The Taming of the Thief (13 page)

 
   
“Don't you Daddy me.” Jonas gave her that
hard look and Sophie felt all of five years old. “I talked to Frank and he
covered for you, but he's never been that good of a liar. Mac, on the other
hand, told me what happened. I've been calling you all morning.”

 
   
“Oh.” Her cell phone, like her laptop, was
locked in her desk in the museum. She never carried it into the basement
because it couldn’t get a signal. She'd never made it back to her office, so
she'd never picked it up. “I left it at work last night, I'm sorry daddy.”

 
   
“And you didn't go home last night?” Her
father wasn't buying.

 
   
“That was my fault,” Pietr inserted
smoothly. Sophie shook her head at him wildly, but too late, Jonas' hard stare
locked on Pietr. “I'm afraid that after the police station, I wasn't
comfortable with her going home, so I invited her back to my hotel.”

 
   
“Your hotel.”

 
   
“Yes, sir.
We're
staying at the Waldorf Astoria.”

 
   
Sophie died a little inside, mortification
rolling the chains of shame around her throat. She couldn't believe Pietr just
told her father she spent the night with a man in a hotel.

 
   
Thank
God Daddy doesn't carry a gun anymore.

 
   
“Sophie.”

 
   
“Yes, sir?”
She
steeled herself for it.

 
   
“Does your mother know where you were last
night?”

 
   
“No, sir.”

 
   
She could feel Pietr's gaze on her, but she
didn't dare look at him. Her father's measured look simmered with unasked
questions. But he held his temper.

 
   
“Good.” The vein jumping in his forehead
suggested that he held it only barely. His disappointment buffeted her and she
fought the urge to shuffle her feet. Jonas had taught both she and Rhet from
early childhood that shuffling feet and the failure to meet his gaze suggested
they were guilty. And even if they were in the wrong, it was better to meet it
head on.

 
   
It didn't make it any easier though.

 
   
“Mr. Kingston,” Pietr interjected. Something
cool in his tone captured both her and her father's attention. “Sophie's done
nothing wrong and doesn't deserve to be treated as such.”

 
   
Her mouth fell open. She winced,
anticipating an explosion, but a peek in her father's direction showed that his
jaw worked, as though chewing on Pietr's words, considering.

 
   
“She's my little girl.”

 
   
Her heart stuttered over the emotion in his
admission. Under the surface of his words lingered a jagged emotion she'd never
heard from him.

 
   
Fear.

 
   
“Yes, sir.
I
appreciate that, but she's not a child nor does she deserve to be treated like
one.”

 
   
“Huh.” Jonas' grunt and half-nod eased the
fist gripping her heart. “About time you found one that has a spine.”

 
   
Mortification swelled up once more, she shot
Pietr another look hoping this time he'd keep his opinions to himself.

 
   
“Thank you,” Pietr smiled, an easy,
accepting grin, but his eyes were still watchful. They swept the area before
returning to where she stood with her father. “Would you care to take this
discussion inside?”

 
   
His gentle reminder that they were out in
the open slapped her heart rate on the rump and it bolted. Someone had tried to
shoot her and here she was, sandwiched next to her father.

 
   
“Yes, Daddy.
Let's
go inside.”

 
   
“Hmm,” her father hummed, but he tucked her
closer, his arm around her shoulders and walked with her to the door.
Inside the security guards nodded to her, accepting her purse for
inspection.
Pietr and Jonas said nothing, but the force of two
personalities carrying her forward.

 
   
She signed the logbook, noting Pietr and her
father as her guests and security opened the door to the side admitting her
past the throng of museum visitors.

 
   
The gaggle of noise cut off with the door closing.

 
   
“Start talking.” Her father ordered.

 
   
“Give her a moment.” Pietr's immediate
retort bolstered her nerves. Daddy was
right,
Pietr
was the first man her father hadn't managed to intimidate within five minutes
of meeting.

 
   
If he lasted ten, her father might actually
start to like him.

 
   
“My office is this way,” she told them both,
leading down the hallway, only to be cut off when Pietr stepped in front of
her.

 
   
“Keys.”
He held out
his hand. Father or no father, Sophie balked at the commanding tone.

 
   
“Pietr, we're behind a secure door in a
secure facility.” She hissed the words, but her father was too close not to
hear it.

 
   
“And yet, your man seems to think you aren't
safe. Give him the keys.” Her father agreeing with Pietr had her rounding to face
him.

 
   
“What?”
His tone
deceptively mild.
“First man through the door is usually the first one
to get shot. If he wants to do it, let him.”

 
   
“Daddy!”

 
   
Trapped between the two, she turned over her
keys and resisted the urge to stomp her feet as they continued down the
hallway, the faint noise of docents and researchers drifting out of the
occasional open office. Thankfully, they didn't run into anyone they knew.

 
   
Sophie hesitated when they passed one door,
lingering long enough to earn a gentle push from her father and an impatient
look from Pietr.

 
   
Fabulous.

 
   
Who knew that agreeing with each other would
suit the two men?

 
   
“That's Doctor Hinkley's office.”

 
   
“We can come back.” Pietr nodded. “Yours is
three down, right?”

 
   
She nodded, not trusting herself to comment
on why he knew the location of her office. She said nothing when he inserted
the key, nor when her father tugged her back a step while Pietr went in first.

 
   
She held her breath, though. Nervous tension
bounced up and down in her stomach, releasing only when Pietr stuck his head
out the door to invite them in.

 
   
Inside, her office remained just as she left
it. Desk situated in the corner, heavily laden bookshelves, including three
with a collection of artifacts, tags missing or torn, that she was in the
process of assessing and re-labeling. A stack of invoices and provenance
statements filled her inbox and three unopened packages occupied the center of
her desk.

 
   
Most likely proofs for the new catalog that
she still needed to go over.

 
   
Her office shrank around the two largest men
in her life. She bumped against Pietr, sliding around him to the desk. His hand
trailed over her lower back, a move her father noted with a faint warning note.

 
   
“Hands to yourself,
Frenchie.”

 
   
“Daddy.”
Sophie
sighed and grabbed her keys from Pietr to open her desk. The top drawer wasn't
locked.

 
   
And a quick pull revealed that instead of
holding her laptop, it was empty.

 
   
Laptop.
Files.
Spare keys.

 
   
Even her cell phone was gone.

 
   
She sat down abruptly.

 
   
Pietr sighed. “I was afraid of that.”

 
   
“Afraid of what exactly?”
Her father closed the office door and leaned back against it, meaty arms folded
in front of him.

 
   
“Three years of work.
Gone.”
Gone! She stared blankly at the empty drawer, closing it and reopening, as
though hoping her laptop might reappear.

 
   
“Did you back it up somewhere?” Pietr
ignored her father, leaning against the side of the desk. His voice was low,
sympathetic and tender.

 
   
“A thumb drive.
But
that's gone too.”

 
   
Pietr nodded.

 
   
“Sophie.
Sauvage.”

 
   
They'd run out the meter on her father's
patience. He wanted answers. But Sophie only had more questions.

 
   
“Explain.”

 
   
Sophie twisted, giving Pietr a warning look
out of her father's line of sight.

 
   
“It's a long story, Daddy. Someone broke
into my apartment last night, but nothing was missing.” Sophie squeezed between
Pietr and the desk, trying to ignore how his body rubbed against hers.

 
   
“And the shooting?”

 
   
“I'm not sure about that, Daddy. Some people
came into Big Mac's bar last night and shot it up. No one was hurt though.”
Flicking a nervous look at Pietr, she glossed over the target and hoped that
her father had yet to glean those details.

 
   
“Uh huh.”
Jonas
rolled his head to the side.
Neck popping.
She
recognized the
maneuver,
he did that when he tried to
choose his words carefully over the objections of his temper.
“And the Frenchie?”

 
   
“Daddy.”
Sophie
admonished. “Pietr has a name.”

 
   
“Yes he does, but does he have a purpose?”
Her father wasn't looking at her anymore, instead he focused on Pietr. To his
credit, Pietr appeared nonplussed by her father's hostility.

 
   
“Actually, Mr. Kingston, I came to New York
to meet Sophie specifically and she has graciously agreed to help me with a
research project for the Sauvage Foundation in return for a generous endowment
to the arts project of her choosing.”

 
   
Sophie barely kept her mouth from popping
open. Pietr had just lied to her father.

 
   
“What kind of project?”

 
   
“Artifact restoration and
recovery and the impact on sub-urban culture.”
The words rolled off
Pietr's tongue as if taken directly from a page within her dissertation.

 
   
“I see.” Her father gave her another long
look. “And what does this have to do with the shooting you reported at the
museum yesterday morning?”

 
   
Sophie groaned internally. Of course her
father knew. “I don't know, Daddy.” She kept it as honest as she could.
“Detective Bryant seemed pretty sure that I'd imagined the whole thing.”

 
   
“Pfft.” If they'd been outside, Jonas would
most likely have spit. “I told him my girl doesn't make up fanciful tales and
if you told him you saw someone shot,
then
someone was
shot.”

 
   
Warmth blossomed in her chest. Her father
believed her. His faith shored up the last of her self-doubt and shoveled it
aside.