Page 25 of The San Marco Heist

A woman entered first. Petite with short, wavy black hair and olive skin, moving with the grace of an acrobat. Her shoulders and thighs were thick. She placed both hands on the armrests of her chair and lifted to curl her legs underneath herself. “Hey, Malcolm. My name’s Jayce.”

Next, a man roughly my height, with a long, lean body and sharp hazel eyes. He looked like a swimmer or a runner. Distance skills. He nodded at me. “Declan.”

Brie entered the room with her tablet, and the television flipped on to show Will’s face.

As Scarlett joined us, still nursing her coffee, the door chimed. Everyone checked to see who else was coming in.

The first thing I saw was the platinum-blond hair, then the impeccably tailored light-blue suit. The closer she got, the clearer her age became. From far away, thirty. Then forty, fifty, and possibly even in her sixties. Perfect makeup, perfect posture, and carrying a baker’s box in one hand with a crocodile skin clutch in the other.

Scarlett muttered, “Who called her?”

Brie shrugged but didn’t look at her sister. “Sorry. I thought she should know.”

Scarlett placed her mug on the table and leaned close enough to whisper to Brie, “She shouldn’t have known until we were already in the air and had some semblance of a plan.”

The woman swept into the boardroom and hit a panel by the door, causing the walls to frost over again.

“Evelyn,” said Rav. “It’s two in the morning. We don’t need that.”

“Sorry, habit.” She slid the box onto the table and waved at it. “I stopped by Russo’s for some sweets. Thought we could all use a bit of sugar at this hour.”

Scarlett took Evelyn by the elbows and kissed her cheek. “Mum—”

Thiswas her mother? Blond hair and green eyes to Scarlett’s brown and brown. The Reynolds siblings must have taken after their father.

“Evelyn, Russo’s is not open at this hour.”

“Darling…” She patted Scarlett’s cheek tenderly. “Everyone’s open for me.”

Scarlett shook her head. Either she was warming to me and letting her defenses drop or she was just too tired to keep them up. Or her mother was someone who could get a reaction out of her no matter what. Interesting.

Jayce drew the box toward herself, selected a sugar-dusted croissant, and kept the box as though it were all for her.

Evelyn slipped out of Scarlett’s grip, and her eyes landed on me. Landed on every inch of me. From my hair all the way to my toes. There was the similarity—the assessing gaze. “And who is this stunner?”

I stood and held out a hand to shake. “My name is—”

“Malcolm.” Evelyn’s face cooled, and she looked me up and down again, even more obvious than the first time. “Emmett’s PI friend who left my only son with a trio of kidnappers, I believe?”

If this was the lion’s den, she was the head of the pride. There was an edge to her that reminded me of Rav. This woman had even more secrets than the rest of the room, no matter how innocent or elegant her exterior.

I took my seat. “They weren’t going to let him go.”

Her eyebrow quirked in that same manner Scarlett’s did.

“My coming here was the only way to ensure he lives.”

“Of course.” Nothing about the tone of Evelyn’s words made me believe she meant it. “What do we know?”

Scarlett walked to the far end of the room and stopped next to the television. “Yesterday afternoon, Emmett was kidnapped in New York City. Malcolm was with him at the time. The kidnappers wanted us to return the Codex of San Marco, but given it’s already in transport back to London, I told them we couldn’t get it. I offered them money, but they demanded we do another job instead.”

Will’s face moved to the bottom corner, and a photograph of a ring appeared. Solid gold, with a thick band. Engravings covered it, but everything was soft at the edges, as though it had been buried for hundreds of years.

She pointed to the ring on the screen. “This is the Chalcis Ring. It’s currently in the possession of Hugo and Camilla Albrecht in Oxshott, England. It’s what the kidnappers want.”

Evelyn leaned forward. “Isn’t that the ring I brought up yesterday morning?”

Scarlett nodded. “I didn’t think it was a good job then, and I don’t think it’s a good job now. But with Emmett’s life depending on it, we’ll have to make it work.”

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