Flirting With Danger

by Suzanne Enoch

  Samantha’s hand stilled, and she slowly looked up to meet Danté’s gaze with glittering eyes. “Beg pardon?”

  “Yes. Her father died in prison as a known art thief. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she has the tablet, and tried to kill me with the first bomb so that I couldn’t discover who she was. She can’t be trusted.”

  “And the second bomb?” Richard asked, clenching his fist so hard his fingers were going numb.

  “To make herself look innocent, undoubtedly. Have you searched her belongings, Detective Castillo?”

  “They might believe you, Partino, if you hadn’t hired a chimpanzee to make the fake for you,” Samantha retorted, rising and flinging the pencil and paper in the estate manager’s face before either Rick or Castillo could make a move to stop her. “No wonder you tried to kill me before I could take a good look at it, but you’d have to blow up everybody over the age of seven if you wanted to keep that shit a secret.”

  “You know nothing,” Danté returned, standing opposite her and slamming a fist against the table. “I know you tried to kill me, and nothing you say will change that. The police will find out the truth.”

  “They already have,” she shot back. “You just placed yourself close to the first bomb, and nobody said I was close to the second one—except for you. So it’s too bad you don’t have the original tablet, because you could probably use the money from it to buy your way out of a murder conviction, you stupid fuck.”

  “Bitch!” he yowled, lurching across the table at her.

  Donner and Castillo grabbed him by either shoulder and shoved him back into his chair. At the same time Richard shot to his feet and pushed in front of Samantha. “Enough!” he bellowed.

  “What did you use for a mold?” Samantha taunted from over his shoulder, “Play-Doh? Or did you have somebody do it freehand with a sledgehammer?”

  “I’m not saying anything! I want a lawyer!”

  “You’d better get one,” Castillo said grimly. “Danté Partino, you’re under arrest for attempted murder and theft and whatever the hell else I can think of on the way to the station.”

  “No! I didn’t do anything! It was her! I didn’t take anything! She has the forgery!”

  Richard stormed around the table and grabbed Partino by his tie. “What forgery?” he growled.

  Partino’s face went white. With an audible gulp he clamped his mouth shut. “I want a lawyer,” was all he said, and he kept repeating it while Castillo called in a uniformed officer with a pair of handcuffs.

  When the acquisitions manager—former acquisitions manager—had been escorted from the room, Castillo faced Richard again. “I’ll need the fake,” he said.

  “I’ll get it for you.”

  “I’m going with you. Evidence contamination and all that.”

  They left the room, though Richard paused long enough to send warning looks at both Samantha and Donner before he exited. Tempers were already high, and he didn’t want to come back to find one or both of them bloodied.

  “Partino’s right about Jellicoe, you know,” the detective said conversationally.

  For a moment Richard kept silent. “And you have proof?” he finally asked.

  “No. If I did, she’d be in handcuffs right along with Partino.”

  “Then she’s innocent until proven otherwise,” Richard returned. “That is still the creed you Yanks go by, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. You’re not surprised by the accusation, though.” Castillo glanced sideways at him. “I figured you wouldn’t be.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, she’s done nothing wrong. Her father was the convict. Not Samantha.”

  Castillo sighed. “She’s a pretty toy, Mr. Addison, but if I were you, I’d keep one hand on my wallet. She’s as slick as they come. Hell, I’ve been catching crooks for twenty years, and I’d still be tempted to give her a head start.”

  “You’re not me.”

  “That’s right. And if I do uncover something, she’s going to jail.”

  “You won’t uncover anything.” He wasn’t quite as certain as he sounded, but neither did he doubt Samantha’s creativity or cleverness. Castillo wouldn’t find anything—not here, anyway.

  In Samantha’s room, still littered with members of the bomb squad investigative unit, he lifted the knapsack from the couch and pulled the faux artifact free of its protective cloth. “Here you are.”

  “And you found this in your trunk, with her bags.”

  “Yes.”

  “This morning.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me again why you didn’t let me know that when I was in the garage with you?”

  Richard gave his charming smile. “It took us a little by surprise.”

  Nodding, Castillo took the wrap and put it back over the fake tablet. “Okay. I’ll have my expert verify that it’s not genuine. My take is that Partino saw that nice photo of you and Sam in the paper this morning and decided he needed to protect himself and his job. He planted the tablet so everybody would stop looking for the real one, then he planted the grenades to keep anybody from figuring out the tablet he’d placed in her bags was a phony.”

  “I’d agree with that.”

  “Yeah. Proving it’ll be a little tougher. And I still need to know why he had a fake, where he got the grenades, and where the original is.”

  All three questions troubled Richard, as well. Why steal a tablet and keep the fake hidden when he could have used it to disguise the robbery? Or if, as Samantha thought, her friend Etienne DeVore had taken the tablet, why did Partino have a fake? And why the first set of explosives?

  Dammit, everywhere he turned he found more questions than answers. And whether Danté was under arrest or not, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t over. He left Castillo at the front door and went back upstairs to his office. “Where’s Samantha?” he asked as soon as he stepped into the room.

  Donner sat alone at the conference table, flipping through the newspaper. “She said she was starving and went to get something to eat.”

  “Right.” He’d forgotten that neither of them had eaten since dessert at Rooney’s last night. “Want a sandwich, then?”

  “No.” Another page turned.

  With a tired grimace, Richard sat at the table. “So what do you think of all this?”

  “You don’t want to know, Rick.”

  “Mm-hm. I’m going to tell you to speak now or forever hold your peace, Tom.”

  “Okay.” The attorney flicked the newspaper closed. “One, you’re sleeping with a known thief. Two, if that tablet you found had been the original, you’d be under arrest right now for insurance fraud. Three, you let Danté go to jail without so much as blinking. Four, I don’t think you commit two—three, almost—murders over a stone tablet. So fifth and last, what do you commit multiple murders for?”

  “Danté had something to do with this.”

  “Enough to let him get thrown in jail? Hell, you’ve only know Danté for ten years, so why not toss him away at the urging of someone you’ve known for under a week and whom you caught breaking into your estate twice?”

  Had it really been less than a week? Decisiveness had never been a problem for him, but Christ. “If Danté had nothing to do with this, I’ll have your firm defend him. Honestly though, Tom, who do you think’s more likely to be lying?”

  Donner glared at him, then stood to pull a bottle of water out of the fridge. “Crap. Between you and me, I think if Jellicoe had done it, she wouldn’t be here. And she wouldn’t be trying to pin it on someone else.”

  “Wow. I bet that hurt.” Despite the joke, Richard felt somewhat grateful. What Donner would say if he knew how strongly Sam seemed to suspect the attorney, he didn’t want to speculate.

  “You have no idea.” Taking a swig of water, the attorney headed for the door. “I’m going to go down and see that Danté has proper representation. It’ll make us look better in the long run, anyway. Someone has to keep you popular wi
th the media and the local community.”

  Richard joined him as they walked down the hallway. “I choose not to comment on that. But if he did as I suspect, he’d best stay in jail for his own protection.”

  At the front door, Donner stopped again. “Okay, one more question.”

  “Yes?”

  “You and Jellicoe. Serious?”

  “I don’t know.” Part of him didn’t want to think about it. She was there, and he enjoyed having her around. As Tom had pointed out, they’d known one another for less than a week. It would take more than a week to figure this out—to figure her out.

  “That ain’t good,” Donner returned with an exaggerated drawl. “Why don’t the two of you come over for dinner tonight?”

  Richard grinned before he could stop himself. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No. I mentioned her to Kate—not any of the particulars, don’t worry about that—and she suggested you come over for dinner. Some chicken parmesan thing, probably. About seven?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Eighteen

  Sunday, 3:21 p.m.

  Samantha watched as Hans trimmed the crust off a fine-looking cucumber sandwich. “You are an artist,” she stated, resting both elbows on the counter.

  The tall Swede glanced at her. “It is only a sandwich, miss.”

  “Sam. And yes, it is, but I always do things in such a hurry.” Frequently, in fact, she forgot to eat until her stomach reminded her. That was one of the oddest and most compelling things about being in Rick’s company; she could take time and watch him grill steak or wait while his world-renowned chef made her a sandwich, and then take the time to enjoy it. “There’s a…peace about cooking, isn’t there?”

  Hans smiled. “I think you may be an artist, as well.” He handed over the china plate and pulled a chilled can of Diet Coke from the beverage refrigerator. “Most of Mr. Addison’s guests don’t know where the kitchen is, much less notice the way their crust is cut.”

  “Their loss. It’s all in the details, Hans.”

  Armed with lunch, she headed upstairs. It would serve Donner right if she returned to the office and ate in front of him, but she needed to think and so headed for the library. It was one floor up and half a wing away from Rick’s office, but according to Hans, it was also one of the most interesting walks in the house.

  She didn’t know whether Rick personally acquired the pieces for his collection or whether he assigned the job to underlings like Partino, but the mix was both eclectic and fascinating. She could only imagine what treasures his other houses contained. A shame she’d never see them, since the only way to do that would be to commit a robbery, and she wouldn’t attempt to steal from him again.

  A wall mosaic of Roman floor tiles, red and blue and yellow, meandered all along part of one hallway. Carefully she ran a free finger along the delicate ceramics, awestruck at the idea that citizens of Rome had walked on them four thousand years ago. A display of Roman coins behind a protective glass shelf came next, followed by a stand of Roman spears and helmets.

  She wondered how significant it was that so much of what Rick collected had belonged to warriors: knights, centurions, Samurai, Conquistadors. He was something of a warrior in the business world, she supposed, and judging by the quality and quantity of his possessions and conquests, he was the twenty-first century’s equivalent of Alexander the Great—or Genghis Khan.

  Sam stopped in the library doorway. “Holy crap,” she muttered.

  One entire wall consisted of floor-to-ceiling windows. The other three were lined with books, with more freestanding shelves spaced at intervals across the room. He even had a college-sized research table on one side, and of course classical marble busts of Greek deities at the ends of the shelves. If she’d been in a thieving mood, the stuff here would have had her in raptures. Even doing a straight stint, goose bumps rose along her bare arms.

  Putting her lunch on the table, she went to browse. The contents of the shelves were even more impressive than the busts. First editions of everything from Twain to Stoker, and even a first folio of Shakespeare’s The Tempest stood behind a glass-enclosed shelf.

  In a few minutes she’d figured out the system and found a book on Greek antiquities. The trail of the three Trojan tablets had been fairly legitimate—at least over the past three hundred years or so, and because of their rarity they’d also been photographed on numerous occasions by several historical researchers. They were some of the very few writings widely believed to originate in Troy, though even that remained a subject of argument and speculation. At any rate, they were ridiculously old and precious.

  With one currently missing, the remaining two in Hamburg and Istanbul became more valuable than ever. It was probably time someone figured out precisely where they were—and whether anyone had tried to steal them, lately.

  “I don’t know what you said to my chef,” Rick’s voice came from the doorway, “but he’s now creating a dessert of some kind in your honor.”

  She grinned. “Just so it’s not Jellicoe Jell-O or something.”

  “How charming were you?”

  “I just asked for a sandwich,” she said, licking mayonnaise off her finger and turning a page, “and complimented him on his culinary skills. I’d heard somewhere that his coffee won an award.”

  “Well, whatever you did, Hans was practically giddy when I was in there a moment ago,” the cultured British accent continued, low and musical.

  She shrugged. “All I asked for was peanut butter and jelly, but he thought jam would better suit my sophisticated palate, and I ended up with a cucumber sandwich on rye.” And some very nice chocolates, which she’d already eaten.

  “Perhaps he was looking for a polite way to say that you can’t tell your jellies from your jams,” Rick said with a chuckle.

  “Yes, but who can, these days? Oh, and by the way, you’ll be stocking peppermint ice cream from now on. Hans put in an order once he found out it was my favorite.”

  “Have you ever met anyone you couldn’t charm?” he murmured.

  “There’s Donner.” She glanced at him over her shoulder, smiling at his somber expression. “I’m just charming, Batman. Can’t help it.”

  “So you are. And amazingly hot, as well.” He strolled up behind her and slid his hands along her shoulders.

  “Careful of my stitches,” she muttered, trying to concentrate. Finally, she found the page she’d been looking for. Sam set aside the sandwich, wiped her fingers on her napkin, and tugged the book closer.

  His grip on her tightened for a moment, then relaxed again. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to figure out the location of the other tablets.”

  “And why is that?”

  She glanced up over her shoulder at him. The bland, cool look on his face didn’t surprise her in the least. He was angry.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she drawled. “I missed yours, but there are still two other tablets out there.”

  “Don’t you dare,” he said in a low, hard voice.

  “You know,” she returned, shrugging out from under his hands, “I think you should set aside a little of that income of yours to buy yourself a sense of humor.”

  For a moment he was silent. “You need to realize that despite our…intimacy, I really don’t know you all that well.”

  “In that case, you need to realize that ordering me to do something is very likely to piss me off and make me do the opposite just to aggravate you.”

  He pulled out the chair beside her and sat. “Point taken. So why are you really after the location of the other tablets?”

  “You learn fast, anyway,” she grumbled. “I need to know where they are so I can do a little research and find out if anyone’s tried to steal them recently.”

  “I can call my office in London and probably find out who owns the pieces,” he offered.

  She looked sideways at him, a blush creeping up her cheeks. “Okay, this is a stupid question, but what sort of bu
siness do you do?”

  Rick laughed. “You don’t know?”

  Sam shrugged, her color deepening. “I didn’t have time to read most of the Internet articles. You buy things and sell them, but I figured there had to be more to it than that.”

  “Ah. As the saying goes, I have my finger in several pies, but yes, mostly I purchase properties, improve or renovate them, and sell them again. On occasion I’ll acquire an entire business for the same purpose.”

  “So what are you going to do with WNBT?”

  He smiled. “Well, the Godzilla programming seems fairly popular. Maybe we’ll go with all monsters, all the time.”

  “Cool.”

  “Actually, the station’s been running at a loss for the past four years. My idea is to bring in a few of my people and see what we can do to fix that little problem.”

  “You have people,” she repeated. She knew that, of course, but she couldn’t help being curious to learn more about him. The whole time she’d been there, he’d been so focused on her that it seemed almost odd to remember that he had a job—a very successful business empire—that needed his attention.

  “Tom’s one of my people. I have others.”

  “How many?”

  “It varies. Somewhere around six or seven hundred at the moment, I would imagine. That includes architects, contractors, carpenters, accountants, computer programmers, attorneys, my secretary, butlers, and whoever else I need for whichever projects we’re working on.”

  “Cool,” she repeated. His statement, though, brought another question to mind. “And why am I here?”

  “We have a partnership,” he returned. “One that you proposed.”

  So she had. But the rest of this, she’d never anticipated. And she would never have planned anything more than conning him into assisting her, then bolting, because being with him was very bad for business. Bad for business—and for her peace of mind. “And why are we sleeping together, then?”

  “Because we want to. To be perfectly honest, Samantha, you fascinate me. I find getting you out of my thoughts to be an impossibility.”

  She cleared her throat. “That can’t be good.”