Bobby stepped back, almost surprised to feel marble beneath his leather police boots, rather than the damp wooden slabs of a seventeenth-century sailing vessel. The boat and the waves and the storm weren’t any less impressive because they were behind thick glass, embraced by a five-foot-high gilded frame that looked like it must have weighed fifty, sixty pounds. Bobby wasn’t sure what had made him stop in front of that particular painting as he’d made his way across the darkened gallery—the lavishly decorated Dutch Room was lined with masterpieces, gratuitously ornate frame after frame speckled along the embroidered walls, beneath candelabras and chandeliers dripping tears of crystal as old and sad as the silken drapes hanging by the arched windows that overlooked the courtyard two floors below. But for whatever reason, the boat had called out to him, and Bobby’s inner voice had joined right in for the chorus; despite every rational bone in his body telling him that it was the wrong thing at the wrong time—that the smart, cautious, and safe way forward was to stick to the plan—Bobby had never been able to ignore that damn little voice.

He glanced over toward his partner, standing halfway across the gallery. Four inches taller than Bobby and twenty pounds heavier, Richie Gustiano looked ridiculous in his uniform, which was two sizes too small and bulging so much in the middle, Bobby was worried the shiny brass buttons running up the center might fly off at any moment. Worse, Richie’s mustache was hanging half off his upper lip and his hat was on backward; the only thing about him that looked real was his badge, which thankfully had been more than enough to get them from their red hatchback parked in an alley a block away and into the museum through the side door.

“You hear me?” Bobby asked, and then repeated himself, louder. “Get over here and help me with this.”

“Are you serious?” Richie finally responded, that mustache dancing in tune to an accent even heavier than Bobby’s own. “We ain’t even supposed to be in here.”

That was true; Richie might have been big, but he wasn’t stupid. Well, he was big and stupid, but the plan had been simple enough that even Richie could follow it without so much as a dress rehearsal. Contract gigs were often like that; every step spelled out in intricate detail, paint by numbers—all you had to do was keep your brush within the lines.

Bobby turned back to the storm, and the waves, and the boat.

“Yeah, I’m serious.”

“This ain’t the job,” Richie tried again.

“Yeah,” Bobby responded.

But he was already reaching for the frame.

*  *  *