by Alice Sharpe
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Where is my painting?” he demanded as the kindly veneer flaked away from his voice.
“I don’t know,” she said, looking around the gallery as though it might have walked out of the vault on its own and hidden behind a sculpture. “It was in this frame yesterday.” She met Cole’s gaze and flinched at the intensity of his stare as he obviously eavesdropped.
“I demand to know what’s going on,” Machnik said. “I paid fifty thousand euros for that painting, and as you know, it is worth double that now, maybe triple.”
Her attention flicked back to Machnik. “I know, sir. All I can think is that Aneta may have mistakenly rotated it back into the gallery.” It was possible although Aneta was seldom alone here for long. Still, there was no doubting Aneta was acting flaky as of late. “I assure you, I’ll look into this right away. Let me get you a cup of coffee.”
“No, thank you,” he said, checking his pocket watch. “I’m going to be late for an appointment. I will be back at four o’clock, and I expect to find my painting waiting for me.”
“Yes, I understand,” Skylar said, her voice shaking. She was already punching Aneta’s number into her phone.
Aneta answered on the first ring as though she’d been waiting for a call. “Thank goodness you’re there,” Skylar said as the bell jangled, signaling Machnik exiting the shop. She was vaguely aware of Cole following the older man to the door and cursed the events of the past few minutes.
“I cannot speak,” Aneta said.
“You have to,” Skylar insisted. “What do you know about Oleskii Machnik’s painting, the one in the vault?”
“What! I know nothing,” Aneta insisted. “I’m hanging up.”
“No, wait. It’s missing, Aneta. The Bartow miniature was in the safe when I left yesterday, and now it’s gone. Just the frame remains. Did you move it?”
“I cannot speak,” Aneta repeated, her voice dropping.
“What do you mean? Why aren’t you here at the gallery? What’s going on?” Skylar stopped asking questions as she realized Aneta had disconnected.
Skylar hit Redial, but there was no answer this time. She wanted to throw the phone in frustration. If she didn’t find a rational reason for this situation, her aunt would have to be told and that would bring in the police.
She raced back to the vault, shoving things aside, opening other packages. Had she made a mistake? Had she inadvertently misplaced it herself?
“Can I help?” Cole Bennett asked from the doorway.
She looked up at him, shock robbing her of her voice. She’d forgotten about him. She wasn’t sure what to do now, who to contact.
“I couldn’t help overhearing just about everything,” Cole continued as though recognizing her inability to form a coherent sentence.
She stared at him, still speechless.
“I’ve taken the liberty of locking your front door and turning the open sign to closed. It seems your coworker knows something.”
That jarred words back into her mouth. “How could you possibly know what she said?”
“I just gathered as much from your end of the conversation. Am I right?”
“I think so, but she won’t talk to me. We have trouble with each other on the phone.”
“Then you have to see her face-to-face. Do you know where she lives?”
“I know the address. I mean, I can find it. It’s in the book over on the desk. But I’ll have to call a cab or find the right bus.”
“Or call a friend.”
“I don’t have many friends here, just family,” she said, hurrying to the desk and finding Aneta’s address. She had no idea what part of the city it was in, but she copied it quickly.
“Your aunt—”
“She mustn’t hear a word of this.”
“I got the feeling Mr. Machnik will not meekly accept the loss of something he cares about,” he added. “And what did he mean it’s worth double or triple what he paid?”
“The artist died earlier this year. The prices on his miniatures skyrocketed. I’ll have to find the painting or make retribution somehow.” She gulped her panic and wondered about insurance, but more than that, she wondered how the painting could have disappeared from a locked vault....
“Your aunt—”
“I can’t tell my aunt. She’s undergoing chemotherapy. She’s too sick to be involved.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice compassionate and yet in control. “Well, here’s an idea. I have a rental outside. I’ll give you a ride.”
“I can’t ask—”
“I don’t believe you did. Are you coming?”
It took Skylar one heartbeat to review her options. She locked the vault and the store. A minute later, she slid into his rental, her heart jammed high in her throat.
Chapter Two
It turned out Skylar’s coworker lived thirty minutes away in a cinder block apartment building with a rusty black fire escape zigzagging its way from the top floor to the bottom. The small, unlocked lobby was dark and held only a row of mailboxes. Cole and Skylar stood side by side looking at the names, searching for Aneta’s apartment number and floor.
Cole’s original plan upon entering the art gallery had been to flirt his way into a dinner invitation with Luca Futura’s niece. He’d been well on his way to accomplishing that goal when the missing painting provided a solid plan B. Cole was used to taking opportunities as they presented themselves. He was former special forces, and that meant augmenting years of physical and mental training with split-second tactical decision making.
Now, hopefully, Skylar would see him as a friend, a confidant, someone who’d been willing to lend her a hand...someone she could trust.
He’d chosen Skylar for his mission because she appeared to be the weakest link in Futura’s chain—and as such, Cole’s best chance of getting close to a man shielded behind layers of protection.
He’d done his research, and he knew Skylar was a recent graduate of a design school. She had three brothers and a sister plus a large extended family spread all over the States. She created clothes for a living and wore them like a petite fashion model, tended to change her hair color on a whim and worked whatever odd jobs paid the bills and gave her time to do what she loved.
He’d known all that going in. What he hadn’t known was how damn pretty she was up close and personal, the way her eyes resembled blue diamonds, the creamy texture of her almost translucent pale skin, the fullness of her lips or the rounded curves of breasts and hips that merged into a trim waist.
Totally feminine and utterly breathtaking—and this from a man who didn’t often allow a person’s appearance to affect him.
But it wasn’t just her looks...there was something else, something robust and lively about her. She’d flirted with him with ease, yet she had no hidden agenda like he did. She just seemed to like people. And there was the way she’d faced first the disappearance of the painting and then her customer’s threats with polite courage, and that had touched him. And to be honest, her distress alarmed him.
He’d been prepared to use her in whatever way presented itself; he wasn’t prepared to actually feel something for her.
“Here it is. Aneta Cazo, fifth floor,” Skylar said, tapping one of the boxes. “Apartment 509.”
He followed her up the gloomy stairs, enjoying the way her dress hugged her rear, then flared to fall softly against her legs, the natural sway of her hips as she moved. She wore some fragrance that wafted back at him as she climbed, sort of summery and flowery but not too strong. She belonged in a place of light and outshone these somber surroundings like a sun drop in a cave. He dragged his mind back to his job. They would convince Aneta to go back to the gallery with them and produce the painting, which she must have taken out of the frame for some crazy reason, then he would ask Skylar out to dinner, maybe at his hotel, maybe chance a kiss good-night so she would understand he was interested in seeing more of her.
Cole heard a sound coming from inside, a sound he couldn’t identify, but it raised instincts honed over many years. He reached around Skylar and tried the knob. It turned in his hand. Soundlessly, he put an arm back to keep Skylar behind him and opened the door.
In one glimpse, he took in two things about the drab apartment. One was a young woman with short brown hair lying on the floor, her white blouse stained red over her heart. The second was a sound coming from behind a closed door to his right. Skylar immediately dashed past him to the woman and fell to her knees. Words of caution died on Cole’s lips as he crossed to the connecting door and opened it. The bedroom beyond was tidy and predictable except for an open suitcase on the bed and a curtain blowing into the room at the window.
He ran to look outside and found someone running down the fire escape. The guy had a pretty good head start, but Cole climbed out and took off after him, hoping the structure was a lot sturdier than it had appeared from a distance or felt now that he was on it.
The man looked over his shoulder to track Cole, but he was too far away for Cole to make out his features. He wore a dark, hooded jacket that obscured even his coloring. Cole took the steps two at a time, adrenaline helping to mask the pain in his leg. While Cole was still two stories up, the man jumped the final few feet to the sidewalk and ran to a black car that sped away as Cole came to a grinding halt still one floor above the ground.
He watched the car turn right at the first corner, then re-climbed the stairs as quickly as he could, hoping that leaving Skylar alone hadn’t been a mistake. Once through the window, he paused by the suitcase where he found a few items that looked as though they’d been thrown in without care and a few others lying beside the suitcase as though awaiting their turn.
Skylar was still kneeling on the floor beside the woman although now she sat with her hands resting against her own legs, tears rolling down her cheeks.
She looked up at him, lips trembling.
He didn’t need to ask, but he did anyway. “Is she—”
“Yes. She’s dead.”
* * *
SKYLAR WAS TREATED WITH cool detachment by the police, which included a detective named Kilo who spoke excellent English. Still there were questions to be answered—lots of them. She did her best to explain things as well as she could, but there was so much she was confused about.
Did Aneta’s murder have anything to do with the mysterious disappearance of Mr. Machnik’s painting? How could two such startling events not be connected?
Through it all, Cole stuck by her side, his presence as rock solid as his muscles. The police asked him a few questions about himself and his reasons for being in Kanistan, and from his answers, she gleaned he was here on business, that his business had something to with imports and exports and perhaps that explained his original interest in the gallery.
When it came to personal details, he seemed to be open and yet vague. Skylar didn’t know him well enough to say whether he was actually being obtuse or just private, a man caught up in someone else’s drama maybe or beginning to seriously regret an impulsive offer to help out.
He explained about the chase, as well, describing the man as under six feet wearing dark clothes, age unknown but not too old—going by the way he moved and jumped.
“And he escaped in a car with Kanistan plates?” Kilo quizzed.
“Yes.”
“What color?”
“Black. It looked like a late-model Mercedes to me but I’m not sure.”
The detective turned his attention back to Skylar. “You say she had a new lover?” A nearby officer stood poised, pen in hand, to take notes. Kilo himself was on the small side with freckled skin and thinning hair, a wispy mustache accenting a long face. By the outline of a package of cigarettes showing beneath the fabric of his brown suit pocket and the way his hand kept returning to pat it, she assumed he was dying for a smoke. She guessed there must be some rule about fouling a murder scene with smoke and ashes.
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Not long. A couple of weeks maybe.”
“His name?”
“She never said his name.”
“What did he look like?”
“I never saw him,” she said.
The detective patted the cigarette package as he narrowed his eyes. “He never came to pick her up for a date or a coffee?”
“No.”
“Think for a moment,” he coaxed as his hand dropped from his pocket. “Did you get the feeling she was hiding his identity, as though, perhaps, he was a married man?”
Skylar thought. The truth was that she and Aneta had not been close, had shared few if any confidences and that Skylar didn’t really know her. Had she been friendlier the first couple of weeks Skylar was here? Marginally, maybe. “I can’t be sure,” she said, “but I guess it’s possible.”
The detective and the uniformed officer exchanged glances. Kilo shrugged. “Her suitcase is half packed as though she was leaving. A jealous lover, a rendezvous, dissension between thieves? Who knows? We will need to meet you back at your shop and look for the missing painting,” the detective continued. “My men will search this apartment when forensics is finished to make sure Ms. Cazo did not steal it and bring it here. That is, if her killer did not take it with him when he fled.”
Skylar started to protest but didn’t. How did she know what Aneta would or wouldn’t do?”
“And you should contact the owner of your gallery at once.”
“No! The owner is my aunt, Eleanor Ables, and she’s not well. She can’t hear news like this on the phone.”
“Eleanor Ables? You are talking about Luca Futura’s wife?”
“Yes.”
“Luca Futura is your uncle?”
“Yes.”
“And why did you not mention this at once?”
“I don’t want to bother my uncle.”
The detective waved away her concern. “He must be told.” He turned to the uniformed officer and snapped off a few words. The twitch in Kilo’s jaw signaled the regard in which Skylar’s uncle was held. “We will contact him at once,” he said, turning back to Skylar.
“If you must,” Skylar said.
“You may go now. We can give you a lift back to the gallery.”
“That’s okay. I’ll take her,” Cole said from her side.
The thought of thirty minutes in the car with Kilo as he played catch-up to his nicotine deprivation was enough to sway Skylar’s decision in Cole’s favor though she was pretty sure she shouldn’t be leaning so heavily on a stranger. But Cole didn’t seem like much of a stranger anymore. Since arriving in Traterg, she’d spent her days at the shop and her evenings with her aunt and uncle when he was home. There’d been no opportunity to make friends—only Aneta who hadn’t been the warmest woman in the world.
Skylar flinched as guilt prickled her skin. Aneta was about the same age as Skylar and her life was over, destroyed by someone who had made sure she’d never see another birthday.
Cole touched her arm and she jumped. “Ready to go?” he asked, and she turned to see that people had arrived to take away Aneta’s body.
Cole’s limp seemed more pronounced as they walked down the stairs. Once in his car, Skylar lay back against the headrest and closed her eyes, relieved to be away from the murder scene, the police and the strain of the past hour.
“Are you okay?” Cole asked.
She opened her eyes and found him looking at her. He was an imposing-looking man in his way, yet his eyes showed kindness. She wished she knew him better, wished she could seek comfort in his arms, draw heat from his body. In other words, a hug would be nice....
“I really don’t want to go back to the gallery,” she said.
“Where do you want to go, then?”
“Anywhere else,” she said and then smiled. “I�
�m just dreaming. I have to meet the police, and my uncle will want details. I have to go back. I just don’t want to.”
“Just who is your uncle?” Cole said as he pulled away from the curb. “That detective sure seemed to snap to order when you mentioned his name.”
“Uncle Luca is high up in Traterg government,” she said. “Like a mayor or something. I don’t understand the politics here, but I know he’s held in high esteem.”
“Then he’ll be able to help deal with the man whose painting went missing.”
“I’m sure he can. I wonder what Aneta did with it.”
“Is there any chance someone else might have taken it?”
“There is no one else. It’s just me and Aneta. I opened the store this morning—there was no sign of a break-in. And Aneta is never there alone, and I have the only key. She must have slipped the painting out of the frame and vault while I was in the bathroom and hidden it away to carry out when she left.”
“Your setup sounds kind of unusual.”
“My aunt is very cautious. She’s always taken care of the gallery herself until now, and she made it clear I was to conduct all business transactions myself. Man, what a mess.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said as he guided the car through early afternoon traffic.
“I feel responsible, though,” she said.
“The plight of the conscientious,” he murmured.
She stared at his profile a moment. “Why are you going out of your way to help me?” she said at last.
He cast her a quick glance. “Take a look in the mirror sometime.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you are an exceptionally pretty woman.”
“So you’re helping me because you think I’m pretty?”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I hoped maybe it was my keen sense of fashion.”
That got a smile out of him. “That, too. No, really, you needed help and then things went nuts and you needed more help and I was glad to be able to offer it.”