Chapter 4: The Tailored Disguise
The fabric of the navy blue skirt suit felt too light against my ribs, like a whisper of cloth pretending to be armor. I stood before the full-length mirror in the guest bedroom of Arthur Briggs’s second-floor apartment, smoothing down the lapels with hands that had not lost their tremor, though the panic had long since burned itself out to ash. On the wooden dresser beside me sat my brown handbag—repaired at the strap by Arthur’s own pocketknife—its interior lined with the manila folder containing the bank surveillance logs, the forged signature affidavits, and the certified copies of the original deeds that Victoria had thought safely buried beneath layers of corporate shell companies.
Arthur sat at a small kitchen table just beyond the open bedroom door, the dull blue light of a laptop screen catching the sharp planes of his weathered face. He wore a rumpled gray sports coat that smelled faintly of pipe tobacco and cold coffee, looking more like a high school civics teacher than a retired homicide detective who spent his twilight years picking apart the secret ledgers of high-society thieves.
“The gala starts at seven,” Arthur said without looking up from the screen, his fingers tapping a slow, rhythmic cadence against the plastic keyboard. “Valet parking only. If you roll up in a cab, the security detail at the botanical gardens will spot you before you clear the outer boxwood hedges. Victoria has three private guards stationed at the North Portico alone, all former state troopers on her personal retainer.”
“I’m not taking a cab,” I said, my voice dry and level in the quiet room. I picked up a string of faux pearls from the dresser—scarcely comparable to the heavy South Sea strands Victoria loved to drape around her collarbones like payment—and fastened the clasp around my neck. “My grandson still drives the car his grandfather bought him for his thirtieth birthday. A dark green Jaguar sedan. He keeps a spare valet key in the magnetized box beneath the glove compartment because he’s always been absentminded about his property.”
Arthur paused his typing, slowly turning his head to look at me through the doorway. His eyebrows drew together, forming a deep vertical crease between his eyes. “You’re talking about taking his car? From right under his nose?”
“I’m talking about reclaiming what was left in my care before it was stolen,” I corrected him, meeting his gaze in the mirror. “Marcus hasn’t changed his hiding spot since he was twenty-five. He thinks the world is too orderly to bite him twice in the same place. If we want to get past the iron perimeter at the gardens without triggering the facial recognition scanners Victoria installed last winter, we don't sneak in through the service gates. We drive in the front.”
He let out a short, raspy breath that might have been a laugh if it had any amusement in it. “You’ve got more iron in your spine than most of the targets I used to chase, Mrs. Vance. But if Marcus sees you before we reach the ballroom, he’ll fold like wet cardboard under his wife’s thumb. You saw him on the driveway. He looked right through you until he realized someone was watching.”
“He was afraid,” I murmured, turning away from the glass to pick up my bag. The leather was cool and reassuring against my palm. “There is a wide, dark difference between being afraid and being spineless, Arthur. Marcus was raised to inherit a name, not a backbone. It’s my fault he never learned the difference. I made his life too soft, and Victoria simply stepped into the gap where a conscience should have been.”
We left the apartment ten minutes later, descending the narrow, uncarpeted wooden stairs into the damp evening air of Maplewood. The sky over the interstate was the color of a wet slate shingle, the streetlamps flickering on one by one as the October wind rattled the dry leaves along the curb.
Arthur’s rusted Buick groaned as we pulled away from the curb, heading south toward the high-rise residential towers where Marcus and Victoria maintained their penthouse suite. The city changed its skin as we drove—moving from greasy-spoon diners and pawnshops with iron grilles over their windows to manicured lawns, low-slung hedges of clipped boxwood, and private security booths where men in dark uniforms checked license plates against digital clipboards.
We didn’t go to the front entrance of the tower. Instead, Arthur parked three blocks away in the shadowed loading zone behind an organic grocery store, leaving the engine idling with a steady, muffled thrum.
“Ten minutes,” Arthur muttered, checking his watch by the dashboard light. “If you aren’t back by seven-fifteen, I’m calling the local precinct and filing a missing person report for an elderly woman with a penchant for high-stakes drama.”
“If I’m not back by seven-fifteen, Arthur, it’s because I’ve decided to move into Marcus’s walk-in closet and haunt him until he learns how to balance a checkbook,” I replied, opening the passenger door before he could argue further.
The underground parking garage of the Vance Tower was cool, smelling of exhaust fumes and floor wax. Overhead, fluorescent strips hummed with a thin, abrasive whine that bounced off the polished concrete floor. The rows of luxury vehicles—black Benzes, silver Porsches, and the occasional cream-colored Bentley—stood like silent, glossy beasts in their assigned stalls.
It took me less than three minutes to locate Marcus’s dark green Jaguar. It sat in stall forty-two, near the private elevator bank that led directly up to the penthouse foyer. The vehicle’s flanks were free of dust, gleaming under the overhead lights as if it had just rolled off the showroom floor.
I crouched down—my knees protesting with a dull, sharp ache that made my breath hitch—and slid my hand along the cold steel chassis near the front wheel well. My fingers brushed against the smooth plastic of the magnetic lockbox. With a small click, the latch gave way, dropping a heavy silver key directly into my palm.
As I straightened up, the pneumatic hiss of the private elevator doors echoed off the far wall.
My heart didn’t race; it simply dropped into a heavy, cold stillness, the way it had when I watched the iron gates close in my face that morning. I slipped the key into my brown handbag and stepped back into the deep shadow of a concrete pillar just as the elevator chimes sounded.
The doors slid open with a soft, sliding whisper. Victoria stepped out first, her high heels clicking sharply against the concrete. She was wearing a floor-length gown of midnight-blue silk that caught the harsh fluorescent light like oil on water, her blonde hair piled high in an intricate twist that left her long neck exposed and elegant. Behind her came Marcus, carrying a slim garment bag over one shoulder, his dark tuxedo jacket unbuttoned at the top button, his face drawn into the tired, pinched expression of a man who spent his life apologizing for things he didn’t break.
“Driver should have been here by now,” Victoria said, her voice carrying an edge of sharp impatience that bounced off the concrete pillars. “If Arthur leaves the Bentley unattendance again, I’m having his parking privileges revoked by the board.”
“He’s probably just down by the attendant desk, Vic,” Marcus replied, his tone low and placating, the voice of a man reciting lines from a script he had practiced a thousand times. “Let’s just get the bags in the trunk. The press will already be crowding the North Portico by the time we clear the tunnel.”
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They walked past my pillar without a glance, their eyes fixed on the gleaming rear bumper of the Bentley parked two stalls down. They were wrapped in the impenetrable bubble of their own wealth and certainty, entirely convinced that the world outside their circle was nothing more than a service corridor meant to keep them clean.
I waited until the trunk of the Bentley slammed shut with a heavy, expensive thud, and the low roar of its engine faded down the exit ramp toward the street. Then I stepped out from the shadow of the pillar, walked over to the driver’s side of the dark green Jaguar, and slipped the key into the door.
