I set it face down on a nearby table and examine the backing. Standard conservation-grade materials, also not original. A quick scan with my phone reveals no embedded trackers in the frame.
With practiced fingers, I loosen the backing to check the authentication marks on the stretcher bar and find the tiny V carved into the wood, almost invisible unless you know to check for it. The mark my grandfather mentioned in his final letters from prison.
This is the original.
Footsteps in the hallway freeze my blood. I freeze, controlling my breathing as they pass by the door without slowing. Once they fade, I move faster, removing my own canvas from its tube. The backing comes off the original frame, and I slide my forgery into place, securing it exactly as the original had been.
Every brushstroke, every shadow, nine months of work for this moment. Side by side, even I would struggle to tell them apart. The only difference is beneath the surface, in the materials themselves. Mine will pass any visual inspection, but the spectroscopic analysis will reveal its youth.
By the time that happens, I’ll be long gone.
I secure the backing with the same conservation tape, making sure the tension is identical, the corners perfect. The original slides into my tube, and I secure it in my holster.
Lifting the frame, a quiet rush of satisfaction fills me as it settles back on the wall. From three feet away, nothing has changed. Valenne’s ghost still unravels against his storm-dark background, anatomical sketches still peeking through the layers of oil.
As I adjust the angle to hang level, my finger brushes a small, irregular bump in the wall behind it.
Curious, I press it, and a soft click sounds from the bookcase to my left, so quiet I might have imagined it if not for the slight movement it triggers.
A section of the wall, disguised among leather-bound volumes and art catalogs, has shifted inward by half an inch.
I freeze, every instinct telling me to finish and leave. Get out while the path is clear. But my attention snags on the dark line between the books and the wall, a hidden slash in the pale room.
What’s so important that the owner would hide it while leaving priceless artwork out in the open? More paintings? More secrets?
The professional in me screams to leave, to secure my prize and vanish before anyone identifies the difference in the paintings. But the siren call of the unknown pulls at me, a curiosity that’s both my greatest strength and most dangerous weakness.
With one last look at the forgery hanging on the wall, I push the bookcase wider and peer into the darkness beyond.
2
Cold, stale air brushes my face, reminding me of the inside of an old safe. I hesitate at the threshold, the weight of the art tube at my spine a reminder of what I’ve already risked tonight.
What I stand to lose if I’m caught.
Five more seconds, I promise myself. Just a quick peek.
The gap is wide enough for me to slip through, and recessed lighting flickers to life, triggered by the motion.
I freeze, cataloging potential exits, hiding spots, and threats with the automatic assessment that’s kept me out of jail for fifteen years in this business.
The room isn’t large, perhaps twenty feet square, with temperature and humidity control. A proper conservation space. The walls are bare concrete rather than the plaster and paint of the salon behind me, and the air holds the particular emptiness that comes from too much soundproofing.
A chill runs through me that has nothing to do with the temperature.
People don’t use this level of soundproofing to keep noise out. They use it to keep sound from escaping.
Wood crates hide what I can only assume are more precious artworks, and my fingers itch for a crowbar to crack them open and discover the secrets they hide. I take a few steps farther into the room, and sleek metal bars come into view, poking out from behind a flat crate taller than I stand.
My pulse quickens as I look back at the cracked opening in the wall, weighing the guaranteed route to freedom if I make my escape now against the adrenaline rush if I stay to explore. But then a moan fills the room, unmistakably human, and my stomach drops.
Turning back, I hurry forward, the cage coming into view. Its sleek metal bars gleam under the cold lights, polished to a high shine. Another piece of artwork. A display case. A trophy meant to be admired.
For a moment, my brain refuses to process the huddled figure inside, knees drawn to chest, head resting on folded arms.
Then the figure lifts his face, and the floor tilts beneath me.
Jade Bustly stares back at me, his usual swagger replaced by hollow-eyed fatigue. His bleached blond hair is longer than the last time I saw him, with dark roots at his scalp, and his sharp features are made sharper by starvation. A bruise blooms across his left cheekbone, purple fading to sickly yellow at the edges.
