Maddy and Ethan had left the living room a few minutes earlier, looking for a way to the second floor. The grand staircase had seemed too obvious; climbing it would be an act of blatant trespass. Although she didn’t know where she was going, Maddy led the way, not wanting Ethan to assume control.
As they headed for the rear of the house, searching for a way up, she glanced back at Ethan, who was following close behind. Her feelings toward him were shifting rapidly, and she wasn’t sure what form they would ultimately take. She was surprised by the possibility that she was attracted to someone so cerebral and detached, qualities that she had pointedly avoided in men, until now.
At the moment, Ethan seemed inseparable from his usual rational self. “If there’s a servants’ staircase, it’s probably near the kitchen. Or the dining room. Didn’t we pass one earlier?”
Maddy remembered the table flanked by Windsor chairs. “You’re right.” She pivoted, turning back the way she had come. “If you knew it was there, why didn’t you say anything?”
Ethan grinned. “I was following you. You seemed to know what you were doing.”
They retraced their steps to the dining room. As Ethan had guessed, a door beside a china cabinet led to a flight of stairs. Ascending, Maddy found herself in an empty corridor. “Now what?”
“He’ll want to keep his art close,” Ethan said. “Near the master bedroom, maybe.”
Maddy saw the same challenging look in his eyes as before. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“If I were alone, I’d have turned back by now. With two of us, it’s less suspicious.”
Maddy saw his point. A man or woman wandering alone through the mansion would look strange, but a couple had a convenient motivation. Smiling at the unspoken implication, she advanced down the corridor so that Ethan would not see her face. She had picked the direction at random, and was surprised to find herself, a few seconds later, at an actual bedroom door. It was ajar. Turning back, she looked at Ethan, who was one step behind her. “You really want to keep going?”
Instead of responding, Ethan reached forward and pushed the door open. “Why not?”
Maddy’s smile, already halfway formed, faltered at the thought that they were testing one another, trying to see how far the other would go. So far, it had been amusing, but she wasn’t sure where it would end. If they found the art collection, the escalation would stop there. But if they failed, she had a feeling that the evening would conclude in some other way.
She entered the bedroom. At her side, Maddy felt Ethan go quiet, as if he, too, sensed that the mood had changed. Five minutes ago, they had been embedded in the party, talking within earshot of the other guests, but now they were alone. Something about the bedroom itself, with its visible signs of a couple’s private life, made the situation seem even more charged.
Maddy, feeling pressed up against the awkwardness of the moment, decided to push straight through it. She went farther into the room, acting more boldly than she felt. A few steps ahead, a door led to the bathroom, while an adjacent door was closed. She was moving toward the second door, wondering if she was reckless enough to open it, when her attention was caught by something on the nightstand. Going to the bedside table, she picked it up. It was a cell phone.
Ethan came closer. The amusement was gone from his face. “What are you doing?”
As she looked at the phone, not listening, Maddy was struck by another thought. If this was Archvadze’s phone, it would contain his address book, as well as a record of his calls. This was information that the fund would love to know, and it would only take a second to retrieve it.
Maddy slid a finger across the touchpad of the phone. The interface was sleek and intuitive, allowing her to find the call history with ease. “Give me a second. I want to check something.”
“Wait,” Ethan said. “Searching the house is one thing, but this is crossing the line—”
Ignoring him, she scrolled through the list of incoming calls. The first few were to contacts with Georgian names, a blur of consonants and patronyms. Failing to see anyone she recognized, she was about to switch to outgoing calls when Ethan, tired of being ignored, plucked the phone from her hands. He closed the call history, his finger moving swiftly across the touchpad, and put the phone back on the nightstand. “We need to get out of here.”
She was about to tell him to mind his own business when she heard a door open behind her. When she turned, she saw a stranger emerging from the door of the study. He was slender, dressed in a brown suit, his face framed by a pair of black plastic glasses. A present wrapped in gift paper was tucked under his right arm. The paper, she saw, was covered in roses.
When the man in the brown suit saw Ethan and Maddy, his eyes widened briefly, then narrowed. Before either of them could speak or react, the man reached down and drew a revolver.
“On the floor,” the man said, his words touched by a Slavic accent. “Both of you.”
Ethan seemed caught off guard by the unreality of the situation. “Are you kidding?”
The man pointed the revolver at Maddy’s head. “On the floor now. Nose to the rug.”
Maddy knelt, her eyes on the gun. Even as she lowered herself to the ground, she was overwhelmed by a sense of the absurd. Through her dress, the pile of the rug pressed up against her knees.
“Lie down on your faces.” The man moved forward into the bedroom. “Quickly.”
Maddy obeyed, resting her face on the clean nap of the carpet. Ethan lay down next to her. He seemed on the verge of laughter, as if he couldn’t believe it either, but there was a grain of real fear in his eyes. Then she felt the pressure of five cool fingers, and realized that he had taken her by the hand.
The man in the brown suit seemed to hesitate, as if weighing what to do next. At last, he headed for the door. “Count to one hundred. If you move before then, I’ll be waiting for you—”
He left the bedroom, closing the door behind him. Maddy remained on the floor, her heart thudding against the carpet. She knew exactly what had been inside that package. Part of her wanted to share this insight with Ethan, whose face was only a few inches from her own, but in the end, she said nothing. Before long, she knew, they would need to confront what had happened, and both of their lives would change, but for now, she could think of nothing else but his hand in hers.