Peyton Riley Page 3

  "Agile Tech," said Peyton, the name clicking in her memory. "Yeah, I've heard of that—something in the news about floating cars?"

  "Yeah, the personal hovercraft," said Carson. "Nice stunt to get capital. They've got a lot of tech in development, but what's been getting investors excited is a military-grade pinpoint tracking system. Talk is that it'll make GPS look like child's play." He spread the clipping along with the photos on the table. "It uses completely different tech than satellites, so, in theory, it is virtually un-traceable and impossible to hack.

  "Anyway. All that's beside the point. What's relevant to us is that Anders has a well-publicized taste for rare art, and the Magraith is right up his alley."

  She spread the photos toward her, running the details in her mind. Something niggled, like a sore that she could not stop poking at with her tongue. "And that's all that Gustave wants?" she asked. "Stop the sale of this painting?"

  "That's all."

  "And I'm free to go after?"

  "Well, assuming you don't want to stay back for a bit, hang out with me, catch the sights—" He broke off at her basilisk glare. "Yes, you're free to go after."

  She continued ruminating on the details, frowning and chewing on her lip, not noticing the effect she had on Carson, who was watching the movement of her mouth with a rapidly heating expression.

  "Why does he want to stop the sale so badly?"

  "Did you need to know that with your other projects?"

  She looked up and met his stare. "No. But I don't trust you."

  "And you trust your boss."

  She rubbed her shoulder. "I've been doing this for six years, Carson. Roi's never gotten me in trouble yet."

  He raised an incredulous eyebrow, and she sighed. "This situation is entirely my fault. If I hadn't fa–" she coughed to cover her words, but she was sure Carson had heard, because he now looked at her with molten eyes. "If you hadn't tricked me," she corrected, her voice sharp, "I wouldn't be in this mess."

  "You were going to say, 'if you hadn't fallen for me,'" he smirked.

  "Don't push your luck," she clenched her fists on the table.

  "Oh I won't." He raised his own hands. "I remember what you did to Leon."

  The memory of flipping the pervert over and the shock on the faces of their Cosa Imbah'i companions brought a slight smile on her face. "Good. You remember that."

  She lapsed into silence again, muttering every now and then as Carson watched. Finally, she stopped and walked to the window.

  "What we need," she said, "is leverage."

  He followed her. "And how do we do that?"

  She turned to him. "Surveillance."

  Chapter 5

  They sat in the Glass Owl café, a newspaper spread between them, the gray spring light spilling in from the window beside them. Across the street the door to the apartment building opened and closed, letting the stream of its occupants in and out.

  Peyton took a bite of her roll. "She's late."

  "She had a late night," said Carson, trying to suppress a smile.

  "You're such a dirty old man," said Peyton.

  "Well, you said we needed leverage." He hid a big smile behind the newspaper.

  Carson had bribed the café owner to let them use his rooftop garden several times a week for their surveillance. (Carson made it appear that he and Peyton were into outdoor sex among hydroponic produce. She wasn't sure Henrik bought it, but he was paid well for his suspicions.) The night before, their days of surveillance finally paid off when Anja Rubinstein welcomed a young man to her flat. Carson and Peyton scrambled onto the Glass Owl's roof, where they took out their cache of equipment (well, binoculars and a high-tech, newfangled camera with a telephoto lens that Carson wouldn't let her touch), crept behind the vertical planters and watched as Anja Rubinstein gave her visitor a very enthusiastic welcome.

  "Very flexible, she is," he said behind the newspaper in the morning light, voice shaking with constricted laughter.

  "Oh shut up." Peyton slid down her seat, watching the door across the street intently. "What the hell are you dicking with that newspaper for, anyway? Can you even read Dutch?"

  "I am a man of many talents and hidden depths."

  Irritation niggled at her, an ever present finger poking at the base of her skull. She didn't know why she'd been so annoyed at Carson, but she was, the moment he started enjoying the window show Anja had put on and began making appreciative comments.

  Anja was beautiful, she had to concede, with white blonde hair that hung like a silvery sheet across her athletic frame. Great tits, too; not too large, but well-formed and pert, and she felt her own nipples harden as she recalled the loving attention Ms. Rubinstein's got from her visitor.

  Damn, but Peyton was tense. She wanted to get laid. It didn't help that Carson slept with only a thin pair of boxers on, and she had to sleep every night to the sound of his pitched breathing, knowing he was just there, on the trundle bed, in the dark, half naked and divine. Then she had to wake up and it was always to see him smirking at her with his bedroom eyes and tousled hair, walking casually to the bathroom as his torso muscles flexed and his morning erection swung with every step. It was like he was challenging her—daring her to make the first move, and Peyton didn't know just how long she could hold out.

  "I hate surveillance," she said for the third time that day. "Boring-ass work. Roi always outsourced it to someone else, someone dull. All I had to do was get the intel and execute."

  "Oh honey, I know, poor you, tell me all about it, girlfriend," he deadpanned. The newspaper pages shuffled for a few minutes. He sighed. "So. Tell me again! What it is you call your work?"

  She rolled her eyes but indulged him. On the fourth day of surveillance, a particularly boring day where they followed Anja around to get her nails done and pick up milk, he'd started asking her questions, and she, having had nothing better to do, started answering.

  "They're called takedowns. I go in, play a role, get the job done. Usually it's to stop something from happening—a sale, a merger, couple of times even a wedding. Roi's clients pay good money for that service, and I do it."

  "So…" he set down his empty coffee cup. "Like, a con artist?"

  "Let's get one thing straight," Peyton bristled. "I'm not a con artist. I don't part people unwillingly from their money. I'm paid for what I do, and quite regularly, at that. Throw in health and dental and it could be a regular nine to five job."

  "Hmm," said Carson, and she could almost see the wheels in his head turning. "And does that job always entail sleeping wi—"

  "Don't even ask. No, I don't charge for sex. That I do when I want to, and for free, thankyouverymuch." She sighed at the suddenly animated expression on his face and tore a piece of the roll in her hand, her frustrations rattling all over her body. "But fine. Let's just say that it's easier to get someone to change course, when sex is on the table."

  "Is it?" he waggled his eyebrows.

  "Mm-hmm." She popped the piece in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. "Sex is a shortcut, you see. You're intimate; you have to be. Something is shared when people have sex, it can't be helped. And usually after having it , you'll find that a layer's been peeled back—some of that outer covering's removed, and it's easier to zoom into the heart of the matter—to understand what makes a person tick. Then you can use that to your advantage."

  He shook his head, his face suddenly serious. "I don't think that's true at all."

  "Oh?"

  "If it were, then all these couples having sex wouldn't drift apart. They'd be walking around, open and intimate with each other, perfectly in sync. But they're not."

  "That's because they don't know how to use sex to their advantage," she repeated. "People confuse sex with something else—affection, maybe. Regard. Power. Love. Sex is all those things, but you don't know when it morphs into those. Every instance is different."

  She pushed the hair from her face and followed the path of a father cycling with a toddler in his
bike's front basket. "There's always a side effect, though, during sex—it's like when you process crude oil, and you get this weird goopy byproduct called petroleum jelly, and at first no one realizes how useful it is. It takes an objective observer to take the byproduct and use it properly."

  "And the byproduct of sex is?"

  She chased the roll down with a slug of coffee. "Control."

  He finally put the newspaper down and gave her his full attention. "So let me get this straight: in this metaphor, control is the petroleum jelly?"

  She shrugged.

  "I've heard a lot of euphemisms for sex, but I have to say, processing crude oil is probably the worst, ever."

  "Forget it," she rolled her eyes. "Your turn. Tell me, again, what you do."

  "I am a humble art dealer," he said seriously, but his brown eyes twinkled with mischief at her raised eyebrow. "Maybe…eighty percent of the time."

  "Eighty percent?"

  "Fine. Seventy."

  Her other eyebrow shot up.

  "Sixty to fifty percent," he grinned. "I'm legit. Most of the time."

  "And the rest?"

  The grin deepened into something nearly sinister. "I help people acquire certain…pieces…that may or may not be strictly on the market." He took a small sip of his own glass of water. "I take a certain pride in accomplishing that without strictly criminal means."

  "Strictly criminal?"

  "I find that a certain amount of charm and a glib tongue gets the job done far more pleasantly than brute force."

  Movement caught the corner of Peyton's eye. On the other side of the window, the door of the building across the street opened, and a distinctive white blonde head emerged, followed by the dark young man who'd stayed the night at her flat. "There we go," she said.

  They watched in silence as the two talked on the sidewalk. Anja clutched the young man by his elbows, seemingly pleading with him with a furrowed, upset expression. The young man shook his head and gesticulated. Finally he wrapped her into a tight hug.

  "Huh," said Peyton. "Leverage."

  The young man turned to go. Anja stood rooted to the spot, watching him leave with the most wretched expression on her face. As Peyton watched her turn and walk away with slumped shoulders, she almost felt a stab of pity.

  Almost.

  "Go after him," she told Carson. "I'll tail Anja."

  He got up and left money on the table for their meal. But at the café door, he hesitated. "No funny business, Peyton."

  "Carson—"

  "I mean it. I'm not the only one keeping an eye on you." With a last meaningful look, he bounded out the door.

  Peyton finished her coffee and left in the opposite direction.

  Through the streets, past cheerful little cafes and die-hard Dutchies trying their best to enjoy the outdoor tables despite the nip in the air, across charming stone bridges arched over the water, through houseboats bobbing as their occupants went through their morning ministrations, Peyton followed Anja, watching the white-blonde curtain swing with every step.

  Suddenly the blonde stopped and turned. Peyton ducked into an alcove, heart hammering, nearly certain that she'd been seen. After a long moment, she peeked back out. Anja was nowhere in sight.

  Peyton had a hunch and headed to the Grand Amrath. They'd tailed Anja to the triangular, fortress-like hotel by the river twice. The art dealer had taken coffee in the bar lounge and waited. Once she received a phone call; on the other time, she sat for an hour and went back to her flat in Jordaan.

  She scanned the streets before crossing to the building. I'm not the only one keeping an eye on you. Who, then? The dreadlocked busker, playing his saxophone on that street corner? The chic hipster mom, pedaling past with a basket stuffed with groceries? Any of the passers-by in the chilly, not-quite-spring of Amsterdam? Was Carson telling the truth, or did he suspect she'd make a break for it?

  She could make a call—ask to use the hotel's phone, place a call to Roi, ask him to extract her from this mess. She could do that.

  She crossed the street and stopped in her tracks. A man leaned on the dark wall a few feet from the hotel entrance, incongruously reading a newspaper in the chill air. He wore a newsboy cap and the lower half of his face was obscured by a thick gray scarf. His eyes were fixed on the paper.

  Was she being paranoid? She passed him, a prickly feeling stealing over her. Stopping, she glanced and turned to see him hastily snap his head back to the newspaper.

  Goosepimples prickled down her back as she entered the hotel. She nodded at the doorman, who asked her something in Dutch.

  "English, please?"

  "May I help you, madame?"

  "I'm here to meet someone in the bar lounge?"

  "Certainly." Another attendant hurried over and directed her to a seat along the long bench against the wall, upholstered in plush cranberry velvet and botanical sailcloth. She looked around and spotted a tiny alcove off the dark wood bar; on it, a phone. Her heart leapt and thudded against her chest. She stood and motioned someone over; a waitress approached with a menu.

  Peyton's mouth was dry as she motioned to the phone. "May I please use your—"

  The words died in her throat. From the corner of her eye she a familiar, newsboy-hatted figure enter the space.

  "Madame?" asked the waitress.

  "Th-the menu, please?"

  She huddled behind the menu, turning the pages halfheartedly. Newsboy took a seat on the farthest edge of the lounge, similarly buried in a menu, but within her line of sight.

  Not the only one keeping an eye.

  Carson wasn't bluffing. She took a deep, steadying breath and ordered a coffee. Eyes on her, was it? She'd give them something to watch. And if what they saw would drive them to sleep, then so much the better.

  The coffee arrived and Peyton took her time savoring it, scanning the lounge for traces of her target—lots of blonde Dutch, but none with the distinct silvery-white coloring that Anja had. The bar inhabitants conversed in low, soothing tones—she caught traces of Dutch, some English, a man on the phone in rapid-fire French, a table of German tourists. Slightly conversant in German herself (and fluent in French and Spanish), she tried to catch the thread of Dutch, to weave it into the comprehension she had of the other languages, and thought she could understand some of it. One word in five—not enough to feel like she was competent, but enough not to feel completely lost.

  From time to time her eye fell on the Newsboy, and smirked to herself as he looked bored out of his skull.

  Good, she thought, and ordered another coffee.

  Three cups later and well into the afternoon, the Newsboy sat, chin in hand, definitely shooting her murderous glances. She stood and saw him perk up—only to fall disappointed as she made her way to the restroom. All that coffee had to go out somewhere.

  She took her time relieving herself. The restroom, like the rest of the hotel, was done up in dark, polished wood with art deco touches. She'd scanned it for a window as she entered but was disappointed—its walls were set against the hotel's interior and there was no way for her to escape unnoticed. She cleaned up and was just about to leave when the door to the restroom opened and a flash of silver-white registered through the gap between the cubicle door and the jamb.

  Feeling idiotic, Peyton held the doorknob tightly and pressed her eye against the infinitesimal gap. Anja stood on the other side, primping in the mirror, a mobile sandwiched between shoulder and ear.

  "Yes, yes," Anja was saying. "How long is he staying? A month? You are sure?"

  A pause as Anja leaned forward and studied her reflection.

  "Very good." She switched to Dutch and Peyton concentrated hard to understand. "And when is he? (So long)? Mmm… (something unintelligible) I can show it to him…yes, I have it with me…all the (security?), of course…"

  Anja straightened to flip her hair. "Thank you," she switched back to English. "Yes. I'll be glad to help Mr. Van Der Luyden."

  She ended the call and st
ared at her reflection. On the other side of the stall, Peyton watched, holding her breath. After a moment, Anja breathed a soft sigh and left.

  "I have to tell you—"

  "You'll never believe what—"

  "No, you go first."

  "No, you—"

  "Fine."

  Peyton's skin was still flushed from her brisk walk from the hotel to the flat—so elated she was from the breakthrough from their surveillance that Newsboy left her mind completely. She sat on the bed and smiled at Carson. "Anders Van Der Luyden is going to be in town. The sale is going down." Carson collapsed next to her and watched her face as she recounted the conversation she'd overheard.

  "That's great, Peyton!"

  "Your turn," she said. "What did you find out about Loverboy?"

  Carson propped his head on his elbow. "For one, his name is Theo Karastis. For another, he's in some sort of money trouble."

  "What?"

  Carson stretched out on the bed, smiling like he'd caught the cream. "It is a tale that is worth telling in full."

  "Get on with it, Scheherazade."

  Carson had followed the dark-haired man, through side streets and various neighborhoods, until they approached its outskirts. There were the typical rows of old buildings flanking the water, but they seemed to have emerged at a row that was abandoned. Perhaps it was due to be torn down or refurbished; it seemed an outlier in the city that had redeveloped what had once been its most derelict assets.

  The young man picked his way between the strangely forlorn buildings and paused by the water. There were half a dozen houseboats here, but unlike the spruced up and pretty examples in Carson's Brouwersgracht neighborhood, the ones here peeled and rusted under the weak spring sun. Carson settled behind the narrow gap between the buildings from which he'd followed the young man. The small space afforded him a view of the faded red houseboat that his quarry now approached.