Mara grasped futilely for reason. Surely, she thought fuzzily, this was wrong. Because…because…The answer shone dimly, only to evaporate in the blaze as his mouth consumed her swollen flesh. Deeper and deeper he drew her in, and she had no reason except to bind him tighter. Legs tangled together. Hands clasped, fingers intertwined. Sibilant wishes drifted over skin and into the cool air that surrounded them.
A man’s blue shirt fell to the floor, followed quickly by bunched white cotton. Soft yielded to hard, and angles sought the poetry of curves. Mara fumbled with the metal buckle at Ethan’s waist, too consumed to remember good intentions or the vengeance of consequences. She couldn’t recall not being with him, not needing him inside.
Ethan feasted and hungered for more. The piquant flavor of the satin beneath her breast. The robust spice hidden at the indentation of her waist. It had been too long, he thought, too long since he’d been sated. Too long since he’d let himself covet a woman’s body, gorge on sensation alone. When she measured him, he shook with the force of need and delight. “Oh, Mara. What do you do to me?”
She bowed up to murmur the answer. “Anything. Everything.” Smoky laughter echoed her promise. “Just let me love you.”
Love you. Love you. The phrase reverberated in his head, churned his scattered thoughts. Words Mara had never spoken to him before, when they were all he’d ever yearned for.
Gently, Ethan reached between their linked forms to still her hands. “This isn’t right.” Shifting away, he clambered off the lab table and felt along the floor for his discarded shirt. He rose from the ground and draped the fabric over her. “We can’t do this, Mara. I can’t do this.”
Shaken, mortified, Mara scooted into a sitting position. She slid off the table, leaving the width of it between them. Eyes flashing, she fumed, “You started it this time, bucko. Not me.”
Her fingers trembled as she tried to adjust the bunched fabric. The difficult act was made all the harder because Ethan remained bare-chested, fly half open. Images flashed in her mind, and she blushed fiercely. The last time she’d made out with a man on a table, she and Ethan had been in study hall after school. Then, as now, she’d been left unsatisfied and aching. The pain riled her, made her livid. She lashed out, “Second time today, Ethan. Makes me wonder how much you actually love this other woman.”
The whip-smart observation hit its mark. Ethan barely flinched, and bit out, “My relationship with Lesley is none of your business.” More invective came to him, but he went silent. He recognized the look of shame on Mara’s flushed face, felt the same greasy sensation in his gut. But Mara was right. This time had been all his fault. He exhaled slowly and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he offered softly. “I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
Because the kind apology was worse than the silence, Mara shot him a venomous look. She didn’t need his pity, or anything else from him. “We’re even now. One for one.” With the tatters of her dignity drooping about her, she adjusted the waistband of her shorts and squared her shoulders. She quickly skirted the table with the length between them. “And you can have your privacy. I’m going to bed. To sleep.”
“Fine,” Ethan agreed shortly. “I’ll bunk down here again.” He let her make it halfway up the staircase before he warned, “Don’t answer the phone, Mara. Or try to sneak out of here tonight. I won’t come after you.”
Mara scurried up the stairs and into the loft. Despite Ethan’s admonition, she dragged her bag from beneath the bed. She grabbed the pile of clothes she’d unpacked earlier, tossing them inside the case with abandon. With each furious throw, she stewed. No way was she staying here, waiting for Dr. Lesley to make a house call. Not when she could still feel Ethan against her. Not when she could hear him saying he loved the brilliant professor.
She didn’t stand a chance. She wasn’t stupid, Mara reminded herself, storming into the bathroom for her loaned toothbrush. Her grandmother had drilled into her a decent vocabulary and respect for English, and because of her grandfather, she knew enough Greek to hang out in Crete for a month’s hiatus. So what, she decided, if the bulk of her education had been self-taught? Perhaps she’d only seen the inside of a college once, when she was scamming a business school mark. The braggart had turned out to be a losing proposition, though she’d done quite well on her financial derivatives exam. Hell’s bells, she’d get a 4.0 in the School of Flim-Flam.
None of which would impress Ethan or his professor in the least. Her exploits couldn’t compare to the good doctor, not when her only claim to fame was a tattered old quilt and a family myth.
With that sobering thought, Mara stopped, turned, and collapsed onto the futon. Drained, she drew her knees up beneath her chin and wrapped her arms around them. Her heel bumped the backpack, which tumbled to the hardwood beneath.
She was way out of her league this time. Ethan wasn’t a struggling kindred spirit anymore. He was a talented, successful academic who had found a new life. One that was arriving special delivery tomorrow afternoon.
Which meant she had to figure out her next move.
Taking a deep breath, Mara unfolded her legs and stood. She was done with moping and bemoaning her luck. Fists on her hips, arms akimbo, she surveyed the clothes that had spilled onto the floor. Running wasn’t her way anymore, and neither was whining about poor choices. Her way, should she choose to remember, involved plans and projects and adrenaline. Independence gave no quarter for mistakes. Rule number seventeen. Make your bed, lie in it, and be sure it can fit in a duffel bag.
Mara chuckled ruefully. She’d obviously forgotten that one, she thought as she bent to retrieve her borrowed finery. The duffel bag and the air mattress had been abandoned in Louisiana, but what she did have with her would be sufficient. Mara Reed survived on her wits and her brain. Neither of which had been left in Alston.
She stacked the khakis from Ethan neatly on the hamper. Normally, she’d offer to wash, but she’d seen no signs of a washer in the warehouse, and a quick trip to the Laundromat was out of the question.
Briskly, she marched into the kitchen area. Plotting, she scraped Ethan’s discarded plate of spaghetti into the trash. Find the gold. Pay off Rabbe, perhaps with interest and a handsome bonus for Guffin. Slip down to the nursing home to see Grandma Reed once more, then hop a plane first-class to the islands. She could easily envision herself stretched out on a beach with brilliant white sand and gorgeous men in loincloths.
Nice plan, she chided herself as she rinsed the dishes, but there remained the stumbling block of Mr. Conroy. His polite threat to her life wasn’t idle. As she wiped the plates dry and arranged them in the cupboard, Mara wondered how exactly she intended to defy the Fates again. Clotho could spin as she willed, but she herself refused to be bound by others’ plots for her destiny.
She’d simply have to return to the basics. Mara plopped onto a stool and filched a paper and pen from the drawer in the island. With quick, familiar motions she drew a table with three columns. Across the top, she scrawled Problem, Solution, Resources. Problem one had to be the $50,000 she owed to Rabbe and the journal she’d taken. If she found the gold, money problem solved. The journal fell under the undefined category of “Finder’s Keepers.”
And she’d use it to solve the next problem of locating the gold. Unfortunately, she mused, the solution seemed to involve Ethan. She penned his name beneath that column, accenting the script with a bold question mark. Right now her only resources were Greek numbers on dead bones, a journal, and the research she and Ethan had independently conducted. A whole heap of uncertainty.
But more than she had before.
Under the problem column she scribbled the name Conroy. Learning more about him was as good a place as any to begin. Mara nodded to herself. The most effective tool for a confidence woman wasn’t weaponry or even her financial stake. It was research. To fool the smartest mark, the most excellent implement was to know more about him than he did. The advent of the Internet had simplified her job considerably.
M
ara walked over to Ethan’s laptop, its screen black. With a few keystrokes she’d brought the computer to life. Using the passwords she’d memorized by furtively watching him when he thought she slept, Mara logged onto the Net. She pulled up the Google site and typed in her search terms: Arthur Rabbe and Conroy. It was a long shot, but often the simplest route yielded the answers.
The screen flashed and the combination of names appeared in blue. After shuffling through the items, she realized the direct approach might not work. Instead, she tried the grouping of Conroy and Seth Guffin. According to her notes, Guffin operated strictly as muscle, never as the lead on an operation. Despite his gentility toward her, he was known for his facility with light arms and breaking human ones. The search yielded two hits.
Fingers almost unsteady, Mara clicked on the first link. The computer whirred into action, slowly downloading a newspaper article from Rockaway, New York. The grainy black and white photo showed a tall, broad-shouldered man standing outside a courthouse. Beside him, Seth Guffin smiled mildly for the cameras. The caption identified Seth Guffin as a former muscle for hire who worked for several New York crime families. He’d been accused of aggravated assault by a Long Island contractor who claimed Guffin had beaten him to a bloody pulp when the man refused to pay a fee to a real estate mogul.
The jury, according to the story, had believed Mr. Guffin’s employer instead. Davis Conroy had testified that Mr. Guffin had merely acted to protect Conroy from a belligerent contractor who’d been terminated for shoddy workmanship. Mara skimmed the story, noting with interest that Guffin had been acquitted by a single juror vote. She clicked on the next item, an article that chronicled another run-in that Guffin had with the law. No mention of Conroy.
“What are you doing now?” Ethan spoke from behind her, and to her credit, Mara merely gulped. He braced his hands on the back of the office chair and leaned close.
“I’m working. And you?” She tried to casually page down to the bottom of the story, but Ethan’s hand swatted hers away from the mouse. “I thought you were going to bed.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
Mara could feel his breath tracing her cheek, and she forced herself to sit still. “Can I help you?” she asked, proud of the absence of tremulousness in her voice. Any second now he’d see the one line that would shoot his temper through the roof. Maybe he’d assume she was catching up on the news.
“Is this the guy chasing you?”
No such luck, she thought. Thanks, again, Fates.
Ethan reached past her to scroll the screen. Obsidian eyes quickly read the item, which gave Mara time to prepare. So she was ready when Ethan spun her chair around and caged her in by closing his hands over the arms. “For the love of God, Mara, you’re running from the mob?”
“Now, don’t overreact, Ethan.”
“Overreact?” Ethan spoke softly, menacingly. “Exactly what constitutes an overreaction when you find out you’re being hunted by mobsters?”
Mara shrank against the chair and kept her voice level. “Rabbe doesn’t work for the mob, Ethan. He’s a petty thief and thug.”
“Who killed a woman and shot you.”
“If they wanted to kill me, they would have. Rabbe doesn’t have much patience.”
“What about Guffin? Are you telling me he’s not a gangster?”
Flummoxed by the unassailable article on the screen, she conceded, “Yes, he, um, is Rabbe’s partner. But Guffin is strictly autonomous these days. If he still worked for the Family, I’d have heard about it before.” Mara stroked the bunched knuckles on the armrest. “Relax. It’s not the mob, I swear.”
Unconvinced, Ethan bored his eyes into the pale brown ones that fairly sparkled with innocence. He didn’t trust them for a minute. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“I’ve told you what I know,” Mara answered more or less truthfully. “Rabbe and Guffin aren’t gangsters. They’re hustlers who are after the journal I stole.”
“Then why the article?”
“I’ve been running since I stole the map, and I haven’t exactly had time to do my homework on Guffin. So I was conducting reconnaissance. To be prepared.”
“I’m afraid to ask, but prepared for what?”
“If we’re going after the gold, we need to know who’ll be tracking us.” Until she knew more about Conroy, there was little reason to mention his involvement. But she owed Ethan as much of the truth as she could. “Who knows about your interest in the gold?”
“No one. I keep my own counsel.”
“No one? Not even Lesley?”
“Lesley knows I’m here to work on an identification project. Which I am. I saw no reason to tell her that I was fool enough to go hunting for a pot of gold.”
“She wouldn’t believe you?”
“Actually, she probably would. And she’d beg to come along.”
“Don’t want to share your wealth with her?”
“I want the manuscript, Mara. The money is yours. But I’m not convinced yet there will be anything to share.”
“Have faith, Ethan.”
For a second time that night Ethan caught her gaze. He watched her steadily, as though trying to read her mind, to ferret out every thought. Finally, he nodded once. “I’m trying, Mara. I truly am.”
“Explain it to me again, Arthur.” Conroy spoke in low tones into the telephone, forcing Rabbe to hold the receiver tight to his ear. On his end, a sleek silver headset cupped his ear gently, the microphone at his jaw. “I want to be certain I understand.”
Rabbe shivered in the sultry heat. His hands and feet had numbed and his throat felt tighter than a virgin. “We picked her up outside the warehouse, in the alley where we’d been on Monday.”
“The same alley where you lost her four days ago, you mean?”
“Uh, yes, sir. Mr. Conroy. I thought we should stake it out, see if she returned to the scene.”
“Very clever of you. So she came out of the warehouse and you—”
“Guffin grabbed her from behind and I got us to the truck. We put her inside, and I drove for the meet point.”
“I believe you left something out, Arthur.”
The liquid vowels terrified Rabbe—especially when they coated his name with an edge of threat. Near panic, he clutched the phone more securely. “No sir, Mr. Conroy. We put her in the truck.”
“But you didn’t begin to drive until you’d secured her hands and feet. Surely, you gagged and blindfolded her, to be sure she couldn’t recount her trail to the authorities. Assure me, Arthur, that you or Seth took those very rudimentary precautions after I spoke with her.”
Rabbe started to respond, but Conroy interrupted. “And please don’t lie to me, Arthur. It makes me quite cranky.”
His teeth began to chatter, clicking against one another despite the tightening of his jaw. “Seth was responsible for securing the lady, Mr. Conroy.”
“Which is why I’m paying him the lion’s share of the compensation. Oh, no. He isn’t the one who demanded seventy-five percent, is he, Arthur?”
“No, sir. I am.”
“You are what?”
“Very sorry to have failed you, sir. Because I did not properly secure the prisoner, when the man blocked my truck, she was able to escape.” Rabbe and Guffin had agreed earlier to keep the exact details to themselves. “Guffin pursued, but she received assistance from the local police.”
“So a young woman who is barely five-seven, 150 pounds soaking wet, manages to outwit you and out-brawn Guffin? She eludes the authorities and goes underground. And you haven’t picked up her track yet. Have I missed anything, Arthur?”
“No sir.” Sweat beaded on Rabbe’s upper lip and trickled along his temple. “That’s what happened.”
Davis Conroy tipped the Corinthian leather seat into a reclined position and sipped daintily from the glass of merlot. Beyond his vision starlight dusted the sky. When flying, he preferred to have the shutters drawn, which helped him pretend that he’d not le
ft the ground. He had no love for flying or for the other pursuits that millionaires adored. Davis Conroy had one true love, and that was money. He reveled in the pursuit, lusted after the conquest, and basked in the spending. He’d never had enough. Like his father. A man too stupid to finish what he started.
And, thanks to incompetent staff, the treasure he’d dreamed about his entire life was slipping through his fingers.
When the stem of the glass snapped, Conroy allowed the rich red wine to soak his sleeve and spill onto the pristine white carpet. The stain deepened until it resembled nothing so much as blood.
“Arthur, are you listening to me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Listen carefully, as I intend to say this one time. Are you listening?”
“Y-Yes, sir. I’m paying attention.”
“Mara Reed has something that belongs to me. To my family. I want it back.” Conroy could hear his mother’s harsh, rasping words as she recounted the thievery of the Reed clan. “You have two days to bring her to me, Arthur, or I will grow disenchanted with our arrangement. Do you understand me?”
“I do. Sir.”
“Good.”
“Um-um, Mr. Conroy?”
“What?”
“We think she’s staying inside a warehouse. I’ve got Seth out doing some recon, to see if we can find out what’s inside.”
Conroy sat up and steepled his hands together. A slow, catlike grin curved his thin-lipped mouth. After nearly a year of searching, a petty criminal with a misogyny complex had led him to the rumored diary he’d hunted for decades. Luck had led him to Mr. Rabbe the first time, but had Destiny decided to take his cause up again? “What’s the address of the warehouse, Mr. Rabbe?”
“Six fifty-three Shahar Boulevard, sir. It’s a big warehouse, but the company that owns it went out of business, we’ve heard.”
“Your information is half correct, as usual. The company was a meat-packing plant. I bought the company and the buildings last year.”
Rabbe couldn’t stop his jaw from falling. “You own the building? So you’ve got a key? Should I send Seth to come get it?”
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