The Final Cut

“Browning? But that doesn’t make sense, I mean—what’s the fox?”

“It’s not a what, it’s a who. I had no idea the Fox was a woman.”

“Nicholas, has the gas gotten to you? You’re not making sense.”

He said, “The Fox is one of the most notorious jewel thieves in the world. Remember I told you I put together a short list of thieves who had the skill to pull off a job this big, and we wanted to see if they had any ties to the Anatoly crime family? Only a handful of thieves operate at this level, and the Fox is one of them. No one has any idea who he—excuse me, she—is. But now we know.”

“You’re saying the Fox is Victoria Browning? I’ve got to alert everyone, she might still be in the museum, we have to catch her.” She got Zachery on her comms unit, could practically see his brain compute what had happened, then heard him go into action. She switched off. “She can’t be far. It’s only been ten minutes.”

Nicholas said, “She’s long gone, and you know it. I’ll wager the video will show Paulie or Louisa freeing the diamond to fingerprint it, she whacked them on the head, rolled the canisters of gas into the comm center, and waltzed right out the Met’s front door, everything timed to the second.”

Mike said, “Maybe the gas is getting to me, because if I hear you right, you’re saying the real Koh-i-Noor was in the crown, snug in its case, this whole time? It hadn’t been replaced with one of the replicas?”

“Exactly what I’m saying. The stone wasn’t a fake. The only fake here is Browning. She fashioned herself an incredible identity and background, hired on at the museum and worked her way up until she was curating the exhibit itself. I’m amazed at her patience, and her brain.”

“Nicholas, why wait until tonight? She’s had four days to steal the diamond, after hours, or the first night the stone was in the building. Why this huge charade? Why wait for half of the New York Field Office and a thousand people to be in the museum to witness the crime?”

“She couldn’t do it, not without alerting security. This was her plan all along. She must have engineered the power surge on Wednesday—everyone would focus on those five precious minutes as the time when the Koh-i-Noor was stolen, only, of course, it wasn’t stolen. The whole purpose of the outage was to show herself on several cameras far away from the exhibit room, the perfect alibi. She’s quite brilliant. Your people did the hard part for her. All she had to do was pocket the diamond, blind everyone, and leave.” He took the skeleton from her, flipped it in the air, and caught it.

“And all of us went haring off, looking at anyone but her—looking at Elaine, who couldn’t defend herself—” He broke off, then continued, his voice angry now. “We trusted everything Browning dished out. And now she has the Koh-i-Noor. Brilliant,” he said again.

“We’ll need that for evidence.”

“I know.”

Mike said, “Do you think she killed Elaine?”

“I don’t know. Everything we’ve been told for the past two days was a web of lies designed to get your techs into the museum and remove the Koh-i-Noor from the crown to fingerprint it. It was the one thing she couldn’t do for herself. We have to go back to the begi

She saw it now, the elegance of Browning’s plan. “That bitch tricked us all.”

Nicholas raised the skeleton metronome. “The Fox leaves behind a token at her crime scenes. Something to mock the investigators. I’d say it’s working.”

Mike touched the head of the skeleton, sent it to ticking again.

Nicholas’s cell phone rang, and they both jumped. Nicholas moved in front of Mike instinctively to shelter her from the blast, spreading his arms wide, in case he’d missed something, but nothing happened. He dropped his arms and answered with a curt “Yes?”

Nothing. Empty air. Then a click.

29

New York, New York

George Washington Bridge

Late Thursday evening

She didn’t have much time. They knew who to look for now, but she’d still made the call to Nicholas’s cell phone—she pictured their surprise, their gut-wrenching fear—she had to admit, it was fun. She knew exactly what Mike Caine and Nicholas Drummond would do next—put a trace on the phone, try to pinpoint the last known location of the call. They’d find it eventually, but in the Hudson River. Smack themselves on the forehead a few times before they figured out exactly how Dr. Victoria Browning, the dedicated, knowledgeable museum curator, had pulled off the theft of the century.

She laughed aloud. Too bad she couldn’t stick around and watch the FBI go in circles, the way she intended, but she had a plane to catch.

Her Ducati Streetfighter maneuvered smoothly through the evening traffic as she drove across the bridge. She chucked the phone over the railing and glanced at her watch. She was five minutes out from Teterboro Airport. One advantage to working for Saleem Lanighan was she could afford everything a woman might need to succeed, including a Gulfstream, fueled up and waiting for her.

She gu

She frowned. There was one fly in the ointment. She hadn’t pla

She could see him now, organizing, pla

At last she was here. With a wave at the guards at the airport entrance, she pulled through the gates and around to the back of the departure building. Money had changed hands, enough money that no one even noticed her, because, as arranged, the airport cameras had been shut down for a ten-minute interval. She’d found a thick stack of hundreds to be the ultimate motivator.

She’d had the tail number of the Gulfstream altered so it would be very hard to trace ownership. The captain was the only one aboard, and he’d filed a flight plan for Vancouver, though he was fueled for a journey across the Atlantic instead. He was awaiting her instruction as to where to go when she got on board. Both precautions would assure anonymity, lay a false trail for the FBI to follow.

She knew, of course, the FBI would eventually figure out the subterfuge, but by the time they found out where she was headed, she hoped it would be too late.

She left the bike on the tarmac but kept her helmet on. No sense taking chances, not yet. Her backpack was a welcome weight on her shoulders. She grabbed another, smaller bag from the bike’s storage box. She climbed the stairs, and once inside, the captain raised them and secured the door. Only then did she remove her helmet, pull the ponytail holder from her hair, stretch her shoulders, her back. She needed rest. She’d been too keyed up to sleep last night. A long flight was the perfect remedy.

The captain was young, fit, eye candy with big brown eyes. He greeted her with a blinding grin. She supposed it must be fun for him, jetting around the world, never knowing where he would be from one day to the next. She hoped he was competent.

“Bonsoir, mademoiselle.” He had a slight Parisian accent. He motioned for her to have a seat in one of the luxurious tan leather chairs.

“I’m ready. Let’s get going.”

“Where to?”

“Vancouver, remember? I’ll give you exact coordinates when we’re in the air.”