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“You’re wrong on a few of these,” she said. “Grant Breton isn’t. He had a piece of the map, but that was handed down to him from his aunt, Jessica.”
Without hesitation, Weston reached out and took Grant’s picture off the wall. That surprised her—that he’d take her word for it.
Rose turned to the left, to the neatly organized wall. She took a minute to study it, then said, “This is some of the art that was in the tunnels.”
“Yes, I spent a lot of time tracing the most identifiable pieces back to their last known owners.” He paused, and Rose looked over, curious despite herself. “Much of this art was confiscated by the Nazis.”
“We guessed that,” she said. “The purists were Nazi sympathizers. It made sense that they would have taken some of the confiscated pieces to keep them safe, or maybe they bought them to help fund the war.”
“That does make sense,” he conceded, “but not all of these were confiscated by the Nazis.” He pointed to the images on the right of the board.
Now that she was looking at it, she could see that each column had information about a single piece of art. A photo of the art in question at the top of the column, and under each were printouts with information about the last known owners, written descriptions, and snapshots. She peered at one of the snapshots. A painting was propped against a stone wall. The lighting was terrible, the colors washed out by the camera flash.
“This was taken in the tunnels?”
“Yes.”
She stiffened. “You took them?”
“Yes.”
She crossed her arms, hugging herself. “How many times?” she demanded. “How many times did you come to the U.S. and go into the tunnels?”
“Many.”
“So you were right there…” She swallowed against the rage that was filling her again. “Were you there in the tunnels with us? Did you listen to…” Listen to them beat me? She shook her head, unable to finish the sentence without bringing up too many emotions she couldn’t deal with. “You should have come back.”
“If you don’t see why I didn’t, then there’s no point in me explaining.”
Rose clenched her hands into fists, sliding her arms behind her so she hid her hands at the small of her back. She couldn’t show such obvious signs of anger—that would earn her a punishment.
He looked at her arms, frowning, then turned back to the board. “See this piece?”
Rose nodded once.
“This pastoral was last seen in the London home of Lord and Lady Ellington.”
He was looking at her expectantly. Rose stared back, no idea what he was trying to tell her.
Rose was waiting for him to say more when it clicked. “Wait.” She stepped closer to the wall, peering at the information on the board. There was a black-and-white photo of an elegantly dressed couple standing in a tastefully appointed room. On the wall behind them, barely visible, was a painting. That same painting was in the first photo, which had clearly been taken in the secret tunnels running into and out of the Trinity Masters’ headquarters.
“In London? Then it must have been destroyed during the blitz.” Rose was thinking out loud, thoughts flickering like fireflies, hard to catch.
“That’s what everyone assumed.”
“But instead it ended up in America, among a bunch of Nazi-stolen pieces.” She stepped back, eyes darting around the room. “Art from England had no way to end up with Nazi art. London was nearly destroyed, but never raided.”
“Exactly.” Weston’s cold, hard demeanor softened, and the word was suffused with satisfaction.
“How?”
“There’s a long, complicated story as to how I came to this theory—”
“Don’t drag it out, Wes!” Excitement got the better of her, but she stopped short when she realized she’d used her old nickname for him.
He paused for only a breath, the barest acknowledgement of what she’d said. “Here’s my theory. The art and papers the purists hid in the tunnels weren’t given to them by the Nazis. In fact, I don’t think it was stolen by the Nazis. I think a bunch of rich and powerful families from all across Europe put as much disposable wealth as they could together, and shipped it to America.”
“How? I mean, there were sympathizers on both sides, but to pool their resources and sneak it out, while there were naval battles going on all around them…” Rose slipped past Wes to walk a tight circle around the room. She thought better when she was moving. “Do you think the Ellingtons were Nazi sympathizers? That would make sense—they put all this together and ship it to the purists, the most powerful group of racist scum in America.”
