"The Storm On The Sea of Galilea" by Rembrandt van Rijn (1633), stolen 1990 - value $140 million

Chapter Four

The questioning was long. When Catarina was finally satisfied, at least for the time being, she left to question others like a bloodhound catching a scent.

I was thrilled for the break.

August returned shortly after she left, bearing coffee like he'd done only twelve hours before. He knew my coffee orders: chai lattes in the colder months, iced macchiatos in the warmer months. August had known me since I was fourteen and he was sixteen, and we'd reveled in the sanctuary of coffee breaks together more times than I could count. We'd escape to the holy grounds of coffee shops when we needed to get away, seeking refuge when it was all too much.

He informed me his parents were on their way before handing me the holy grail—an oversized chai latte.

"Thank you," I said gratefully. I welcomed the warm spice after Catarina's questioning; her detailed investigation had opened a dam of chills to my soul. Catarina was polite, but it was what seemed to be thinly veiled underneath the politeness that unnerved me.

With a sip and a jolt, I realized August was looking carefully at me over the rim of his own cup, scrutinizing me for any quivers after my time with Catarina.

"You look like it didn't go well. Was it that bad?"

I feebly shrugged, looking away. The only thing I said in return was the only thing I could scramble for. "This whole thing is bad." 

August paused, slumping slightly and denting the warmth my spiced tea had fought to return.

"Yeah, it is," he murmured quietly.

He looked exhausted, and it felt just like it had in my office right after everything happened. Both of us clung to oversized coffees, this time from a real shop instead of an employee lounge, and both of us tired beyond what a night of rest could heal. We had a long journey ahead of us. It hadn't gotten any shorter in the past few hours.

"How are you?" I nudged.

August had been tipping his cup back when I spoke, and he took a long drink before answering.

"Fine." He ran a hand through his hair, catching it on hidden tangles between loose curls.

With my own careful analysis, I only hummed in response, not believing him. August had taken care of everyone around him his entire life, and that hadn't changed. Right then, he was focused on the museum, his family, and finding a way to support everyone through the chaos. I knew he'd let the stress push him into the ground if he wasn't careful. While I'd help him avoid it, my actions would happen behind the scenes as usual. That was us; we supported each other in the whirlwinds and the hurricanes. Right then, we happened to be in a tornado.

"I should go. My parents will be here any minute and they'll want to head straight to the board meeting." August cracked his neck and shuffled towards the door. He turned with a sour expression and a pointed finger. "Don't let the dick ask you anything while I'm gone."

I grinned. "Who, detective grouch? I can handle him."

"I know you can. Doesn't mean he's not a dick," August muttered back.

"Did you two know each other? Before today, I mean."

I watched August shift on his feet as a dark look crossed his brow. His word choice felt careful, even purposefully deliberate with his pauses and intonations. "I knew of him, but I'd never met him before. His reputation precedes him, about both his skill and his personality—apparently, it's all true."

"Must be some reputation," I replied just as carefully. I was curious, but it wasn't the time to interrogate. So I beat back the questions that threatened to escape and resolved to do my own detective work.

"Yeah, it is. Stay away from him," August warned immediately. I only nodded half-heartedly. "I mean it, El. He's belligerent."

"Yeah, yeah, stay away from the big bad wolf. I got it."

August huffed and gave me a look before going out the door, quickly disappearing back into the real world. He was leaving the tornado shelter, and in a way it was just like the movie. The moment he stepped out, swept up into the cyclone, he was in a world of color and beauty and hidden danger. There was color and beauty everywhere in Whitehill.

Even the furniture was vibrant where it scattered.

The plush purple chair I was still draped across in Geraldine's office was comfortable, and I felt no desire to leave. She wouldn't mind, and I didn't know what to do next. I felt like I was in a state of suspension, watching the world rush by too fast, unable to free myself until given instructions. I needed explicit directions; it was how I thrived, especially in moments like the one I was currently in.

I finished my coffee, staring at the slanted scrawl spelling August's name on the side and comforted by all the ways he'd managed to stand by me that day. But not just then, everyday. August and I had met at a luncheon our families forced us to go to when we were still bright-faced teens, and he'd been my unshakable friend since then. It'd been one of those luncheons, where the laughs were too loud and the smiles too stretched. Or rather, the wallets too filled and the motives too layered. It hadn't been the first luncheon I'd ever attended, but it was by far my favorite. In truth, my family had attended events like that more than I'd wanted in my lifetime. The Vaycker family didn't come close to the Whitehills, but I'd be naïve to think we were anything but upper class.

That was the interesting thing about wealth. My family was more comfortable than we really needed to be, but the Whitehills were even more formidable, and their influence was even heavier. There was always someone to make another feel like a small fish in a big pond; always someone with more money. It could blind, motivate, and cause want for more. It could make one fail to realize there were even smaller fishes, and sometimes one was the big fish. The pond wasn't always as big as it seemed. Sometimes one got to be the shark; other times nothing more than a guppy.

I'd met a lot of people even wealthier than my family who'd stare and blink if informed they were well-off. They didn't feel that well-off; not when there was someone else with more money, more items, more wealth. They weren't privileged, they'd say, because someone else was. Someone else had more.

It was always about having more.

I think that was why August and I had gravitated towards each other that day. We'd wanted to be kids in a place that only wanted to dress us up and fill our pockets. Now we were adults. We walked that fine line of being grateful for what we had, guilty for what we didn't earn, and angry when what we had wasn't seen as ours. Did we ever really earn anything? If we worked hard our entire lives, did that make us any different from those who didn't, if all of us already started so close to the finish line? Did it make a difference if I tried to distance myself?

I wasn't sure. And I would never ask. I couldn't, because it was my golden burden to bear. It was a rather cumbersome sense of self to carry, but at the end of the day it was still born from privilege, and it silenced us. We shut our mouths, knowing it didn't matter if we choked on silver spoons when so many others went hungry.

I stewed in that swirl of moral and financial responsibility. It felt both incredibly long and impossibly short when my weighty musing ended. It must've only been a few minutes, but the distracted thoughts had spiraled so quickly, and I'd been swept up faster than I realized. I was thankful for the distraction when a loud voice called down the hall.

"Geraldine!" the voice sung. It was confident and smooth as it echoed down to the office. The volume was entirely too loud for a museum, but that didn't matter much that day; there was an obvious lack of guests around.

"Geral—" the voice cut off abruptly as the woman swung into the doorframe, seeing my figure half-risen from the chair. "You're not Geraldine."

"No," I laughed. "I'm not."

I stood up the rest of the way, just in time for the woman to make her way to me.

"Well, it's still good to see you, Els."

Lena yanked me into a hug, one that'd never be caught on camera. It was too personal and too close, decidedly not one of the polite and gentle grasps allowed on screen. It was a Lena Loretti hug, the real Lena Loretti not seen on display anywhere else.

"Lena, what are you doing here?" I asked into her shoulder. Lena sighed, let me go, and stepped back.

She looked as good as she always did, even and especially in her casual clothes. Her blonde hair was loosely allowed to fall down her back, and her face looked only minimally made up. It was the off-season; she had a break from cameras following her around to calibrate perfectly balanced drama. Except for paparazzi, that is, but every celebrity knew how to mostly avoid them. With paps, it was just a matter of choosing whether to let themselves be seen, deciding what level of normalcy to try for, and determining what they were willing to sacrifice for privacy. Lena was good at avoiding them when she wanted to. It was a skill bred from her upbringing and refined with experience.

"I'm here to check on all of you." She took her sunglasses off her head and shoved them into her bag, right next to a dark ball cap and a mutely toned scarf. "I heard what happened."

"Geraldine's in a meeting, and August just left to meet his parents."

Lena nodded in response, collapsing into the other purple chair with a relaxed huff. I followed suit, resettling the one I'd previously vacated.

While August was a close childhood friend, Lena was mostly a casual childhood acquaintance. When it came to the circles of the upper class, one was an acquaintance with pretty much everyone. It was really only a few years ago, when Lena was tucked under Geraldine's wing next to me, that the two of us really got to know each other. Geraldine had a knack for expanding her nest when someone needed it the most, and Lena had needed it. When her career had boomed and her family had fizzled, she'd needed help that Geraldine was skilled at providing; she'd needed the safety of family, found or otherwise.

Lena absentmindedly twirled hair around her fingers, tugging at the highlighted strands. "I wanted to talk to Geraldine about more security if she's interested."

"More?"

"Just in case they come back."

"We have Owen and all the guards." I shook my head, tugging at a string on my shirt with my own restless fingers. "They're installing more security systems today, too."

Lena shrugged, slapping my hand away from ruining my clothes. "It couldn't hurt. I just thought I'd mention them to Geraldine. They're really good, and honestly, I trust them. They're the security I hired back then."

I nibbled my lip, seeing the dark cloud that quickly crossed Lena's eyes. I wasn't lying when I said I'd never seen a bad paparazzi photo of Lena. She had a natural beauty only heightened on camera, and it shined brightly through any lens. It wasn't a surprise, of course, because she was a well-known TV star, and blessed with genes kissed by Hollywood. The only paparazzi photos that weren't controlled, or weren't allowed, were from that day.

It was a sore spot for her. I imagined it would be for quite some time. It wasn't something easy to brush off; I honestly prayed it never would be. Lena had experienced a few stalkers and mega-obsessed fans over her career, but none were as bad or as crazy as the one that'd taken her dogs a few months before.

It'd started small. Lena didn't get her fan mail herself, and it wasn't uncommon to get a few unhinged letters here and there. As such, she hadn't known when it'd started; her team had sorted them out like they'd always done. It wasn't until shortly after a dark van crashed into the front gate of her home that Lena knew something was up. At first, she'd thought it was a hit-and-run accident—then letters started being slipped through the gate.

She'd immediately requested increased neighborhood patrols, let her network and police know, and hired a separate home security company with on-call services. She'd done everything right, and it had pissed the stalker off; enough to corner her poor dog walker and snatch Lena's two lovable pitties. The paparazzi caught wind of it, and Lena had been blindsided before police could inform her. Mid-interview, and televised live, she'd been asked about it while answering questions from the audience. The distraught photos of Lena racing home were the only 'bad' paparazzi photos there were of her, but I didn't consider them bad—only cruel.

Luckily, two days later, her dogs Bonchi and Pepperjack were found safe and sound. She'd called in another security company when the threats escalated following their disappearance, and they'd actually helped find the crazy asshole who did it. Her sweet rescue girls would never hurt a fly, and Lena had been beside herself when they disappeared; to say she was grateful for their return was an understatement. They were the gentlest dogs I'd ever met. In my experience, most pitbulls were only vicious when trained that way, and BonBon and Pepper were evidence of that. They were spoiled couch potatoes, not aggressive beasts, and there were a lot of things I was more afraid of than the two lazy rescues that ran her home.

BonBon and Pepper were back to spending their days lounging in her yard and taking up her couch because of the hard work of that security company. I wasn't sure what the company's name was, but I was grateful.

"Lena, what are you doing here?" Geraldine's surprised voice interrupted, saving me from scrambling for a response. Lena shot up, quickly crossing to the elderly woman and pulling her into a gentle embrace.

"I heard what happened. Are you okay?" Lena asked, urgent and slightly muffled. Geraldine patted her back with a chuckle.

"Fine, hon, I wasn't here when it happened."

Lena pulled back, concern still clear in her gaze. "I know, but that painting meant a lot to you."

"It still does, wherever it is. I only hope it's intact and safe." Geraldine turned to me, before glancing between us.

"You girls weren't getting into trouble now, were you? There's enough chaos going on without you two introducing more," she admonished. Both Lena and I spluttered our protests, but she wasn't wrong. At least not in the past. Lena had a knack for trouble, and I had a knack for somehow getting involved; it was apparently a special skill I had honed over the years. In fact, August had been our saving grace more than once.

"Of course not, Gerrie." Lena grinned with razzle.

"We would never," I promised with corresponding dazzle.

"Right," she hummed. She didn't look convinced. Rather, we earned ourselves the look specific to suspicious grandmothers. It was enough to make us fidget. "Well, I need to grab something before returning to the meeting. My son and daughter-in-law just arrived."

Geraldine crossed to her desk, pulling out a few files from her drawers.

"Oh! Here, I was going to give this to you." Lena startled and stepped forward, hurriedly digging into her purse. She dug out a crumpled business card and thrust it towards Geraldine, who accepted it with a raised brow. I peered over at the card, staring at the glossy embossed words across the front.

"Wait, that company? Greystone?" I wracked my brain for information, the name triggering some haze of memory long discarded. I hadn't known the name of the company she'd hired back then, but I did know that name. My memory finally trilled, satisfied as it yanked the missing information from the recycle bin in my brain. "Isn't that the company that just had some big scandal?"

I remembered a news article or two about them and plenty of news articles about the politicians involved. I hated politics, but it was hard to avoid when it trended on Twitter or became a hot topic of discussion in the media. Even if I hadn't cared, I remembered how that particular piece of news had rippled. From political battlegrounds to court rooms in D.C., the aftermath of the scandal their ex-CEO had been embroiled in had added fuel to an already volatile situation. It'd included a wide range of topics that typically caused dissension, from environmental loopholes to political corruption, and had immediately caused many battle lines to be drawn. There were plenty of hot takes on what'd happened. The scandal was even covered in weekly comedy skits on TV, making fun of the state of the world and drizzling everything with dark humor to portray the situation.

"It's not Greystone anymore. Actually, I never even met the old CEO. The network did, and the police did, but I never met or talked to him. I only interacted with the other guy, Reed Sterling, who was here with the teams," Lena said strongly, immediately launching into her reasoning and defense. "The old CEO is gone, but most of the same guys are still there, and I trust them. I know they can be an asset to the museum. They're good at what they do. They're actually the ones I hired back then, ma'am. If you're looking for more security, I'd really recommend them."

"Is Reed Sterling the CEO now?" I asked curiously, wondering how that worked. Lena faintly blushed, not expecting questions so soon in her company presentation.

"Well, no. He doesn't work there anymore, but I called him, and he said the new CEO is just as good as him. Like I said, most of the old teams are still there. Sterling personally assured me the new guy could be trusted. He's not really new, though. He's worked there just as long as Sterling has. He's just new at being CEO."

Geraldine stared thoughtfully at the card. She raised it with a gesture and turned to Lena.

"Thank you. I'll talk to Owen on whether we need the assistance. We don't want the thieves coming back," she sighed. "And more sets of eyes couldn't hurt."

"Sterling said he'd talk to the CEO and update him, so he'd be informed in case you were interested," Lena replied.

Geraldine nodded and collected her papers. She thanked Lena again, promising to get in touch soon, and left to return to her meeting.

"What's his name?" I asked off-handedly, relaxing in my spot in the purple chair. "The new CEO?"

Lena sat down, clasped her hands on her lap, and leaned back. Her eyes met mine.

"Simon," she said. "Simon Gatz."

Here we go...

Are you ready?

Also, sorry for the late post! It's highly unusual for me to miss posting on schedule, but I had graduation and things got busy! I got another degree, so I guess I have to figure out what to do with it now.

By the way, I want to reiterate a part of this story's description. While this is a standalone story, and hopefully able to be read without reading my other work "In Love and Diplomacy", a lot of background information here is expanded upon in that book. This is a spin-off after all! In this book (TSAWW), those things might be skimmed over or lightly expanded upon throughout, but if you've read ILAD you might have a deeper understanding of some character's backgrounds. This isn't a disguised plea to read my other book, in fact I'd like to warn you if you choose to do so! ILAD was my FIRST book and I've learned a lot since then. It'll be undergoing the deep editing process throughout the next few months. With that said, it's still my first book child and I'll always be proud of it and appreciative when people read it!

- H