SIXTEEN

“Go back?” William said, half an hour later, across the desk in his undercover office.

His tired eyes had grown more and more narrow as Monk told him what had happened back at the mansion, and now his voice was downright hostile.

“You want to go back to Thomas Franklin?” William shook his head. “You’ve got to be crazy.”

Hearing the words—the same words he’d been saying to himself in the limo all the way back to the District—Monk had to admit that William could be right. But that didn’t mean he was about to agree.

“Do I want to go back? Hell no, I don’t.” Those were the words William would want to hear. “I have to, is what I’m saying.”

“But you saw the Madonna … you just told me you saw it.”

Monk looked away for a moment. “I just can’t be sure. Franklin’s guards were all over me. The security camera was panning too fast. Five seconds … I had maybe five seconds.” Monk shrugged. “I can’t sit here and tell you I’m certain.”

“But it’s possible, right? The secret room was definitely a stash.”

“It was private, that’s for damned sure … And it was certainly secret, the way the guards rushed me out of there. Hell, I suppose you could call it a stash.” Monk hesitated. “But what difference does it make? I’m almost certain I saw a Madonna, but I can’t tell you for sure it was Lyman Davidson’s da Vinci. Not sure enough to go after a man as connected as Thomas Franklin.”

William looked away, toward the window to his left. Monk followed his gaze. At two-thirty in the morning the sky was lit by a moon partially obscured by a thin patchwork of clouds, their edges silvery against the darkness. The sort of night sky you see in the opening credits of a horror movie, Monk couldn’t help thinking. Add a clap or two of thunder, you’d have the whole thing. He turned back to see William watching him. Monk leaned forward in his chair.

“It won’t be long until Franklin knows about what happened with me in his vault, if he doesn’t already know. His security people might wait overnight to make their report, but we can’t count on that. They’ll identify me as Derek Towne, but Franklin will put it together. He’ll remember Lisa and me from the reception line.”

“So let him stew. We wanted him to know you were at the party, and you made damned sure of that.” William paused. “Actually, your getting caught upstairs might work to our advantage. Franklin’s got to be wondering what’s coming next.”

“What’s coming next has got to be me. Straight up, straight into his face.” Monk heard his voice quicken. “You want him to stew, give him even more reason to. Give him a chance to make a mistake. If your mole is telling the truth, if Franklin’s really buying stolen art from Sung Kim, he has to be scared shitless about what happened with me. He has to be contacting her. By going back, I’ll make it even more necessary for him to talk to her.”

“The Madonna won’t be there, Monk.” William sounded like a tired schoolteacher with a particularly dull child. “If the mole is right about him, Franklin’s already moved the Madonna somewhere we’ll never find it.”

“But we can’t know that for sure unless I go back, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. We can’t get a FISA wire with what I think I saw, and we’ve got to have the wire. It’s the only way we’ll ever get to Sung Kim.”

“Carter will never go for it.”

“Then I’m afraid we’ve got a problem.”

“With you there’s always a problem.”

“The Madonna robbery is still my case. Regardless of your Sung Kim, I’m still the case agent on Lyman Davidson’s da Vinci. I may have been ordered to stay away as long as you were working Trevor Blaine, but that ended when you took your FISA wire down. Now it’s back to business as usual, and that means I keep looking for the Madonna. Thomas Franklin is my best lead. With you or without you, I’m going back to him.”

William sat back in his chair. “You’re bluffing. I’ve played enough poker with you to know.”

Monk raised his eyebrows but said nothing, happy to stand pat with the cards in his hand. The silence grew longer, and Monk wasn’t about to break it.

“You made a deal,” William said at last. “You agreed to the deal.”

“When do we talk to Carter?”

“Goddammit, Monk, I told him this would happen if we cut you in.” William leaned forward. “But this time you’re going to lose. You pull this shit with the director of NSA, you’re going to—”

Monk raised his hand like a traffic cop. “Forty-eight hours. With Philip Carter’s permission or without it, I go back to Franklin in two days.”

They hadn’t talked about Bethany Randall.

But Monk knew they would.

On his way back to Lisa at the loft—and despite his tired brain—he had no trouble bringing up the images of that night in the hot tub, the worst part of the night, at any rate. The quick jolt of humiliation at getting caught … Bethany’s leap off his mostly naked body as William stood over the two of them with a gin and tonic in his hand. The shouting, all three of them yelling, mostly a slurred and drunken mixture of threats, apologies, and promises. Then William throwing him and Bethany out into the night … and Bethany’s desire to keep the party going at her house. Finally, Monk’s better angels coming to the rescue and taking him home.

Christ.

He and William hadn’t talked about it yet, but it would happen.

Sooner or later it had to happen.