Page 1 of Wicked Games
Hôtel Regina Louvre, Paris 2013…
“LUCKY, DO YOU HAVE YOURhead in the game or is it still up the American conservator’s ass?” I hated the nickname but wouldn’t give Banks the satisfaction of seeing my irritation. He’d already taken too many things from me. “You were instructed to make a connection with someone employed at the museum so we could gain access to their security systems.”
“And I did,” I abruptly said before he could say anything more. “You act as if I didn’t hand you a flash drive with every access code you needed for the recovery.”
“You fell in love with your mark.”
I inwardly cringed at the term Banks used but was careful not to let my emotions show. Target. Sucker. I couldn’t think of Ryder Jameson in those terms. He was blond, beautiful, and brilliant. When he looked at me, his guileless blue eyes darkened with lust, passion, and love. I thought myself incapable of love again, but Ryder proved me wrong. There was just no way forward for us. I had a job to do which required me to set aside my personal feelings, and if I failed to do so… No. I couldn’t let myself get distracted by memories and demons that were better left buried.
Charles Banks, the owner of Old World Antiquities, had me by the balls, and the wicked grin on his face told me he knew it. There was a time when I didn’t mind scaling the sides of buildings and evading security systems to recover artifacts and paintings. The adrenaline helped keep the darkness at bay, and it wasn’t long before I craved it like a drug. I eagerly answered Banks’s calls because there was no mission too dangerous, no challenge I couldn’t complete. All that changed when I introduced myself to Ryder. Unfortunately for me, my circumstances were no different from when I met him four weeks prior. I had no choice but to continue my mission and get out of town before it was too late.
“I fucked my mark, Banks. It’s nothing new for me. Any means necessary is our motto, is it not?”
“Do you take me for a fool, Lucky? Do you think I’ve suddenly gone blind?”
I didn’t bother hiding the way his words made me bristle, but I needed to take control of the narrative. “Are you implying I’ve failed to meet the objectives?” I held up a finger. “I found my mark.” I held up a second finger. “I obtained all the security details and layout of the museum, including the underground rooms like the labs used for restoring artifacts and the vaults they’re kept in during the process.” I held up a third finger, but Banks cut me off with a wave of his hand before I could say more. Then he pulled a manila envelope from his briefcase and dropped it on the coffee table in front of me. I recognized what it was immediately.
“Your flight leaves in four hours. You need to pack and leave immediately.”
“But the job isn’t finished, Banks.” I’d never left before a mission was complete. What fuckery was this?
“I’m doing this for your own good, Lucky. Fitz will take over and see the mission through. You’re needed elsewhere.” He didn’t say someplace far away from Ryder Jameson, but he didn’t need to, because his expression said it all. “Do not try me, Lucien. I never bluff, and you know it.” I did. Without another word, Banks rose from the club chair he’d wedged himself into and left.
The manila envelope on the coffee table might as well have been a ticking bomb. I could pick it up and move onto the next job, or I could stay in Paris with the handsome American man I’d fallen in love with. No, there was no choice for me. I rose from the cream settee and packed my essentials, which consisted of a few changes of clothes, some toiletries, and my laptop. Banks’s clean-up crew would dispose of everything else when they erased my presence, well, my Sebastian Deveraux alias, from the luxury suite after I departed.
I went to the balcony one last time. Instead of seeing the Eifel Tower in the distance, I saw the look on Ryder’s face when he made love to me the previous night. He’d been so reserved when we first met, but each time we’d been together, Ryder grew bolder in his touches and the places he wanted to make love. Ryder hadn’t cared if any of the other guests saw him straddling my hips and riding my cock; he only cared about the way I made him feel. It was the most beautiful gift anyone had ever given me, and I had to walk away from it. Fuck! I wanted to scream the word at the top of my lungs and let it echo off the exterior walls of the majestic hotel but settled for an internal yell that bounced around in my brain instead.
No regrets. It had been my motto since I started working for Banks, and it had never failed me until now. I was consumed with regret until it made me physically ill. I wavered about what to do next until my cell phone buzzed with an incoming text from Banks. He’d sent a photo taken ten years prior of two young members of the British SAS locked in an intimate embrace not unlike the encounter I’d shared with Ryder the previous evening. No words accompanied the photo from Banks, but none were required. I would do as commanded, or Banks would release the photos to the press without regard for the lives it would destroy.
I let out the anguished growl of an injured animal then turned on my heel and went back inside my suite. I kept walking, pausing long enough to grab the manila envelope off the coffee table and slip it inside my laptop bag. I decided not to pack any clothes because delaying one more minute could alter the life of someone I vowed to protect. Rather than leave the keycard inside the room like usual, I decided at the last minute to keep it as a reminder of the nights shared with a man I would never forget.
NERVOUS DIDN’T BEGIN TO DESCRIBEhow I felt on the night of my first gala for the Cincinnati Art Museum. I knew better than most that I owed my job to my mother’s social standing and her position as a trustee on the board as well as my father’s generous annual donations to the arts. The director of the board, Daniel Perez, had no problem letting me know how much he disliked me and that he wouldn’t hesitate to can my ass at the slightest mishap.
“Trouble seems to follow you everywhere you go,” he’d said upon our first introduction. “Or should I say priceless artifacts tend to disappear whenever you arrive.”
I could’ve pointed out it had only happened twice, but contrary to what the movies would have you believe, heists from museums were rare. Thefts of priceless artifacts were more likely to occur at the homes of private collectors where the security systems were easier to manipulate and override. Instead of arguing with the dickhead director of the board, I smiled and thanked him profusely for the opportunity. I stopped short of guaranteeing he wouldn’t regret it because he very well might.
I didn’t attract trouble; I attracted the attention of one troublesome man: Sebastian Deveraux. I’d met the British man in Paris not long after I arrived six years ago, and we had the kind of whirlwind affair you only read about in books or see in movies. Sebastian took me for long drives in the French countryside where we feasted on succulent food he’d packed in a large wicker basket, drank red wine, and made love in fields of lavender. There were weekend trips to Corsica and Nice where we held hands while walking the beaches. I couldn’t eat brie, drink cabernet sauvignon, smell lavender, or feel a salty, ocean breeze against my skin without thinking of him and the way he made me feel.
One day, Sebastian was there, and the next, he was gone, and so wasThe Card Playerspainted by Paul Cézanne and valued at over two hundred and fifty million dollars. It had been loaned to the Louvre by the family who had purchased it at a private auction some years before. The museum was shocked the painting was stolen without triggering any of their alarms, and I was stunned when a picture of the suspect was presented to the staff the day after the heist. A few murmured he looked familiar, but they couldn’t remember where they’d seen him.
“You’ve seen him when he’s come to pick Ryder up for lunch. The guy is his boyfriend,” Paul Benoit, my lab partner, had blurted out.
Even though the museum couldn’t prove for certain Sebastian was the thief, or I was somehow involved, they fired me. After the loss of the man I’d fallen so hard for and my dream job, I went into a downward spiral. I could only get jobs at small museums in Europe that barely paid the bills until a curator in Cairo sought me out because he’d seen examples of my restoration work. Abanoub Shammas either hadn’t made the connection to my tenure at the Louvre or was willing to take a risk, because he stuck his neck out for me with the board of directors at the Gayer-Anderson Museum. It was my chance for a second start, and I felt alive for the first time since Sebastian had left. Then history repeated itself. How stupid can one man be? As it turns out, pretty fucking stupid.
“Ryder, fix your face,” Celeste Jameson hissed beside me. “You look like you sucked on a fish.”
“How exactly does one look after they suck on a fish, Mother?”
“Your mouth is all puckered funny, and you have deep grooves marring your forehead. You’re going to need Botox injections before you reach thirty-five.”
“Mother, I’m already thirty-five.” I gave her a pointed look. “I believe the correct expression is that I look like I’ve eaten something sour or sucked on a lemon. I’m not sure anyone created a saying about sucking on a fish. Is it a live fish or a dead one?”
“Ryder, you’re insufferable,” she said with a pained sigh. Was that it? No apology for forgetting my age? I snickered internally. Celeste Jameson didn’t apologize; it was beneath her. Or at least the woman she was now, the mother I’d grown up with never would’ve forgotten a birthday. “Thirty-five?” she asked. I nodded. “What did we buy you for your birthday?” She didn’t know because she obviously let her personal assistant handle all the details.
“A week in Fiji.”
“I was generous this year. Did you have fun?”