She drew in a deep breath and entered in a few more keywords. While the mysterious video man had offered a name to get her started, Adriana trusted her own sleuthing abilities over some person she’d never met. That being said, the web didn’t have much to offer on the missing painting. She forced herself to go through her process, taking everything one step at a time in her usual, mechanical fashion. It was the best way to ensure she missed no details and became as familiar as she could with the target. Adriana treated jobs like this in an almost scientific manner.
An image of the painting popped onto the screen,and she zoomed in. She studied the picture with the greatest of care, analyzing it as much as possible. The untrained eye would have no idea what she was doing or why, but that didn’t matter to her. Adriana knew what she was doing. The more she could familiarize herself with the artwork, the less chance she could be fooled by a counterfeit placed as a decoy.
Though never experiencing that kind of failure before, she’d heard of other thieves who had. One particularly unlucky fellow attempted to steal a Renoir from a private owner in France. He’d succeeded with greater ease than expected, but when he took the painting to the buyer, they discovered it was a fake. The thief’s body was found floating in the river a few days later — the painting strapped to his back.
At least that was the way she’d heard the story. Only the killer knew for sure what actually happened.
It paid to be meticulous, in more ways than one.
She clicked to the next page and continued to scroll through the links that led to other pages supposedly containing more information on the missing Bellini.
Finding the painting would be hard. If she could actually home in on its location, breaking in and taking it would no doubt be equally as challenging.
People who were able to acquire and keep such things secret typically did so at great expense. There would be security measures in place to guard it that would rival those of the richest banks in the world. And then there was the possibility that the artwork could be kept in an actual bank, though that was doubtful. One of the fascinating things she’d learned during her life as a thief was that the people who held onto forbidden things loved to show them off. Of all the works of art she’d recovered, almost all of them had been on display in plain sight within the illegal owner’s residence.
She snorted at the title thief. Adriana detested the term in relation to what she did. Her expertise was recovering things that were stolen, taken from the rightful owners and never returned. Most of the cases she worked didn’t involve the original owners. With the passage of time, most of them had since died. Often, their children or grandchildren were the ones she contacted about things she was able to retrieve. And almost always, they were shocked by her revelations.
Something on the screen caught her eye,and she stopped. Her eyelids narrowed to slits,and she clicked the link. A gray web page opened on the screen. It looked so old it may well have been the first page to ever be published on the Internet. The fonts were ugly, and the images were oddly placed, but there was no question that whoever had created it knew about the Bellini. The website’s author drew some fairly ridiculous conclusions, but he also had some interesting ideas as to what could have happened, including an eyewitness account from a soldier who claimed they knew where it was. The soldier was surely dead by now. A couple of additional searches revealed that to be true. He’d died nearly thirty years before, leaving behind some children and grandchildren. Only one of his children remained alive: a daughter who was getting on in years. Sonya Zaragova—the name the man in the video gave her. Adriana remembered the woman’s name.
Next, she sent a text message to a couple of young research assistants in Atlanta. While Tara Watson and Alex Simms were employed by Tommy Schultz’s International Archaeological Agency, he’d told her she could call upon them any time she needed. Right now seemed to fit that description perfectly.
The two, affectionately known as the kids due to their being in their twenties, were some of the best and fastest when it came to digging up hard-to-find information. While Adriana chased down one lead, maybe they could uncover another.
Once the message was sent, she slid the phone back in her pocket and performed another search online, this time for the other thief the man on the video had warned about. Know thy enemy. She finished pecking the keys and hit enter.
The results were scattered. A few headlines topped the first page while more random items graced pages two and beyond. The Chameleon, it seemed, was a woman. Adriana couldn’t help but feel a little patronized that whoever was running this little game thought they needed a level playing field based on sex. She was one of the best in the world at what she did, man or woman. Additionally, she despised the thought of being a pawn in someone’s sick game. For the time being, however, she had to accept it.
She kept reading.
The Chameleon was like a ghost. No one knew her real name or where she was from, though there were a few reports that she was American. One website was dedicated to a sort of cult following of her, like the bandits from the old American West; she had a substantial collection of fans and potential suitors. In one article, several people had declared their fanciful, romantic wishes for the woman. Adriana passed through the comments quickly, shaking her head at some.
She left the site and scrolled through a couple more. It was clear that no one knew much about the mysterious thief outside of myths and the things she’d stolen, or attempted to steal.
The Chameleon had somehow slipped through the authorities’ fingers in Paris, London, Beijing, and several other major cities; all they could get on her was a rough sketch and minimal description. And those were never the same.
Thus the name, the Chameleon.
It seemed her greatest skill was being able to blend in and change her appearance. The narrow escapes she’d managed were, according to the reports, out of necessity due to unsuccessfully navigating security measures.
That was good to know, Adriana thought.
The other thief was sloppy, unskilled at her craft. Usually, those types were sitting in a concrete cell somewhere, rotting away for several years surrounded by metal bars. The fact that this…Chameleon hadn’t been caught in spite of her inability to pinch her targets was a tribute to her strengths, disguise, and stealth.
Adriana scrolled across another report, this one more troubling than the others. During a botched attempt, the Chameleon had killed a private security officer and severely wounded another. In that instance, she’d used a gun, but it was safe to assume the woman was proficient in hand-to-hand combat as well. Good to know, just in case.
While Adriana specialized in a very niche market of stolen art, the Chameleon was all over the map, both literally and figuratively. She’d stolen artwork, relics, lost treasure — pretty much anything she could get her hands on. The woman was a veritable high-end kleptomaniac.
She also went by an assortment of aliases: Joan Ritchey, Jennifer Vandenborg, Allyson Webster, and Delia Smith. Those were just the ones the authorities knew about.
Adriana had seen enough, at least for now.
She stood up and strode around the corner and over to the unmolested interior door. This one featured a biometric lock, one she’d personally recommended to her father. She pressed her thumb against the panel and waited three seconds while the device scanned the unique, minuscule grooves in her skin. A second later, a heavy click from within the door signaled it was open.