Corps circuit here for the past couple of years. Everybody knows him, and you won’t get stopped if you’re with him. He’s on his way to… Ouaga right now, I think. How soon can you get there?”

  Ouagadougou was the capital of Burkina Faso, the country directly north of Togo. “We can be there by tonight. Are you sure he’ll take us?”

  “You pay for his drinks and let him tell some war stories, then yeah, he’ll let you tag along in his air-conditioned SUV. Nicest car on the road by a lot in some places. You bringing cash in case you need to bribe someone?”

  “Always.”

  “Look at you, such a Boy Scout.” It didn’t take much to restore Carter’s good mood. “I wish I could get the time off, man. I’d drive you down there myself just to learn more about this mysterious retrieval job.”

  I was suddenly very grateful that circumstances were keeping Mal and Carter far away from each other. “I’ll tell you more once the job’s done.”

  “You better. Call me when you get in tonight. I’ll have more info for you then.”

  “Be safe, Carter.”

  His voice softened a little. “Be safe, Alex.”

  The call ended. The three of us stared at each other for a silent second before Patricia picked up her phone and said brightly, “Well, I’ll just talk to Robert about getting you gents a flight to Ouagadougou, then. You two take your time and… yes.” She walked off toward her room, leaving Mal and me alone.

  The quiet felt uncomfortable, and I didn’t like that. I opened my mouth, but Mal beat me to the punch. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude to your friend.”

  “You weren’t. And even if you were, Carter’s a big boy. He can take it. I hope you don’t
think I was considering leaving you behind, though.” Because we’d had that discussion, and I knew it wasn’t worth the fight. I could take care of Mal best when he was with me.

  “No, not at all.” He looked me square in the eyes, azure blue holding me captive. “And I hope you don’t think I was considering letting you go without me. I fully plan on seeing this through to the end, and I mean to be there every step of the way.”

  My throat felt tight. “Could be dangerous,” I managed. Because for all my good intentions, I hadn’t been worth shit when it came to protecting Mal in Marseille. Why I thought I’d do any better in the underbelly of Lomé, I didn’t really know. Arrogant. It’s gonna get you killed.

  “The cause is worth the risk, I think. And I couldn’t ask for a better companion.”

  I almost felt like he should ask for one, but I was in too deep to back out now. “Likewise.” I cleared my throat and stood up, stifling my groan at the pull in my bruised muscles as I carried our dishes over to the sink. “Let’s clean things up and see what Robert’s wrangled for us.”

  Chapter Ten

  WHAT ROBERT had managed to wrangle for us was, unfortunately, a red-eye flight leaving Marseille at two in the morning. It was direct, at least, but I was still out on my feet by the time we got to the airport, never mind actually waiting around to get on the plane. Alex, meanwhile, looked as fresh as a daisy with his one night’s sleep under his belt. It was fortunate he could manage on so little, honestly—he kept me moving, at least.

  Patricia ensured we had everything we needed for the trip down—including visas and vaccines, which I couldn’t fathom how she’d managed so quickly, and she wasn’t about to tell me. “The less you know, the better,” she’d said after jabbing me against yellow fever. “And I know this will be a short trip, but be sure to use those antimalarials, all right? It’s the rainy season along the coast, and the mosquitos don’t discriminate.”

  “You know, you’d make an excellent mum,” I told her. She smiled.