PART 2 (Continued)
CHAPTER 5: A MASTERPIECE IN FLAMES
The taste of blood in my mouth was metallic and warm. Kroll’s henchman, a brute with knuckles like bags of walnuts, held me down against the concrete floor.
Kroll crouched over me. He didn’t look angry. He looked disappointed, like a teacher whose favorite student had failed a test.
“The book, Marcus,” Kroll said softly. “I saw her take it. Where is she going?”
“To the police,” I lied, wheezing. My ribs felt like they were cracked. “She’s probably halfway to the precinct by now.”
Kroll chuckled. He stood up and dusted off his expensive suit pants.
“The police? No. A scared sixteen-year-old girl doesn’t go to the cops. She goes to where she feels safe. Or she hides.” He turned to the brute holding me. “Tie him to the radiator. Then find the girl. She’s on foot; she can’t have gone far.”
The brute hauled me up and dragged me to an old cast-iron radiator against the wall. He used zip ties—thick, industrial plastic ones—to bind my wrists to the piping. I struggled, but it was useless.
Kroll began walking around the studio. He picked up a can of linseed oil. He splashed it over a stack of canvases.
“What are you doing?” I yelled. “Those are paintings! Even if they’re fakes, they’re art!”
“Evidence, Marcus,” Kroll corrected me. “To the world, these are just the ramblings of a failed artist. To my employer, they are a loose end.”
He splashed turpentine on the workbench. The smell was overpowering.
“You’re going to burn it down?” I asked, disbelief washing over me. “With me inside?”
“Tragic accident,” Kroll said, pulling a silver Zippo lighter from his pocket. “Disgraced art expert, distraught over his public humiliation, seeks out the source of the forgery. A struggle ensues with the mentally unstable forger. A fire breaks out. Everyone dies. It’s a clean narrative. The insurance payout on ‘The Eclipse’ will be processed by Monday.”
He flicked the lighter. The flame danced in the drafty garage.
“You’re insane,” I whispered.
“I’m efficient,” he said.
He dropped the lighter onto a pile of oil-soaked rags near the door.
The effect was instant. A whoosh of heat hit my face as the fire roared to life, climbing the drapes and catching the wooden easel.
“Goodbye, Marcus,” Kroll said. He stepped out into the night, the heavy metal door slamming shut behind him.
I was alone.
The heat rose rapidly. The smoke began to pool at the ceiling, thick and black. I pulled at the zip ties until my wrists bled. The plastic dug into my skin, refusing to give.
The fire was eating the fakes. I watched a beautiful reproduction of a Rothko curl and blacken, the colors blistering away. It was heartbreaking. But I was next.
I looked around frantically. The radiator was hot, but not hot enough to melt plastic. I needed something sharp.
The floor was littered with debris from the struggle. A few feet away, gleaming in the firelight, was a palette knife. A sharp, metal spatula used for mixing paint.
It was just out of reach.
I stretched my leg, straining every muscle. The smoke was dropping lower, stinging my eyes, filling my lungs. I coughed, a racking, painful sound.
Come on.
My shoe brushed the handle. I hooked it with my heel and dragged it closer.
I contorted my body, sliding down until my bound hands could grasp the handle. It was slippery with oil.
I wedged the blade between the zip ties. I sawed. Back and forth. The plastic was tough. The fire was roaring now, the heat blistering the skin on my face. A canister of spray paint exploded on the other side of the room, sending a fireball into the ceiling.
Snap.
The tie broke.
I scrambled to my feet, stumbling. The door was blocked by a wall of fire. There was no way out the front.
The back window. The one Maya used.
I ran to the back of the studio, weaving through the maze of burning canvases. I found the window. It was small, high up, and covered in grime.
I grabbed a heavy bust of a Roman emperor from a shelf and smashed it through the glass. Fresh air rushed in, feeding the fire behind me.
I hoisted myself up, glass shards slicing my palms, and tumbled out onto the wet grass of the backyard.
I rolled away from the building, gasping for sweet, cold air.
Behind me, the garage windows blew out. The roof collapsed with a sickening crunch. The entire life’s work of Arthur Pendelton was gone.
I lay there for a moment, watching the sparks fly up into the Queens night sky. I was alive. But I had nothing. No phone. No car keys. No proof.
“You look like hell,” a voice whispered from the bushes.
I jumped.
Maya stepped out. She was shivering, hugging the leather journal to her chest. Her face was streaked with soot and tears.
“You didn’t run?” I asked, coughing.
“I couldn’t leave you,” she said. “And besides… I got the license plate number of their SUV.”
I looked at her and started to laugh. It was a hysterical, broken laugh.
“Kid,” I said, standing up on shaky legs. “We’re going to take these bastards down.”
CHAPTER 6: THE VIRAL SPARK
We retreated to a 24-hour diner three blocks away. It was 2:00 AM. The place smelled of bacon grease and stale coffee. We sat in a booth in the back, away from the windows.
I ordered two coffees and a plate of fries. Maya hadn’t spoken since we left the fire. She just kept her hand on the journal.
“So,” I said, wiping soot off my forehead with a napkin. “We have the journal. We know Kroll works for the Director. We know the painting is fake. But the painting is in their vault, and the rest of the evidence just burned down.”
“Not all of it,” Maya said.
She pulled out her phone. The screen was cracked.
“While you were in there… before they came… I took pictures,” she said. “I took pictures of the journal pages where Dad talks about the acrylic paint. I took pictures of the chemical tests he did.”
“That’s good,” I said. “But it’s not enough. Pictures can be faked. They’ll say we forged the journal.”
“I also recorded audio,” she said.
I froze, a fry halfway to my mouth. “What?”
“When I was hiding in the bushes,” she said. “When Kroll was talking to you. I recorded it.”
My heart started pounding again. “Did you get the part where he admitted to the arson? Where he admitted to the fraud?”
“I got it all,” she said grimly. “The part where he said ‘insurance payout.’ The part where he said ‘clean narrative.’ It’s faint, but you can hear it.”
I leaned back against the vinyl seat. This was it. The smoking gun.
“We need to go to the police,” I said. “Right now. We have a confession.”
“No,” Maya shook her head. “If we go to the police, the lawyers will get involved. Kroll will disappear. The Director will pay someone off. The evidence will get ‘lost’ in the evidence locker. You know how rich people work.”
She was right. I knew exactly how they worked.
“So what do we do?” I asked.
Maya unlocked her phone. She opened TikTok.
“We go to the people,” she said. “I have 200 followers. It’s not much. But if we tag the right accounts… if we use the right hashtags…”
“You want to post a confession of a murder attempt on TikTok?” I asked, skeptical.
“Not just that,” she said. “We’re going to tell the story. The whole story. ‘The $12 Million Lie.’ People love a takedown.”
I looked at the phone. It felt reckless. It felt dangerous.
“Do it,” I said.
We spent the next hour editing. Maya was a wizard. She spliced the audio of Kroll’s voice over the images of the burning garage (which she had filmed from the bushes). She added photos of the journal. She added a video of me, bloody and sooty, explaining exactly how the chemical test failed.
At 3:15 AM, she hit ‘Post’.
Caption: “They tried to kill us to hide a fake painting. @Christies @FBI #ArtFraud #JulianVane #Corruption”
We sat there, watching the screen.
One view. Ten views. Fifty views.
“It’s not moving fast enough,” I said, anxious.
“Give it a second,” Maya said. “The algorithm needs to wake up.”
Suddenly, the phone buzzed. A comment.
User88: Holy sht is this real??*
Then another.
ArtLoverNYC: Wait, that’s Marcus Thorne. I saw him at the auction today! He’s missing!
Then another.
TruthSeeker: The audio… that sounds like Victor Kroll. I know that voice.
The numbers started to climb. 1,000 views. 5,000 views. 10,000 views.
By 4:00 AM, the video had 500,000 views. It was being shared on Twitter. It was trending on Reddit.
My phone, which I thought was dead, suddenly pinged. I had bought a cheap burner at a bodega on the way here.
It was a text from Elias Thorne. The billionaire buyer.
Text: “Marcus. I just saw the video. I’m looking at the painting right now. If you’re lying, I will bury you. If you’re telling the truth… I’m listening.”
I looked at Maya. She was grinning, her face illuminated by the blue light of the screen.
“We got their attention,” she said.
“Now we need to finish it,” I replied. “We need to prove it physically. We need to get back into the auction house.”
“How?” Maya asked. “Security will be tripled.”
“Elias Thorne,” I said, showing her the text. “He has the painting. Or he thinks he does. If he hasn’t taken delivery yet, it’s still in the vault.”
I typed a reply to Elias.
Me: Meet us at the gallery at 8:00 AM. Bring your own chemist. And bring the police.
I hit send.
“We’re going back to the scene of the crime,” I told Maya.
“I’m ready,” she said. She looked tough. The scared kid was gone.
But as we stood up to leave, the news flickered on the TV above the counter.
“Breaking News,” the anchor said. “Fire reported at a residence in Queens. Police suspect arson linked to disgraced art dealer Marcus Thorne, who is now a person of interest in the disappearance of a local teenager.”
My jaw dropped.
They had spun the narrative. Kroll had called it in.
“They’re blaming you,” Maya whispered. “They’re saying you kidnapped me and burned the house.”
The waitress behind the counter looked up at the TV, then looked at me. She looked at the soot on my face. She looked at the girl in the hoodie.
Her eyes went wide. She reached for the phone.
“Run,” I said.
We bolted out of the diner, sirens already wailing in the distance. We had four hours until 8:00 AM. Four hours to stay free. Four hours to survive the entire NYPD looking for us.
And we had to make it to Manhattan.
