It was nice. Three prodigies, sitting around, being casual . . . while creating work that would last hundreds of years. See? They could be normal like everyone else.
The giant panda, Shen, walked into the living room. He had his cell phone in one hand and one of his many bamboo stalks in the other.
Staring at his phone he said, “Got a text from Vic. He and Livy are heading to his house for the night. He wants me to keep an eye on you guys while they’re gone.”
“Great,” Coop said, suddenly not liking the flow of what he’d just written. “Thanks.” He reached for the eraser he kept next to him and removed the offending notes, started again.
“You know”—Cherise lowered the sound on the dramatic yelling—“I think Livy’s really into Vic.”
“Really?” Coop asked, still erasing. He hated seeing the remnants of his failures.
“I’m worried, though.”
“Why?”
“He’s awfully nice. Maybe too nice. You know, for Livy.”
“He’s not that nice,” Kyle tossed in. “He’s seen enough of life and death to be able to handle the darker side of Livy’s personality and needs. And Livy doesn’t need someone who is like her. She doesn’t need a honey badger as a mate. She knows, at least subconsciously, that connecting with someone like her would lead to what her parents once had. She fears that. She is, much to her surprise, a one-man woman. She will never be comfortable with the yelling, cheating, and lying that her parents thought of as sport so things never got too boring. For an artist she’s surprisingly conventional about relationships.”
After staring at each other, Coop and Cherise gazed at their younger brother with wide eyes and opened mouths.
He glanced away from what Coop realized was a sketch of the Arc de Triomphe, which they’d seen on their three-day stopover in Paris before heading back to New York. And it was meticulous and wonderful and . . . perfection. Still . . . Coop wondered if his brother might be missing another possible career.
“Have you thought about studying psychology, Kyle?” he asked.
“I plan to get my PhD in that. To get my PhD in art history just seems so . . . useless. I study art and its history every second of every day. I mean, when you think about it . . . I’m art history in the making. But a PhD in psychology would allow me to understand my enemies so I can destroy them and their careers before they get in my way.”
Cherise leaned over and whispered in Coop’s ear, “If he starts wondering about the taste of human flesh, you do understand we will have to stop him before his murder spree begins?”
“I’m more worried,” Cooper whispered back, “that he’ll become ruling overlord of the universe and we’ll have to find some kind of magic sword if we hope to destroy him.”
They both shuddered and returned to their work.
But after a few minutes, all three siblings looked up and saw the giant panda standing by the TV, eating his bamboo and staring at them.
“Something wrong?” Cooper asked him.
“Just keeping an eye on you three. Like I promised Vic. And thanks for not going to different rooms. It makes it easier to do my job.”
Coop glanced at Cherise and Kyle. Since none of them had any ideas on how to handle this, they again focused on what they were doing. But at least Cherise turned up the TV quite a bit to help drown out the sound of the panda’s munching.
That did help. At least a little.
Allison Whitlan walked into her beautiful home. She removed her cashmere coat and placed it in the closet. She removed her Jimmy Choos, sighing at the cold marble in the hallway against her feet. With the shoes hanging from one hand and her Chanel purse in the other, she went to her living room.
She was halfway across when she stopped, the hairs on the back of her neck raised, and goose bumps spreading up her spine and down the backs of her arms. Slowly, she turned and faced the beautiful but powerfully built Asian woman standing by the gift Allison’s worthless father had sent her. She’d kept the gift, as she’d kept all his gifts over the years, but only because it was unique and interesting. Her friends, great world travelers, had been fascinated by such a large honey badger. They’d all been under the assumption that the African animal was much smaller in size.
“How the hell did you get in here?” she demanded of the woman, who was dressed brazenly in a tight red dress, with bold gold jewelry on her neck and arms.
“I need a name from you.”
“What?” Allison took a step toward the woman, but the intruder raised her forefinger, swung it back and forth while clicking her tongue against her teeth. At that moment, in that very second, Allison knew she was in grave danger. That this . . . person could and would kill her without a second’s thought.
Allison knew it, and it terrified her as nothing ever had before.
“I need a name.”
“It’s my father you want, isn’t it?” Allison shook her head. “You can threaten me if you want, but it won’t matter to my father. He won’t care. All you see here, all the money I have, is because of my mother and stepfather.”
The woman gazed at her with the blackest eyes Allison had ever seen, and after a moment, she pointed at the stuffed honey badger with one perfectly manicured nail.
“Did your father give you this?”
“Yes.”
“Did he bring it himself?”
Allison blinked at the question. She was used to these kinds of questions from the police. The FBI. All of them had been at her door more than once over the years. All looking for her father. Her criminal father. The best thing her mother had ever done was leave that man and marry Allison’s stepfather. Not only had he been ridiculously wealthy, but he’d actually cared about Allison and her mother. Took care of them. Even now he and her mother were still together, currently on her stepfather’s yacht in the Caymans.
“No,” Allison replied. “He didn’t bring it himself. I haven’t seen my father in . . .” she thought a moment. “Ten . . . maybe fifteen years.”
“Then who brought this to you?”
Allison hesitated. But the woman suddenly started walking toward her. Slowly. Taking her time crossing the space between them. She was shorter than Allison, even in those fifteen-hundred-dollar shoes she wore. But good God! Those shoulders! She looked like she could take Allison’s stainless steel front door down with those shoulders.
The woman reached her hand out, and Allison struggled not to jerk away, feeling a movement—any movement at all—would get her killed.
The woman gently pushed a loose curl behind Allison’s ear. “Don’t start lying to me now, sweetie.”
She had an accent, but she was trying to hide it. Her words were clipped, almost British. But she wasn’t from Hong Kong. Allison had lots of friends who were, she traveled there often, and this woman didn’t sound like them.
Nor did she seem like anyone Allison had met before. Ever. In fact, now that Allison was close to her, there was something so primal about this woman, so base, that Allison had to struggle not to cry in abject fear.
Instead, she swallowed back her tears and her fears and she answered the woman honestly. “Some delivery company. Out of Florida. There was no note. Or return address.”