Page 86 of The Picasso Heist

I’VE MADE HIM an offer he can’t refuse.

I’m so convinced, I don’t wait for him to agree or say another word. Click. I’m gone.

So is Nikolov. Twenty minutes later, he and Blaggy are arriving at his house in Millburn, New Jersey, rolling up in a black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows. I know this because I’m there in my Jeep, waiting at the gate.

Before Blaggy even begins walking toward me, I step out, cell phone in hand, and spread my arms. He’s patting me more for a wire than a weapon. Blaggy turns to his boss with a nod, signaling I’m clean.

“So what do you have to tell me that’s so important?” asks Nikolov.

“In your driveway? Nothing,” I say. “Let’s go inside.”

“We’re fine right here,” he says.

No, we’re not. “Is the painting inside?”

He doesn’t have to ask which one. “Why?”

“It’s not a trick question,” I say. “It’s a beautiful painting, a Picasso in his prime, and I miss looking at it. That’s why. I was an art history major, after all. So is it inside?”

“Of course it is,” he says. “You can’t freeport a painting that everyone thinks was destroyed. We all know it doesn’t exist, right?”

That’s right, Anton. That’s why I knew it would be here.

“I’m thinking you keep it in one of two places,” I say. “It’s in your office or in some mystery safe room like you see in the movies.”

Nikolov nods at his guys with AR-15s. “My whole house is a safe room.”

With that, he puffs his chest out, turns, and walks inside. Blaggy points a thick finger at Nikolov, and I fall in line.

I can tell Blaggy’s even more pissed at me than his boss is because this is now twice I’m walking into this house on my own terms. The first time I’d orchestrated my own kidnapping and tricked Blaggy into introducing me to Nikolov.

This time I managed to tail Nikolov without Blaggy knowing.

This guy’s got one job: to watch his boss’s back, guard his six.

And he still didn’t see me coming. He knows it.

I follow Nikolov through his foyer. The shine on the white marble floor is near blinding. “I never thought I’d be back here,” I say.

“That makes two of us,” says Nikolov.

“If I’m not mistaken, the last time we were together with Bergamo, it was in your apartment in the city and you had a gun to my head.”

“Yeah, right after you kicked Bergamo in the balls.”

“He deserved it,” I say.

“And you deserved the gun to your head.”

“We’ll agree to disagree on that, but we both don’t like the guy. Am I wrong?”

Nikolov stops in his tracks halfway through his living room and angrily turns to me. “For your sake, there better be more to this conversation than you and I just thinking the guy’s a prick,” he says.

“There is.”

“So let’s have it.”

“I want to see the painting first.”

“Damn, you’re annoying.” He starts walking again, muttering over his shoulder, “If you weren’t a girl…”

It’s not in his office or in a safe. The Picasso hangs over a fireplace in a mahogany-paneled room complete with a bar, a poker table, and an entire wall of game-hunting receipts, among them the heads of the African big five: a lion, a leopard, a buffalo, an elephant, and a rhinoceros.

But I barely look at them. I only have eyes for Pablo.

“There you go,” says Nikolov. “Have a good, long look. Soak it in, there, art history major.”

Which is exactly what I do. “It’s quite something.” I fall into a deep silence as I stare at his beloved Picasso, knowing I’m driving him nuts.

Finally he can’t help himself. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he says. “Are you ready to talk now or what?”

“Almost. Just a little bit longer.” I’m humming a tune to myself. Something light, upbeat. It’s killing him. I can feel his glare on my back and Blaggy’s glare as well. Blaggy, standing in the doorway, is surely thinking of all the fun and creative ways he could torture me.

Eventually I turn around and stare at Nikolov with just a hint of a smile. “You know, if I weren’t a girl, I wouldn’t be wearing heels,” I say.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks.

It means this.

Faster than a gunslinger, I reach down for one of my new Jimmy Choos I bought with my winnings from courtsiding his gambling site.

The shoe’s off my foot and in my hand in the blink of an eye, and before Nikolov can finish screaming “Nooooo!” I lodge the stiletto heel right smack in the middle of the painting, leaving a gaping hole in the canvas.

“Now let’s talk,” I say.