Maria’s mules clicked as she crossed to the sideboard and poured herself a glass of wine. She took a long swallow and looked toward Pete again. “I’m afraid it’s not here.”
“Where is it?” Kat asked quickly.
Maria shrugged as if she could care less about Kat’s question, in the same way Kat had shrugged moments before. “In storage.”
“Here in New York City?”
“Possibly. I’ve had several shipments sent back to Athens in the last few days. It’s possible it was in one of those.”
Kat sent Pete a worried look.
“Or,” Maria went on, “It’s possible it’s still in the vault.”
“Then let’s go check,” Pete said. “We can’t wait until your shipments arrive in Greece and your employees unpack the crates.”
Maria laughed. “Peter, it’s nearly eleven o’clock. The building is closed, the vault is locked and even I can’t get access to the security codes until the morning. I’m afraid you’re stuck until tomorrow.”
Kat turned away in a clear sign of frustration and glanced around the apartment. And Pete felt the first stirrings of unease.
He’d hoped to get the necklace and get Kat the hell out of New York before dawn. He didn’t like being here, where they could be seen driving around the city or walking into a hotel. Odds were they hadn’t been followed, but he couldn’t be sure, and he sure as hell wasn’t risking his life—or Kat’s—on a handful of maybes. He’d seen firsthand what these guys were capable of.
The more he thought about the fact they’d been set up, that Busir had used him to get to Kat in the first place, the more determined he was to make sure she got out of this alive.
Options ran through his head. And though he knew the one that popped up strongest was the worst of the bunch, it was also the safest.
“Fine,” Pete said. “We’ll go with you to get it in the morning. But in the meantime, I need one more favor.”
Maria lifted her brows in question but didn’t respond.
“We need a place to stay tonight.”
Kat whipped back toward him in a blur.
“What?” both women asked at the same time.
“Just for tonight,” he said, ignoring Kat’s reaction. “As soon as we have the necklace, we’ll be out of your hair.”
“No way,” Kat exclaimed. “I’m not spending one single—”
A sly smile spread across Maria’s face as she, too, ignored Kat’s reaction. “That could be interesting.”
She lifted a bell on the sideboard and shook it. The housekeeper scurried in from the kitchen. “Mabel,” Maria said. “Show Ms. Meyer to the guest room. She”—her gaze ran up and down Kat’s damp, dirty clothing—“looks like she could use a towel.”
The air chilled at Pete’s side, and he could feel Kat’s eyes boring into him like icy daggers, but he didn’t turn to look. This was the safest place for her right now, whether she liked it or not.
Maria glanced back to Pete with a victorious smile that made his blood run cold. He knew Kat saw it, just as he knew he wouldn’t do a damn thing about it.
“I, on the other hand,” Maria said, “would like some time alone with you, Peter. We have some unfinished business, don’t you agree?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Maria watched Katherine Meyer stalk up the stairs. The dark-haired woman didn’t bother to look back, which was just fine with Maria. She was happy to finally have her out of the room.
Maria turned toward the sideboard again when they were alone. “Drink, Peter?”
He cut his gaze from the stairs with a scowl. “You can be a real bitch when you want, you know that?”
Maria laughed, poured a finger of bourbon and handed it to him. “And you are never a man a woman can predict.” She watched as he set his untouched glass on the coffee table and sank into a side chair. Alone, he looked tired. Run-down. Beat. Maria couldn’t help wondering just what had happened over the last two days to steal the spunk and style from Peter Kauffman.
She perched on the arm of the sofa across from him and pursed her lips. When it was obvious he wasn’t going to volunteer any information, she said, “She was the one at the auction you went after, wasn’t she?”
He hesitated, then nodded.
“Former lover?”
He hesitated again, then nodded.
“Why do I get the impression there’s more to it than that?”
“Why do you keep asking that same question?” he said with a scowl.
She couldn’t help it. She smiled. “Why are you not being honest with me? Have I not stuck my neck out for you several times in the past? Are we not friends? Suddenly this woman breezes back into your life, and you trust no one but her?”
Peter let out a weary sigh and dropped his head back against the cushions. “She’s not just any woman,” he finally said. “She’s the one who changed my life.”
“I see,” Maria said quietly, though she didn’t, not really. Peter’s past was as blank to her as hers was to him, and for a moment, she considered letting the whole thing drop. True, he was her friend, but there was a reason she’d kept their relationship strictly sexual. She didn’t want to deal with anyone else’s baggage.
She thought of the way he’d looked at Katherine Meyer, with tenderness in his eyes and a longing she’d not seen on another man’s face in…years. And she suddenly wondered if she’d been fooling herself. Maybe he’d been the one keeping their relationship strictly sexual. Maybe she wasn’t as in control of things as she thought she was.
“I’m a good listener, Peter,” she said in a softer voice.
He lifted his head and studied her with speculative eyes. Then rose and walked to the window where he looked out at the rain dousing the city in waves. “There’s not much to tell,” he said as he pulled the curtain to the side.
“Oh, I think there is. It’s obvious she wriggled herself under your skin. In fact, I think, somehow, she broke your heart.”
When he scoffed, Maria knew she was right.
And it wasn’t jealousy that coursed through her as she looked at his somber face reflected back into the room by the window pane, but curiosity. No matter what he said, this woman meant more to him than just about anything else. It was written all over his face, in the deep lines around his mouth and in his haunted eyes. Though she’d vowed never to let herself get close to another like that again, she wasn’t so completely coldhearted that she couldn’t empathize with someone going through the same thing.
“Why don’t you tell me about this pendant and what she was doing at the auction?”
He dropped the curtain and turned to look her way. “It holds evidence pertaining to a crime she witnessed in Cairo when she was working there. We met there. She’s been in hiding ever since for fear of retaliation by the real criminals.”
“You knew about this?”
He shook his head. “I thought she was dead.”
“Oh.”
And that was how the woman had broken his heart, Maria realized. Her gaze dropped to his untouched glass on the table in front of her as links to the story fell into place. “She faked her death.”
“Yeah. She was afraid they’d come after her family if she just disappeared. She had to make it look like she’d died.”
“Where is her family now?”
“She doesn’t have any left. Her mother passed about two years ago. Heart attack.”
“Why did you not know about any of this?”
“She didn’t trust me with it. There were other things between us then.”
“I see,” Maria said again. But her brow wrinkled as she thought through what he’d said. “Why did she come back for it now?”
“Because I was selling it, and she was afraid it might fall into the wrong hands.”
“But you didn’t sell it.”
“Nope,” he said, moving to study a painting on the far wall. “I didn’t. She picked up the wrong necklace at the auction.”
“It seems to me a woman w
ho can break into a Worthington auction and steal a prominent piece of art from underneath security’s nose isn’t helpless. You’ve had that pendant for years, and your security isn’t nearly as rigid as Worthington’s. She could have broken into your gallery at any time to get it. Why now?”
He shrugged as he straightened the painting on the wall. “I don’t know. Maybe she was tired of hiding. Maybe she wanted her life back.”
Maria frowned. “I don’t buy that. If this evidence could have cleared her of any wrongdoing on her part, she could have come out of hiding at any time. There’s something else going on here, Peter. She’s protecting someone.”
His hand paused on the frame of the painting, and slowly he turned to face her. Questions, and something that looked oddly like realization, raced across his classic features.
“What?” Maria asked, puzzled by his reaction.
“Nothing. I just…” His brow lowered. He seemed to be thinking something through. He glanced to the stairs, then back to the painting. But when he looked her way, the confusion was gone, and there was a clarity to his eyes she hadn’t seen before.
“The details aren’t really important right now, Maria. The bottom line is, without that evidence, she’s the prime suspect in that crime she witnessed. That’s why we need to get it back.”
Maria let out a sigh and rose to take her glass back to the sideboard. “I’m afraid that might be a bit of a problem then.”
“Why?”
“Because,” she said as she set her glass down, “I wasn’t entirely honest with you earlier about the status of my warehouse.”
His eyes narrowed, completely clear and very focused. “I’m listening.”
“Someone broke into the warehouse early this morning. The vault was breached. Several of the pieces I purchased from your auction are missing.”
“And the pendant?”
“I don’t know. It’s completely possible it was already sent to Athens. It’s also possible it’s still in the vault. We haven’t finished sifting through the mess that was left behind yet.”
“And it’s possible it was stolen,” he finished for her.
She pursed her lips. “Yes. This was a professional hit. The FBI was collecting evidence all day. INTERPOL has already uploaded a list of known missing pieces from the theft to their Web site.”
“You have no idea who was responsible?”
“No.” She tipped her head. “But something tells me you do.”
He ran a hand over his mouth and was silent for so long, she wasn’t sure he would answer. Then he dropped his hand, and the urgency she saw in his eyes verified her assumption.
“I want to go down there tomorrow and take a look around.”
“I can probably arrange that, though it’ll likely ruffle some feathers.”
“Not like I’ve never done that before.”
She smiled a little, happy some of the lighthearted humor she liked most about him had entered his voice again. “You look exhausted, Peter. There’s nothing we can do tonight regarding any of this. You’d be better off taking a shower and getting a good night’s sleep. You left some clothes here. The rest of this can be dealt with tomorrow.”
He glanced toward the stairs with the same longing in his eyes she’d seen when he’d walked in the door, and the bitterness she’d felt toward him for ditching her after the auction slipped away.
No matter that she didn’t have much of a heart left herself. Someone else did. She wasn’t about to stand in his way. “Why don’t you just go ask her?” she said softly.
Surprised, smoky eyes turned to look her way. “Ask her what?”
“Whatever it is that’s got you so confused about her motives.” When he frowned, her smile widened. “While you’re at it, you might try telling her how you feel. A woman always likes to hear she’s exactly what a man wants.”
His frown deepened. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
Maria laughed. “Yes. You do.” She turned for the hallway that led to the master bedroom on the first floor. “You might also mention I’m not quite as bitchy as I come across.”
“But you are,” he said to her back.
Maria couldn’t stop the chuckle that slipped from her mouth as she walked away. “I’ll have Mabel bring you something clean to wear. Good night, Peter.”
“G’night, Maria.”
In her own room, Maria closed the door and listened. The floor outside creaked ever so slightly. She looked across the plush room, decorated in shades of red and gold, and figured that counted as her one good deed for the year. Sure, she’d lost a lover, but she hoped she’d kept a friend.
Lovers were a dime a dozen. Someone you could count on when you were down on your luck? That was hard to find.
And she of all people should know.
Pete showered and changed in the guest bathroom downstairs. Hot water had never felt so good, and for once he was happy he’d had the foresight to leave a few things here, even if at the time it’d seemed wrong.
Maria’s words skipped around in his brain as he dressed, and questions he hadn’t thought to ask Kat over the past two days fired off like bottle rockets, one after another. More than anything he wanted to barge upstairs to Kat’s room and find out if what he suddenly suspected was true, but he couldn’t. Not yet. There were two things he had to do first.
The apartment was eerily quiet as he made his way into the office Maria kept on the main level. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over trees and grass and a black void that was the park. Dark cherry bookcases spanned an entire wall, decorated with leather tomes and bronze sculptures and expensive art she’d no doubt collected over the years.
He’d always liked this room. While the rest of her penthouse was frilly and delicate, this room had the dark colors and bold woods he found peaceful. He shut the door behind him, moved around the antique French desk and sank into the plush leather chair. The immaculately clean surface held only a small lamp, a phone and a lone pen.
He sat in the dark, just staring at the smooth desktop softly illuminated by the city lights outside, thinking through everything Maria had told him. Thinking back over everything that had happened in the last two days. Man, had it only been two days since his life had been turned upside down because of Kat? It felt like longer.
Some small part of him wanted it to be longer.
Odds were pretty good Maria’s break-in was related to the auction and Kat. Someone wanted to know if Maria had the pendant, and they were willing to do just about anything to get it. Odds were even better it was already long gone.
Which meant Kat was in deep shit.
No matter how Pete worked it in his head, Kat was going to take the heat for what had happened all those years ago in Cairo. If she turned herself in to the Feds without proof there’d been anyone else in the tomb with her the night Ramirez had been killed, there was a good chance she could do time. Maybe even be extradited back to Egypt.
A searing pain slit his chest at just the thought. Would Slade stand up for her? And if he did, would his pull have any weight?
Pete doubted it. One, no matter what, there was no proof. And two, Pete seriously doubted Slade would put himself on the line for her like that, regardless of how much he may still care for her.
Which left only one option. She’d have to stay in hiding. But, shit, from the way things had gone down the past few days, that wasn’t much of an option, was it? How long until Minyawi or whoever the hell he worked for tracked her down? They knew she was alive now. They knew she could bury them. They couldn’t let her live.
Pete ran his hand over the glossy surface of the desk and thought about his life in comparison to hers. About how smooth it had been. He’d been like his buddy Rafe’s big fancy boat really, sailing along, a few waves here and there, but no major storms that had jarred him or flipped him around. Losing his parents had been hard, but he’d just been a kid then, and he’d quickly adapted. Burying his grandparents had stung, but he
’d been in college by then and had his own life that didn’t include them. And though it was selfish, he knew the deaths of the role models in his life had helped him build Odyssey. He’d taken his inheritance and put it all into the gallery, plodded along with ease and never looked back. Things had always come effortlessly for him. Until the moment he’d met Kat. And lost her.
Then his life had changed forever.
For nearly three days he’d been blaming her for that. Reasoning he could be so much further ahead if he hadn’t gone on the straight and narrow after he thought she’d died. No question his life had been harder since that point. Emotionally as he tried to get himself on track, mentally as he came up with ways to make Odyssey profitable on the right side of the law, physically as he worked himself to the bone so he didn’t have the energy to think of her or dream of her or wish things could have been different.
He remembered how he’d felt when he’d found out she was alive. Beat to hell and so utterly betrayed. Because everything he’d done because of her had been for shit.
Then he thought of what Maria had said: If this evidence could have cleared her of any wrongdoing on her part, she could have come out of hiding at any time. There’s something else going on here, Peter. She’s protecting someone.
Followed by Kat’s voice at that park in Philadelphia just before she’d left him: If I lied to you, it was for a very good reason. Maybe someday you’ll understand that.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath and knew, if given the chance, he’d do it all over again the exact same way. No matter how any of it had played out, she’d been the one person to change his life for the better.
His heart was pounding a mile a minute as he leaned forward and flipped on the small tabletop lamp, then reached for the phone. A quick glance at the clock on the wall told him it was almost midnight, but he didn’t care. He paid his lawyer in Miami an insanely embarrassing retainer for moments just like this. The guy could get his ass out of bed for all Pete cared.
Twenty minutes later, with the weight of his decision on his shoulders and no thought of turning back, he clicked off the cordless phone, turned it on again and dialed the number his lawyer had grudgingly dug up for him.
Stolen Heat Page 25
