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

Chapter 10

10

Friday, 11:15 a.m.

“S o you— you —don’t have a source who knows what Martin’s after,” Samantha said into her phone, her gaze out the rear door of the Victorian as another crate left the transport truck. “You could make a guess, you know. A pretty good one. You just won’t. That isn’t helpful, Stoney.”

Glancing up from his own phone as he leaned against the wall beside her, Richard continued typing out his question to Tom Donner. If they involved the local police or the FBI his own ability to control the situation would lessen considerably, but he refused to be caught flat-footed. The more contingency plans they had in place, the better.

When Samantha tapped off her own call and shoved the phone into her jeans pocket, Richard dumped his own into his coat. “No luck?” he asked.

She blew out her breath. “I don’t know if it’s a professional pride thing, like his head’ll explode if he makes a wrong guess about what a thief might be after, or if he wants to stay out of it, or if he really doesn’t have a clue,” she whispered, glancing at the horde of Sotheby’s security guards escorting the pieces in from the trucks and up the stairs to their display areas. “But he won’t even frickin’ tell me if I’m playing three- or ten-card monte, so I got nothin’.”

“It could all just be a bluff, you know,” he reminded her, even though he wasn’t wasting any energy believing that. “Martin could be in Palm Beach right now, stealing Picassos off our walls at Solano Dorado.”

“I wish.” She scowled. “How screwed up is that?”

“I’m actually more annoyed that he’s the reason you can’t just focus on your familial relationships. You’ve found your mother, Samantha.”

She frowned. “Are we supposed to be in the park with her pushing me on a swing or something?” she countered, moving around him to shove a stack of boxes out of the way. “I wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t have met up with her at all, if Martin hadn’t done his voodoo. Figure that one out for me.”

“I can’t. I’m here against orders, as it is.”

“Yeah, I noticed that. You think you have a better chance of catching sight of Martin than I do?”

After the way she’d picked his pockets the other day, his own sense of capability where thievery things were concerned had been rather bruised, but that had probably been her intention. “I’m here in a support role. You know, someone you can verbally lambast without making waves in the theft prevention community.”

“I can appreciate that,” she returned, her expression easing just a touch. “But what I also don’t want spreading in the theft-doing or theft-prevention community is that I need my pretty British man with me when I’m doing important stuff.”

Perhaps she made a good point, but he didn’t like it. It wasn’t just the being referred to as decoration, but the implication that he was, essentially, making things worse by being there. “Then think of me as a weapon,” he murmured. “I have the heads of at least three law-enforcement departments on my phone, and I’m not afraid to dial.”

“Hm.” Samantha sidestepped, coming up behind one of the Sotheby’s workers. “If you take out your phone in here again,” she muttered, “I’m going to feed it to you.”

The big man turned his head to look at her. “I’m not—”

“I don’t care if your house is on fire and your wife is having quadruplets,” she interrupted. “Your phone does not leave your pocket inside this building. Is that clear?”

He looked like he wanted to argue, but Samantha just stood there, arms at her sides, nearly a foot shorter than he was, and met his gaze. Finally, he blew out his breath. “Okay. Sorry.”

“Thanks.”

“You think he’s working with Martin?” Richard whispered when she returned to her post against the wall.

“Nope. I think he’s playing online poker. But I’m not going to risk anybody taking photos of where the displays are, or what’s in each one.”

It wasn’t often that he would admit, even to himself, that he was in over his head. Today, though, at best he was a curiosity, and at worst he was distracting Samantha when her attention needed to be—and for the most part was—elsewhere. Leaving, though, meant agreeing that he was useless, and that just didn’t sit well. At all.

“Perhaps I’ll give Walter a call myself, then. From outside, of course.”

“Have at it. And you can tell him I said he’s pissing me off.”

Leaving voluntarily was better than her literally kicking him to the curb, but not by much. Outside he tapped his authorization card against the panel, alerting the system that he’d left the building, before he removed his phone from his pocket and called up not Walter’s, but Tom’s, name.

“Hey,” Tom’s Texas drawl answered immediately. “I’m glad you’re still alive. I was beginning to wonder.”

“You received my text?”

“Yeah, about two minutes ago.”

“It’s not the first time I’ve asked, Tom. Have you heard anyone discussing the Adgerton collection?”

“Are you guys fighting or something? No chitchat?”

“I am feeling somewhat useless at the moment. I don’t like feeling useless.”

“Gotcha. You do have a business to inspect in Passaic if you’re looking for work. You know, the one that sells the cool board shorts but has a terrible customer service reputation?”

“‘Stoked.’ Yes, I remember. Not today.”

“I’m just saying, Rick, Jellicoe doesn’t tromp into your business. That’s the one thing I like about her. So you tr—”

“Well, fuck you and the stupid high horse you rode in on. I would like to be able to turn Martin Jellicoe aside before he gets arrested and rats out his daughter to save his own skin.”

Silence. “Okay. I get it. And I’m trying. But other than calling everybody in my old-timey Rolodex and asking if they know about the Adgerton exhibit and if they’ve heard of anything interesting coming up for sale, I don’t really have an in. I’m a corporate attorney with a reputation for being a straight shooter, Rick.”

Drawing in a slow breath, Richard closed his eyes for a few seconds. “I value you and your reputation,” he said. “I won’t apologize for pushing, but I understand why you draw the line where you do.”

“Rick, now you’re making me feel bad. If you give me a clue where to look, I’ll dig into every art collector on the east coast.”

“I don’t have any clues. Yet. Just keep fishing, and see if anyone nibbles.”

Tom sighed. “Will do. Just be careful, okay? Of you, Jellicoe, and your reputation. You’ve spent a lot of time and effort on carving one out for yourself.”

Ending the call, Richard paced to the Victorian’s doorway and back again. He did understand Tom’s reluctance to skirt this close to the edge of nefarious activities. Samantha referred to Donner as a boy scout, and he’d actually been one. And he had a wife and three children he wanted to be able to look in the eye.

Richard, however, didn’t have any such qualms where Samantha and her safety were concerned. Scrolling through his contact list, he tapped Walter Barstone’s name. The phone rang three times before the line connected with a noncommittal, “What?”

“Walter,” he said crisply. “I’m assuming you feel fairly confident that if Samantha is arrested as a result of Martin’s meddling, she won’t carry any tales about you. I wanted you to know that I don’t feel any such loyalty. In fact, if you leave her hanging here when she’s trying to do the right thing by her own mother, I’m going to make a point of adding some difficulties to your life.”

“Hey, Rick,” the fence’s voice returned, dry and even. “Good morning to you, too. Martin doesn’t trust me, and he’s got contacts I wouldn’t touch. I’m digging. All I’ve got so far is a guy in Amsterdam who collects Alexander Calder kinetic sculptures and who’s fallen off Sotheby’s guest lists because he doesn’t like other bidders—to the point that he’s set guys’ cars on fire.”

Richard didn’t ask how Walter knew that the Adgerton exhibit featured two Calder sculptures; he wasn’t supposed to know that, either. While he didn’t collect them himself, he did know that one had sold for two-and-a-half million a year or so ago. “Would Martin take a gig like that?”

“In the old days? No. Now? Maybe. Especially if it put him into a showdown with Sam. He really seems to want one.”

“Why didn’t you tell her about this?”

“First, it could be a red herring, and second, I don’t want to point her in the wrong direction. She’s better than Martin, but that man carries a grudge. I’m already on his shit list. So are you, if you hadn’t realized that.”

“I figured I might be. I’m not losing any sleep over it.”

“Yeah, well, you live in a fortress, but don’t forget that Sam managed to break in there at least twice.” He took a breath. “I guess what I’m saying is I would’ve stopped working with Martin a long time ago if I wasn’t worried about where Sam would have ended up with only him to rely on. I thought…maybe he took her because her mom was a bitch he couldn’t deal with any longer. I also knew he had no damn business raising a kid.”

This was a bit of a conundrum. Thanking Walter for having a hand in raising Samantha, when together the fence and Martin had both used her as a thief, didn’t sit well. But Richard could agree that with Martin’s influence alone, things could have been much, much worse. “I’ll pass on your information about the Calder pieces to Samantha. Don’t hold out on her, Walter; we both know she can handle whatever gets thrown at her, and I’d rather she feel more comfortable talking to you than going around you.”

“Yeah, well, likewise.”

“What’s the name of the Amsterdam guy?”

“Rick, I—”

“Name.”

“Shit. Daan Van der Berg. And I hope you know that you two are ruining my future employment prospects.”

“Good. Retirement would suit you.”

The call clicked off, and Rick texted Tom. “Drop the prior. I need a direct phone number for Daan Van der Berg in Amsterdam, and an idea of his portfolio.” That done, he dropped his phone back into his pocket.

There. That was something that was definitely in Tom’s wheelhouse, and it wasn’t even remotely illegal or unethical. Walter might have just been throwing out random names, trying to get both him and Samantha out of his figurative hair, but Richard didn’t think so. The fence knew what was at stake, and he damned well knew the consequences of Martin Jellicoe winning this round.

His own next step should have been to go tell Samantha what he’d discovered, but at this point having a name and even a probable focus of the theft didn’t change all that much. They knew Martin meant to rob the exhibit.

The man he truly needed to talk to was Martin Jellicoe, or Bradley Martin, or whatever the hell his actual name was. That, though, came with its own difficulties. Not just finding the man, who was slipperier than a hagfish, but figuring out what to do with him. Getting him arrested would be simple, but that would then allow Martin to flap his gums to any law enforcement agent willing to listen—which would endanger Samantha’s freedom.

Bribery was an option, he supposed, though he had no reason to believe Martin needed money. Samantha didn’t; she had a bank account or two herself overseas and more than enough money to vanish somewhere and live very comfortably with or without him for the rest of her life. He assumed Martin was flush as well, since the man had apparently stolen every vehicle he’d ever driven and had never owned any of the houses in which he’d lived.

That left the third option. That one, though, he didn’t care to consider too closely. Samantha would never forgive him for it, and while he felt the reasons would be justified, it also opened up a pathway he wasn’t certain he wanted to begin walking. Once he’d come up with a good-enough reason for a murder, well, it made him a murderer.

In the business world, three options were a plentitude. In Samantha’s world—former world—three options simply wasn’t enough. Where, though, was he supposed to come up with more?

* * *

“It would help, Miss Sam, if you could point me in the right direction,” Aubrey said, shifting his phone from one ear to the other as he pulled out his credit card to pay for the deli sandwich he’d ordered.

“That’s the tricky part,” Samantha answered, and he could almost hear her scowl over the phone. “I don’t have a direction. All I have is a pending sense of doom—like we know the Huns are coming and we know we locked all the windows, but oops, we forgot about the front door.”

“Thank you, Margaret,” he said, nodding as he balanced the phone against his shoulder, the sandwich in one hand and an iced tea in the other. “Well, tell me what you’ve installed, and I’ll see if I notice anything you might have missed.”

There was more to her sudden anxiety than just nerves, because over the past year he’d come to know her well enough to be aware that the confidence she had in her work was well-founded. That kind of stuff just didn’t worry her.

Aubrey took a breath as he sat at one of the diner’s tables. This part of his job was only supposed to be a cover for his real job. Shit . “Or I could fly up there and take a look at it with my own peepers. A second—or third—set of eyes to look over things might give you a couple extra minutes of, you know, sleep.”

“I thought you were happy being the office guy. Charlie with all his dirty, sweaty angels.”

“I like being the office guy,” he said, snorting at the idea of Samantha’s growing crew of misfits and uncaught felons being angels. “That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be a better office guy if I went out and took a look at what you’re doing once in a while. And this one’s important. A contract with Sotheby’s… Man, that could change things.” He paused, sending a few curse words at himself. “Barstone and Mr. Donner got to join you in Scotland.”

That sounded extremely whiny, even when he’d thought it might come across as a little needy. Damn, but he preferred charming someone over pleading with them. Being there might not make any difference, anyway. But at least it would be something he could show as a receipt to the FBI and Ling Wu.

“Really, Aubrey?” Samantha sighed, making him wince. “Fine. Catch a flight tomorrow morning, and get yourself a room at the Manhattan. Mention me to get the business discount. Bring one of the infrared cameras and a kit bag, since you’re coming.”

“Will do, Miss Sam.”

“You guys are going to have to quit it with the jealousy crap, Aubrey. I’m the boss now, not a slab of bacon.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just…I’d like a chance to step up, you know?” he floundered, jabbing a finger into the top slice of his toasted sourdough.

“I get it. See you tomorrow.”

The call disconnected, and he lowered his phone to the table. This secret agent business was becoming even less satisfying. Samantha trusted him, when she had no real reason to do so, and now he wasn’t just observing. Nope, now he’d just bought himself a ticket to spar with the champ—and he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to fight. Plus, even if she hadn’t had Rick Addison in her corner, he wasn’t at all sure he would win.

She hadn’t even told him why this job was making her so anxious. For all he knew, she might have smelled the FBI sniffing around and when he arrived in Manhattan, she would be asking him to make some calls and find out if there was an open investigation around this collection, or around her. And then he had no idea what the hell he was going to tell her. As he’d tried to explain to Dean and Ling, he had no evidence that she’d done anything wrong. This, though, was the first time he was going out of his way to look for proof to the contrary.

As he ate his sandwich, he made himself flight reservations and booked a room at Addison’s hotel. He’d said he meant to be helpful, so he googled cutting-edge anti-theft devices and a couple of articles on how the Louvre protected their artwork, plus the statistics for Sotheby’s thefts, attempted and successful. Most of the stuff he knew already, but the more background he had, the more competent he would sound.

Once he’d returned to his late-model blue BMW he placed another call, this one to inform Wu Ling that he would be in New York for the next few days to take a closer look at what Samantha was doing for Sotheby’s. He made arrangements to check in with the Manhattan office, too, just because it was good manners.

It all made him feel like he needed to take a shower. That creeping unpleasantness wouldn’t go away until he’d either proven that Samantha wasn’t the thief the FBI thought she was, or that she was. Either way it needed to happen soon, because the two sides pounding on each other in his head was going to give him an aneurism.

* * *

“And why is Pendleton coming to Manhattan?” Rick asked, sitting back in his chair, his coffee cup cradled in both hands.

“I don’t know,” Samantha answered. “I think he got jealous when Donner and Stoney got called to Scotland and he didn’t. So I’ll have him look over things at the Victorian House and see if there’s anything else I should be charging Sotheby’s for.”

“What are they all, twelve?”

“I can only answer for Stoney and Aubrey, and the answer to that is yes, I think so. I get that I’m cool and awesome and everything, but I don’t want a fan club. You have one of those, and those women are evil.”

“I didn’t ask for a fan club,” he retorted, sipping his coffee and pretending not to look at the clock in the kitchen. “They did that all on their own.”

“Well, same with my two guys. You have to explain Donner, because I can’t.” Bending over her phone, she flipped through the cameras, internal and external, at the exhibit house. They’d gotten about a third of Adgerton’s items moved in, with a couple of delays because people hadn’t used their damned access cards yesterday, so today they would hopefully get the rest of the shiny stuff secured in its display cases.

And then it would be time to wait. And sweat. The shit of it all was that Martin knew that, knew that it was actually easier to be a bad guy. Good guys were supposed to win every time, but bad guys only had to win once. It wasn’t fair, really.

“Would you rather live here in New York without the Donners, then?” Rick asked, shaking her out of her momentary career regrets.

“No. Of course not. But we haven’t decided if we’re even moving here. I don’t see why you needed to shake things up with them when nothing is decided.”

“Because everyone needs time to think and consider,” he returned, eyeing her. “Whether it happens or not, if we go, I would like them to move with us. I can’t just spring that on them.”

Powerful guys just expected their friends slash employees to relocate whenever they did, she supposed. In a way it was fair, because Rick had bought Solano Dorado after the Donners had taken a house in Palm Beach. He’d followed them, then. But the Donners had three kids, one of them in college but the other two with a couple more years of junior and high school in front of them. That complicated things.

She complicated things. Firstly, because she couldn’t make up her damn mind, because just when she thought she was figuring out the straight life it threw Martin Jellicoe at her, or a marriage proposal, or a couple of impressionable kids who she really didn’t want thinking her old life had been cool. Even if parts of it had been.

Her phone chimed, and she opened up her texts. Person unknown had sent her a four-word text. “Some nice-looking stuff.” That didn’t sound good.

“What?” Rick asked, setting aside his coffee and leaning forward.

Man, she was going to have to work harder at her poker face, if he was reading her that easily. “I don’t know,” she said. “My dad, I think, trying to rile me up.” She showed him the text.

“Ignore it,” he advised, sitting back again. “You can’t bait someone who isn’t paying you any attention.”

That was some good advice. Samantha set the phone down, returning to her morning donut and scrambled eggs. Yep, it was nice having Andre around to do his chef stuff. Otherwise, it would have been Pop Tarts for breakfasts. “Okay. I’m ignoring it. Pretty random anyway, right?”

“Could well be a spam ad. You could just block the number.”

Samantha took a breath, ripping another piece of donut off with her teeth. “Hardly worth the effort.”

“True. Do you want another diet Coke?”

“No, I’m good. Thanks.”

Her phone chimed again. Dammit . Maybe Rick was right. Maybe it was a two-part spam ad for butt enhancers or something. Waiting a beat, she turned over the phone and looked down at the screen. “Crap.”

“Not spam?”

“Now it says, ‘You’ll get the rest of it moved in today, I assume?’”

His jaw clenched. “In all fairness, it could just be someone with a wrong number, and they’re helping a friend move.”

They both knew that wasn’t what was going on, but the pretending at least reminded her that Martin was working very hard not to say anything concrete. Nothing that could come back to bite him later. Just a couple of vaguely worded texts meant to rattle her. Well, she wasn’t rattled. It was barely street-level information to know that the Adgerton stuff was nice, and that it was being moved into the Victorian house. The viewings were starting in three days, after all.

She tapped her fingers against the tablecloth.

“Don’t respond,” he said, pointing a strip of bacon at her.

“I know that. Jeez. I’m just…I could say something really clever and biting. I hate missing a chance to be clever.”

Rick snorted. “You are cleverness personified. The goddess of cleverness.”

“I’d settle for patron saint of thieves and comedians, but thanks. And let him think I did block him or something. Jerk.”

“I’m still amenable to joining you again today, you know,” he said, flipping over the newspaper at his elbow like he’d spent more than three seconds looking at it since it arrived. “Just for another set of eyes. I could sit in the security room and stare at the camera feeds.”

She wanted him there, or at least close by, because he was sure-fire backup. Nobody watched her six like Rick did. “You know, he could be taunting me to get you out of here so he can rob you. I mean, you do have a Degas on the wall behind me. Among other things.”

Rick looked at her for a second. “Damnation, Samantha.”

“Welcome to paranoid world. Enjoy your stay.”

Her phone chimed a third time. Jumping, she picked it up, then blew out her breath. “Aubrey’s landed. He’ll be at the Victorian house by ten, he says.”

“Good. At least he can provide another pair of eyes.”

“Yeah.” Reaching over, she snagged his last strip of bacon and stood. “I should get going. You’re working from here today now, I assume?”

“No. But I’m calling in Wilder. I feel the need for a butler.”

She couldn’t help laughing. “I won’t even tease you about it, because having somebody here all day will make me feel a little better, too.”

“Good. Especially since a Martin Jellicoe fake-out to rob me hadn’t occurred to me until you said that.” Standing, Rick reached for his suit jacket.

“I doubt that’s his plan, but I’m trying to anticipate everything.” She slipped her hand around his waist as they headed for the elevator. “Give me a ride to work, will you?”

“That saves me from insisting that I accompany you there, anyway,” he muttered, leaning sideways to kiss her temple.

Her phone chimed again. She lifted it up—and stopped so quickly Rick nearly lost his balance. There was no text this time. Only a photo of a small marble sculpture of a hand, taken through glass and on a red velvet background. One black metal corner showed at the edge of the photo.

“This is from my damned exhibit,” she growled. “I locked that display case myself, yesterday.”

Rick grabbed her gesturing hand so he could look at the phone. “That doesn’t mean he broke in,” he stated as she yanked her arm free and sprinted toward the door and the elevator beyond.

“Oh, he didn’t,” she snapped, seething. The damn elevator was of course on the first floor, and she jammed the button with her thumb. “Someone else took that photo and sent it to him. Someone who was in there yesterday. Someone Sotheby’s hired, and whose name I fucking know. I bought them Danishes. The good kind.”

Inside information. Martin had always gone for that advantage when he could, even if—as it usually did—it involved seducing some dumbass woman who thought he was a dashing whatever it was he was pretending to be. These days it had likely taken a bribe, and that irked her even more. Losing your mind over love was something she could understand. Hell, she’d lost her mind a year ago. Greed was no damn excuse. At all.