For someone lawfully buying his way into a museum, Baz was too nervous. The exchange was so simple: hand over money, receive a stamp on his wrist. Still, his hands shook. The ordinariness of his surroundings exaggerated the adrenaline coursing through him.
It took guts and a certain amount of mental rewiring to reach the point of walking through the one-way turnstile. He had to leapfrog right over all doubt. The pulse was good for smashing down back seats and for terrifying, aggressive downtown driving. It only served to make him jumpy in the museum.
Jitters felt too much like foreign substances pulsing through his bloodstream, urging a buried need to take something, just to take the edge off. His skin prickled, nerves craving.
Baz focused on his breathing, taking in the surroundings. A distant memory gave him direction, the recollection of Gwen and Cheng arguing the day after the party. It hadn't been that long ago. Logically, Baz recognized that fact, but the day seemed to stretch for eons. When had he really woken up? Three days earlier? How could so much be crammed into a few hours? It didn't make sense. It especially didn't make sense when Baz could so clearly remember cowering under his comforter for days at a time, miserable and flu-ish, letting chemicals dissipate out of his system. In those weeks of withdrawal, it was hard to do anything. How could he accomplish absolutely nothing in those days, but succeed in breaking into a house, getting kidnapped, escaping, and going on a limousine joyride over the course of eight hours? How could he experience those opposite ends of the spectrum?
The more he thought about it, the more surreal it became. Better not to think about it at all. Better to focus on what the hell he was going to do next.
What Baz knew was limited. He could only guess the direction of Rei's office. He guessed that it had already been searched for 'evidence' shortly after she vanished. He knew that Rei asked him to meet her there.
There had to be a reason she wanted to meet there. Was it a thing? Did she need to talk to someone? Was there something to be taken care of? This time, no one handed him a print-out of what to look out for.
There was some kind of business Rei had. That was something. Baz also had a head start. That was something, too. He was not without advantages. The obstacles just also happened to be sizable ones.
He floated through time.
The exhibits in the right wing focused on the kinds of things Baz had studied in school: the classics of the Renaissance, the tapestry and relics echoing the same themes that existed in Da Vinci's work. Replicas of his designs occupied the space, flying machines suspended from the ceiling. In some cases, they weren't replicas at all, just ideas manufactured into realities. Failed realities, in a lot of cases, but that was because the exhibit didn't strive to prove Da Vinci perfect. There were so many failures, imperfections, an inability to reconcile design with physics, but the amazing thing was that he had thought it at all, possible or impossible.
Context was key, and the context was the Italian country. Italy yielded Renaissance artists like it did vineyards and olive groves. Baz didn't need to retrace history by reading inscriptions and tags. He didn't rent a set of headphones to listen to an audio guided tour. Baz spent enough time soaking it in, as though he could absorb knowledge by osmosis. It was more engaging than sitting in his dorm room studying, staring bleary-eyed at the same text book for hours at a time in preparation for finals.
The knowledge all flooded back easily, as if he hadn't abandoned it. It took no offense to the break he took. There history was, right where he left it. The art of a hundred years ago did not shift or change in his absence.
Nor did the museum, really. The layout was as he remembered it and, following the natural flow of the exhibits, the museum led him into the framed tableaus of European life.
Murals backed arrangements of furniture, wood hand-worked into intricate designs, clawed chair legs and high arched backs. Mannequins modeled delicate outfits. Textiles were always the hardest to keep. Rei must've known that much better than Baz did. It was rare to recover something of quality, intact. It was harder to keep it that way, colors threatening to fade under less than optimal lighting.
He regarded the frills, studying the embroidered details in the hems of the fabrics.
It wasn't Rei's specialty. He wondered vaguely if offices at the museum were located in relation to specialties. He wondered what Rei's specialty actually was.
Would he have to break into her office? He cringed at the thought. Always with the breaking and entering. Why always with the breaking and entering?
He turned, growing more and more aware of the time trickling by.
Would anyone guess where he went? Did the limousine have a built-in GPS that easily gave away his location? Did it have a damage gauge and Cheng already knew Baz bashed the front into a light post?
Why was that something Baz regarded as one of his worst crimes? Oh, no. He crashed a car. He drove without a license. That totally overshadowed all the literal burglary he partook in. Oh, the guilt.
It was late in the day, inching closer to the museum's closing time. That fact hung over him, like the ominous philosophical quotes on the boards overhead: "The soul exists partly in eternity and partly in time."
The real countdown had begun the moment he accepted Jasper's ultimatum. The sand slipped through the hourglass, threatening to drown him. What an awful way to go, coughing up sand. What could be as coarse and painful as granules in his throat, in his lungs? How had he not noticed?
Subtle music piped in through the speakers, a period and place-appropriate symphony. Besides the hum of strings and clarinets, there was little else. Most visitors were gradually making their way toward the exits.
Baz remained while the others left, gaze sliding over the glass showcases offering specific details of artifacts. Hairbrushes, children's toys full of lead, mercury mirrors, jewelry. He preferred the anonymity of crowds, much like the one he casually slithered through during the intermission of Les Mis. Without the crowds, he was left exposed.
His eye caught on a necklace arranged around a disembodied neck. He blinked, reading the inscription below it without fully absorbing the content. On loan from a personal collection.
The inscription continued, revealing a dramatic history of the Ferrero family of Italy, how the necklace traveled through generations to America. On loan from a private collection. Hadn't there been a necklace hinted at, referenced in a letter from Rei's library?
This was undoubtedly to find him, if she were in a position to, but waiting felt so passive.
He tugged at the ring around his neck, dropping onto the bench as if to intently admire the generations that came before him. Not at all like a man running out of options.
Shit.
What did he do next? Where did he go from there? In the limo, the museum sounded like the only option, but he couldn't hide forever. He couldn't rely on the fact that Rei would know where he vanished to. He couldn't rely on the fact that Rei would find him first. Had it been the wrong decision to abandon her?
The necklace gleamed from its delicate false throat. The stones refracted light. The setting glimmered.
It was a dead end. Not just any dead end, but the kind he couldn't backtrack from. He had barely managed to get to the museum in one piece. There was no way he could escape the way he arrived. Maybe he could just front flip right into the bay. Swim away from his problems.
The thoughts crossed his mind, but Baz didn't move.
His eyes flicked up. Somewhere, out of his direct line of sight, there were security guards on rounds. There were two exits from the exhibit: back through Da Vinci's inventions, through a set of double doors, and another set circling into the next exhibit, double doors separating Europe from North America. The North American route involved traversing almost the entire rest of the museum before circling back around to the foyer.
The quick assessment, the careful inventory of escape options came as naturally as reflex now, like everywhere he went was just a trap laid out for him. It was a good time to get out of the business. It was beginning to affect his whole psychology, but maybe he should've clued into that much earlier.
Footsteps approached, notable in the gradually emptying museum. Baz half-awaited the thud of heavy boots, police storming the museum to arrest him for reckless driving and grand theft auto. Instead, the click click click of stilettos echoed off the floor. He stiffened, alert to the hurried, muffled voices.
Tick tock.
He assessed how to escape, but not how to hide. What was he supposed to do? Duck behind the glass display cases? Slip under the dining room table of the full-size diorama? Hiding was off the table, so Baz stood.
The cluster came around the arch separating inventions from Italian reality. Rei kept her shoulders square, valiantly calm until she saw him. She stopped so abruptly that Cheng collided into her, nearly toppling them both.
"Sébastien," she said.
"You said..." Baz didn't bother completing the sentence. There was no point.
"I did."
Gwen smiled, no longer coy or distant, but venomous. Hadn't she always been a little bit feral, prepared to bite? Her eyes flicked to the necklace draped over the headless form. She didn't need to read the inscription to recognize it.
"Being a step ahead really hasn't done you any good," Gwen said, stalking closer. Baz imagined a tigress crouching in the tall grass, inching closer and closer to prey. He probably shook as much as a poor cornered morsel. She turned before she could pounce, finding the same inscription Baz had, her name echoed behind the glass. There it was, what she'd really come for.
"Keys?" Gwen demanded, twisting sharply to Rei.
Rei shook her head. "I've already negotiated a trade to Italy. It's just here for safekeeping while the paperwork goes through."
There was more effort in her steady posture, more energy exerted into maintaining her poise. A long day taking its toll.
It showed in Gwen, too. And in Cheng and Jasper. They were ragged in different ways. Cheng obsessively smoothed his suit. Jasper had the twitchy unrest of a man whose plan fell apart, who wasn't prepared for the chaos of spontaneity.
"For fuck's sake." Gwen swept up to Jasper, brazenly taking the gun from his hip before he could even react. "Lock the doors."
Jasper obliged, scurrying for the nearest set of double doors. A woman with a gun in her hand left little room for argument. She looked like a Bond Girl, armed and made up, dressed for martinis, not a fight.
"Keys," she repeated.
Rei's hand slipped into her pocket, her eyes on Baz. Somewhere in the sequence of events, a distant part of his mind predicted what happened next. The keys dropped into Gwen's open hand and without pause, Gwen tossed them at Baz.
He caught them, the metal toothed and warm. The gun aimed at him was the opposite: cold and sleek.
"Open it."