Page 152 of Stuart Woods' Smolder

Monica walked over to Rudy as the van turned out of sight. Viv, who had been one half of the couple talking on the sidewalk, joined them.

“Did you hear what he said right before he left?” Viv asked.

Monica, Rudy’s faux girlfriend, nodded. “I think Stone’s theory about him going on the run is right.” She turned to Rudy. “Nice job on the acting.”

“Oh, um, thanks, I guess.”

“Maybe prison will have a drama club.”

Rudy blanched.

Chapter 45

After dropping Stone off at the Centurion lot, Teddy drove to the Duchamp Gallery and used his well-honed skills to break in and disable the alarm.

Thanks to the audio bug in Simon’s suite, he’d learned that something was happening at the gallery at two. The obvious assumption being that it would be the time Petry picked up the forgeries.

Teddy spent ten minutes installing microcameras in the gallery’s back room, Simon’s office, and the showroom. Then, on his way back to the Audi, he placed four more cameras around the parking lot.

Once he’d checked that all the feeds were working, he drove to his house and transformed into Billy Barnett.

Thirty minutes later, he was on the Centurion lot, where he spent the rest of the morning huddled with his assistant, Stacy, going over preparations for tomorrow night’s party.

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“…and in May of next year, we have three planned releases:Face to Face, directed by Lawrence Johns;Smiling Eyes, directed by Liesel Zhao; andCodes of My Father, directed by Zonnie Turman. There’s a chance that—”

The conference room door opened, cutting off Centurion Pictures’ VP of production.

Billy stepped in. “Sorry to interrupt. Ben, could I have a moment?”

Ben Bacchetti nodded and said to the room, “We’ll take a quick break.”

After he and Billy left the room, Dino leaned into Stone. “Twenty bucks says it’s about us.”

“No bet.”

Less than a minute later, Ben and Billy returned.

“There’s something that needs my attention,” Ben said. “Nothing serious, but it’ll take more than a few minutes. If there are no objections, let’s reconvene in one hour.”

There were no objections.

Billy caught Stone’s attention and looked to the door. Stone and Dino followed Billy out and into an office one floor down, where three chairs faced an open laptop.

Once the door was locked and they were all seated, Billy tapped a few keys on the laptop. A grid appeared on the screen showing a dozen different camera feeds.

“I thought you might be interested in watching the handoff of the forgeries.”

“You thought right,” Stone said.

Billy clicked on a feed covering the back room of Simon’sgallery, and the picture increased to a quarter of the screen, while the others shrank to fill the remaining space.

In the center of the room was the box Rudy had made for the forgeries. Simon was pacing a groove in the floor beyond it.

“Looks like it’s time.” Billy exchanged the enlarged interior feed with one from the parking lot.

A small cube truck had just pulled into the lot. It performed a three-point turn and backed toward the gallery’s rear door. When it stopped, two men got out.

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