I could've fallen asleep in that tub, but reluctantly I pulled myself up and wrapped a towel around my body, careful not to reopen any of the scrapes and cuts on my side. I looked like absolute shit—split lip, black and blue ribs, and a nasty head wound that finally stopped bleeding, but most of the damage was concealable. As I crept around the door of the bathroom, I could hear Desirae on the phone with someone, but she quickly ended the call when she saw me.
"BCPD picked up Calogero at the docks."
My stomach dropped. "Des, that's only gonna piss the family off—"
"He was wanted for a million other reasons. Using a fake passport, for one." She scooped up a sweatshirt and running shorts from the bed and walked over to me. "Apparently, he needed medical attention when they got there. Might lose his right eye." She cocked a curious eyebrow at me as she handed over the clothes. "BCPD just assumed he pissed off a sex-worker... Something about a broken stiletto?"
I shrugged my shoulders and almost lost my towel. "Uh, must be some kinda Cinderella vigilante or something."
"You're resourceful, I'll give you that."
As I tugged the shorts up beneath the towel, she turned away to the balcony windows. I knew I wasn't fooling her, but I also knew better than to admit I shish-kabobed Cal's eye with my knock-off Loubies. I ran the towel through my damp hair once more before hanging it on the bathroom door, then quickly slipped into her sweatshirt while she pretended not to look. Her perfume surrounded me, warm jasmine and spices infused in the threads of her alma mater.
"I uh, didn't know VCU had an FBI program," I said, pulling down the hem.
"Quantico is just up the road."
"What was your major, then?"
She let out a half-hearted laugh. "Why do you care?"
"I dunno." I wandered over to the pink velvet chair in the corner by her balcony and plopped down. "It's one of the best fine art schools in the country so you must be good, but I've only seen your forensic work. Which isn't very personal."
"Believe me, it is," she mumbled as she grabbed the throw blanket from the back of the chair.
"When was the last time you made art that wasn't work?"
Draping the fur blanket over her arm, she stared at me for a second. Her dark eyes sharpened, both irritated and amused it seemed before she turned towards the hallway. "I laid some Tylenol out with a glass of water on the nightstand. I'll just be in the living room if you need anything else."
"Wait, I can take the couch," I offered, hopping up from the chair. "You don't gotta give up your bed."
"And have you bleed out on my four thousand dollar sofa?" Her head tipped with a smile. "I don't think so."
But as she reached for the door to leave, dread crept up my spine. I didn't know if it was lingering fear of the Cassini's or Landon or maybe it wasn't even fear at all since I couldn't shake the gnawing guilt that ultimately stemmed from Artemisia, but after everything tonight, I didn't want to be alone.
"Can you stay?"
Desirae hovered in the doorway, picking at the cream shag of the blanket. "I shouldn't." Which was definitely the right call. She was already risking her case for me. Her safety for mine. But as I sunk down onto the edge of her bed, she stepped back into the room. "You really are awfully needy for a hardened criminal."
My lips twisted up to a smile. "Get caught stealing some overrated art from a predatory artist and all of a sudden you're a hardened criminal."
"Was it just one predatory artist?" She tossed the blanket on the bed and leaned over me to reach for the lamp switch. "You make it sound like the Musée d'Bellelli was your one and only heist." The truth tightened my throat as I kept my eyes locked on hers, trying to ignore the slinking neckline of her cami just inches away. She knew what she was doing. "They never caught the thief who took the de Koonings."
But she was way off with that one.
"From the Rosenberg?" I laughed, a little insulted. "Oh please, they were a bunch of tools."
"They?"
"Three drunk Russian kids. Completely trashed the canvases from what I heard so they didn't get shit for them." I had nothing to lose revealing what I had heard and Desirae had everything to gain from it. "Besides, they bludgeoned the guard. I'm not into violence."
"Says the Cinderella vigilante."
The lamp clicked off, veiling us in a blanket of darkness. I could no longer see her in front of me, but she felt even closer than before. The warmth of her body sent goosebumps over mine.
"What do you know about a stolen Lucian Freud?" she whispered close to my neck.
The old bait and switch. I wanted to ask her how she knew it'd been me, but I also wasn't ready to go back to prison. I tried to calm my heart, slow my breaths. Every exhale still dragged a dagger across my ribs. As I leaned back onto the bed, I felt her move with me.
"I'm uh, not familiar," I managed to say.
"One of his unfinished paintings of a woman went missing from a little gallery near Brescia about nine years ago."
My first date with Artie. About two weeks after my first sitting with her.
I had made a passive comment about Freud and the way his women were splayed in some of his work during our contemporary art class. Artie countered my criticism. We argued back and forth until the professor interrupted us to move on.
In a matter of hours, Artie had scrounged up a fake passport for me and we were catching a red-eye into Milan to see an exclusive exhibition. Freud's paintings made me even more uncomfortable in person. Uneasy. The way they had them arranged in the palazzo made the flesh of the subjects even heavier.
As Artie guided me through to her favorite piece, she barely took her eyes off me. I thought she was still just dead-set on proving me wrong until she admitted that night that she was jealous of my reaction. That she hoped she could make people feel that way about her own work someday. And that she knew I was right about Freud, but she couldn't feel it herself.
I guess I wanted to try to stimulate that reaction for her by offering her a new intimate perspective. What else do you get a girl who can practically afford anything in the world?
That night, she broke up with Cora.
Desirae's knee sunk into the mattress between my legs, pulling me back to the present. My heart started to race again as moonlight carved out her outline, hovering above me.
"You know," I murmured, sitting up closer to her, "if people realized how easy it actually is to break into some of these galleries, it'd kill the mysterious allure of art heists."
"I'm sure that will work great in your defense." Her words were hot on my neck, teasing my ear, but I was barely listening to what she was saying.
"My defense?" I echoed, sliding my fingers along the back of her leg to coax her closer. She obliged, inching farther onto the bed, kneeling over me.
"For when the U.S. decides to go after you now." Her hand caught mine as I stopped at the hem of her shorts to actually comprehend what she was saying. "You're on my side of the bed, by the way."
The smile fell from my face as I stared up at her through the darkness. "You think they'll do that? Wouldn't that be like, a huge dis to France?"
"They could if they wanted to."
My eyes finally adjusted to the darkness and I could see she was serious. Sliding out from beneath her, I scooted over to the other side of the bed. My chest started to tighten and I could no longer ignore the throbbing in my head. I downed the Tylenol on the nightstand and chugged the glass of water.
"More importantly, they know you didn't act alone," Desirae added as she slipped beneath the covers. She propped her pillows up against the headboard to look over at me. "It's not like France put much effort into finding your accomplice. But we all know why that is"
"Well, seems like a waste of time for the U.S. to go after Artie now, seeing as she's—" I was going to say six feet under, then remembered what Rafael had said at the beginning of the night, about her 'not exactly' being in the ground. I had been so distracted with getting to Landon that I never got to ask him what he meant. Did he know something his father didn't? I really needed to talk to him. But once again, I'd lost my phone. I turned back towards Desirae with a different thought. "Are you able to pull foreign death certificates?"
"Depends." There was slight hesitation in her voice, maybe even suspicion, but her eyes softened when they found mine through the dark. She reached up to her necklace and spun the wedding band. "They don't ever say much, Kirby. If you're still looking for closure, I don't know that it'll help."
"I'm not really sure what I'm looking for." As I slid beneath the sheets next to her, I debated whether or not to tell her about Artie's body.
"Well, I know what it's like to cling to mementos," Desirae said, "to try and make sense of the past, but you can't let it control you. You've been given a second chance. Don't allow her to hold you captive any longer."
I held back a laugh. "And how's that working for you?"
She sighed. "Fair enough." Letting go of the band, she sunk lower into the bed. "I'll see what I can do."
As I turned away towards the ceiling, Colonel Mustard jumped up on my side. I bit back a groan as his thick paws sunk into my bruised ribs. Making himself at home, he began kneading my stomach, but I missed having a cat so much I just stroked his orange fur while he purred away. Desirae scooted closer to lift him off of me.
"He's okay," I insisted, rolling over to spoon the little chonk. "It hardly hurts now."
"You have tears in your eyes."
I wasn't sure what was worse, her seeing me in physical pain or emotional. I denied both. "I have allergies."
Colonel Mustard settled on the space between us, content to have two hands petting him at the same time. Desirae didn't scoot back, her legs were just inches away from mine. As I continued to pet the cat, my fingers brushed softly over hers where they had gone still on his back. She didn't pull away or inch back from me. I thought maybe she had fallen asleep until she finally spoke again.
"Colonel Mustard was my husband's cat."
Was.
I guess I had been right about her being widowed like me. "Shit. I'm sorry for being a dick about asking earlier."
"It's all right. I wasn't exactly being sensitive about Artemisia."
"Can I ask what happened?"
Colonel Mustard started purring again as her hand slowly passed over mine on his back. She continued to pet him and after a moment, I was ready to apologize for asking, but then she looked back up at me. "When the Cassini's began revamping the neighborhood, it basically started a war with the local Black gang. My husband was deep undercover with them and should've been yanked from his case months prior, but his SAC wasn't ready to pull the plug. There was a shootout at the old strip club behind the theater and the Cassini's—likely Calogero from what I've been able to piece together, took my husband. I only ever got a picture of his body."
It all really was personal for her. "So you're not just trying to take the Cassini's down, you're looking for revenge."
"It's not revenge. It's holding the right people accountable. Nailing Calò is a start, but he just does what he's told." Her hand slid away from the cat to pull the sheet up around her shoulder. "So as guilty as you are for crimes I can only imagine, I have no interest in you."
"Geez, you coulda at least waited til morning to break my heart," I softly laughed. "No interest in me, sure..."
"At the moment, at least."
Her smile flashed bright in the dark, but as it faded, I began to backtrack every conversation we had tonight. From her interest in Artemisia and Rafael to her suspicions about Gabriel's death and his body down to the passion she had for her forensic work. I realized then that she wasn't solely seeking accountability either. She was literally looking for her husband in every unidentified skull that came her way.
But she had only seen a photo of his body.
"Your husband—he could still be alive though, right? You never saw his body?"
"He would've found some way to reach out to me," she said softly. "I don't feel him with me anymore."
I laid back into my pillow and wondered what that kind of loss felt like. I still felt Artie everywhere I went, especially now that I was back home and not hiding away in Favignana in her little boat where I'd actually been the last year. I made a promise then as I was falling asleep to come clean to Rafael in the morning.
And maybe Artie would stop haunting me.
Sometime before dawn, I felt Desirae's watch buzzing close to me. She stealthily slipped out of the bed, using the light of her phone to guide her through the room. Through my cracked eyes, the blue light disappeared down the hall. Drifting in and out of sleep, I could hear irritation in her voice as it echoed from the living room, but whatever she was angry about, I couldn't make out, and the heaviness of my eyelids ultimately won.