PROLOGUE

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Even the brightest Californian day can play host to the darkest of plans—the kind that starts with a shiver of soil, a whispered promise of an earthquake brooding underfoot. An imperceptible quiver that nudges a blade of grass, forcing it to bend in blind allegiance and disturb the Monarch butterfly clinging to it. Such was the domino effect set into motion when Shivonne O’Roydon left the cool reprieve of the Pallas Museum cafeteria and stepped into the sun-drenched botanical gardens outside.

   She made her way along the winding stone path to the crystalline pond teeming with pale-pink lotus lilies straining up out of the water on graceful, long ballerina necks. On any other day, she was like one of those lilies, struggling to keep her slender neck above the fray while rooted to the bottom of life’s murky waters.

   But not today. Today had been a good day.

   She took a large bite from the glossy red apple clutched in her hand. They were waiting for her on the manicured lawn in a semicircle, her best friends and confidantes. Bookish museum educators to the world, but the world to her. Angel had her shoes off, her feet resting in Luke’s lap. Lorelei sat like a sphinx; her face angled to the sun. They exuded the serenity of a famous pointillist painting: George Seurat’s bathers at leisure on La Grande Jatte, an intricate map of individual dots that formed a luminous whole when viewed from afar. A quilt of false serenity, she knew, each spiderweb-thin patch of human quandary stitched together with thin, dissolvable threads of hope and resilience.

   When Shivonne approached, graceful and silent as a lynx on the pads of her dancer’s feet, their heads turned in unison—like satellites—as if they had sensed her presence even before they saw her.

   “Hi, everyone,” she said and sat down, her long legs crossed at the ankles. The smell of freshly cut grass and early-summer blooms swirled around them; a gaggle of ducks were quarreling at the edge of the pond. Yet, overhead, an invisible dark cloud was hovering, threatening an epic storm. Shivonne sensed its electrical current buzzing through her bones … and shivered.

  “Olympians, I called you here today,” Angel started, bypassing any pleasantries. Luke snorted a giggle at the preposterous suggestion of the four of them as Olympian gods. But Angel cut him off with one of her steely glares. “I called you here today,” she repeated, “to propose something that will shock you at first …” She waited for their chins to lift, for their eyebrows to drop again. “Hear me out and consider all the facts before interrupting. Okay?”

   They regarded each other, then nodded.

   Angel pulled her feet in from Luke’s lap and curled them under her, rotating her head, owl-like, to scan the perimeter. There were no cameras or security guards outside, just a scattering of visitors milling about and an elderly couple strolling hand in hand by the lily pond. On the far end of the lawn, a young couple was passionately kissing on a picnic blanket.

   “Do you remember the discussion we had last Sunday evening after the book group?” Angel asked in a barely audible whisper.

   “About art crime, you mean?” Luke asked loudly, plucking a blade of grass and pinching it between his lips, utterly oblivious to the aura of secrecy permeating their circle. When Angel cast him another death stare, he cringed and mouthed, ‘Sorry.’

   “Yes, and how uncomplicated it seemed to steal art from a museum,” she said.

   Luke nodded, still blissfully unaware of the low growl of tension building in the ether around them. Shivonne, however, felt its familiar, icy grip creeping up her spine. She took a tentative bite of her apple, her eyes locked on Angel.

   “Um, okay?” Lorelei furrowed her brow. The most intuitive of the group, she was the first to sense impending doom.

   Angel inhaled deeply and the ducks at the pond abruptly fell silent, as if on cue. A stillness settled around them as if the Fates had held their hands aloft—nature’s spiteful conductors—to pause the earth’s rotation for a second. “I have a plan for our team of Olympians … to make things right,” she said, letting the words sink in.

   A team. Of mere mortals with Greek-hero alter egos. A plan.

  The others shifted uncomfortably on the grass; the earth seemed to wobble on its axis, its tempo off. Something was amiss. The Monarch butterfly nearby fluttered its wings—once, twice, three times—triggering a storm of epic proportions, thousands of miles away. At the pond, even the ducks resumed their high-pitched squabble. They, too, had sensed the shift in the atmosphere.

   A single drop of apple juice teased its way down Shivonne’s bottom lip and hung there in suspense, teasing gravity, before it slipped from her chin just as Angel dropped her bombshell:

   “We are going to steal a painting from the museum.”

 

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