frowning, he added, “You didn’t frisk me. Aren’t you supposed to—”
“Sir, I’m going to need you to come here and stand next to your partner,” Roman said, cutting off Roberts. “We’ll have to call your names in before we move on.”
Guard Number Two was staring at Dorothy, eyes narrowed.
“Sir?” Roman said again, approaching him.
The guard pointed. “His mustache is falling off.”
Blast.
It seemed to Dorothy that Roman stiffened as her own fingers flew to her face. Sure enough, the damn mustache was askew. Her first impulse was to fix it, but it was too late. The second guard was already shaking his head, backing away. His eyes flicked to the security desk. The alarm.
She felt Roman’s eyes on her, questioning, and she could hear what he was thinking as clearly as if he’d actually spoken the words out loud. It’s not supposed to happen like this.
History was supposed to be on their side. Dorothy had spent so long preparing. Night after night falling asleep with a musty old book as a pillow. Hours spent staring at a computer screen, until the words all blurred and a dull headache beat at her skull. They weren’t going to be caught. They couldn’t be.
Dorothy moved between the guard and the alarm, reflexively. He was larger than she was, and she saw his eyes narrow as they moved over her body, sizing her up. He could push through her, he was thinking.
Well, he could try to.
Dorothy had learned many things during the last year she’d spent with the Black Cirkus, but perhaps the most useful was the location of the esophagus. There was a spot on the human body where the esophagus peeked out from behind the collarbone, all frail and weak, and if she happened to, say, jam her fingers into that spot, she could make a man twice her size cry for his mother.
This man was not twice Dorothy’s size, but he still lurched at her, and so she calmly stuck two fingers into that tender spot just below his neck and hooked them in and down.
He jerked backward, gasping, hands grabbing at his throat. “What the—”
Dorothy used that second of surprise to spin him around, wrenching both arms behind his back. He twisted, all red-faced and wide-eyed, trying to see her face.
He looked at her then, really looked at her, and she saw him take in the scar. The white hair.
“Jesus,” he choked out. “You’re not a—”
Before he could finish, she’d jerked his arm upward so it would hurt.
“Watch it!” the guard shouted, but he didn’t fight as she slapped the cuffs over his wrists. “You’re not even a cop, are you?”
“Not remotely,” said Dorothy. She shoved the guard up against the wall, beside his partner. Now that they were both cuffed, they were no longer a threat. “This is a robbery. You don’t know it yet, but it will go down in history as the greatest robbery ever performed.”
Dorothy and Roman led the guards to the basement, handcuffed them to pipes, and wrapped duct tape around their hands, feet, and heads. Then they headed upstairs to the Dutch Room.
Dorothy had practically memorized the Dutch Room. She’d spent hours poring over photographs, wondering if the tile floor would cause her to trip in her oversize boots, if their voices would carry through the high, arched windows and into the courtyard below, if they’d be able to see in the near-perfect dark.
Her flashlight’s beam bounced off green brocade walls and gilded gold frames holding the most famous artwork in the history of the world. Chairs and heavy wooden furniture had been pushed up against the walls, almost like someone had cleared the center of the room for a dance. Dorothy grinned a little at the thought. It was the 1990s. The kind of dancing she was thinking of hadn’t been popular for a hundred years and the nonsense that had taken its place . . .
Well. It seemed more like convulsing than dancing, to her.
“We have a little over an hour,” she said as Roman headed for a framed Vermeer.
“You’re the boss.” Roman pulled a box cutter out of his pocket and began cutting the painting from its frame.
Isabella Stewart Gardner had bought that Vermeer in 1892, for 29,000 francs, Dorothy thought, remembering her research. Now it was worth millions.
She tilted her head to the side, studying it. It was smaller than she’d expected it to be. Why was everything so much smaller in real life?
They packed up paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas,