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“Yes. I’ve spent years perfecting the recipe so the crust stays crisp and the eggs light.”
“It’s delicious. The best quiche I’ve ever had.”
Evelyn laughed. “Reuben can’t cook to save his life. I know for a fact that he fed you boys a snack yesterday instead of a real meal, so I’m sure I could have put anything in front of you this morning, and you would have said it was the best thing you’d ever eaten.”
A genuine smile tugged at my lips. “You might be right about that, but it really was delicious. My idea of cooking is takeout, so I appreciate Reuben’s effort and your cooking.”
“Oh, you’re a charmer, aren’t you?”
A throat cleared behind me, and I turned to see Jack leaning against the kitchen doorway. “You’re late.”
A glance at my watch said it was a whole minute past nine, and I rolled my eyes. “I was finishing breakfast.” I picked up the quiche crust in one hand and the now empty plate in the other. “Where should I put this?”
“I’ll take it. You go.” She took the plate and shooed me toward Jack.
“Lead the way.” I stuffed the last of the quiche into my mouth and followed Jack out of the kitchen.
Jack didn’t say anything as he walked down a hallway that looked exactly like the one that led to our rooms but was on the other side of the house. The only thing that was different was the art. While I couldn’t tell you who painted most of the pieces, I knew enough to notice the paintings and catalog them so I could use them as landmarks if I had to navigate the house without a guide. He stopped in front of another single panel door that felt like it was deeper in the earth than our room, almost as deep as the saltwater spring but not quite, and I realized as Jack knocked on the door that Reuben’s house was as much a home as it was a bunker. The paranoia Jack had mentioned before made sense.
Reuben opened the door and held it wide for us to enter. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting a reclusive former art thief’s office to look like, but the room reminded me more of my brother Julius’s hacker lair than Quin’s gallery or studio. A bank of wide monitors filled one wall, all showing news broadcasts from around the world. There were no windows, and a huge mahogany desk faced the door. A six-seat conference table took up a large amount of space in the middle of the room, and I realized we weren’t alone.
A woman in her mid to late forties with hair so blonde it was almost white sat at the table, a pile of files and papers in front of her. She looked up when we walked in and smiled. I recognized her as Amanda Vanderkaamp, the art thief and forger that Felix had been looking for when he’d been threatened. I didn’t know much about her other than the fact that she’d been in the WITSEC program after she’d witnessed a murder in the gallery where she was working that turned out to be a mob hit. She’d testified only because she’d been offered federal protection, and her testimony had led to significant arrests. When she’d been targeted as part of whatever Felix was investigating, Jack, operating on Reuben’s intel, had gotten her out of Amsterdam and brought her here.
Reuben gestured us toward the table, making introductions as he moved. “Amanda, this is Cal Hunter, one of Juno’s grandsons.”
She stood and held out her hand. “Martina Lisica, or as you probably know me, Amanda Vanderkaamp.” I expected Amanda, Martina, whatever, to have a Dutch accent since she’d lived in Amsterdam. I wasn’t expecting the faint Russian accent at all, and maybe that was why my brain-to-mouth filter flipped off.
“Am I allowed to know your real name? What am I supposed to call you?” The questions fell out of my mouth before my brain could catch up, and I mentally facepalmed.
Luckily, she laughed. “I figured you already knew my real name since your brother’s mate was digging into me, and you’ve been hanging out with this one.” She nodded to where Jack stood behind me. “And because Martina is, for all intents and purposes, dead, Amanda is fine. Before I changed my identity, I worked with your grandmother. Sort of.” Amanda winked like I should get the joke she’d just made. “I gave you my old name in case you knew me by that name… or rather by my reputation.” Her lips twisted into a sly smirk.
A small glimmer of recognition teased the back of my brain. “You’re Lady Fox.”
My grandmother had told us stories of another formidable female thief who was making her mark on the male-dominated art-theft world, a fox shifter, who was incredibly smart and had thwarted several of her heists in the early days of her career. Eventually, she had learned Lady Fox’s targets trended toward jewelry and precious gems—the “shiny things” she’d called them—and my grandmother had refined her focus to classical antiquities and the occasional painting. She admitted she couldn’t compete with Amanda’s talent for stealing bejeweled artifacts, and she’d praised Amanda’s forgery skills as well.
“I am. Your grandmother was a very worthwhile adversary. It is a shame she retired. Competing with her helped me hone my craft when I was a young thief. Juno was one of the best.”
Nero was my grandmother’s protege. He’d been the most interested in following in her footsteps. I’d never cared much about the art world, preferring to use my skills in other ways like Julius did. Nero and Quin were the ones invested in the “family business.”
“And you’re willing to help us even though you and my grandmother were competitors?”
Amanda’s eyes darkened. “We were competitors, yes, but our corner of the art world is very small. When someone targets one of us, they target all of us, regardless of our relationship.”
“Why don’t we sit down, and we can talk more about what Amanda knows and the intel I have.” Reuben pulled out a chair and sat, and I did the same, taking the seat next to Amanda while Jack took the one across the table and next to Reuben.
Once we were all settled, Reuben leaned forward and folded his hands on the tabletop. “So, Amanda and I have been talking, and we think the painting is about to reappear, which is why there has been interest in thieves that are experts where the painting is concerned.”
Amanda nodded. “I think I ended up on whoever plans to make a play for the painting’s radar because I was investigating. Even though I’m technically out of the life, I was doing restoration work at a gallery in Amsterdam, and I heard… things.”
“And the things Amanda has shared coupled with some additional information that has come in from other contacts make me think someone in Europe has the painting.”
Jack nodded like everything they were saying made sense.
“This isn’t my world, and sorry to ask, but what kind of information makes you think someone has the painting? Has it been seen?”
Amanda and Reuben shared a look I couldn’t interpret.
“When a stolen piece of art, especially one as infamous asThe Evolution of Man, is about to reappear, there are ripples.”
