Behind the desk, a tall wooden bookcase, a few art books, a row of auction catalogs, the rest of the shelves bare. He removed the remote device from the top drawer of the desk, hit a few buttons, and the bookcase slid on casters to expose the wall behind it. Another code and the wall itself swung open. Behind it, a steel door. One more code, fingers tapping quickly, the door opened, and he stepped into the vault. He hit the remote one more time, and everything closed behind him—the wall, the bookcase all sliding back into place.

This was always his favorite moment, standing in the dark, waiting. He savored it until he could no longer wait, then flipped a switch, and the room was flooded with light.

Eighteen paintings. Eleven drawings. Thirteen prints. Each artwork with its own spotlight, accumulated over the past thirty years beginning legitimately with a small Blue Period Picasso. Beside the Picasso, the only other legitimate sale in the vault, a Rembrandt etching, currently worth a half million dollars—a pittance compared to the other artworks in the room. He often loaned these two pieces to museum exhibitions to show he was not only legit but generous.

He switched off the alarm and checked the thermostat to make sure it was at its constant sixty-eight degrees, then the dehumidifier, both backed up by a small generator, before perusing his collection. He paused in front of a Monet seascape, taking in the rich blues and purples of the sky and water. From there, to a small Van Gogh painting of a congregation leaving a church. He took his time, occasionally running his fingertips over paint, a sin—oily skin against delicate pigment—but he could do what he pleased, like flick his tongue over the painted nipple of a Gauguin nude, imagining the taste of sweat and salt, along with the history, the lives lived inside the painting, the artist Paul Gauguin in Tahiti with this unimportant though beautiful young woman he had immortalized.

He shuddered. Stood back, taking in his treasures, his children, relishing the idea that this art was his and his alone.

Selfish?

He didn’t think so. After all, didn’t he take better care of them than the careless museums and galleries they had been stolen from?

It was his calling, mystical and divine, almost religious, the way he would see an artwork in a museum or gallery, feel a palpable vibration, and know he had to have it, had to rescue it—the thought whispered into his mind as if from God.

He moved from Gauguin’s Tahitian scene to a Madonna by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, surprisingly seductive, lips slightly open and dark red. He licked his own lips, then folded himself into the gold-plated Warren Platner chair, felt its curved back embrace his body as if he were floating. He skidded the chair a few inches closer to the painting, metal base scraping on the marble floor, the echo of a screech filling the room. He covered his ears, but too late; the ghosts were already here.