Page 5 of Denied Access
The brief change in her countenance suggested that Greta was not buying what he was selling. A slight narrowing of her eyes, a pursed lower lip, and a single worry line that marred her otherwise smooth forehead. Someone who had not spent hours memorizing her every feature might not have noticed the minuscule differences in her expression.
Rapp noticed.
Reaching across the table, he squeezed Greta’s hand. Her soft fingers sent a jolt of electricity crackling up his arm. She smiled. It was tentative, but a smile nonetheless.
She knew the effect she had on him.
She also knew what he did for a living.
Rapp slid his gaze across his surroundings as he stood.
He and Greta were seated among a cluster of tables that served as the outdoor eating area for a café located on the southwestern corner of the Plaça dels Àngels. The open-air plaza was anchored to the northwest by the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art and a municipal building to the southeast. To Rapp’s eye, the museum’s edgy lines and endless panes of glass seemed at odds with the municipal building’s stodgy faded stone façade, but the throngs of pedestrians who transited the plaza didn’t seem to mind. Mothers pushing baby strollers jostled with young professionals on their way to or from lunch, while tourists clustered in twos and threes armed with cameras and maps.
The shops and restaurants lining the courtyard made Plaça dels Àngels a natural gathering point for Catalans and tourists alike, but another, more distinct clique also made use of the slate walking area. A coterie of skateboarders incorporated the museum steps and tiered concrete entrance into their aerial performance. While predominately male, a handful of women also numbered among the dozen or so skaters.
A redhead wearing a tank top and loose cargo pants broke from the pack, riding her board straight at the concrete ledge adjacent to Rapp’s table. The velocity she generated in the run-up to the trick was impressive. Her twin braids streamed behind her, reminding him of a crimson battle ensign snapping in the wind. He guessed her to be about his age, but with her face scrunched up in concentration, she looked much younger. The ledge was only a few board lengths away, but the woman was determined to go faster still. Risking her balance, she shifted her trail leg off the board for a final, monstrous push. Then she stomped the tail of her board and went airborne.
The ollie was expertly done.
The redhead’s board cleared the ledge with room to spare. The same could not be said of her rear foot. The edge of her toe clipped the concrete lip, sending skateboard in one direction and woman another.
Over the course of the four years he’d spent on the Syracuse University lacrosse field, Rapp had developed the ability to mentally slow down a developing play and determine its probable outcome in real time. Imagining the skateboarder as an attacker hurtling down the field with the ball in her crosse’s pocket and a clear shot at goal made the rest easy. In the blink of an eye, Rapp analyzed the woman’s flight path and computed a likely point of interception. Sliding left, he interposed himself between the redhead and the unforgiving pedestrian walkway. A millisecond later, she slammed into his chest. Rather than attempting to arrest her momentum, Rapp went with the flow, cradling her unhelmeted head as they both tumbled to the ground.
The jarring collision between the unforgiving stone and his arms and shoulders foreshadowed bruises to come, but he was able to take the majority of the impact across his thick back muscles. Maybe not as clean as the countless falls he’d practiced in the jiujitsu dojo, but it got the job done. For a moment he was flat on his back and nose to nose with the startled woman.
He wondered what she saw in his coal-black eyes.
A startled tourist?
A Good Samaritan?
Or maybe something else.
Rapp unlocked his arms, and the skateboarder shot to her feet. He couldn’t understand the torrent of Spanish pouring from her lips, but judging by her embarrassed smile and flushed features, he could guess.
“C’est bon,” Rapp said. “C’est bon.”
The woman loosed a final bit of Spanish before grabbing him in a surprisingly strong hug. Then she picked up her board and headedback to the circle of skaters. Rapp watched her go before turning to Greta.
He smiled.
She did not.
Chuckling, Rapp summited the steps and entered the museum.
CHAPTER 2
THEBarcelona Museum of Contemporary Art had a rather uninspiring lobby.
Rapp already knew this because he’d spent an agonizing four hours traipsing through the museum the day before as Greta regaled him with details about each exhibit. This was not to imply that he was uncultured. In addition to English and French, Rapp spoke Arabic and Italian fluently and could get by in Persian. He’d forgotten more about the inner workings of the Fertile Crescent than most academics knew, and he’d graduated from Syracuse with a degree in international business and a minor in French. He did not think much of modern art, but he was smart enough not to voice this opinion to his girlfriend.
In a nod to its contemporary sensibilities, the museum eschewed the traditional soft lines, vaulted ceilings, or murals that made Barcelona a destination for architecture aficionados. Instead the lobby consisted of sharp edges, boxy walls, and uninspiring displays. Rapp would not have termed anything that graced the ample wall spaceart. Indeed, the most inspiring vista did not come from within the museum’s Soviet-style decorum at all. That honor belonged to the floor-to-ceilingtinted windows that offered an unobstructed view of the skateboarders’ courtyard antics.
Rapp approached the ticket counter and tried to catch the eye of the disinterested twentysomething manning the register. He did not succeed. When it became apparent that the young man was content to indefinitely ignore Rapp in favor of his paperback novel, he spoke.
“One ticket, please,” Rapp said in French-accented English.
With a long-suffering sigh, the man slapped the book onto the counter and looked up at Rapp. “No hablo inglés.”
