What a fucking idiot the guy was. Had a good thing right at his side, but nooooo, he needed to go find some strange. In Idaho.
So stupid.
Back out in the hall, Balz had a thought about dematerializing through one of the double-paned windows. Instead, he found himself padding down the curving stairs just so he could go by the Banksy stuff again. Now that was art.
And he’d take one or two if he could. Unfortunately, masterpieces like that? You couldn’t unload them for more than pennies on the dollar. Too much provenance, too much attention—and that was the thing about being a thief. It was all about the exit strategy, and not just in terms of getting safely away with somebody else’s shit. You had to be able to liquidate—or you were just a felonious hoarder.
Down on the second floor, he pivoted toward the view and took a deep, calming breath—
The sound was quiet in the utter silence of the triplex, the kind of thing that, later, he would wonder how he’d heard.
It was a tap. Like on a window. But not quite.
Frowning, he pivoted and looked in the direction he thought it came from. That was when he heard it again.
Tap. Tap.
Like something was trapped and trying to get out.
Weird. In all his research on the Mr. and Mrs., he hadn’t come across any pets. For one thing, the pair had the kind of travel schedule where you could hardly keep a houseplant alive, much less something that required food, water, and walks. For another? The Mr. was a nasty neat. Cat hair? Dog hair? He’d have a fucking coronary.
Well, whatever it was, there was no reason to—
Of their own volition, Balz’s feet started walking, his body carried like inanimate luggage as they headed off in a direction, on a mission, that was utterly unconnected to his will: He wanted to leave. He wanted to head back with the watches to his room at the Brotherhood’s mansion. He wanted to make a call to his black market guy to monetize the Mr.’s happy little collection of wrist-bound tick tocks.
Instead, Balz was passing through the collection rooms . . . back with the meteorites, the surgical instruments, the bats.
A new room now. Totally dark with no lights or windows.
As he entered, a ceiling fixture was motion-activated and a low-level, hushed illumination bled down from above.
Books. Everywhere. But not lined up on shelves, spine to spine. These were set in glass cases that ran up the walls, the tomes reclining on tilted stands like they were at a spa. In the glow of the soft light, gold lettering gleamed on covers as well as the edges of some of the pages. When Balz breathed in, he smelled dust—
And something else.
Tap. Tap. Tap—
His head slowly swiveled to the far corner. Set aside from all the others, in a floor display cabinet that was hip-high and spotlit, a tome separate from the rest had been given an exalted distinction from the others in the collection.
Tap.
Balz walked over, called by the sound. By the presence of the special book. By . . .
In the back of his mind, he recognized that he was powerless to turn away. But he was so captivated by what was before him that he neither took note of his thrall nor had any thought to change his destination. And as he came up to the encasement, he caught his breath.
“I’m here,” he whispered as he put the watches aside on the glass top. “Are you okay?”
Like the thing was a child who’d been forgotten. Who needed rescuing. By him.
The priceless artifact was bound in some kind of dark, mottled leather that made his nape tingle in warning. Old. The single volume was very, very old. No title was embossed on the surface of the cover, and the pages seemed thick as parchment—
Something smelled bad.
Like death.
As a wave of nausea surged in his gut, Balz covered his mouth with his palm and bent forward to retch—
The sound of his cell phone ringing was an absolute electric shock, his body launching itself off the floor. What the fuck? He’d silenced the—
Weak and disorientated, he fumbled with the thing. “Hello? Hello . . . ?”
“Time to come home, Balz. Right now.”
At first, he didn’t recognize the voice. It certainly wasn’t someone who hit him up very often.
“Lassiter?”
Why was the fallen angel calling him—
His eyes returned to the book on its stand and he jumped again. It had opened itself, the front cover thrown back, its pages flipping in a rush, the flurry of activity making no sense—
“Now,” Lassiter barked over the connection. “Get your ass home right fucking now—”
Balz snapped to attention. Something in the angel’s syllables broke whatever spell had overtaken him, and with a shot of clarity, he knew if he did not dematerialize away at this very instant, he was never going to be free.