The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 2

by Nora Roberts

She disconnected, sniffed. She had him now, she decided, and he’d turned the key himself. “They’re expecting me, and will switch off the alarm when I get there.”

  “Fine.” He stretched out his legs as she pulled onto the road again. “I’m doing this for you, you know.”

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

  “No thanks necessary.” He waved them away, grinning while she snarled. “Really. Despite all the trouble you’ve caused me, I like you.”

  “Why, I’m all aflutter.”

  “See? You’ve got style—not to mention a mouth that just begs to be savored over long hours in the dark. I really regretted not having more time with that mouth of yours.”

  Her hands tightened on the wheel. The hitch in her breathing was fury. She wouldn’t allow it to be anything else. “You’ll have more time, Ryan,” she said sweetly. “This mouth of mine is going to chew you up and spit you out before we’re done.”

  “I look forward to it. This is a nice area.” He made the comment conversationally as she followed the coast road into town. “Windswept, dramatic, lonely, but with culture and civilization close at hand. It suits you. The house came down through your family, I take it.”

  She didn’t answer. However ludicrous her actions, she wasn’t about to add to them by holding a conversation with him.

  “It’s enviable,” he continued, unoffended. “The heritage, and the money, of course. But beyond the privilege it’s the name, you know? The Joneses of Maine. Just reeks of class.”

  “Unlike the Boldaris of Brooklyn,” she muttered, but that only made him laugh.

  “Oh, we reek of other things. You’d like my family. It’s impossible not to. And what, I wonder, would they make of you, Dr. Jones?”

  “Perhaps we’ll meet at your trial.”

  “Still determined to bring me to justice.” He appreciated her profile almost as much as the shadows of ragged rocks, the quick glimpses of dark sea. “I’ve been in this game for twenty years, darling. I’ve no intention of making a misstep on the eve of my retirement.”

  “Once a thief, always a thief.”

  “Oh, in the heart, I agree with you. But indeed . . .” He sighed. “Once I clear my record, I’m done. If you hadn’t messed things up, I’d be taking a well-deserved vacation on St. Bart’s right now.”

  “How tragic for you.”

  “Yeah, well.” He moved his shoulders again. “I can still salvage a few days.” He unhooked his seat belt, and turned to reach into the backseat for the bag he’d tossed there.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nearly there.” He whistled lightly as he took out a ski cap and pulled it down low over his head until his hair was concealed. Next came a long black scarf of cashmere that he wrapped around his neck and over the lower part of his face.

  “You can try to alert the guards,” he began, flipping down the visor to check the result in the vanity mirror. “But if you do you won’t see the bronze, or me again. You play it straight, go in, head to the lab just like you would normally, and we’ll be fine. Andrew’s a little taller than I am,” he considered as he unrolled a long, dark coat. “Shouldn’t matter. They’ll see what they expect to see. People always do.”

  When she pulled into the parking lot, she had to admit he was right. He was so anonymous in the cold weather gear that no one would look twice at him. More, when they got out of the car and started toward the main entrance, she realized she might have taken him for Andrew herself.

  The body language, the gait, the slight hunch in the shoulders were perfect.

  She yanked her card through the slot with one irritable flick of the wrist. After a pause, she punched in her code. She imagined herself making wild faces at the camera, tackling Ryan and pounding her fists into his smug face while the guards scrambled. Instead, she tapped her key card lightly against her palm and waited for the buzzer to sound and the locks to open.

  Ryan opened the doors himself, laying one brotherly hand on her shoulder. He kept his head down, muttering to her as they walked in. “No detours, Dr. Jones. You don’t really want the trouble, or the publicity.”

  “What I want is the bronze.”

  “You’re about to get it. Temporarily at least.”

  He kept his hand on her shoulder, guiding her down the corridors, down the stairs, to the lab doors. Again, she keyed them in. “You won’t be walking out of here with my property.”

  He turned on the lights. “Run your tests,” he suggested, peeling out of his coat. “You’re wasting time.” He kept his gloves on to take out the bronze and hand it to her. “I do know something about authenticating, Dr. Jones, and I’ll be watching you closely.”

  And this, he told himself, was one of the biggest risks of his long career. Coming here, with her. He’d boxed himself in, and was damned if he could rationalize the reason. Oh, coming back was one thing, he thought as he watched her take a pair of wire-rim glasses out of a drawer and slip them on.

  He’d been right about that, he mused. The sexy scholar. Tucking that thought away, he made himself comfortable while she took the bronze to a workstation for an extraction.

  His reputation, his pride—which were one and the same—were at stake.

  The job, which should have been a nice, tidy, and uneventful close to his career, had ended up costing him a great deal of trouble, money, and loss of face.

  But what he should have done, and had intended to do, was confront her, threaten her, blackmail her into offsetting his losses, and walk away.

  He hadn’t been able to resist outwitting her. He had no doubt in his mind she intended to slant the tests in her favor, to try to convince him that the bronze was genuine. And when she did, it was going to cost her.

  He thought the Cellini would be fair payment for his indulgence. The Institute, he decided, slipping his hands in his pockets as he watched her work, was about to make a generous donation to the Boldari Gallery.

  It was going to kill her.

  Her brows were knit as she straightened from the microscope. There was a twist in her stomach that no longer had anything to do with anger or with irritated arousal. She didn’t speak at all, but made notes in a steady hand.

  She took another scraping from the bronze, both the patina and the metal now, put it on a slide and studied that in turn. Her face was pale and set as she placed the bronze on a scale, took additional notes.

  “I need to test the corrosion level, take X rays for the tool work.”

  “Fine. Let’s go.” He moved through the lab with her, imagining just where he would display the Cellini. The little bronze Venus she would give him would go into his own collection, but the Cellini was for the gallery, for the public, and would add a nice splash of prestige to his business.

  He pulled a slim cigar out of his pocket, reached for his lighter.

  “No smoking in here,” she snapped.

  He merely clamped it between his teeth and lighted it. “Call a cop,” he suggested. “How about some coffee?”

  “Leave me alone. Be quiet.”

  The twist in her stomach was sharper now, and spread like acid as the minutes ticked away. She followed procedure to the letter. But she already knew.

  She heated the clay, waiting, praying for the flash of light from the crystals. And had to bite her lip to hold back the gasp. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  But when she held the X ray up, saw her instincts confirmed, her fingers were icy cold.

  “Well?” He arched a brow, and waited for the con.

  “This bronze is a forgery.” Because her legs were weak, she sat on a stool and missed the flicker of surprise in his eyes. “The formula, as far as I can tell with preliminary tests, is correct. The patina, however, has been recently applied, and the corrosion levels are inconsistent with those of a bronze of the sixteenth century. The tool work is wrong. It’s well done,” she continued, with one hand unconsciously pressed hard against her churning stomach. “But it’s not authentic
.”

  “Well, well, Dr. Jones,” he murmured, “you surprise me.”

  “This is not the bronze I authenticated three years ago.”

  He tucked his thumbs in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “You screwed up, Miranda. You’re going to have to face it.”

  “This is not the bronze,” she repeated, and her spine snapped straight as she pushed off the stool. “I don’t know what you thought you could prove, bringing me this forgery, taking us through this ridiculous charade.”

  “That’s the bronze I took from the South Gallery,” he said evenly, “and one I took on your reputation, Doctor. So let’s cut the bullshit, and deal.”

  “I’m not dealing with you.” She snatched up the bronze and shoved it at him. “You think you can break in my home, then try to pass this obvious fake off as my property so that I’ll give you something else? You’re a lunatic.”

  “I stole this bronze in good faith.”

  “Oh for God’s sake—I’m calling security.”

  He grabbed her arm, shoved her roughly against the counter. “Look, sweetheart. I went through this little game against my better judgment. Now it’s done. Maybe you weren’t trying to pass anything off. Maybe it was an honest mistake, but—”

  “I didn’t make a mistake. I don’t make mistakes.”

  “Does the name Fiesole ring a bell?”

  The angry flush died out of her cheeks. Her eyes unfocused, went glassy. For a moment he thought she’d slip through his hold like water. If she was feigning distress, he realized he’d underestimated her.

  “I didn’t make a mistake,” she repeated, but now her voice shook. “I can prove it. I have the records, my notes, the X rays and results for the tests on the original bronze.”

  The vulnerability got to him, enough for him to let her go as she twisted. He shook his head and followed her into a room lined with file cabinets.

  “The weight was wrong,” she said quickly, as she fumbled with keys to unlock a drawer. “The scraping I took didn’t jibe, but the weight—I knew it was wrong as soon as I picked it up. It was too heavy but— Where the hell is the file?”

  “Miranda—”

  “It was too heavy, just slightly too heavy, and the patina, it’s close but it’s not right. It’s just not right. Even if you’d miss that, you couldn’t possibly mistake the corrosion levels. You can’t mistake them.”

  Babbling now, she slammed the drawer shut, unlocked another, then another.

  “It’s not here. The files aren’t here. They’re missing.” Fighting for calm, she closed the drawer. “The pictures, the notes, the reports, everything on the bronze David is missing. You took them.”

  “To what purpose?” he asked, with what he considered saintly patience. “Look, if I could get in here and take a fake, I could have taken anything I wanted. What would be the point in going through this routine, Miranda?”

  “I have to think. Just be quiet. I have to think.” She pressed her hands to her mouth and paced. Logical, be logical, she ordered herself. Deal with the facts.

  He’d stolen the bronze, and the bronze was fake. What was the point in stealing a fake, then bringing it back? None, none at all. If it had been genuine, why would he be here? He wouldn’t. Therefore, the story he’d told her, however absurd, was true.

  She’d tested it, and agreed with his conclusions.

  Had she made a mistake? Oh God, had she made a mistake?

  No. Logic, not emotion, she reminded herself. She made herself stop her erratic movements and stand perfectly still.

  Logic, when properly applied, was amazingly simple.

  “Someone beat you to it,” she said quietly. “Someone beat you to it and replaced it with a forgery.”

  She turned to him, seeing by the considering look on his face that he was likely reaching the same conclusion.

  “Well, Dr. Jones, it looks like we’ve both gotten that kick in the ass.” He angled his head to study her. “What are we going to do about it?”

  twelve

  M iranda decided to accept that it was a day for abnormal behavior when she found herself sitting in a truck stop off Route 1 at six A.M.

  Their waitress brought them a pot of coffee, two thick brown mugs, and a pair of laminated menus.

  “What are we doing here?”

  Ryan poured, sniffed, sipped, then sighed. “Now that’s coffee.”

  “Boldari, what are we doing here?”

  “Having breakfast.” He kicked back and studied the menu.

  She took a deep breath. “It’s six o’clock in the morning. I’ve had a difficult night, and I’m tired. I have some serious thinking to do and I don’t have time to sit in some truck stop trading witticisms with a thief.”

  “So far you haven’t been that witty. But as you said, you’ve had a difficult night. Are you going to run into anyone you know here?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Exactly. We need to eat, and we need to talk.” He set his menu down and shot a smile at their waitress when she came over, pad in hand. “I’ll go for the half-stack of hot-cakes, eggs over easy, and side of bacon, please.”

  “You got it, cap’n. How ’bout you, honey?”

  “I. . .” Resigned, Miranda squinted and scanned the menu in search of something nonlethal. “Just the, um, oatmeal. Do you have skim milk for that?”

  “I’ll see what I can do, and be back to you in a jiff.”

  “Okay, let’s outline our situation,” Ryan continued. “Three years ago you acquired a small bronze statue of David. My research indicates this came through your father, from a private dig outside of Rome.”

  “Your research is correct. The majority of the finds were donated to the National Museum in Rome. He brought the David home for the Institute. For study and authentication, and display.”

  “And you studied it, you authenticated it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who worked with you?”

  “Without my notes I can’t be sure.”

  “Just try to picture it.”

  “It was three years ago.” Because her mind was fuzzy, she tried the coffee. It was like sipping lightning. “Andrew, of course,” she began. “He was very fond of that piece. It appealed to him. I think he might have done sketches of it. My father was in and out of the lab, checking the progress of the testing. He was pleased with the results. John Carter,” she added, rubbing an ache in the center of her forehead. “He’s lab manager.”

  “So he’d have had access to it. Who else?”

  “Almost anyone working in the lab during that period. It wasn’t a priority project.”

  “How many work in the lab?”

  “Anywhere from twelve to fifteen, depending.”

  “All of them have access to the files?”

  “No.” She paused as their breakfasts were served. “Not all the assistants and techs would have keys.”

  “Trust me, Miranda. Keys are overrated.” He flashed that smile again as he topped off their coffee. “We’ll assume that anyone who worked in the lab had access to the files. You’ll need to get a list of names from personnel.”

  “Will I really?”

  “You want to find it? You’ve got a three-year time span,” he explained. “From the time you authenticated the piece until I relieved you of the forgery. Whoever replaced it had to have access to the original to make the copy. The smartest, simplest way to do that would be to make a silicon mold, a wax reproduction from that.”

  “I imagine you know all about forgeries,” she said with a sniff, as she spooned up oatmeal.

  “Only what a man in my field—fields—needs to know. You’d need the original to make the mold,” he continued, so obviously unoffended she wondered why she bothered to snipe at him. “The most efficient way to do that would be to make it while the bronze was still in the lab. Once it’s displayed, you’ve got to get around security—and yours is pretty good.”

  “Thank you so much. This isn’t skim milk,” sh
e complained, frowning at the little pitcher the waitress had brought with the oatmeal.

  “Live dangerously.” He dashed salt on his eggs. “Here’s how I see it. Someone in the lab at that time saw the way your tests were leaning. It’s a nice little piece, one a collector would pay a fair price for. So this person, maybe he has debts or he’s pissed off at you or your family, maybe he’s just decided to try his luck. He makes the mold some night. It’s not a complicated process, and he’s already in a lab. Nothing easier. If he doesn’t know how to cast it himself, he certainly knows someone who does. More, he knows how to make the bronze appear to be, on the surface, several centuries old. When it’s done, he switches the pieces—likely just before it’s moved to display. Nobody’s the wiser.”

  “It couldn’t have been done on impulse. It takes time, it takes planning.”

  “I’m not saying it was impulse. But it wouldn’t have taken that much time, either. How long was the bronze in the lab?”

  “I don’t know for sure. Two weeks, maybe three.”

  “More than enough.” Ryan gestured with a slice of bacon before biting it. “If I were you, I’d run tests on some of my other pieces.”

  “Others?” She didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her, not when it hit her now with such force. “Oh God.”

  “He did it once, and did it well enough to pull it off. Why not do it again? Don’t look so devastated, darling. I’m going to help you.”

  “Help me.” She pressed her fingers to her gritty eyes. “Why?”

  “Because I want that bronze. After all, I guaranteed it to my client.”

  She dropped her hands. “You’re going to help me get it back so you can steal it again?”

  “I’ve got a vested interest. Finish your breakfast. We’ve got work to do.” He picked up his coffee and grinned at her. “Partner.”

  Partner. The word made her shudder. Perhaps she was too tired to think clearly, but at the moment she couldn’t see her way to recovering her property without him.

  He’d used her, she remembered as she unlocked the front door of her house. Now, she would use him. Then she would see that he spent the next twenty years of his life taking group showers in a federal installation.