Page 73 of Handle with Care
It doesn’t make sense. He definitely doesn’t need the money. He would know he would get caught eventually. I shake my head to clear the thought. Yet there’re no reasonable explanations any which way I look.
Beside me, the phone remains as dark as my mood.
My mind reels from one uncomfortable thought to the next. I can’t imagine that he’d pull something like that, but it’s a little too neat that both the collection is missing and there’s a blank in the spreadsheet tracker like we never received the pieces in the first place. But then, he wouldn’t let me know about the missing items if he stole them. That makes even less sense.
Miserable, I finish my pint. Whatever’s happened, we’re the last ones to see the missing exhibits and the first to blame for their disappearance.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Monday morning, I’m a little bleary-eyed as we all stand in the gallery under the full lights for our daily install stand-up meeting. The old show has been packed up, with the last of the drop-offs scheduled for today and more incoming deliveries timed to the hour. Today, I’m on-site again, and Will is due to make the final drop-offs.
Lily briefs the team on the exhibition, doing a walk through the gallery with us. She finishes up with our rising problem. “And tomorrow, we will start installing the exhibits for the show.”
Across the circle of the team around Lily, I meet Will’s gaze. He looks away. Coy bastard. When Lily lets everyone dive in on the day’s tasks, I catch him before he slips out the back door to the waiting lorry.
“Hey, hang on a second,” I call after him, hurrying along the loading area and trotting down the steps after him. My advantage is I can take steps faster than he does, and now, after everything, I know why.
Will walks slowly over the cobbles. He pauses next to the lorry. The driver’s inside, waiting.
I trot up next to him, brushing my fingers against his wrist as I search his eyes for any sign of the Will I know and have fallen for. Apparently hard. His jaw is tight.
“Hey,” I try again softly.
So close, I can see his Adam’s apple move as he swallows. “Dylan.”
“I’m getting the distinct feeling you’re avoiding me. And I hate to pull thewe need to talktalk here in the middle of everything, but you know.”
His eyes widen as he glances from me to the transport, back to the museum, and finally resting on me again. “Now? Surely this is ill-timed.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know what’s going on exactly, but I miss you like you’ve got my heart in your hands. Because you do. And I need to find a way to reach you, but I don’t know how. All I know is I feel what we have slipping away.”
His head lowers ever so slightly. His voice strains when he speaks. “Please, Dylan. I can’t have this conversation here.”
“Then when?”
“I…” He looks away. “Tomorrow, maybe. After work. It’ll probably be late.”
“Okay,” I concede, letting him go. And I stand there, watching him climb up the side of the lorry into the passenger seat with enviable athleticism, staying till they drive away down the lane.
When I go back in, Lily catches me. “We need to review the exhibits list and plan our strategy for tomorrow and get everything as ready as we can for the first phase of the install tomorrow. Let’s go to the boardroom.”
Dutifully, I accompany Lily. When we settle in with our laptops and the big floor plan on the wall, she gestures at it. The different sections of the floor plan are color coded. She’slabeled them by hand with the different phases for installation. Or maybe our project manager did.
At any rate, my stomach’s dropped to my ankles because Phase One starts with the earliest ’60s and ’70s fashion exhibitions through the ’90s: Mary Quant, Paul Smith, and Vivienne Westwood. Phase Two will be the architectural models for the ’60s and ’70s buildings of note in London, along with industrial design pieces, and Phase Three is the furniture.
“Is something wrong?” Lily asks me. Despite my best efforts, I can’t quite keep the shock from my face about the plan. We’re really screwed. I try to think of how to handle this. I could lie, which won’t bode well. I could tell the truth, which would be worse. Either way, it’s going to involve throwing both Will and me under the bus if I’m not careful.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I assure her. “Not exactly.”
She frowns slightly, because she’s perceptive like that and my response isn’t exactly a smooth endorsement of confidence of the sort that Will could pull out of a hat with his easy charisma when he’s on.
“Not exactly?” she asks.
Fuck. Here we go.
“Maybe you’d like to start with Phase Two instead?” I try gently.
“Why would I want to start with Phase Two? I want to work from the one side around to the other so we can install the exhibits with minimal movement around them to mitigate risks. We have to start with Phase One.”
