Page 90 of The Picasso Heist

SKIP RARELY PLAYS the combat card or any card related to his role with Special Forces. So if he’s telling you a story about a certain mission he was part of, rest assured there’s an ulterior motive lurking.

“I’m only here because my brother told me you wanted to apologize,” I say, sitting across from Elise Joyce in her Brooklyn office. Her window overlooks the Korean War Veterans Plaza where Fulton and Tillary Streets meet.

Joyce, sitting behind her desk, laughs loudly, mocking me. “And you believed him?”

I look over at Skip and his lying eyes and then spring up from my chair to do exactly what I did the last time the three of us were together—storm out.

Only this time I don’t even make it to the door. I barely make it out of my seat. As soon as I stand up, Skip puts his big-brother hand on my shoulder and pushes me back down.

“There was this one time in Fallujah,” he says, his hand still on my shoulder, “our Persian interpreter, who spoke both Dari and Pashto, came down with the chicken pox, of all things. There was no other interpreter embedded with us in our unit, but it’s not like we could just call a time-out in the war.

We had a sweep planned—when we literally go door to door in the neighborhood searching for weapons—and while a few of us knew a couple of words and phrases, no one was even close to fluent in either dialect.

So we had to scramble, and what we did was find a Sunni carpenter who spoke Pashto but wasn’t a Taliban sympathizer, and we paired him with a Hazara farmer who was fluent in Hazaragi, which is very close to Dari.

Now, normally these two guys would hate each other’s guts, but as it turns out, their fathers had fought together against the Soviets.

In other words, having a common enemy had allowed their fathers to put aside their differences, and these men did the same—at least long enough for us to complete our sweep without anyone getting their freakin’ head blown off.

Do you two understand what I’m getting at? ”

“That depends,” I say. “Am I supposed to be the Sunni carpenter or the Hazara farmer?”

Skip’s answer is a quick, hard pinch of my clavicle, which is what he used to do to me when I was a kid and he wanted me to shut up. The death grip, I called it. It still works.

“Can we talk about the common enemy now?” asks Joyce. “And this plan of yours?”

“You mean ours,” says Skip. “It’s our plan now.”

“That depends,” says Joyce.

“On what?” he asks.

“Whether or not it works,” she says. “Because it’s my ass on the line if it doesn’t.”

It’s my turn to laugh in her face. “Your ass? Your ass? If this plan doesn’t work, I’m as good as dead,” I say. “Literally.”

“So let’s make sure that doesn’t happen,” says Skip.

Joyce picks up the printout sitting on her desk and holds it like it’s a live grenade. “I’ve changed my mind. I need to know how you’re able to intercept Nikolov’s calls,” she says.

“No, your first instinct was right,” says Skip. “The less you know—”

“Yeah, I get it. Plausible deniability.” She stares at the transcript. “But still.”

“I showed you how we could track Nikolov’s movements by his phone,” says Skip. “Let’s just say, once that trapdoor is open, the possibilities are near endless.”

“In other words,” says Joyce, “it’s military software and you’re not about to give me details.”

Skip grins. “Something like that.”

“Speaking of military,” she says.

“There’ll be a team of two staked out at the warehouse in Jersey,” says Skip. “They’re both former SEALs, private contractors now.”

“Will they be enough?” asks Joyce. “Only two?”

“You’re footing the bill, you tell me,” he says.

“You won’t know what you’re walking into. What if Nikolov has a dozen of his guys in that warehouse?”

Skip points at me. “To kill one skinny little girl?”

“That’s real funny,” I say.

“Seriously, though,” says Joyce. “You could easily be outnumbered.”

“Outnumbered, maybe, but not outmanned,” says Skip. “My guys and I will be just fine.”

“It’s not you she’s worried about,” I say. “In fact, you never worry about anyone other than yourself, do you?”

“You’ll have to forgive my sister—”

“No, she’s right,” says Joyce without even a hint of shame. “This is just a transaction. A deal. You’re getting me what I want, and in return you get what you want. Your father.”

“No, that was our last deal,” I say. “What you’re doing now is extortion.”

“Call it whatever you want,” she says. “Ask me if I give a shit.”

I’m shooting daggers. “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

“And you’re just pissed off because you’re not the smartest chick in the room,” says Joyce.

I’ve got a thousand comebacks but I leave them all unsaid. After all, I know what she knows—or at least what she thinks. Releasing my father from prison is entirely her call.

So I sit there and take it.

Of course I do.