Page 7 of Smoke Screen
Focus.
A job like this would put BARS on another level. A seriously big level.
And he wanted it. To come out of the shadows and maybe, for once, get credit for doing something meaningful. To look at men like Blakely, who considered the Blackwells nothing but glorified thieves, and flip those fuckers off.
“Jesus,” he said, “I should have brought a drink with me.”
“You and I both.”
He faced Maddy again. “Who knows the queen’s jewels are gone?”
“The Center’s board, my boss, the director of security, President and Mrs. Thompson, the FBI agents working the case, and the two of us. Baltimore police responded to the initial call, but as far as I know, they weren’t briefed on the exact items stolen. The FBI took over the scene within minutes. By now, some of our employees may know.”
What the hell did that mean? They either knew or they didn’t? “May know?”
“We boarded up the exhibit space as soon as the FBI processed it, but someone could have seen it before it was sealed. The security director may have told his staff. They’re a tight group.”
“But, as far as you know, the media doesn’t know about the queen’s pieces?”
“No. We’ve told the press that the queen’s jewels were safe. We lied. For obvious reasons, we need to get the pieces back quickly.”
Talk about an international incident. And, hell, from what Phin knew about the queen’s personal collection, which wasn’t a lot, the historical and monetary value made the pieces difficult to insure.
“What kind of loss are we talking about?”
“For both the Pierres and the queen’s collection? A lot. Among the missing items are three tiaras. One of them is valued at one point two million. The second tiara has forty-seven vertical diamond strands. The diamonds alone are worth over a million dollars. We’re estimating the third tiara at nearly a million. Then there are two brooches, a diamond bracelet, and a triple-strand diamond necklace.”
“Did the Thompson Center insure them?”
Maddy let out a soft grunt. “I didn’t know it until yesterday, but no. It was a calculated risk that came down to paying enormous insurance fees the Center couldn’t afford.”
“The board gambled and lost.”
“Yes. As crazy as this will sound, the money wouldn’t matter. It’s the historical value that’s impossible to measure.”
Phin shook his head. “My mother would call this a humdinger.”
“Will you help us?”
BARS was good, but were theythisgood? It’d sure be fun to find out. “Let me take it back to my family. I’ll also reach out to my brother at the FBI. I’ll fall through the floor if he’s willing to give us any intel. But now that we’ve been approached by the Thompsons, and given the high profile, the feds may want all hands on deck.”
And wouldn’t that be interesting? Big brother, who’d walked away from all things BARS to be a straitlaced FBI agent, might want their help. Again.
“I highly doubt that,” Maddy said. “They haven’t exactly been forthcoming.”
Phin glanced over at her. “I guess it depends on how bad they want to find the queen’s stash.”
Phin rolledout of bed at 7:15, a minor miracle since he’d arrived home after two and then stared at his bedroom ceiling for ninety minutes, thinking about the tremendous opportunity laid at his feet.
It took every argument he could conjure not to walk down that long hallway in the middle of the night to Zeke’s door and bang on it.
Sometimes, living with his family in the mammoth Friary they’d converted to a multiunit home, gave him hives.
And, hello? His mother in residence didn’t offer a ton of privacy when it came to bringing women home. He’d gotten used to either going to the woman’s place or making use of the condo BARS leased in Charlotte.
There were times, though, like now, when having his family close made life easier.
This Thompson deal, if Zeke agreed, would be a total freaking win for BARS.
