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In the painting, I gaze out, one hand on a saucily cocked hip. I had dressed for the portrait as if for an outing—a floor-length white linen skirt, a jacket over a pleated blouse, and I hold a straw boater in one hand. The artist captured the golden gleam of my necklace, a delicate thing made of fine strands of woven gold that had once graced the neck of a Celtic ancestor. Other than my clothing, I look the same now.
For all I know, the necklace’s former owner is still alive, although I doubt it. While clansmen bodies seldom fail, our minds eventually do. What would the woman think of me, so ready to surrender the life I was taught to value so highly?
I don’t have to ask. I feel my ancestor’s disdain, even across the centuries.
The stocky guard appears at the entrance to the exhibit, her full cheeks flushed, her body tight, clearly on the hunt. Can she, impossibly, be after me?
I sidle closer to a man of my height.
I cannot be discovered. My glamére has to work.
“I think I got one.” The whisper shivers in KB Volmer’s earpiece. She steps out of the gallery of art done by Irish kids. Their stuff didn’t look any better than her crap that her mother had put on the refrigerator when she was a kid.
Speaking just loudly enough for her collar mike to pick up her words, she says, “Again.”
“I think I got one.”
She snaps into focus. There’s only one thing he can be talking about.
The whisper comes again. “It’s heading for the entrance.”
KB zings him. “It would be helpful if I knew who this was and where you’re stationed.”
“Schultz, by the big lion outside the Michigan Avenue entrance.”
Does Schultz’s voice shake from the cold or from excitement? His words sure as hell send a thrill through KB. She hopes to be the first of the couple-hundred Homeland Security agents staking out museums across the country to catch one of the Intruders—she knows in her gut that they are bad guys.
She says, “You’re sure it’s an Intruder?”
“Gotta be. Compared to everybody else out here, infrared output looks like a bonfire.”
The thermal imaging cameras Homeland Security has been testing since an ETA terrorist blew up a roomful of Goya masterpieces in Madrid’s Prado National Museum are about to pay off. Yesterday, agents at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art spotted two bright infrared “blooms” strolling in—and then lost them in the crowd. KB isn’t going to make that mistake.
Excitement clutches her. Even Schultz sounds tight now; his voice has lost that lame whine—no more bitching about working in the cold, no more muttering that the Intruders haven’t done anything so why the big hunt?
Yeah, they haven’t done anything . . . yet. That’s the way terrorists operate, staying low until it’s time to strike.
They aren’t going to get away with it on KB’s watch.
KB says, “What do you see? Your eyes. Did you look with your eyes?”
“Just a glimpse. Female. Dark hair, Curly. Tall and slender. Wearing a dress and a long black coat with a hood up. The camera just shows the glow.”
Oh, man, this is it. Reflex sends her hand inside the navy blue blazer. Just beneath the Art Institute logo her Walther 9mm automatic waits, snug in its holster. Posing as an Institute security guard is perfect cover, but she hates the skirt—it makes her legs look heavy, and putting one on always feels like a demotion. Damn cold in the wind, too.
Her earpiece crackles. Schultz says, “It’s going in.”
Time to saddle up. She says, “I’m headed for the lobby. All stations, be alert for a tall, slender female that lights up your camera.”
Aching to break into a trot, she forces herself to keep to a hurried walk, as near as she can come to the dawdle of a real museum guard. But when she reaches the stairs she goes up two steps at a time, charged with energy, electric, as if she is going into combat.
Who’s to say this isn’t combat? The war on terrorism is personal with her, and the enemy can be anywhere, is everywhere.
Upstairs, she scans the lobby, and then a tall figure in a long black coat, a hood hanging down the back, hurries past her. Curly brown hair, a youngish woman heading down the hall with the knights. KB follows.
When the woman gets close to the end of the hallway, she glances back at KB and then increases her speed.
KB aims her thermal camera. A bright glow flares in the viewfinder. Gotcha! She hustles after her quarry. She wants to run, but doesn’t want to alarm her target. The woman rounds the corner, and KB stretches her legs to close the gap.
She says to her collar microphone, “I am on a suspect, a real hot spot in my camera. Schultz, move inside and guard the Michigan Avenue doors. Use the camera on people leaving.” She’ll need evidence later. “Did you record this one coming in?”
His “damn” answers her question. She says, “Don’t forget to record if you see something. Bailey, you on the Columbus Drive exit?”
KB would know Bailey’s voice anywhere, deep and full of the rhythms of Chicago’s black south side. She says, “Yeah. I got the doors.” A pause, then, “This really it?”
“Looks like. Be on the lookout for a tall, skinny female, long hooded coat over long dress.” Might be smart to have backup. “Sanchez, where are you?”
He whispers, “Second level. They got a painting with a locomotive steaming out of a fireplace. Weird.”
“Get moving to the other side. I’ll locate the subject, then we’ll take ‘er.”
“Okay. But what’s the big deal about these hot people? They don’t do nothin’ but go to museums.”
“Are you walking or talking?”
“Walking. I’m walking. Jeez.”
KB passes a suit of armor and feels a connection with the soldier who had worn the iron uniform. Like him, she’s a protector, her mission to stand between her country and evil, and she will do anything to carry it out. She touches her pistol again.
She can’t hold back a tight little grin.
When she reaches the Sculpture Court, the woman isn’t there, but movement on the second level catches her eye—someone tall in a black coat entering the American art exhibit. KB pounds up the stairs.
At the exhibit entrance, she runs her gaze across the visitors. The curly-haired woman isn’t there. Had the face she’d seen been a disguise? She eases her thermal camera up.
In her viewfinder, the images of people are lighter forms against the dark grays of cooler walls and floor, and clear enough to distinguish facial features. She pans the room until she comes to a bright white shape near the wall.
She jerks the camera from her eye; where the flare had been three people stand before a humongous painting of an old-time man and woman. There’s a skinny, pimply-faced guy; a white-haired, snooty-looking older lady; and a fiftyish blond with short hair. The guy and the senior citizen both wear black coats.
KB steps close to the wall to get a better angle on their faces. She raises the camera, focuses on the glowing spot, and turns down the gain. The glow dims and she zooms in until a woman’s profile emerges. She glances KB’s way; her face is oval, with delicate features and big eyes like a fashion model. Twenties or thirties, the age of the woman in the hallway, but not one of the three faces she saw with her naked eyes.
Okay, maybe there’s another way. She turns up the gain until the Intruder’s image becomes a bright blur and the two figures next to it show up. The Intruder is between the two normal images.
She lowers the camera. The center person is the white-haired woman. How the hell did she do it?
No matter, she’s got the Intruder now. KB stifles a rush of delight, but not before tasting it, just a little. There’ll be time to celebrate after she has the Intruder in handcuffs. Backing away from the entrance, she whispers into her collar mike. “Sanchez! Where are you?”
“I’m coming. Some old woman wanted to know where the antique paperweight crap is.”
“Get your ass in gear. The American art exhibit upstairs. Now!”
KB goes to the top of the stairs and peers into the Sculpture Court. She doesn’t see Sanchez’s bow-legged stride. She returns to the exhibit entrance. She’ll explode if she waits for Sanchez. Maybe she can talk the Intruder out of the room, separate her from regular visitors. She has never met a female she couldn’t handle. Or a male either, for that matter.
She slips the camera strap over her shoulder, slides a hand under her blazer to make sure her weapon moves easily in the holster, and enters.
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