Peyton Riley Read online

  He made to clasp her shoulder and then thought the better of it. "Can we talk?"

  She glanced at her watch again. "Here? Now?"

  "Peyton–"

  "Can't it wait? We're on the clock, Carson."

  He stared at her, his mouth thinning to a straight line.

  "What the hell is the matter with you?" she said. "There's a job to do. Let's go!"

  He walked with her in sullen silence, refusing to look her way despite her frequent questioning glances at him. They stalked down from the Stedjelik to the Abragat restaurant in the same chilly, charged mood that had accompanied their exit from Brussels. Finally at the restaurant door, Carson turned and gripped her arm.

  "I don't think you should go in there."

  "What?"

  "He might see you and cotton on to us."

  She shook her head, pointing to the red hair pinned and piled under a white silk scarf and black felt hat. "What am I, a moron? I know how to disappear."

  "Even so," he shook his head. "Let me handle this."

  "Uh-uh. You're the charm offensive but I don't think your charms are going to work on someone like Anders."

  He gave her a pointed look and turned to leave.

  She caught his arm before it was pulled away. "What's gotten into you?"

  "Just wait in that café," he said.

  "No!"

  "Fine," he hissed. Without waiting for her to follow, he let himself into the hotel. After a few minutes, she followed, spotting him resolutely making his way through the lunch crowd and coming to a halt in front of Anders Van Der Luyden himself.

  "Fuck." She scrambled to find a seat that would hide her from sight yet let her monitor the proceedings, but the open plan restaurant's dark wood tables were as flat as could be, and she was starting to get looks, standing there scanning the room.

  "Looking for someone, Madame?" asked a waiter who had snuck up on her like a ghost.

  She started. "Is there…is there any place that I may have, um, privacy?"

  The waiter's eyes roved upward. "The upstairs dining area is closed until dinner service, but–"

  "Please?" she said, her voice shaking, giving him her best damsel in distress. "I just really need to be alone for a while."

  The waiter studied her for a few seconds, bit his lip and nodded. "Right this way, Madame."

  He had her up the stairs, where she begged for a seat near the lip of the balcony overlooking the diners below. The waiter looked worried; it was only when she tucked a bill into his pocket and patted him fondly on the arm that he visibly unclenched and let her take a seat. She ordered a salad and set him on his way, and then she listened very hard for what Carson was saying to Anders Van Der Luyden.

  "I don't recall inviting you to sit," said a terse voice coming through her earpiece, as clear in her head as though she were in the table with them. She heard the scraping of a chair; she scanned the diners below to spot them—a couple of heads in a sea of dark wood tables for two. "Mr. Varis, I am expecting someone!"

  "She's not coming, Mr. Van Der Luyden."

  She heard the sputter of angry words that refused to form and come out. She squinted over the diner's heads, frustrated that she couldn't see beyond Carson's folded elbows on the table. Van Der Luyden leaned back on his seat, his hand gripping a glass like he was toying with the idea of splashing it in the unwanted intruder's face.

  Soft footsteps padded up the steps; the waiter had returned with her order. She snapped back to attention, smiling at him and enduring his friendly inquiries until he retreated downstairs.

  Beneath the balcony, Carson and Van Der Luyden seemed to be having a face-off.

  "What is it that you want, Mr. Varis?"

  "Simply to give you a warning."

  "Ah." He leaned back again on his seat and sipped his drink. "Is this some sort of extortion attempt? Is that little redheaded bitch a part of this? A silly piece of blackmail? Let me tell you, boy. I eat things like that for breakfast. You will be arrested and in prison without so much as a by-the-way."

  "I'm not here to extort money from you. In fact, I'm here to save you a great deal of trouble."

  "Too hard sell, Carson," she whispered. Down below his head moved slightly, as though to dislodge a fly.

  "What trouble could a man like me be in that you could save me?" asked Van Der Luyden, the malice in his tone like venom.

  There was an intake of breath, and then Carson said: "I know you've been approached to buy the Magraith."

  "What the fuck, Carson!" she hissed

  Van Der Luyden cocked his head and sipped his drink. "And?"

  "And I'm here to ask you not to push through with it."

  He laughed, a low, menacing chuckle without any sense of humor. "And I suppose you are going to tell me why?"

  Carson cleared his throat. "We have reason to believe that…that your dealer is not entirely legit."

  Van Der Luyden cocked his head the other way. "And?"

  "You will be making a risky purchase and possibly aiding a crime."

  Van Der Luyden raised the glass and swirled it. From the light streaming in the skylights near where she sat, Peyton detected a deep golden hue—cognac? She shook her head, annoyed with herself for trying to identify a glass of liquor while Carson was throwing their plans to shit. "Mr. Varis. I have no possible idea how the fact of my intended purchase came to reach your ears. As far as I am concerned, it is you who is posing the risk here. You are, most probably, the criminal of which you speak."

  "Mr. Van Der Luyden--"

  "Leave this place now," he growled.

  Carson stood stiffly and buttoned up his jacket. He watched the other man sip his drink. "I am trying to help, sir, that is all. If you change your mind, you can reach me here." He reached into his suit pocket, laid a card on the table and left.

  Heart hammering, Peyton watched as Van Der Luyden took the card in his hand and studied it. When Carson's voice came over the earpiece, it made her jump in her seat. "Heading to the flat. Exit in ten minutes, no more nor less. Recon in thirty."

  She forced the salad in her mouth and chewed leaves that slid down her throat like paper, her eyes darting between Anders' form downstairs and any sign of the waiter. She managed to catch the latter's eye with a subtle nod, and he hurried upstairs to get her the bill. Yet Van Der Luyden remained at his seat, the card still held in his hand.

  Peyton paid for the meal and hurried out, furtive as she took subtle looks at the restaurant behind her, willing Anders to stay at his table, for them to not run into each other. The walk to the lobby doors seemed to take ages.

  When she was out on the street, a sudden relief went through her, and her breath expanded so that she gulped great lungfuls of air.

  Then she headed towards the bus station to make her way back to Brouwersgracht.

  She found Carson by the kitchen table, sweaty and stripped down to sweatpants, eating an apple. The sight of his lazy post-workout form so incensed her that she ripped off hat and scarf and flung them to the bed along with her bag and coat.

  "What the hell was that all about?" she demanded, her palms shaking against the cool wood of the kitchen table.

  "What was what about?" He bit into the apple savagely.

  "What you fucking did with Anders Van Der Luyden, what else?"

  Chew chew chew. "You got me a meeting. So we met."

  One of her palms slammed on the table. "I did not mean for you to go to him and spill your plan like that!"

  "Why not?" his voice grew lower as hers rose. "Why the hell shouldn’t I be direct? You never know."

  "'You never know? You never know?'" Peyton's voice approached that decibel that only dolphins could hear. "I've gone too far to let a critical meet go with 'you never know.'" She ran her hands through her hair violently, feeling the strands catch between her fingers and part painfully from her scalp. It felt good, the tiny rips of pain, to release the strands of unease that had been nestled within her since Stedjelik.

&nbs
p; Carson merely stared at her with cool eyes, mouth in that same strange thin line. He tossed the apple core over his shoulder, where it hit the enamel sink with a dull thunk. "I'll be damned. Peyton Riley—are you actually enjoying this job?"

  She leaned across the table so that they were eye to eye. "A job is a job. I don't half-ass things. And if I'd known you'd tank this like fucking amateur hour–"

  "I just thought my approach was good enough."

  "You're the charm offensive, remember? I'm the brains of this operation—or was there another reason you forced me here against my will?"

  "Well, maybe I don't agree with the calls 'brains' of this set-up is making!"

  Suddenly she was angry. The craziness of the past few weeks, the rollercoaster of roles and emotions she was put through, it had pulled her taut like piano wire. All the fear and anger and confusion that she'd been pushing underneath the surface came bubbling up to the fore.

  "You listen to me," she hissed. "You fucking charmed me and let me take you to bed and then you turned around and drugged and kidnapped me and had some fucking psychopath interrogate me, then you flew me all the fucking way here to do a job that required my fucking skillset. Now maybe you don't agree with what I say, but that's not the fucking point. I'm here 'cause your boss needed me, and thanks to you fucking assholes I have no choice but to see it through so I can finally get the fuck home. It's not your call to change the play like that!"

  He stood up, edged behind the table and walked up to her, step by slow deliberate step, herding her like a sheepdog until she inched backwards and was pinned against the far wall. "Did you ever stop and think that we're destroying someone's life? That this is beyond a simple job? That it's not just about getting to game over?" He moved his face against hers as if to kiss her. "That if we succeed with your plan, Anja's boyfriend could get hurt?"

  "What do you care what happens to Theo Karastis?" she snapped. "And did you grow a conscience right when a pale blonde started sucking her thumb in front of you?"

  He placed two hands on either side of her ears, their gazes locked tight. "You realize that not only are we blowing this girl's livelihood, we're also throwing this guy to the wolves?"

  "You want a takedown, this is how you do it," she shot at him.

  He nodded, as though confirming a well-known fact. "And that's why someone's sister died." Peyton felt a cold water-splash of shock and gasped, but Carson was angry now, too. His eyes blazed and his lips were nearly bloodless when he said: "You're ruthless."

  The sight of him angry with her, judging her, spurred a fire in her belly and she pushed his chest with all her might. "I don't care," she lashed out. "You want out, you go and tell your boss. Good luck if he's as scrupulous as you are."

  He stepped back, his eyes clouded.

  "It's my head on the chopping block," she jabbed at his chest. "And if that makes me ruthless, then so be it."

  Carson turned to the sink. He let the water run, his head hung low, his body strung tight; then he splashed his face. "I can't do this," he said, nearly inaudible over the sound of the water. "I can't be around you right now."

  He toweled off and dressed with speed. His curls stuck out in odd angles, his shirt tucked haphazardly. By the door he picked up the slim package, wrapped in brown paper, and slid it into a leather case.

  "If the brains of this operation doesn't mind, I'm off to make a delivery. All according to plan."

  "Maybe you should fuck her, too, you know, seeing as it’s your specialty." She helped herself to an apple from the bowl on the kitchen table and bit into it viciously. "Carson Varis: Offensively charming the panties off his marks."

  She turned her back on him and only flinched slightly when the door slammed shut.

  Chapter 10

  Spring in Amsterdam is sometimes a nominal affair, and so it was that week. The weather turned sleety with rain; gray clouds converged over the canals so that the water reflected the dull gloom, making mirror images of fat gray clouds spitting and pissing water. But the cold along the Brouwersgracht was nothing compared with the arctic chill inside Peyton and Carson's flat.

  They avoided each other's gaze. They left the flat to take long, useless walks, getting soaked to the bone. Carson took to disappearing for hours on end, while Peyton got good at cataloguing her minders parked in the van across the street. There was Newsboy, of course; a pudgy guy who looked like a down-and-out ex-cop (if that were a type) who'd obviously replaced the dreadlocked wanker who attacked her; and a middle-aged woman with the large, darkly liquid eyes and deep brown skin of the Middle East. They lounged outside the flat windows and lurked in doorways and unobtrusively read the same pages of newsprint in soaking park benches as Peyton walked the canals and wandered the city.

  On the third day of the great Dutch Cold War, a text message came through on the safe phone: "Clear one." So Peyton reluctantly caught Carson's eye, and they sighed as they bundled up in their coats and made their way to the Agile Tech offices.

  "What's the plan?" asked Carson, a slight sneer underlining his tone.

  "I've made an appointment with his secretary."

  She expected him to make a crack, roll his eyes, refer to their argument the few days before. But he simply shrugged and followed her down the road.

  An hour later they were shown into a light-filled room with Scandinavian chairs and a raw wooden conference table. Anders Van Der Luyden sat across from them with his large, colorless eyes and curiously smooth face, the skin on his cheeks thick like untanned leather, and watched them with crocodile stillness.

  "Well." He licked his papery lips. "This has been very curious, Mr. Varis. Our dealer, it seems, passed off a remarkable reproduction as an O'Malley original and scared off an old rich woman from her hobby." He sipped at a glass of water. "How interesting."

  "Is it?" asked Carson.

  A slight smile curled his lip. "Indeed. Interesting." His watery eyes darted to Peyton. "How very like a script, almost."

  Carson merely held his gaze.

  "Well then," said Anders, leaning against the table in a sudden swift move. "I see from Birgitte that you have refused my offer of compensation."

  "We don't want your money."

  "A favor then, somewhere down the road?" He laughed suddenly. "No chance of that, oh no. But I think my thanks are at least in order. So thank you, Mr. Varis, and your tasty accomplice, for preventing me from making an unscrupulous purchase."

  "It was our pleasure." There was no mistaking the sneer on Carson's face now.

  Anders stood. "Then this meeting is at an end."

  They followed suit. "That it seems," said Carson, and without another look back, he left the room.

  Peyton followed, feeling peculiar. She seemed dirtied somehow, and small. She glanced behind her just as she reached Agile Tech's lobby to find Anders Van Der Luyden's clear eyes following her from behind the conference room's cool glass walls.

  Outside, at the street corner, Carson stood waiting.

  "I leave tonight," she said, watching the street.

  "No." She looked at him, startled by his hard tone. "One last clear from Gustave, and we're through."

  "Why should I–"

  He frowned. "I'm not arguing. Go if you like. Don't pretend you don't know who's following you. Just know Gustave won't be calling them off until we get the last clear." The frown turned into a grimace. Carson had lines around his eyes now that didn't seem to be there when they first met at the island, which seemed like a hundred years ago. "You're not the only one who's being watched, Peyton."

  Chapter 11

  Two days had passed and still the last clear hadn't come.

  Chapter 12

  Peyton walked Westerpark in a fug of low spirits. The 48 hours of silence that had passed after their meeting with Anders lay on her shoulders like a mantle, weighing her down and filling her thoughts with anxiety. The thought of what Roi would do now seemed so wildly incomprehensible in the terror that simmered under the surface that
all she could do was muffle it, compartmentalize, and stop herself from dwelling on her fear whenever her mind wandered that way. Yet she was unable to completely ignore the rising panic that suffused her body as the minutes ticked past.

  At least the sun was finally out.

  It was past the copse of cherry trees, just starting to bloom now, that she noticed her middle-aged/Middle Eastern minder (Ms. Middle?) following a few yards behind her. Peyton slowed her walk, yet Ms. Middle plodded on, not caring if she were noticed or not. When the minder was a couple of feet away, Peyton whirled suddenly and made to grab the minder's arm…only to find a small pocket knife pointed at her. The tip of it glinted in the sun from underneath the woman's thumb.

  "What do you want?" asked Peyton, heart leaping in her throat.

  "I am to bring you to the flat," said Ms. Middle. "A message for you."

  Ms. Middle marched her all the way up to the flat and very nearly shoved her into the room before locking the door behind her. Carson was already sitting on the bed, a tablet held in his hand, and he looked up as the door slammed shut. He scooted for her to take her seat beside him.

  "Where'd you get that?"

  He nodded at the door. "One of the tails found me."

  "Safe phone not enough?"

  "Apparently not."

  The tablet screen showed a wood-paneled room. In a few seconds, Gustave filled the frame, clad in his impeccable gray suit, his longish hair shellacked into place.

  He did not look very happy.

  The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as his dark eyes swept over them, not saying anything for some minutes. And then:

  "The Countess's money was supposed to have been reversed two days ago. It has not. Explain."

  She looked at Carson. Tiny beads of perspiration broke over his upper lip.

  "The painting was delivered on time—Van Der Luyden confirmed the block—I–" He licked his lower lip. "Perhaps a wire issue?"

  Gustave looked like thunder. "Swiss banks, accustomed to handling billions for an aristocratic family going back five generations, do not have 'a wire issue.'"