I checked the time. Ten-oh-three. Forty minutes had passed since I’d stepped outside the museum. Owen should almost be through the vault door by now, if Clementine’s calculations had been correct. Add the twenty minutes I’d spent roaming around inside the museum, and Phillip had been shot roughly an hour ago. That meant he probably had another hour left. Maybe two if we were both lucky.

Tick, tick, tick. Time to get on with things.

I touched a contact on my cell phone. It rang three times before she picked it up.

“Detective Coolidge.” My sister’s warm, confident voice flooded the line.

“Hey there, baby sister,” I drawled. “Have I got a story to tell you.”

Chapter 14

14

“Are you joking?” Bria asked three minutes later when I’d finished explaining everything. “Please, please, please tell me that you’re joking.”

“Unfortunately not.”

“You’re telling me that a group of giants is holding everyone at the Briartop museum hostage? And robbing the place while they’re at it?”

“You got it,” I replied. “I’m out here in the parking lot, taking a halftime break before I head back in and let Clementine know that things aren’t sewn up quite as neatly as she thinks they are.”

“What are you going to do, Gin?”

The suspicion in her voice might as well have been code for How many people are you planning to kill? Always a valid question when it came to the Spider.

“Well, right now, I’m going to take the bomb I got off the bridge, go back into the museum, and blow something up. I haven’t decided what, exactly. Any suggestions?”

Bria was silent for a moment. Then she let out a rueful laugh. “Well, I’d suggest the abstract wing. I never understood what all the fuss was about with that. Art should look like art, trees and flowers and people, not weird shapes and splotches of color all smeared together.”

I grinned, even though she couldn’t see me. “A woman after my own heart.”

Through the phone, I heard Bria typing on her keyboard. She was at the police station, and as soon as I’d told her Clementine’s name and description, she’d started searching for information on the giant.

“Here she is. Clementine Barker. Fifty-eight. Lives on Bear Hollow Road. Head of Barker Industries. Private security firm offering personal and corporate protection. I’m looking at the company website right now . . .” Bria let out a low whistle. “Wow. It looks like she’s hired at least fifty, sixty giants in the last few weeks, judging from all the announcements on their press page.”

“She actually put all her new hires on her website?”

“Yep,” Bria said. “She’s got up photos and bios listing all of the giants’ credentials.”

“Well, that would certainly fit in with the rah-rah-giants speech she gave in the rotunda earlier.”