Page 66 of The Devil Wears Orange
“You had me until the grenades,” says Jack.
“This is too much,” I sneer. “Why are you doing this?”
Rashid remains silent.
“Thomas Crown grows a conscious,” says Jack.
I interject, “And you said the Thomas Crown persona was all Hollywood with no truth to it. We should take it to the police.”
“Without evidence, police are bound by law. I do as I please.”
“Let’s go through this again,” I say. “While Jack infiltrates the household staff at the castle to retrieve a secret code to the vault – good luck with that – we’re going to an auction to pretend to bid on a diamond necklace.”
“Correct.”
“And we’re somehow getting Banning’s fingerprints?”
“Yes.”
Jack’s eye twitches. “This is giving me a headache. How are we supposed to carry out all that art he supposedly stole?”
“As I mentioned, I have a crew. We won’t be doing this alone. During a fireworks distraction on the night of the Black and White ball, we will enter the vault via the waterway,” explains Rashid. “No one will know the art is missing until long after we’re gone.”
“Famous last words,” mumbles Jack.
I shoot my hand up as though in class, but don’t wait for Rashid to call on me. “When we steal back the stolen art work, do we also steal the diamond necklace?”
“Charlotte!”
My head whips to Jack. “It was only a question. Besides, you’re gaga over that weird guy’s self-portrait.”
I sigh heavily, contemplating the madness of this plan. Jack and I have been a team for a couple of weeks now, forwarding information to Favreau. And now we’re to dig ourselves deeper into this criminal world and take part in an actual heist? Is that seriously what we’re considering? “I need to clear my name.”
“Absolutely. This is an opportunity of a lifetime,” Rashid says. “We can be heroes.”
“More like martyrs,” I mumble.
Chapter 37
“Establishing shot. Luxembourg. Thesun dips back into the horizon and casts a hue of semidarkness over the city. Limousines line up to the end of the block from the auction house and beyond–”
“–What are you doing?” Rashid says. He sits next to me in the back of the limo that creeps toward the main entrance.
My eyes hide behind oversized, dark sunglasses, and a (borrowed) diamond hair clip completes my white Versace dress. Rashid wears Armani, perfectly tailored to his fit body. I would have loved to be his tailor and take in an inseam here and there. I breathe in his cologne – a little bergamot oil, something citrusy and amber – it’s warm and compelling. One more sniff, and I’ll find myself straddling the guy.Focus!
I clear my throat. “Narrating. Or possibly voice-over, you know, like those bits in heist films where characters go over the details for the sake of the audience, so they know when things veer off course. Not anOcean’s Elevenfan?”
Rashid gazes at me. “Anticipating this to veer off course?”
“They always do in the movies. Hollywood loves to raise the stakes.”
“Hollywood isn’t real. If you always give an audience a happy ending, why worry about the stakes they raise?”
“Endings don’t matter. It’s how you get there that makes for an exciting journey.”
“Hmmm,” says Rashid.
The limo moves forward a few feet then stops. It’s a constant motion of starting and stopping.
