Page 28 of Sinful Crimes for the Artistically Inclined
Joe pushed his lips together and waited as Percy fiddled with his room key, concentrating very hard on turning it over and over. “I just wanted to say, I’ve really enjoyed the last few days, and if all goes well, I will see you in a few hours. And… Thank you for putting your trust in me. Not only today, but, well, since… that night.” Percy brought his eyes up to meet Joe’s. “I would love to… see you again.”
Joe almost laughed at the unusually bashful delivery, but he knew better than to do that. “Um… I mean, we’re staying in the same room, so…”
“We are. And that’s nice. And you should know, everything is paid for, for another week, so should you want to stay on?—”
“If you don’t come back?”
“Just in case.”
Gut surging upwards, “If you die today?”
With a slightly apologetic tilt of his head, “You should know it’s all taken care of. So you wouldn’t have to worry about that.”
Joe nodded slowly. “Being an international criminal does seem to pay well.”
It was exactly the light-hearted response Percy needed, and the slight embarrassment at the odd goodbye was replaced by a glorious, Joe-flooring smile. “I’m only a criminal if they find out it was me.”
The wink as he left was frustrating, irritating, and enticing enough to make Joe dress quickly, and quietly slip out of the apartment to follow Percy at what he hoped was an undetectable distance.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DEGENERATE ART
Fuck!
What the fuck was he doing? Why the hell had he brought Joe along on this trip?
Percy stepped out of the hotel, into the bracing wind of a narrow road on a sunny day, and wound his way expertly through the ancient streets. He’d been to Kraków four times in the last three months. He’d studied maps, distances, times, alleyways, and sewers. Over and over, he’d cut through courtyards and byways, and rented more than one empty apartment between here and his final destination, all in readiness for today. This was his only chance, and while he had prepared for every eventuality he could conceive of, there were always more ways things could go wrong.
Things that could go wrong…
He knew exactly why he’d brought Joe.
Joe was lovely. Joe was sweet and funny and acerbic in equal measure. He was brave, and smart, and kind. He was beautiful. Painfully beautiful with those hazelnut curls that Percy loved to sink his fist into.
But Joe was still a priest. And Percy slept with him anyway,without a second thought, the moment Joe’s jealousy finally got the better of him. Without the slightest hesitation, he had broken Joe’s vow of chastity and had become his first lover, and now he felt responsible for Joe’s happiness.
But that was stupid. Joe was a grown man. He could do what he wanted with his life. It wasn’t Percy’s fault Joe came to his house that night. It wasn’t his fault that Joe came into his home in his goddamn priests’ collar and threw his arms around him before he ever said a word. It wasn’t his fault Joe had kissed his lips, all along his jawline, down his neck and his chest, let him pull off his belt and… everything else.
The flash of a leather belt wrapped around his wrists flashed into Percy’s mind, and he shivered slightly. Percy had a good mind to turn around and go spend another hour with Joe, but no. He had work to do.
Today was a once-only opportunity that Percy had devoted countless hours to. He’d paid all the right people, made allegiances with all the wrong people, and now, finally, he was going to be one of the first decent humans to lay eyes on the painting since the Nazis hid it away back in 1945. All he had to do was convince a group of criminals to give him the painting for free. Convince a gang of neo-Nazi thugs to part with a priceless artwork for nothing.
It would have been so much easier to just pay them off, but he knew whatever money he gave them would only trickle down through their organisation to help them grow, to spread their parasitic filth to every other sick, depraved, idiotic individual the money allowed them to access. So no, he would not pay. He would use every bit of his hard-earned skill, eloquence and deportment to extract the thing he wanted, cleanly and easily, free of charge.
Failing that, he would use his fists. And his knives. And maybe his grenade. But he must save the painting at all costs, and that would be tricky with a bomb going off.
Percy pushed his key into the door of a ground-floor apartment. He walked into what would have been the living room, had there been any furniture, and taking his dagger from his coat pocket, he pried a floorboard up. He pulled more floorboards loose, then more, and retrieved the heavy bags he’d stored there months earlier.
Money. So much money to make them think this was their pay day. If only he’d thought to hide the grenade here, but it was a decision he’d meandered over until the last moment, whether to possibly blow the place up, so the grenade came in the suitcase.
Percy was due to meet them in a church, and he’d already thought of hiding spots to put the painting to protect it from a blast. Behind the marble altar was one possibility. There was also a thick stone sarcophagus with something rotting inside, and he’d been able to shift the lid enough to slide a painting through the gap the last time he tried. It would be hard to get a hold of the painting long enough to do that though, as they would probably have one of their men guarding it, but that was nothing Percy couldn’t handle by throwing his knife into that man’s neck before pulling the pin, if only he could have him standing behind the altar when he did it.
He replaced the floorboards, took the incredibly heavy bags full of money, locked the door behind him, and continued on his way up the street.
Ah, it would all be so much easier if he could just kill himself and feel good about it. To die to save the painting. How poetic for an art history scholar.
The ability to die and leave no one behind to grieve was what had always made Percy so good at what he did. And that had been a perfectly acceptable risk, up until that time. But now he had Joe. Joe, who would likely be quite upset if Percy turned up dead.
