Page 69 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“We’re record­ing ev­ery­thing,” Mikel re­minded them. “How­ever, if you see any­one you want to fo­cus on, say so, and my peo­ple will do their best to shift the cam­eras and mics.”

Mikel’s team was al­ready dis­trib­uted in strate­gic po­si­tions around the out­side of the house with video and au­dio equip­ment. They’d even man­aged to snake a tiny cam­era into the front en­trance hall to get some in­te­rior footage. Mikel had ve­toed tap­ping into the house’s se­cu­rity sys­tem cam­eras. The thieves would be dis­abling or block­ing them some­how, so he didn’t want them pos­si­bly tipped off to an­other in­ter­ested party at the house.

“What kind of art does this guy have that’s worth steal­ing?” Raul asked.

“Oh, some mi­nor works by Van Gogh, da Vinci, Rem­brandt, and a cou­ple of Car­avag­gios. And those are only the paint­ings.” Mikel’s tone was heavy with sar­casm. “The sculp­tures are equally im­pres­sive.”

“Why don’t they have bet­ter se­cu­rity?” Quinn asked, ap­palled.

“I guess they think Lake Como is a safe neigh­bor­hood,” Mikel said. “In fact, their se­cu­rity sys­tem isn’t half-bad. It’s just not good enough to stop a de­ter­mined pro­fes­sional crew like this one.”

“It’s show­time,” Quinn mur­mured. With the in­frared cam­eras, she could see a fig­ure ghost­ing up through the land­scaped grounds and around the side of the house.

“He’s tap­ping into the alarm sys­tem,” Mikel said as the fig­ure crouched in front of a box at­tached to the house’s foun­da­tion.

Af­ter sev­eral min­utes, the fig­ure jogged around to the front of the house and fid­dled with the front door un­til it swung open. The in­side feed picked him up. Now that he was in­side the house, his face came into sharp fo­cus, ex­cept there was no face to see. It was a fea­ture­less, shiny oval. He wore a mir­rored mask like the ones Gabriel’s kid­nap­pers had worn.

She tensed and cut her gaze side­ways to see that Gabriel had lifted his hand to his ear­lobe. The ges­ture broke her self-con­trol. She couldn’t bear to let him suf­fer through the mem­o­ries alone. Reach­ing un­der the ta­ble, she lay her hand on his thigh and gave it a com­fort­ing squeeze.

He dropped his right hand from his ear, while slip­ping his left down to cover hers where it rested on his leg, his palm sweaty against her skin. She didn’t blame him. The mask made her queasy, and she hadn’t been sub­jected to two weeks of cap­tiv­ity un­der its threat.

The masked fig­ure dis­ap­peared for sev­eral min­utes. No one in the con­fer­ence room spoke, but the air was thick with an­tic­i­pa­tion and ten­sion. The ter­ri­fy­ing mask didn’t mean that this was the same crew that had ab­ducted Gabriel. How­ever, com­bined with Ko­dra’s meet­ing with Dupont, it seemed more than a co­in­ci­dence.

A mid­size cargo truck crept up the drive­way, its head­lights off. A van fol­lowed it. The truck swung around in front of the house so its back end was up against the front steps. Eight fig­ures in dark clothes and those hor­ri­ble, blank masks emerged from both ve­hi­cles. One man opened the back of the truck, which had a cater­ing com­pany logo on its side, prob­a­bly a real com­pany’s name painted on a stolen truck.

“Isn’t us­ing the front door risky?” Raul asked. “The back door is bet­ter hid­den.”

“I’m guess­ing the front door is wider and more ac­ces­si­ble for the bulkier art­works,” Mikel said. “The road is so far away that you can’t see the house from there any­way.” He mut­tered some­thing into the head­set he wore to com­mu­ni­cate with his team. One cam­era be­gan to move closer to the front door.

So far, the thieves had barely spo­ken, merely bark­ing brief or­ders at each other in ac­cented Eng­lish, which was handy for Quinn. It was prob­a­bly a crew of mixed na­tion­al­i­ties, so they de­faulted to Eng­lish as the com­mon lan­guage.

The ad­vance man reap­peared at the front door, say­ing the video cam­eras were taken care of. With a sud­den­ness that made Quinn’s heart jump, the thieves ripped off their masks. See­ing hu­man faces was both a shock and a re­lief.

Gabriel’s grip tight­ened. Quinn scanned the group un­til she saw Ko­dra, who was col­lect­ing the masks from his col­leagues. He had a smile on his face un­til he got to a blond man with the shoul­ders of a line­backer. Ko­dra’s mouth thinned to a grim line of ir­ri­ta­tion. The blond man smacked his mask into Ko­dra’s hand, and the two men sep­a­rated im­me­di­ately.

“Ko­dra doesn’t like the blond guy with the gi­ant shoul­ders,” Quinn said. “Can we get a clear look at him?”

Mikel mur­mured into his head­set, and a cam­era shifted to zoom in and fol­low the blond. He turned so the lens cap­tured his full face be­fore the cam­era pulled back to show his en­tire body. Quinn sneaked a look at Gabriel to check his re­ac­tion.

His eyes were nar­rowed and fo­cused, but there was no sign of recog­ni­tion.

With her free hand, Quinn high­lighted the man’s face on her lap­top and ran it against the CSIC data­base. “Got him,” she said. “Guil­laume Gre­nier. He’s one of Dupont’s reg­u­lars.”

They fell silent again so that Gabriel and Raul could con­cen­trate on voices, bod­ies, and ges­tures. Quinn con­tin­ued to high­light and iden­tify the thieves as their faces be­came clear to the cam­eras. Most of the crew were known as­so­ciates of Dupont, but a few were free­lancers like Ko­dra.

Her mind was rac­ing. Maybe Ko­dra and Gre­nier had both been part of the kid­nap­ping, and they hadn’t got­ten along.

Af­ter about twenty min­utes, the driver closed the back of the truck. The thieves had re­moved the art­works with the speed and ef­fi­ciency of pro­fes­sional movers.

Ko­dra passed out the masks. Gabriel’s fin­gers tight­ened around hers as the hu­man faces were erased by the blank sil­ver sur­faces. Quinn wished she could do more than hold his hand.

The mov­ing crew piled into the van and the truck, while the ad­vance man went around to the out­side box again for a few min­utes. Then he bolted back to the van, jumped in the front pas­sen­ger seat, and both ve­hi­cles sped down the drive­way.

“I have a sur­veil­lance car wait­ing that will tail them to wher­ever they’re of­fload­ing the art,” Mikel said.

Gabriel leaned back in his chair, a sheen of per­spi­ra­tion glis­ten­ing on his fore­head. Quinn kept her hand around his be­fore she said, “Those mir­rored masks are in­cred­i­bly creepy.”

“Yes, they are,” Gabriel agreed, his voice dull.

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