A Kiss in the Dark (Sam and Rick #2)

Chapter 9

9

Thursday, 3:33 p.m.

R ichard flopped onto his back, reaching over to drag Samantha across his chest. “I don’t know about you,” he murmured, “but I feel better now.”

Panting, Samantha tipped her head to give him a kiss on his jaw. “I’m beginning to think things would have been awkward if you hadn’t come to New York.” She chuckled. “Martin probably thinks I’m shaking in my boots right now, wondering when he’s going to strike. And here I am, spread-eagled under Rick Addison while we try to break the bedsprings.”

He didn’t generally think of himself as a boytoy to be used for sex or any other purpose, but neither was he about to complain about being of service today. Of course, neither did he need to hit the treadmill today, either. Not after that. “This doesn’t change anything, you know,” he commented, still trying to catch his breath. “You’re still who you are. The only difference is that you’ve added a few more chapters to your book.”

“ The Book of Sam , I suppose? It would have a lot of blank pages for things I can’t talk about. And lots of profanity.” She put her chin on her fist to look down at his face. “Can you imagine being Anne? Losing a kid, looking for her until you just…give up, I guess, and then years and years later having this random person you hired announce that she’s your daughter?”

“Not to sound like a psychologist, but Anne’s business is her own. All you have to figure out is you, my dear. And all that’s shifted for you is that you potentially have one parent who doesn’t belong in federal prison.”

“Yeah, but I belong in federal prison. Some gift for mom, huh?”

That talk was not acceptable. Richard took her shoulders, lifting her so they were eye to eye. “No, you don’t belong in prison,” he stated. “Your father was a self-centered, egomaniacal fool who saw you as clay he could mold into the perfect cat burglar, and then he couldn’t handle it when you surpassed him. You have a conscience; that’s why you’ve chosen a career that helps you make amends. In my opinion, you using your expertise to stop other people like Martin is a better use of your time than wasting it in prison.”

She shifted out of his grip and slid off him to sit up. “Wow. You’ve been thinking about this a lot.”

“Every damn day.” He caught hold of her hand as she shifted to the edge of the bed. “Get to know Anne, let her into your life and you into her life, or don’t. The only thing you’re obligated about right now is keeping Martin Jellicoe out of the Adgerton exhibition.”

Richard didn’t let out his breath until Samantha squeezed his hand back. He couldn’t force her to do anything, as much as he wanted to from time to time, but at least she was listening. While he knew about all of his relatives back three or four hundred years, Samantha had been a singularity in more ways than one. Even knowing what he did about Martin only gave him a small sampling of what her life must have been like. He doubted she would ever learn anything about her father’s family; even if Martin told her about them, even if Martin was his actual last name—which he doubted—she wouldn’t believe a word he said.

Now, though, she had a chance to learn about the other half of her ancestry. Perhaps he put more importance to it than she did because his own was so detailed, but she must have had some interest in knowing where she came from. Where that strong, stubborn sense of decency came from, because that damned well wasn’t anything she’d gotten from Martin.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, when she didn’t move.

Samantha sighed. “Mostly about whether in a year or so I’m going to regret taking this job as much as I do right now.”

“So you don’t want to know wh—”

“I found you,” she interrupted, “when I was me, no tangles, no ties, and a dad I thought was dead. I’m not sure I like the idea of being Dolores Lee Jones from Nebraska.”

“Sarah Jane Martin, from Connecticut,” he corrected. “Though Dolores is a bloody sexy name.”

With a snort she pulled her hand free of his and stood. “Don’t forget that I’m fake-named after a T.S. Eliot poem. Or more likely, the Broadway musical.” Naked, she twirled, making a pawing motion with her hands. “I’m a Jellicle cat.”

Humor. Humor was good. That was how Samantha coped with things that troubled her. As she trotted into the bathroom, Richard lay back again. He’d been through moments where he’d worried she would flee, vanish into the night. This hadn’t been one of those moments, but it troubled him at least as much. She felt guilty for detesting a mother about whom she’d only been told lies. She felt guilty that Anne Hughes had spent…years worrying about a young girl who’d barely given her a second thought. And she felt guilty that she hadn’t been the picture-perfect girl she figured Anne had imagined for all those years.

And when Samantha felt guilty, she wanted to make amends. Her comment that she deserved to be in prison had nearly stopped his heart. Prison wasn’t going to happen. The possibility alone was why he kept a few select phone numbers and coordinates in his wallet. People who for a price could arrange travel across certain borders even if his own plane was stopped. Places where the U.S.—and most of the rest of the civilized world—couldn’t arrange for arrests or extraditions. And he’d discreetly arranged several offshore accounts for the same reason.

The shower went on, and a moment later Samantha leaned around the edge of the bathroom door. “Wanna soap me up?”

His cock jumped. Yes, this was about burning off adrenaline and not wanting to consider next steps, but he happened to be an enlightened, supportive partner. If she required more sex, he was certainly willing to oblige. “I feel in need of a shower, myself,” he drawled, sliding off the bed and padding into the bathroom.

She slid her arms up over his shoulders and leaned against him to plant a solid, open-mouthed kiss. “Let’s just keep doing this and forget everything else,” she suggested.

Taking her by the waist, he lifted her up onto the counter and stepped in between her knees. “They’d find our entwined, half-melted skeletons in about a week, but it would be worth it,” he murmured, slowly drawing her forward and burying himself inside her.

Gasping, Samantha leaned her forehead against his. “Shower,” she muttered.

With a grin he lifted her again. Her legs wrapped around his hips, and he carried her into the shower through the thankfully wide door. Hot water cascaded over them as he kept her pinned against the Carrara tile and shoved into her again and again. Samantha dug her fingers into his shoulders, giving a high-pitched, drawn-out moan as she came around him. Damn . That was the moment, that handful of heartbeats when he could look her in the eye and know that whichever heart-stopping stunt she pulled, however much danger and excitement she craved, she belonged to him. They fit, literally and figuratively. Eyes rolling back in his head he joined her, grunting as he climaxed.

“God, I love shower sex,” she panted, planting a kiss on his mouth. He felt her lips curve in a smile. “And I love you.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, lowering her feet to the tiled floor and reaching for her bottle of shampoo. “Likewise.”

A frown touching her face, she shoved at his shoulder. “Seriously. This wasn’t just a workout. You make me feel…safe.”

With a scowl of his own, Richard squeezed shampoo onto his palm. “That’s…flattering.”

“Come on, Brit. That’s not what I mean. You know how to do all the sex stuff like a certified pro. But I spent a lot of years being able to count on me. That’s it. Backpack under the bed, one ear listening for car doors closing too quietly, one eye watching for anybody who might look at me funny. Even with Stoney—he wouldn’t give me up, but he would vanish if things got too sticky. You wouldn’t, though.” She tilted her head to look at him and reached up one hand to cup his face. “You’re the only person who’s ever put me first. And yes, that makes me feel safe. You make me feel safe. So you can suck it if you don’t like that.”

Wow . Richard leaned back against the shower wall. “I forget sometimes,” he said quietly, “how much effort, and how much faith, it’s taken you to be in my life.”

“So ‘safe’ isn’t a bad word,” she prompted.

“So ‘safe’ isn’t a bad word,” he repeated. “Now I believe I promised you some soaping up.”

She snorted, turning her back and tilting up her head. “Kinky.”

* * *

Samantha dipped a cracker into the jar of peanut butter and dumped it into her mouth. It was too late for lunch, but a little protein before Anne arrived for dinner would hopefully at least keep her from fainting or doing something else equally unimpressive.

As she licked off her finger, her phone rang to the theme from Wonder Woman . Using her peanut butter-free pinkie, she accepted the call. “Hi, Katie.”

Katie Donner, wife, mom, PTA member, protector of local wildlife and avid recycler, had only done one questionable thing in her life, as far as Sam could tell. She’d married Tom Donner. But then, the guy was as upright as a human could get, so there was that.

“Sam,” Katie’s warm voice returned through the phone’s speaker. “You’ve had quite a day, I’ve heard. Wanna talk about it?”

Rick strolled into the kitchen and stole one of her crackers. “Katie?” he mouthed.

Sam nodded. “My mouth’s full of peanut butter. Give me a sec.” With her clean hand she scooped up the phone and made her way to the huge living room window. After she swallowed and ran her tongue around her teeth a few times, she took a breath. “Tom told you all the stuff, I guess?”

“He said you found your mom. As I recall, you never thought of her very fondly. Was it rough?”

“Really rough. Turns out my dad made up all the sh—stuff about her kicking us out. He kidnapped me. She reported me missing, but couldn’t get far enough into Martin’s network to locate me.”

Silence. “Wow. That’s…awful. A lot of things for you to rethink. A lot of emotions. It must be so crazy. How’re you doing?”

Looking at Katie’s name on her phone display, Samantha frowned. Rick had said the same thing, pretty much, but he was always worried she would freak out and skedaddle. Slowly she sat in one of the ultra-comfortable chairs facing the window. Katie was…normal. If she thought all this might be crazy and weird, then feeling confused about it was…okay. “Weirdly,” she said, “hearing you say that actually helps. My head’s kind of whirlwindy.”

“I can only imagine. Does she seem like an okay person, at least? Because I don’t think you’re obligated to connect with her unless you want to do that. It doesn’t matter if what you’ve been told about her is false. You still have the right to decide whether you want to know her or not.”

“I feel bad for her. I mean, for a lot of years I barely spared her a thought, because Martin said she wasn’t worth thinking about.”

“Made it easier for him, I bet,” Katie muttered, then cleared her throat. “You didn’t punch her or anything, did you?”

“No! No, of course not. I’m just…I’m not the ideal daughter, you know?”

“Oh, please. You’re awesome. Do you want to get to know her? Because she’s not perfect, either. She married your dad, right?”

“Yeah, she did.” And she had known he was a bad boy, though probably not just how bad. Still, they both had some baggage. Some Martin-shaped baggage. “Martin’s an ass,” she said aloud. “Excuse my language.”

“Oh, I agree. And moms can be tricky, too. Believe me, you’re always twelve years old to your mother. And they always know better than you do and aren’t shy about telling you that. So you take things at your pace. And call me if you want to vent or ask questions, or whatever. I’m here, Sam, okay?”

“I may have avoided that twelve-years-old thing, since she didn’t know me then. But thanks, Katie. I’m not good with the family stuff. I appreciate it. Really.”

“Anytime, my dear. You’re frequently the only excitement in my life. And don’t you dare apologize for that.”

“Okay. Bye.”

She tapped off the call and looked up to see Rick resting both elbows on the counter, chin in his hands as he gazed at her. “Is this where I say that I already told you all that, or should I just nod sagely at her wisdom?” he asked.

“Just nod, dude. She’s a normal. You and I are…Well, we’re not normal.”

He grinned. “We’re exceptional.”

Well, he was exceptional. Today she was just happy to hear that not knowing quite how to feel was okay. Having a female friend was good. Having Katie Donner in her life was good. Even if it meant having Tom Donner there, too.

* * *

Generally, when invited to someone’s home for dinner, Anne Hughes brought wine. Red wine, usually, because in her mind it felt more festive. Tonight wasn’t about being festive, though. Nor was it just any dinner.

Hefting the cloth sack she’d brought with her, she thanked the Uber driver and climbed out of his Subaru. She’d passed this apartment building on Park Avenue perhaps a thousand times in her decade of working at Sotheby’s. During at least one taxi ride she remembered thinking that Richard Addison lived in the building, but that had been in conjunction with a showing she’d been arranging, when she’d hoped he or his surrogate would make an appearance. Everyone knew Addison was a collector with exquisite taste and deep pockets.

But tonight wasn’t about that, either. Squaring her shoulders, she pulled open the glass door and stepped into the lobby. Marble floors, mahogany desk, and a gold- and dark-blue striped wallpaper that practically screamed “you can’t afford me” greeted her, along with a tall, broad-shouldered man who stood up from behind the mahogany desk as she entered.

“I’m here to see Richard Addison,” she said, even though he wasn’t who she was there to see, at all.

“Name?” he said, bending his head to type something onto his computer.

“Anne Hughes.”

He nodded, leaving the desk and walking over to the pair of elevators against the back wall. “When you step out of the elevator,” he said, reaching in with a card and hitting a button before he shifted to hold the door open, “there’ll be a door and a phone in front of you. They’re expecting you, so the door won’t be locked. You can head straight in.”

“Thank you.” She stepped into the mirrored elevator, and the door closed with a quiet chime.

She dealt with wealthy people all the time in her position at Sotheby’s. They’d long ceased being intimidating, though she knew to look out for serious quirks and oddball requests that if ignored or neglected, could cost a client a very lucrative sale. But this wasn’t about assessing a potential buyer, either, even though Rick Addison might well be one.

How in the world had she ended up calling one security expert, of which there were a small handful on the east coast, having that one person she called accept the job, and then discovering that this same one person was her long-missing daughter? There were coincidences, and then there was this.

It all stank to high heaven of Bradley Martin. The question that kept hammering at her was why . And the possibilities that she’d been running through her head all afternoon didn’t lead anywhere good. At the beginning of the equation were two facts: she knew Bradley Martin, knew how he thought and how far he would go to make a point; and she knew—she knew —that Bradley always put himself first. This wasn’t about helping her reconnect with Sarah—Sam. This was about him in some way. And they all needed to figure out how he meant to use all this.

Because for her it was all about Sarah. The little girl with the gold and copper hair who loved Disney movies and had once spent a month straight wearing Tinker Bell wings day and night, didn’t much resemble the young woman who conversed in thief lingo and had clearly—because she’d admitted to it—joined her father on at least some of his burglaries.

There were other things, though. She’d liked Sam from the moment they’d met. There had been an ease to their conversation that she’d enjoyed, but now she had to review to see if she’d sensed a connection or something, or if she’d just been pleased to see a competent woman being successful in a male-dominated profession.

The elevator door opened, and she stepped into the small foyer. As the man downstairs had said, the alcove was empty except for a phone on one wall and a plain, unmarked door. Oh, and a camera set above the door that could see any visitors.

Resisting the urge to wave at it, or to straighten her coat or her hair or something, Anne took a deep breath and reached for the doorknob—only to have it pull away from her before she could grasp it.

“Hello,” Rick Addison said in his smooth British accent. “Thank you for coming. Somewhere more…neutral might have been easier, but it also would have been less private.” Standing aside, he motioned for her to enter.

“I expected a butler,” she commented, hefting the sack in her hand before she held it out to him. “I brought wine. I’m not sure why, but it’s what people do, right?”

“We have a butler,” he said, shutting the door and falling in beside her, as charming and confident in a suit and tie as he had been in jeans and a T-shirt just…what had it been? Yesterday? “I haven’t called him in yet; we thought we’d only be in New York for a few days.”

“When did you decide you would be here longer?” she asked, watching as he set the sack down in the large kitchen. In the far corner sat a full, refrigerated wine rack, which of course they would have. God, she was an idiot.

“When Samantha learned that Martin—Bradley—was involved.”

Anne cocked her head. “You know all about her, then? And Bradley Martin or Martin Jellicoe or whatever he’s calling himself these days?”

“I do.” He lifted the bottle out of the sack. “This a good cabernet.”

“I like it. What made you decide to dig through my past?”

Anyone else might have been offended by the blunt question, but he continued on his way to a cabinet for a pair of wine glasses. “When I learned Martin Jellicoe was involved.”

“You don’t trust him, then? Or you don’t trust Sam around him?”

“Ah.” Lifting a cork puller out of a drawer, he opened the bottle. “If you think for a second this is a jest, or that either of us is working with Martin to put something over on you, we’re about to have a very different conversation than the one Samantha’s been fretting over for the past few hours.” He set the bottle down. “Are we having that conversation, then?”

“She makes a good point, Rick,” Sam’s voice came from a doorway at the far end of the kitchen. “If I were Martin’s loyal padawan, or if I still believed all the shit he said about Anne over the years, yeah, I might be working with him to hit her exhibit. I’d be suspicious of me, too.”

Padawan . That was Star Wars . It was odd that at the same time she was trying to decide if she could trust this woman at all, she wanted to decipher everything about her, know her likes and dislikes, and make certain she ended up being one of the likes. Sam would like Michael, at least, and his substantial Star Wars collection. Anne took a breath. No. No talk about Michael or things that personal while Bradley Martin was anywhere in the state. “He took my child from me,” she said aloud. “I’d be a fool to think he wouldn’t stoop to using my connection with Sam—the connection I want—against me. Do I think she has anything to do with that? No. But it could still be used.”

“I think he’ll use it against us, too. But I don’t think he knows that we know about that connection,” Sam commented, shifting around Addison and going into the refrigerator for a bottle of diet Coke.

“What makes you say that?”

“He’s dangling a big ‘you won’t like the ending’ over my head if I keep going with this job. After he probably arranged for me to get it.”

Abruptly Anne couldn’t catch her breath. “You talked to him? You’re going to have to explain that, right now.”

Rick handed her one of the glasses of wine as a broad-shouldered man in a chef’s jacket appeared from yet another doorway. “Let’s take this to the front room, shall we? I prefer not to get in the way of Andre’s culinary preparations.”

“Andre prefers that too,” Andre Vilseau said, pulling out a pair of pots and clanking them onto the counter.

Following Samantha and Rick, Anne found a large, wide sitting room, the entire wall facing Central Park made up of ten-foot-tall windows. The idea that her little Sarah lived in a place like this still didn’t quite feel…real. Should she ask for a DNA test?

Sam dropped onto the gray couch perpendicular to the windows. “He drove up to me right after you and I left Starbucks. He’s totally up to something. I just can’t figure out if he’s after the Adgerton collection, if he’s pissed at me for quitting my previous means of employment, if he means to try to drag me back into it, or if he happened to spot you or your name somewhere and decided to hurt you some more for getting over him.”

“Would you? Ever go back to it, I mean.” Anne frowned. “And I’m not asking because of the Adgerton collection. I…want some things from this relationship. I want this relationship. So, would you?”

“No.”

Sam said it confidently enough. “I so want to believe you, Sam. I do. But I believed Bradley when he said he’d gone straight, too. I can’t…This is—"

“May I poke a few holes in your Samantha-returning-to-crime theory?” Rick seated himself beside Sam, close enough to touch but not doing so. “Firstly, there’s me.”

“You keep her on the straight and narrow, you mean? I happen to have some firsthand experience that loving someone doesn’t turn them into the human you want them to be.”

“I’m on the straight and narrow because I love him ,” Sam stated, taking a swallow of her diet Coke. “And because I prefer living in a place where I can open the doors and walk outside whenever I want to. But that isn’t what he means.”

He sent his fiancée a sideways glance. “Yes. Anyway, I’m rich. And well known. It would ruin my reputation if she stole something and got caught. And because I’ve made her much more high profile, her disappearing after she pulled a job like this would be very…problematic.”

“And not just because he would hunt me down like a Terminator,” Sam added.

“Though that would have to factor into the situation.” Rick tipped his glass against her bottle of soda.

Very slowly Anne took a seat on the front edge of a blue chair. Even more slowly she drank her entire glass of wine. Sam had mentioned her life with Rick as a deterrent to her being a criminal already, but for heaven’s sake, they finished each other’s sentences. As if they’d had this conversation before and concluded exactly what the outcome would be if she went rogue.

“The ‘crime doesn’t pay’ axiom actually applies for you, doesn’t it?” she commented around the rim of her glass.

“I’ve made crime pay,” Sam answered. “It’s paid me a lot. But I was getting tired of it, really. I had a legit job, working in art restoration, and only did the bad things if the object or the setting really interested me.”

“Was art restoration how you two met?”

“Actually, I—”

“That’s close enough to the truth to suit,” Rick interrupted. “Because while I understand your trying to build trust and Samantha wanting to be honest with you, you’ve lived a rather secretive life yourself, Anne. And I prefer to keep some padding between my fiancée and trouble.”

Anne wished they hadn’t left the wine in the kitchen. “This morning I had this thought, that if you were a few years older, Sam, we might be good friends. Then this afternoon you tell me that you’re my daughter, and my brain hasn’t slowed down since. This isn’t at all what I was expecting when I called you for help.”

Sam grimaced. “I bet the reunion part wasn’t what you were expecting, either. I know this isn’t the huggy, squishy tear fest you probably wanted, but we both know Martin’s involved. And that puts shit in the middle of the party.”

“I have no complaints about finding you after all this time. Never. But no, this is not how I ever imagined any of this would happen. And I imagined it a lot. Or I used to.”

Wow . As Samantha absorbed that bit of information, she sipped at her Diet Coke. She couldn’t remember ever imagining a reunion with her mom, except in a nebulous, giving-the-woman-the-finger-on-her-wedding-day kind of way. Seeing that woman sitting there now, she was kind of glad Anne still wasn’t sure about all this, because it helped her find her own balance. Reexplaining the logic of it all, hearing it all said aloud, made it more solid. More real.

“You think he orchestrated all this? Arranged for me to hire you? Because I had the same thought. And it’s pretty scary.” Anne looked into the bottom of her empty glass again. “Why would he go to all this trouble for either a painting or to teach you a lesson? It’s beyond extreme, even for him. I was hoping you would convince me all this was just a coincidence, after all.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that, actually. And a couple of months ago,” Sam said, “Martin basically forced me into a gig to rob—”

“Samantha,” Rick cut in, his tone sharp. “We’re keeping padding between you and trouble, if you’ll recall.”

“She knows who Martin is, Brit,” Samantha reminded him with a brief glare. “Plus, the NYPD thanked me after.” Yeah, she got his caution. But at some point, if they made it through this, she liked the idea of just…telling the truth to Anne. If Rick was jealous of that, well, he’d have to get over it. “Martin forced me into a gig robbing the Met,” she started over. “I turned it on its head, brought in the cops, and Martin had to do some serious scrambling to keep from going back to prison. He’d made a deal with Interpol to turn in other thieves, so a couple of years ago they faked his death in prison and pulled him out to roam free. Idiots.” Samantha took a breath. “Anyway, the Met gig pissed him off, because he didn’t know what hit him, and because he thought he was pulling me back into the business—not that I was going to send him running for his life.”

“Bradley always did have a healthy sense of his own superiority,” Anne muttered. “And a keen desire to keep his own skin safe.”

“Yeah. So anyway, I think this is him trying to one-up me. He looked you up, planted that note to spook you, maybe had a fake phone call with Joe Viscanti and brought up my name so I would be on his mind or something, and here we are. Like I said, yesterday right after I left you Martin pulled up in a stolen car and warned me off the job. Again. I played it like I figured he was just trying to prove that he was the king, but I’m really starting to think that his end game is to say, ‘Hey, guess what, Anne’s your mom,’ and then wreck the two of us while he takes whatever it is he’s after from the Adgerton collection. A double tap.”

“So all of this…crap is because you dented his ego?”

Samantha tipped up her soda and took a drink. “I can’t quite figure all the angles yet, but yeah, I think it’s to teach me a lesson.”

“To teach you a lesson. I’m just what, then, incidental?”

“You’re integral,” Rick said.

“As the damn red herring, or gun on the wall, or deus ex machina or whatever,” Anne snapped, slapping the arm of the chair with her free hand.

“I think we can all agree that Martin’s an ass.” Rick stood, handed over his untouched glass of wine to Anne, and sat again. “I can’t even imagine how much pain he’s caused you, Anne, but no part of me thinks he presently has anything charitable in mind.”

Samantha slid her hand over to grip his. That was Rick, feeling compassion for the party that had been truly injured in all this mess. For her, it had been disbelief and shock and some anger at Martin, but for Anne, who’d had her toddler stolen from her and probably figured Sarah was dead at worst and never coming back at best, this must have been a horror. And on top of that, little Sarah wasn’t a senator or a ballerina or whatever it was moms wanted their daughters to become. Nope, little Sarah was a barely retired jewel thief.

“I’ve put out some feelers, to see if anybody knows what he’s after from the collection,” she said aloud. “He generally doesn’t take a job unless he has a buyer for something. That doesn’t mean he won’t pocket a few extra things to fence, but there’s got to be someone after a particular item of Adgerton’s.”

“You have the list,” Anne commented, sipping at her second glass of wine. “I don’t know anything particular about any of the items other than what the provenance or the family has told me. There are some extremely valuable items, of course, but nothing in particular that screams ‘Bradley Martin’ at me.”

“Did you take Martin as your married name?” Rick asked, even though he and Donner would have discovered that by now, already. Digging again, then, or looking for lies. Jeez, and she’d thought she was the paranoid one.

“Yes, I did. After he emptied out the collection I was tending and stole my daughter, I reverted to my maiden name. I would never have been able to stay in this field otherwise.” She blew out her breath. “Even so, I had to work at a few…lesser-known establishments before Sotheby’s agreed to hire me. This will ruin my career. Again. And I’m running out of names.”

“I know that feeling,” Samantha commented. “But he’s not going to ruin anything, because even if we don’t know what he’s after, we do know he’s going to hit the collection, and we know how he means to put me—us—off our game. And I happen to know that short of taking a dump truck and driving it through the front entrance, Martin’s going to have a hard time breaking into that building. And while he likes to break stuff, he definitely doesn’t like getting caught doing it.”

Actually, maybe a cement pillar or two in front of the front and back entrances might be a good idea, now that she considered it. If they had time to get them set into place. Even a pit of wet cement might slow Martin down if he decided to go Godzilla on the Victorian.

“What do we do, then? And what do we,”—and Anne gestured between the two of them—“do next?”

Samantha had been working on both of those ideas all day. “As far as the Adgerton collection, we start bringing in the items tomorrow just like we planned,” she said, trying to ignore the male wall of annoyance sitting beside her. Yeah, Rick didn’t like her spilling secrets. She didn’t like it, either. But at some point, somebody needed to give ground. And under these circumstances, she figured it needed to be her.

“Isn’t that like parading hens in front of a fox?” Anne asked, beginning to look like she was going to need a third glass of wine.

“It is. To Martin, it’ll look like I’m straight-up ignoring his threats, that all I see is him challenging my abilities.” That, though, touched on the thing that had been bugging her about all this, and she sat forward. “If you want to keep working with me, that is. This is your gig, after all, and me being here is going to make all this tougher.”

“Do you think Bradley would back down if you went back to Florida?”

“He might. If this really is about putting me in my place, which I think it is, he might back off.”

“Oh.”

“If he’s got in his head that using you is how he’s going to take me out, though, he’s probably not going to give up poking at both of us. It might get even more personal, for you at least. I’ve got him pretty well walled off from Rick and me. With actual walls.”

“I don’t want to even think about him lurking at the edges of my life,” Anne stated, clenching the stem of the wine glass. “He needs to go away.”

“On that, we agree one hundred percent,” Rick said. “If it can be done without endangering Samantha.”

Ultimately, it might just have to endanger her. However she’d originally stepped into the burglary business, by the time she’d retired she’d become a willing, fully cognizant, participant. If her dad decided to drag her down with him, she would sink. The idea of that scared the shit out of her, but being caught had always been a possible consequence of participating.

“Agreed.” Anne nodded.

“Even if it can’t be,” she said aloud, before everyone could agree to sacrifice their own peace of mind for her freedom, “Montenegro is nice. And Brunei hardly has any typhoons.”

“Why those two countries?” Anne asked.

Rick shifted, his fingers tightening around Samantha’s. “No extradition treaties with the U.S.”

Anne blinked. “That’s…scary that you know that.”

There were a half-dozen other countries, too, including one or two where Rick had made a point to do some investing. Just in case, he’d said. Yeah, in case they needed to flee the U.S. God, what a mess that would make of his life. And it was almost worse that he’d anticipated that, had shifted some of his wealth around to avoid having all his assets frozen if it came down to it. Him, the guy born and bred into money and who’d made a shitload more of it than he’d had when he started, was willing to restructure his entire life just to keep her in it.

“I just found you,” Anne said, putting her free hand over her heart. “We need to find a way to stop Bradley without forcing you to live in a hut somewhere.”

“Huts are cool,” Samantha quipped. “We could be Gilligan and the Skipper.”

“Maryanne and the Professor,” Rick corrected.

“Thurston and Eunice ‘Lovey’ Howell,” Anne put in.

Samantha’s heart did a weird thump. “You know Lovey’s real name,” she breathed.

Anne’s cheeks reddened. “I used to win bar trivia contests,” she said. “Quite a few of them.”

Rick squeezed her fingers once more, then released her to stand. “You two are definitely related,” he commented. “I’m going to go check on dinner.”