Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 479(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 479(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
A soft, sliding noise drew their gaze back to the Cézanne over the mantle. The painting dropped back a couple of inches into the wall and then moved to the left. A dim light revealed a deeper-set painting hidden. An old portrait of a young man. The lost painting by Old Master Raphael.
“Whoa…” Angelo exhaled.
“And that’s real.”
“Get it down, and let’s get out of here,” Royce said, heading over to the door. He positioned himself so that he was still hidden in the shadows but could keep watch down the hall while also still keeping Angelo and Marc in eyesight.
The house remained quiet—the only noise coming from Angelo as he climbed carefully onto the mantle and worked on taking out any security system attached to the priceless painting. Marc remained on the ground but close by with a small pouch of tools to assist.
Royce kept his glances back brief, trying not to think too much about how easily Angelo and Marc worked together. When he and Marc had returned to the bed and breakfast, they had been more interested in getting their clothes off and never got around to talking about how Marc knew the thief. He didn’t actually think that Marc had done anything like this before. It was only jealousy nipping at him. He didn’t want to share Marc with anyone, even someone from his past. Not that it made any sense. Did they really have a chance at something? Their lives were so different.
And yet…stealing a priceless lost painting from an elegant estate in Tuscany was a unique bonding experience, right?
Royce didn’t realize he’d let himself get distracted until he heard a faint clatter across the hardwood floor. Sort of like clicking. He looked over his shoulder to see Angelo pulling the framed painting from the hidden cove and handing it carefully down to Marc. The sound wasn’t coming from within the room but down the hall…and it was getting closer.
Tightening his hand around the gun, Royce leaned closer to the open doorway, straining to hear. To make sense of the noise. And then it finally hit him. Fuck.
He hurried over to where Marc and Angelo were kneeling on the floor around the painting.
“Does Schmid have a dog?”
“What?” Angelo whispered back.
“A dog. Does Schmid have a dog? I think I heard nails on a hardwood floor.”
Angelo said something under his breath that Royce couldn’t quite catch, but it sounded like swearing regardless of the language. “I’ve got it. Help him.”
While Royce knelt down in Angelo’s spot, the other man took up Royce’s post by the door. He heard nothing for more than a minute. He handed Marc a tool each time he requested one and kept the light from the tiny flashlight steady while Marc worked to carefully free the painting from the frame. During the day, Royce had looked up a description of the painting on the Internet and wasn’t exactly reassured by what he found. According to estimates, Raphael’s painting had been completed more than five hundred years ago on a wood panel rather than canvas as Royce had expected. The age of the painting forced Marc to work carefully to protect it as much as possible.
The idea of his uncle ever getting his hands on this incredibly rare work of art turned his stomach. It belonged in a museum for its protection and care, so it could be enjoyed by the entire world. Not just one evil, power-hungry man.
When they returned to the US, he would work with Gidget to make sure that she had a safe way to deliver an anonymous tip to Interpol regarding the painting’s new location. He might be forced to hand Raphael’s work over to his uncle, but it was not staying with the man. It would be returned to the Polish museum, and no one would ever know that Marc was involved.
The soft clicking he’d heard earlier grew louder. He knew without a doubt that the sounds were nails on the wood floor, and it was definitely more than one dog. Shifting the flashlight to his left hand, he snatched up his gun again. He had no desire to shoot a dog, but he would do whatever he must to keep Marc safe.
Angelo stepped back away from the open doorway as the first little white puffball of fur came into view. He’d expected something large and angry like a Doberman pinscher or a Rottweiler—a true guard dog. Not…
“Holy shit! He’s got bichon frises,” Marc whispered with a soft laugh.
Six of them to be exact. And they loved Angelo. Or rather, they loved the little treats he was pulling out of his pocket and dropping on the floor near the center of the room. The thief was whispering to them in an endless stream of nonsense baby talk, keeping them fed so that they couldn’t suddenly start barking.