the street. He picked the padlock, slid open the grate, and slipped inside the museum. The break-in took less than two minutes.
“
Merde alors! Nom d’un chien!
You were right,” said Commissaire Killian Bernard of the OCBC, the Office Central de Lutte Contre le Trafic des Biens Culturels, the elite art robbery unit of the French judicial police. He was sitting at a window table beside Kate O’Hare. They were inside the dark Café des Beaux Arts on Rue Dupanloup, across the square from the museum. They both watched the break-in unfold with night-vision binoculars.
The French detective, a big, wide-bodied man of Scottish and French descent, had been skeptical when Kate showed up in his office in Paris two days earlier and insisted that Nicolas Fox would strike the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orléans within forty-eight hours. Her explanation had been vague, verging on totally evasive. But given the daring thefts Fox had committed in Europe over the past week, and Kate’s expertise where this thief was concerned, Bernard couldn’t risk ignoring herwarning. So he mobilized his team and went to Orléans, a one-hour drive from Paris, and staked out the museum.
Kate was dizzy with relief when the thief appeared on the scene. She’d been tortured with uncertainty ever since she’d arrived in Orléans. There were tons of cities beginning with the letter
O
or
K.
This was the only one she was certain Nick had struck before. He’d broken into this same museum six years ago. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t committed some con or theft in one of the other possible cities, such as Osaka, Oslo, or Oxford. Not to mention Kansas City, Kathmandu, and Kawasaki.
“How would you like to proceed, Agent O’Hare?” Bernard asked. When he spoke in English, he sounded like Inspector Clouseau trying to imitate Sean Connery. “Shall we move in now, or shall we wait?”
“Let’s grab him as he’s climbing out the window. It’s when he’ll be the most vulnerable.”
As if on cue, the thief carefully reached out the window and set the cardboard tubes on the sidewalk. The entire theft, from break-in to escape, had taken less than five minutes.
Bernard picked up his radio and gave the command to move.
“On y va! On y va!”
The thief swung his legs out the window, but before his feet touched the ground, uniformed police officers swarmed around him.
Kate and Bernard emerged from the café and walked across the square as the thief was handcuffed and patted down forweapons. He was smaller than Kate had expected, and at close range the mask was obvious and the effect was chilling. An officer pulled back the hood and removed the mask, and everyone gasped. The thief was a woman.
“Incroyable,”
Bernard said.
The police headquarters, the Hôtel de Police, was a decaying four-story block of concrete that was built quickly and cheaply in the hurried post–World War II reconstruction of Orléans. It had been eroding from neglect ever since.
The interrogation room was like the hundreds of others Kate had been in, right down to the unevenly balanced chair used to keep the suspect on edge. Kate sat across the table from the thief, whose fingerprints had identified her as Serena Blake. She was in her mid-thirties but could have passed for ten years younger. Her brown hair, colored to match Nick’s, was styled in a pixie cut that brought out the sharp features of her face, her slender nose and prominent cheekbones. She wore a black tank top that hugged her body like a too-tight leotard. She had the strong, slender physique of a gymnast, which made sense,given what Kate now knew about her. Police records showed that Serena Blake was a British citizen who’d spent two years in prison for burglary in her early twenties and, although she hadn’t been arrested since then, was known to be an expert cat burglar. And because Kate had collected extensive information on Nick while she was chasing him, she knew he’d worked with Serena.
“We
“
Merde alors! Nom d’un chien!
You were right,” said Commissaire Killian Bernard of the OCBC, the Office Central de Lutte Contre le Trafic des Biens Culturels, the elite art robbery unit of the French judicial police. He was sitting at a window table beside Kate O’Hare. They were inside the dark Café des Beaux Arts on Rue Dupanloup, across the square from the museum. They both watched the break-in unfold with night-vision binoculars.
The French detective, a big, wide-bodied man of Scottish and French descent, had been skeptical when Kate showed up in his office in Paris two days earlier and insisted that Nicolas Fox would strike the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orléans within forty-eight hours. Her explanation had been vague, verging on totally evasive. But given the daring thefts Fox had committed in Europe over the past week, and Kate’s expertise where this thief was concerned, Bernard couldn’t risk ignoring herwarning. So he mobilized his team and went to Orléans, a one-hour drive from Paris, and staked out the museum.
Kate was dizzy with relief when the thief appeared on the scene. She’d been tortured with uncertainty ever since she’d arrived in Orléans. There were tons of cities beginning with the letter
O
or
K.
This was the only one she was certain Nick had struck before. He’d broken into this same museum six years ago. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t committed some con or theft in one of the other possible cities, such as Osaka, Oslo, or Oxford. Not to mention Kansas City, Kathmandu, and Kawasaki.
“How would you like to proceed, Agent O’Hare?” Bernard asked. When he spoke in English, he sounded like Inspector Clouseau trying to imitate Sean Connery. “Shall we move in now, or shall we wait?”
“Let’s grab him as he’s climbing out the window. It’s when he’ll be the most vulnerable.”
As if on cue, the thief carefully reached out the window and set the cardboard tubes on the sidewalk. The entire theft, from break-in to escape, had taken less than five minutes.
Bernard picked up his radio and gave the command to move.
“On y va! On y va!”
The thief swung his legs out the window, but before his feet touched the ground, uniformed police officers swarmed around him.
Kate and Bernard emerged from the café and walked across the square as the thief was handcuffed and patted down forweapons. He was smaller than Kate had expected, and at close range the mask was obvious and the effect was chilling. An officer pulled back the hood and removed the mask, and everyone gasped. The thief was a woman.
“Incroyable,”
Bernard said.
The police headquarters, the Hôtel de Police, was a decaying four-story block of concrete that was built quickly and cheaply in the hurried post–World War II reconstruction of Orléans. It had been eroding from neglect ever since.
The interrogation room was like the hundreds of others Kate had been in, right down to the unevenly balanced chair used to keep the suspect on edge. Kate sat across the table from the thief, whose fingerprints had identified her as Serena Blake. She was in her mid-thirties but could have passed for ten years younger. Her brown hair, colored to match Nick’s, was styled in a pixie cut that brought out the sharp features of her face, her slender nose and prominent cheekbones. She wore a black tank top that hugged her body like a too-tight leotard. She had the strong, slender physique of a gymnast, which made sense,given what Kate now knew about her. Police records showed that Serena Blake was a British citizen who’d spent two years in prison for burglary in her early twenties and, although she hadn’t been arrested since then, was known to be an expert cat burglar. And because Kate had collected extensive information on Nick while she was chasing him, she knew he’d worked with Serena.
“We
Similar Books
