It was an old, unfinished copy of a Renaissance portrait I had used for practice.

The linen now hung in three jagged, vertical ribbons.

“They were looking for something specific,” Adrian whispered.

He stepped over a pile of broken gilded frame moldings.

His leather shoes crunched loudly on shattered glass from an old jar of mineral spirits.

The chemical smell was overwhelming in the enclosed space.

It mixed with the musty odor of damp drywall and old paper.

“Grant,” I said, my voice barely a whisper in the cold air.

“Or his hired men,” Adrian added.

He bent down and picked up a torn photograph from the floor.

It was a black-and-white print of a Dutch landscape painting.

I recognized it immediately as one of the pieces from the Vale collection.

“He knew I would come back here eventually,” I said.

I walked toward the back of the studio, careful to avoid the broken glass.

My main workbench had been cleared with a single, violent sweep.

Dozens of my expensive camel-hair brushes lay scattered across the floorboards.

Many of them had been snapped in half.