“Yes,” Violet says. “I can do that.”
“All right.” I check my watch. 1:35. “Gloves on. Let’s do this.”
CHAPTER 14
The three of us slink toward the service entrance while looking over our shoulders to make sure the cop doesn’t come back. The real cop, I mean. We stop in front and look up at the camera.
“Hopefully one of them isn’t keeping a lookout right now,” Violet says.
“Hopefully.” I pull the last item out of my bag. “If both of them aren’t in the basement, they’re certainly going to hear this.” I hold up my crowbar and examine the hollow metal, green service door again. I take a breath. This won’t be easy. A hollow metal door requires a lot of force, and I may be strong, but I’m not a six-foot-eight, 350-pound linebacker.
“I think this is going to take all of us,” I say. “I’ll work on the crowbar, and the two of you kick like hell. Got it? We have to do this as quickly as we can.”
Yellow nods. “I can kick,” she says. She lifts her right knee and takes a practice thrust kick.
I nod back. That had some force to it. We might be all right. I jimmy the crowbar into the lock and take a breath. “On three,” I say. “One . . . two . . . three!”
I yank at the crowbar with all the strength I can muster; at the same time Yellow kicks right below the doorknob, at the weakest part of the door. She spins away, and Violet swoops in with another thrust kick that lands on the same spot. That does it. The side splinters, and the door swings open. Yellow squeaks in delight and jumps up and down.
“Shh!” I say. “We have to be careful.” I turn to look at Yellow and Violet. “Look, I know you don’t like me, and truth be told, I don’t like either of you; but we have to put that aside and be a team in there. Otherwise all three of us could wind up dead.” As soon as the words escape my lips, the full truth of them becomes evident. This is real. Not a drill. And we could die. Very easily. Fear creeps into my skin and overtakes me. Suddenly I don’t want to go in. I want to call the cops and be done with it.
Yellow puts her hand in the middle. “A team.” I look at her and put my hand on top, then Violet does the same. This comforts me a little. We can do this—we have to.
“Watch out for the alarms,” I say. “They’re everywhere. Trip one, and the thieves will know they’re not alone. And then they’ll come looking for us. So please tell me you both know how to bend around laser alarms.”
Violet nods, but Yellow shakes her head. “I’ll figure it out,” she says.
I guess that will have to do.
Yellow enters first, and I go in after her. Violet brings up the rear. I raise my hand for them to wait for a second, then duck into the security office and synchronize my watch with the security system so I’ll know my cheat sheet will be right. It’s 1:40 exactly. We have eight minutes until the thieves head up the main staircase to the second floor. I stash my bag by the entrance. Then we tiptoe quietly through the maze of doorways that leads to the main staircase. We’re standing in front of the courtyard, which is dark and spooky, and I’m not liking this one bit.
And then I stop because I can’t see a thing. At least, not a thing I’m looking for. There are no green lasers crisscrossing the floors and walls, showing us where the alarms are.
“I thought you said there were lasers,” Yellow whispers to me.
I wave her off. I thought there were. My eyes scan the courtyard and stairs, and then I spot something. A small white cube hanging in the corner. An electric eye. Dammit. I should have anticipated that the museum would have a much more primitive security system in 1990. Dammit. I can’t keep making mistakes like this.
I point to the cube. “Electric eye.”
“Violet.” I’m whispering so softly I’m practically just mouthing the words, but Yellow and Violet hear me and turn their heads. “We just have to look out for them.”
I look at Violet and nod my head in the direction of the Blue Room, and she nods back. There’s another electric eye in the corner by the Macknight Room, and I hold my breath as Violet flattens herself against the wall. I don’t know whether the eye is hooked up to any sort of audible alarm, and I really don’t want to find out the hard way.
Violet rounds the corner, and the museum stays silent. But still, I don’t exhale. Not yet. This is like a game of limbo. Life or death limbo.
I look down at my watch. 1:42. Six minutes to go.
There aren’t any eyes on the stairs, but when Yellow and I get to the top, we find three of them. Yellow points to each, and I see her calculating how to avoid them. I’m thinking the same. A modern, high-tech security system would be so much easier. At least I could see what I need to watch out for. Electric eyes work by sending an invisible, infrared light beam that detects when a person is around because the beam is broken. But I can’t see the damned beam!
Think!
And then I get an idea. The eyes are trained to detect people walking through the museum.
I turn to Yellow and point at the floor. “Crawl.”
I have no idea if this will work, but it’s worth a shot. Yellow looks at the floor and nods. It’s time for us to part ways. The Dutch Room is to the right, and the Short Gallery is to the left and around the corner. Yellow and I make eye contact. She’s terrified, and I am, too. I’m not even going to try to hide it. But we both drop to the floor and scoot away from each other on our stomachs.
I low-crawl like they teach in the military—like they taught me at Peel—until my shoulders scream in pain, but I know it’s only a minute or two tops. And I ignore them because the hall stays silent. I get to the Dutch Room and stand. Watch check.
1:47.
My stomach lurches. I only have a minute before the thieves come upstairs.
I scan the location of the electric eyes in the room. If I stick to the perimeter, I should be safe. So I hop up and find myself staring at The Concert. It’s not hanging on the wall. It’s attached to a small board and placed on a table alongside the window. There’s a chair in front of it, as if you’re supposed to sit and stare at it. It’s so pretty in person; it almost gives me chills.
I’m wasting time! I’m here to save the damned thing, not gawk at it. I throw myself against the wall and scoot along it toward the back of the room.
The second hand on my watch clicks to 1:48.
I’m too exposed. There’s nothing to hide behind. I’m wearing black and my hair is dark, but the security lights are bright enough that anyone would see me in a heartbeat. I have to get out of here. Now. It’s quiet. Too quiet. A total absence of sound.
Except not.
Footsteps.
Quiet. Barely audible.
Footsteps on the stairs.
I have to move! I scoot around the other door, which leads into an elevator lobby. I could probably stay here, but I keep going into the Tapestry Room. There’s an eye in the corner, and I don’t know if it will catch me, so I throw myself down and crawl into the Tapestry Room just as I hear footsteps in the Dutch Room.
They’re here.
I tuck myself into the southwest corner of the dim, cavernous room, behind a table that a sign tells me is from the mid-eighteenth century. I pull out my cheat sheet again. My hands tremble so much I can barely read it. There are two men not even twenty feet from me. Very bad men here to do very bad things. And then I jump as there’s a rip and a crack in the next room. I breathe and tell myself it’s the thieves taking a painting down from the wall. I look at the paper in my hands.
1:51. One of the thieves leaves and trips an alarm in the stairway. That thief then goes through the Early Italian Room, through the Raphael Room, and into the Short Gallery.