"Well, aren't you a sight for sore eyes?”
He took a seat next to her, his body warm and safe and his presence as magnetic as she remembered. When their eyes met, she instantly knew why the stranger in the hospital chapel had felt so comforting. His piercing blue eyes and tanned skin had reminded her of him.
"Hello, Ben," she greeted him, her voice gentle and full of emotion.
Their eyes remained locked for what seemed like an eternity, allowing them to return to the last time they were together, to remember what they once shared.
When a small group of school kids and their teacher entered the room behind them, the commotion pulled them back into the present and Jorja spoke first.
"How have you been?"
A small smile broke across his face.
"You mean since you broke my heart and disappeared?"
"I had no choice, Ben."
"I know. You did what you had to and life went on." He scanned her face. "You look just the same, Georgina."
"So do you, Ben." She scanned the room then continued. "No one calls me that anymore though. It's Jorja now, Jorja Rose." She waited for his reaction.
"Jorja Rose. Suits you. That explains why I could never find you." His voice cracked and his body suddenly tensed up.
There was nothing she could say that would fix what was already done, so she allowed the silence to heal what was broken, and turned her gaze to the painting.
"This was our first," he broke the silence. "I remember it as if it were yesterday. We were just kids, but oh, that thrill."
"We were lucky. If it were not for Mr. Evans, we would have ended up in juvie. I still don't know why he covered for us."
"He liked you, almost as much as he liked this place. Besides, he was close to retirement. He probably saw it as a way to cash in on his retirement sooner, I reckon."
Ben turned to study her face.
"Do you miss it?"
Jorja tensed up. She knew the answer to that question all too well.
"I do, more than I should. But it's been twenty years and a lot has changed since then."
She found him looking down at her left hand.
"That has never changed."
It was her turn to look at his hand. A narrow white imprint where a ring had once been traced the tanned skin around his ring finger. It was as if someone had stabbed a hot poker through her heart.
"This was a mistake." She got up to leave, unable to fight the betrayal that threatened to make itself known in her eyes.
"Georgina... Jorja, wait! It's not what you think."
"I shouldn't have come, Ben, it's not fair to pull you back in. I'm sorry."
But as she headed for the door, she froze when her eyes found the man from the train entering the exhibition room. He had seen her too and started moving around the group of kids who stood huddled together around their teacher in the middle of the room.
"I'm guessing this is why you called me," Ben said quietly next to her.
She didn't need to answer. He could see it in her eyes as she turned to face him again.
Ben took both her hands in his. "He's not going to do anything in here, not with those kids around anyway."
"That might be, Ben, but there's only one way out of here and he's not going to just let us leave."
"What do you know of him?"
"Nothing, I spotted him on the train for the first time. But he isn't as old as he appears. That much I do know."
Ben's eyes revealed something familiar and she instantly knew what he was suggesting.
"You can't be serious, Ben."
"How sure are you that there is only one way out of here?"
He was teasing her with his handsome smile and the twinkle in his crystal blue eyes.
"It's been two decades, Ben. It won't work, not to mention that we aren't kids anymore."
Ben's smile widened.
"Do you see another way out of here? Besides, from where I'm standing, you're what, maybe five pounds heavier? We can totally do this."
She hated when he was right.
"Good. Now, I happen to know the trigger is still in exactly the same spot. One would think they would have upgraded the security system by now, but like a few other things, nothing has changed. So I guess today is our lucky day. Ready?"
"Ready."
She wasn't but it was irrelevant anyway. Her body simply couldn't resist. She craved the adrenaline like the desert craved the rain, and she couldn't stop it.
She glanced back at the old man who stood firm, guarding the exit door, his hand under his bomber jacket as if he held something in place.
Every fiber in her body was suddenly alive with excitement, just like it used to be when the two of them were on a job.
Her eyes found the floor tile roughly two feet to the left of the Sunflowers painting and she stepped on top of it. She heard the near-silent click and nodded to Ben that it had worked and that it was his turn. His hand reached to touch the spot on the wall to the right of the painting, then pushed down firm as they listened out for the second click. The sound came just as it had all those years ago. Excitement surged through their veins, their eyes fixed on each other in an almost trance-like state. Behind them the old man was moving in on his target, ready to finish what he had been instructed to do.
But Jorja and Ben were undeterred. She would have to be quick. Ben's eyes confirmed her thoughts. Jorja felt that familiar rush flood her body as she simultaneously lifted her feet and leaped onto the tile next to Ben. The alarm sounded loudly in the room and seconds later the wall swallowed both of them along with Van Gogh's painting, depositing them into the small safe room on the other side of the wall.
There was not another second to spare as their bodies squeezed up against the wall in the much too narrow chute. As if it were only yesterday, they were still perfectly in accord and she already had her foot atop his cradled hands that lifted her through the vent opening above their heads. Once inside the duct, she reached down to help Ben up from the chimney-like space. The air duct was smaller than it had seemed when they were young but they had done it. They crawled through the space, twenty yards further then turned down another vent until it opened up into a storage cupboard positioned on the other end of the historic building. She watched as Ben reached into his back pocket to retrieve two metal tools that he quickly used to unlock the door. It took three more minutes before they exited the back of the building and escaped through the service entrance into St. Martin Street. Behind them, they heard the police sirens rush toward the gallery as they disappeared into a shopping alley that led to Charing Cross station. Once they were underground and out of sight, they stopped for the first time while they waited for the next train.
Excitement surged through their bodies; their cheeks flushed and their bodies were on fire.
"I cannot believe we got away with it!" Jorja said, her smile so wide she did not think it was still possible.
"Twenty-odd years and they're still running the same safety triggers. Unbelievable," Ben echoed.
"Oh, no you didn't! You didn't know, did you? You guessed. Tell me you didn’t, Ben!"
"It worked, didn't it?" He laughed, amused that she had caught him in his bluff.
"I can't believe you tricked me into thinking you knew it hadn't changed. What if they’d caught us, huh? What if they had changed the security?"
He pulled her into his arms, tucked an unruly lock of hair behind her ear.
"I would've never let that happen, Georgina. We were born for this. You said it yourself. You miss it. Come on, I saw your face just now. You loved it. Just like the old days. We can do it again, Georgina, make up for the time we missed."
When his face came in to kiss her, she pushed herself away and turned her back on him before she turned to face him again.
"No, we can't, Ben. Too much has changed. I have a new life, a safe life, at least until recently. We have moved on. What we had back then was great, the best years of my life. But you have moved on too. You are married now, and that changes everything."
Ben shook his head with amusement.
"There it is again, the same flaw you've always had. What was the first thing I taught you, huh? Never. Assume. Anything."
Jorja's brow creased in a curious frown as she searched for how she had assumed wrongly.
"Was, Georgina, was. I was married, a long time ago. When you suddenly upped and left my heart was broken. I looked everywhere for you, gave up after eight years. I couldn't work anymore. My mind wasn't in it. So, I started to drink, heavily, hoping to drown my heartache. That's when I met my wife, in the local pub. She ran the bar, got me to an AA meeting. I have been sober ever since. Two years ago she died, caught in the crosshairs of a nasty pub brawl when she worked an event in South London. I never shed one single tear. And that's when it hit me. I was her husband; I should have mourned her, except I couldn't even bring myself to cry at the funeral. The hole I had in my heart was the one you had left behind, not her. It has always been you, Georgina. I have never gotten over you."