Chapter 13
Pomander Walk was on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a tiny alley between Ninety-Fourth and Ninety-Fifth Streets. If you weren’t looking for it, you could walk right past it. It resembled a little London side street, Tudor-style homes painted in bright colors, surrounded by actual gas lamps and locked security gates. I could see why Dominic had chosen to meet with his mistresses here. Angelo hadn’t said whether or not he was British, but you wouldn’t have to be an Englishman to appreciate reinforced security on a hidden alley if you were hiding something else, something much bigger than a mistress.
The street was a little busy, nothing too unusual for a Friday night in Manhattan. It didn’t matter, though, I knew I could get that lock picked open without anyone noticing. That’s the beauty of working in New York: no one will acknowledge anything you do. If I had tried to open that lock with a blowtorch while wearing a Big Bird costume, people would have kept walking by. (Not that I would ever do that. All those feathers near an open flame? I’d be flambéed in ten seconds and definitely earn top ranking in the Worst Spy Ever contest.)
I pulled a pin out of my pocket and gently started to scrub at the gears on the inside of the lock. Whatever the residents at Pomander Walk were paying for security would have been better spent hiring some Dobermans because the lock cracked open in less than ten seconds and I slipped through the gate, looking like just another normal girl on her way home.
Oh, how looks can deceive.
I knew Dominic’s house would be empty, but I glanced in the window as I crept past, looking for any light or sign of life. It was dark, though, the only glow coming from the gas lamp, and I could hear evening sounds coming from other town houses on the narrow street. Dinner dishes clanking, a baby screeching, a horn in the distance. If that baby got louder, it would be great, but I knew better than to rely on an infant for distraction. A crying baby had once kept my dad from being captured in Milan a few years ago, though. He still talks about it and my mom and I are like “WE GET IT ALREADY.”
I suspected Dominic’s house wouldn’t be easy to break into, and I was right: the lock was way more than just a standard deadbolt. It had two deadbolts and a paltry lock that resembled the one on the front gate. Then once I got through the door, I still had to crack the security system in sixty seconds before the alarm went off. Apparently Dominic was allergic to dogs so I didn’t have to worry about Fido tearing my leg to shreds, but I knew these locks would keep me busy for at least five minutes. I was lucky that there wasn’t a fingerprint scanner like we had at home. Pomander Walk, after all, was supposed to be a quaint residential area, and a fingerprint scanner on the front door would basically be like putting a sign on the house that read: HELLO, THERE ARE VERY SUSPICIOUS THINGS GOING ON BEHIND THESE DOORS! I’m pretty sure the Neighborhood Watch would frown on that.
The first two deadbolts clicked fairly quickly, and I burned through the flimsy lock in mere seconds, but the weight in my bag made me lose my balance for a second and I jiggled the doorknob as I grasped at it in an effort to remain upright. “Crap,” I whispered, staying perfectly still for a few seconds just to make sure that I hadn’t accidentally started the sixty-second countdown to the alarm going off. I knew I had only one minute and I needed every one of those sixty seconds. My personal best was seven seconds … and my personal worst was sixty-one seconds.
I said a quick prayer that I would have a personal best sort of night, then carefully turned the knob and opened the door.
My muscles tensed as I waited for the alarm to start its warning beeps. My heart was racing like a rabbit’s, my pulse so loud in my ears, but my hands weren’t shaking. They never shake when I’m nervous. It’s one of the reasons I’m so good at my job.
I waited a few seconds for the alarm to start beeping, then a few more, but it never did. My heart sped up to a barely manageable pace and I knew something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. That alarm should have started ticking down. There was no way Dominic would have left the house without setting it, right? He’s a professional, a former Collective agent. He wouldn’t just leave without setting it because—
Oh my God. He hadn’t set it because he hadn’t left.
Dominic Arment was still in the house.
Chapter 14
My brain clicked into survival mode with a surprising amount of speed, considering how long I had been out of work.
Okay. Check to see if anything was weird, different, a little too obvious. Now that my eyes were adjusting to the dimness, I could see a glimmer of light coming from the kitchen and another one from upstairs. If someone wants to trap you, they’ll often set up the room so they can grab you fast, take you by surprise before you realize you’re even in their trap. There were no trip wires, no laser points zipping across my face, no steel doors falling shut behind me and jailing me inside. Considering I was still standing in the foyer and no one had grabbed or attacked me yet, I was pretty sure that I was the one who had taken Dominic by surprise and not the other way around.
There was a constant shushing sound coming from upstairs, like a waterfall. I stood still and tried to figure out what it was, if Dominic Arment had cleverly decided to lure me into his house and flood it until I drowned somewhere under the coffee table, when it abruptly shut off.
“Oh, shut up,” I whispered to myself. All this careful planning and timing and I had let myself into Dominic’s house while he was in the shower?
Well. This wasn’t how the job was supposed to go, but I would have to deal.
I wasn’t sure how much time I had before Dominic came downstairs, so I moved through the foyer and into the living room. My hair was in a braid that I had tucked down the back of my black shirt. Wearing it under a hat would not only be terribly conspicuous but also terribly stifling, so I had to make do. I had black Frye boots on my feet, mostly because I hadn’t thought Dominic would be home and wouldn’t have to worry about making noise, and I also didn’t want to spend any time lacing up my other boots. I was wearing the same pair of jeans that I had worn for the past three days (again, lazy) and my shirt was a plain gray V-neck. It was a practical getup for prying around in strangers’ houses, but it wouldn’t work for dinner with Jesse and his mom, so I had stashed a pair of wedge sandals, a cardigan, and a lip gloss I had “borrowed” from my mom (she would say “stolen”) in my backpack and figured I would just change in the cab.
Life as a twenty-first-century female spy. It’s not easy.
I could hear Dominic humming upstairs, something vaguely operatic and Italian, and I moved through the living room, keeping each step as light as possible. Why, oh why, had I worn Frye boots? If I got out of this situation—when I got out of this situation—I was definitely going to buy a pair of Repetto ballet flats. Roux could help me, I rationalized. She was good at shopping and price compar—
I came to a halt in the living room. “Oh,” I whispered. “Oh.”
One whole wall of Dominic’s living room was covered in shelves, lined with collectibles of all kinds. First editions of books, Depression-era glassware, tiny blue-and-white chinoiserie-style figurines, and what looked like a row of Fabergé eggs. Each shelf held new trinkets, and I realized with grim horror that the coins could be anywhere. It would take hours to go through each book, check behind each shelf for a wall safe, look under each figurine for a secret key or clue.
And I hadn’t even gone upstairs yet.
It was hard to tell if any of the walls held actual treasures or if they were all knockoffs, but I didn’t have time to start checking because I could hear Dominic’s humming moving across the floor and toward the stairs.
More specifically, it was moving toward me.
I threw a quick glance around the room, looking over at the dining area and kitchen, trying to find the best hiding spot. I couldn’t run out the front door now, and besides, if Dominic left in five minutes, then I’d be stuck outside with no security code and back at square one. Being trapped in a house with a potenti
al madman and a definite criminal was not on my List of Things to Do, but it was better than nothing.
There was a small space between the ceiling and the wall holding the television. I guess he could have used it for potted plants or other decorative dustcatch-y things, but it was empty. Again, not perfect, but it would have to do.
Dominic started descending the stairs as I silently vaulted off an armchair and grabbed onto the edge of the crawl space, hoisting myself up by my fingers. Roux, I realized as my muscles burned, had been smart about taking up tae kwon do. She probably could have karate-kicked her way up the wall (or whatever it is they do, I don’t know one thing about tae kwon do), but I had to settle for wheezing my way into what I now realized was a very small space. I shimmied myself into it so I was lying flat on my back just as Dominic came downstairs, still humming.
I can’t lie, the humming was making a bad situation worse. I felt like I was stuck with a large bumblebee. A large bumblebee wearing a lot of cologne. God, Dominic’s poor wife and mistress.
I lay flat on my back against the cool drywall, watching my chest rise and fall as I struggled to calm my breathing. You’re fine, I kept telling myself. You’re totally and completely fine. You surprised him, not the other way around. You’re going to get out of here and find the coins and go have dinner with your boyfriend and his mom and it will all be fine.
Dominic sat down in his chair and picked up the TV remote, turning on the set.
It was so not fine.
Chapter 15
I lay flat in that tiny crawl space for two and a half hours.
Do you know how I know how long it was? Well, let me tell you.
Dominic Arment, criminal mastermind, potential possessor of ten gold coins worth at least seventy million dollars, owner of potentially priceless antiques, also had a cuckoo clock collection.
I thought I was going to lose my freaking mind.
Dominic Arment didn’t do much besides watch TV. He got up once to get a drink, but it wasn’t enough time for me to climb down and sneak out before he came back. I was stuck, pure and simple. Just me and the cuckoos.
When the birds went berserk at seven o’clock, I started to feel a bit tense. I didn’t mind lying still for an hour (I had once spent six hours stuck in a dumbwaiter in Munich, so this wasn’t too bad), but I knew that my dinner date was fast approaching. When the cuckoos went off at seven thirty, I felt my heart pick up speed, and when they started crowing at eight, I sighed to myself and looked at the ceiling.
Jesse was going to be so, so hurt. And pissed. And hurt. And … ugh.
The only bright spot—and I do mean the only one, seeing as how a bird cacophony was scaring me out of my wits every fifteen minutes—was that I had a perfectly sneaky view of Dominic’s collection wall. I could see the spines of the books, all of them wrapped in protective plastic covers and faced away from the front window. There was a Faulkner title, a few from Fitzgerald, some Dickens, and even a copy of Moby-Dick. I could tell, though, that Dominic wasn’t the kind of man who had read the books and bought the first editions because he loved them. He bought them because they were expensive, they were showy. They were things he could hide from his wife so she’d never be able to access them in a divorce. He could show them off to his mistress so she’d think he was well read, worldly.
Every minute that crept by just made me hate Dominic that much more.
The figurines were too far away for me to properly examine, but the Fabergé eggs were closest to me. They really were beautiful, oval and shimmering under the dim light. I had never seen one before, not in all my travels and adventures, and I was disappointed that I couldn’t creep over and pick them up and examine them. I wondered how many gold coins it would take to buy one of them, if the coins were already long gone and all that was left were these Russian relics.
The longer I stared at them, I realized that something wasn’t right. There was an egg in the row that didn’t look quite like the others. It was the same size, but it seemed a tiny bit brighter and bolder than the others. It was a deep golden color, set atop a little wheeled cart pulled by a dark blue figure. It looked bizarre, but no less ornate than the other eggs. From a distance, it sort of looked like a hot-air balloon, and it kept calling to me the way safes call to me just before I break into them. I have a secret, Maggie. Aren’t you just dying to know what it is?
And then the cuckoo clocks went off again, signaling eight thirty, and I almost fell out of my perch.
Apparently they scared Dominic, too, because I heard his glass tumbler suddenly shatter against the floor. “Damn!” he cried, and I stayed absolutely, perfectly, painfully still. He stood up and I could hear him muttering to himself in the kitchen, “Where the hell is the broom?”
This was my chance.
I shimmied out of the crawl space and lowered myself to the floor, trying not to make a sound. (Stupid boots!) There was scotch and glass all over the floor and I leaped over it, nearly losing my balance but righting myself just as Dominic came out of the kitchen.
It’s times like this that my brain just shuts off. I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s like I’m thinking about nothing and my body moves instinctively, going where it needs to go in order to protect me. In a similar way, I do the same thing with Jesse. It’s like I know just where to kiss him, when to hug him, almost like we share the same thoughts, the same wants.
I ducked against the staircase, hiding in the shadows as I heard Dominic’s shoes crunch into the glass. If he turned, he would see me. If I breathed, he would hear me. All the muscles in my leg were starting to cramp but I bit the inside of my cheek and ignored the pain because there was no way that I was going to be caught in this job and disappoint everyone and ruin my parents’ careers. If my boyfriend was going to be angry with me for missing dinner with his mother, I had better have a good reason why I was so late.
Dominic swept up the glass as I crouched not ten feet away from him. I could see only his back, but he looked a bit older than my parents, his shoulders a little stooped and his hair thinning on top. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that criminal masterminds are the most boring-looking people in the world, and Dominic Arment certainly fit that bill.
I spent fifteen of the most painful moments of my life kneeling against that staircase, waiting for the second those cuckoo clocks sounded so I could escape. My heart was racing so fast that I could feel my pulse throughout my body and when I blinked, I could have sworn that I heard my eyelashes tap against my skin. No matter how good a spy you are, you cannot control adrenaline. Your body will always win. All you can do is ride out the rush.
“CUCKOO! CUCKOO!”
“CUCKOOCUCKOOCUCKOO!”
“COOO! COOO! COOO! COOO!”
“HOOOONK!”
I seized the moment and rushed the front door. Dominic couldn’t hear my boots on the floor through the incessant noise, nor could he hear the turn of the door, but I knew he’d feel the draft as I shut the door behind me, holding the knob tight in my gloved hands so that it wouldn’t click shut. My legs were shaking so badly that I was afraid I’d collapse, but I ducked past the window and vaulted myself out of the gate and around the corner, my lungs taking in huge gulps of air. I knew that Dominic would investigate and I had to get out of there before he came looking for me.
I headed out onto Ninety-Fourth Street, turning on my phone as I did. My breath was still pretty ragged and my legs were going to be sore for days, and when my phone flickered on, I had eleven text messages from Jesse, all variations on the same question:
WHERE R U?????
There was also a missed call from Angelo, which didn’t surprise me. He must have heard about the bad intel, but he would never leave that message on my cell phone. Roux had sent her own text message, a photo of her and her doorman, Harold, in the lobby of her apartment building. She had a huge grin on her face, the kind that only meant trouble, and Harold looked like he was praying that wild hyenas would storm through the
building and eat him alive. “Harold says hellooooooooo!” the text read.
I called Angelo first.
“Your intel was bad!” I shouted as soon as he answered. Now that night had fallen, the streets were busier than ever and I didn’t have to worry about being discreet. To be honest, it felt good to yell. Spending two and a half hours coiled up in a tiny space had left me with too much potential energy and unused adrenaline. I probably could have bounded from building to building like Spider-Man, that’s how high I was.
“It was bad!” I shouted again, not even giving him a chance to speak. “He was in the house the whole time! The whole time!”
“I know, my love. I found out right after you left. I tried to tell you but it was too late.”
“And did you know that he has a cuckoo clock collection?” I cried, even though that wasn’t really a detail that Angelo needed to know. “He’s pathological, Angelo. Who collects those things? A maniac, that’s who!”
“Slow down, darling. Are you all right? Did you get—?”
“Of course I didn’t get anything!” I turned on Broadway, heading toward Ninety-Fifth Street. The nearby subway station looked vaguely like a spaceship, all sleek surfaces and new design, and I wished that I could just climb into it and fly back in time, back to when things were normal and my family was safe and I knew what I was doing.
“I couldn’t get anything because he was in the living room!” I told Angelo. “I got trapped in a crawl space! Who gave you that intel, Angelo? Because they turned on us!”
“I know. We talked about this earlier, love. It’s getting harder to tell who’s on our side.”
“Why, though? What’s going on?”
“We can discuss later. Did you see anything? Anything weird or different?”
“You mean besides a cuckoo clock collection?”
“Maggie.”
I stopped on the corner and rubbed my forehead. I was exhausted, had a headache, and I knew the night was only going to get worse.