Page 109 of The Picasso Heist

Routine can be the secret of life… or the kiss of death.

I leave my apartment at twenty minutes before ten for my regular Sunday-morning barre class at Radiant1 Fitness, after which I’ll stop at Juice It Up for my usual mango, banana, and pineapple smoothie. I barely make it down the block before the two guys approach me.

“Don’t run,” says the first.

“Don’t scream,” says the second.

To make sure I do neither, they both flash their gun-tucked-into-the-belt ensembles before pointing at the black Escalade idling at the curb.

Still, it’s not as if I’d let myself get abducted off the streets of Manhattan without asking a few questions.

“What the hell’s going on?” I say. Yeah, that seems pretty spot-on.

Of course I don’t get a straight answer. “Somebody wants to talk to you,” says the first guy.

“Who?” I ask.

“Just get in the damn car,” says the second guy. “Or we can help you get in, if you’d like.”

And that’s that. The story of how I’m going for a ride.

Just like Anton Nikolov told me it would happen. His guys, his plan.

I don’t say much in the car. Neither does anyone else. The driver has two earrings in each ear and knuckle tattoos that spell outhellon the left hand andfuryon the right. I’m not sure which one delivers the harder punch, hell or fury, but considering the driver’s hulking frame and how the top of his head is scraping the roof of the Escalade, it’s a safe bet that those who have tried to find out over the years immediately regretted it.

He misses the turnoff for the Manhattan Bridge.

I clear my throat. No one notices. I clear my throat again, louder. They all notice but no one says anything. We’re heading farther south, toward the financial district instead of over to New Jersey. Shit. Never have I been so upset about not going to Newark.

I need to say something, except I can’t.

But I have to.

Which leaves me no choice. Everyone in the car is supposed to know I’m wearing a wire. What the hell.

I start yelling, “What are you doing? Stop! Get your hands off me!”

No one has their hands on me. No one’s doing a thing beyond staring at the crazy girl in the middle seat reaching up under her own sweatshirt. I rip the tape from my skin, detaching the wire. Here goes nothing.

“What the hell, guys? What are we doing?”

The driver tightens his grip on the wheel, flexing hishellandfury,before saying in a Bulgarian accent, “Change of plans.”

CHAPTER92

“GO FASTER, YOU’RElosing them!” barked Elise Joyce from the back seat.

She was not supposed to be riding with him in the first place, so the last thing she was going to do was sit in the front seat and risk being seen.

“I’m not losing them,” said Skip calmly. “And this is the right distance.”

“Yeah, until we lose them,” said Joyce.

Skip gave her a glare in the rearview mirror. “For the record, I’ve done this before.”

“And I haven’t. That’s the whole point. We can’t screw this up.”

“Which is exactly what happens if we get too close,” he said.