White Heat (19 page)

Max shook his head. “Under different circumstances, I’d agree with you. But I don’t want her around on this op.” He didn’t want Emily anywhere
near
anything to do with Black Rose again. And that meant Catherine Seymour. Not until he knew the what and the
why
of how a Black Rose asset had broken into her palazzo.

If Savage had anything to do with the attempts on Emily’s life
,
he’d kill her himself. Slowly.

IT HAD BEEN SEVERAL YEARS SINCE EMILY HAD BEEN TO LA MEZQUITA. Then it had been crowded with tourists and worshipers, and had smelled faintly of orange blossoms from the grove of trees lining the Patio de los Naranjos on the north side of the building.

Today she was escorted by two heavily armed women through the south entrance. Only a handful of vehicles were parked in the lot, and half of those were blackened hulls. The sight took her breath away, and the thought of all that history and art gone caused a physical ache in her chest. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how many people had died or been injured in the kind of blast that could melt a car.

“Holy crap,” AJ breathed, looking around at the aftermath. “The blast was hot enough to melt the metal. Look over there.” She pointed to a stand of trees at the edge of the parking lot, some three hundred yards away. Chunks of cars and other debris hung from the charred tree limbs like macabre Christmas ornaments.

AJ and Keiko had filled Emily in on the bombing. But knowing was different from
seeing.
She was overwhelmed by the smell of smoke as soon as they stopped and opened the car doors. The thick, oily stench brought black paint strokes to mind, an artist’s rendering with undertones of centuries-old pain, framed with hand-hewn stone and crushed dreams.

So much art and history, ruined. Her heels crunched gravel as she rounded a corner, then received the full, devastating impact of the gaping hole in the side of the building. “God. Who could do something like this?”

“Unfortunately a
lot
of people,” AJ answered as they took the shallow stone steps up to a partially open, magnificent bronze door and went inside.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Emily murmured. The stench of smoke was stronger inside, and drifts of diaphanous charcoal- colored vapor floated in the air currents overhead like black ghosts. Goose bumps rose on her skin, and she rubbed her arms through the long sleeves of her borrowed T-shirt.

“This is—God. I don’t even want to imagine how many people died, or how much priceless artwork has been lost.” She brushed her fingers across one of the black marble pillars as they walked, the stone cold and hand-smoothed. If walls could talk.

Max stood with two men several hundred yards away. It looked as though he were waiting for her. And he was. Just not the way her heart was interpreting his expectant stance. She felt an irrational urge to run the length of the prayer hail and fling herself into his arms.

Instead she walked sedately between the two women on Max’s team. It felt like the longest mile stretched between herself and where he waited. Other than a brief respite in his arms, tension had been twining itself around her nerve endings for what felt like forever.

He didn’t see her, and glanced at his watch. A tiny show of his impatience that surprised her. She observed him curiously as she closed the gap between them. She’d had him pigeonholed long before she’d ever met him. More so afterward when his father had admitted the kind of man his son was. But Max surprised her at every turn. He was
nothing
like the man his father had claimed him to be.

He hadn’t lied and professed undying love and a rosy future. She had to respect him for being honest. At least about that. It was easier to deal with the truth than it was making whole cloth out of lies.

He knocked her off balance. And that surprised her because she usually kept her emotions very much in check. She’d learned to do that to protect herself, she supposed. Whatever. Now it was ingrained. Yet Max, whether he wanted to or not, was chipping away at her tough outer shell.

It was emotionally terrifying.

It was keeping her on her toes, she thought with the start of a smile for him.

“Did you know Jacoba Brill?” Max asked when she was still twenty feet away. Her smile faded. There was no tenderness in his voice, no softening in his hazel eyes. He was all business.

She hadn’t known why Max had sent for her, obviously not to declare his undying love. But she hadn’t expected him to ask about another restorer. Or, God help her, maybe she had. First Daniel. Then her break-in, then Franco’s family …

With his question she literally felt her scalp tingle as her hair tried to stand on end. “Only by reputation.”

Her heart started pounding way too fast, and she rubbed her damp palms on the legs of her borrowed jeans as the rubber bands around her nerves stretched another notch. She had to lick her lips to push the word out. “Why?”

“She died this morning.”

“Please tell me of natural causes,” Emily was amazed at how calm and controlled her voice was, when inside she was screaming like a frightened child. “She couldn’t have been over fifty-five.”

“They claimed a heart attack.”

She could tell his opinion by his closed expression. She had to lock her knees so she didn’t fall to the beautiful inlaid floor. This was an insane, terrifying, out-of-body experience. She wanted, no,
needed,
to wake up from this nightmare, in her own bed, preferably in Max’s arms. She dragged in a deep breath. Let it out slowly before she could speak again. “You don’t believe the diagnosis?”

“We’re having our own people do an autopsy now.”

The only way she was going to make it through this was to focus on things she could control. There didn’t appear to be much at the moment. Glancing at the two men standing beside Max she put out her hand and introduced herself. It seemed a rational, civilized thing to do in a world gone mad.

The one on the left with the tortoiseshell-colored hair looked like a fallen angel. Tall and well dressed, he slipped a large, tanned hand into hers with a charming smile. “Asher Daklin.”

The second man had eyes almost as black as his dead-straight, shoulder-length hair. He had a lean, clever face, and a mouth that looked as though he never smiled. Despite looking like some exotic member of royalty, Emily wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley. Not unless she had Max with her. He took his hands out of his pockets, but didn’t shake her hand. “Rafael Navarro.”

She stuffed her fingers into the front pocket of her jeans, and glanced back at Max. “I can’t imagine
how—but
what can I do to help?”

Max handed her what looked like a corner of an elaborate gilt frame. “There’s a little painted wood under the frame that wasn’t blackened by the explosion. Enough for you to tell us anything about the painting?”

She traced a jagged triangle of charred wood across the corner, grateful for even this small thing she could do to help. “I can tell you something about even the blackened piece here. But not with the naked eye. I’d have to test it back at my studio and/or send it to the lab I use. But yes, I think there’s enough to work with. What am I looking for?”

“Can you authenticate what’s here as the original work?”

“Sure. As I said, with testing. I can do most of the chemical testing in my studio. But for the X-ray, infrared, ultraviolet tests, it has to be sent elsewhere. But I can certainly get started on this right away if you like.”

“You’re not going back to your studio. But if you give Zampieri a list, and where he’ll find the stuff at your place, he’ll buy what you’ll need. Is there anything you can tell us now, just by looking at this?”

Oil on wood.
“What was the painting?” But suddenly she knew. God. It was exactly the right size. She just
knew.
The bottom dropped out of her stomach as she braced herself for Max’s answer as one would brace for a punch to the chest.

“The Holy Family.”

At his words the other shoe dropped in her mind with a resounding crash. Black sparkles filled her vision. The blood drained from her head, and it took a concerted effort to say through stiff lips,
“Canigiani Holy Family.
Raphael. I’m familiar with it. I-I did the restoration of this work six years ago.”

“Did you paint a copy?”

“I removed a distorting blue overpaint done sometime in the eighteenth century—”

The truth, but not all of it.

She felt the prickle of nervous perspiration along her hairline. She’d seen this exquisite work a lot more recently than six years ago when she’d done the restoration for Richard Tillman.

She’d seen it nine months ago. While she’d been copying it in Daniel’s studio.

THREE HOURS LATER THEY WERE IN UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS, ON their way to the home of Miss Brill. A car was waiting for them at Soesterberg Air Base. Max took her arm and led her to the black limo with tinted windows.

“Bulletproof?” she asked as he slid across the backseat to join her.

“Yeah. I told you I wouldn’t let anything hurt you. As soon as you’ve taken a look at Brill’s studio we’ll get you to the safe house. Zampieri will help you set up a studio there with anything you need to test what’s left of the painting.”

The truth, if he ever found out, could hurt her big time. Right now she didn’t see a need to tell Max anything. Because it wasn’t relevant. If that changed, she’d have to tell him about the arrangement she’d had with his father.

If things changed.

And if things changed it would mean that her suspicions about Daniel had been correct all along. Emily really, really didn’t want to be right.

Because if she were right her life would be irrevocably changed forever. “My mother’s expecting me in Seattle.”
If she remembered I was coming at all.

“She’ll see you in—”

“A few days?” Emily interrupted as they left the air base behind. “A week? Two?”

Not only was she aware that she wasn’t being logical to ask him to pinpoint how long he’d need to keep her safe, it was immaterial how long she would have to stay locked up in a “safe house.” He was keeping his promise to protect her. As much as she was chafing at all this cloak-and-dagger stuff going on, if she couldn’t have her first option—going back to her normal life—then she was grateful to be secreted away somewhere out of the range of a maniacal killer.

If she believed for a moment that what she’d done had any bearing in this, she’d bite the bullet and tell Max now But what would it serve to tell him that she’d been the one doing Daniel’s work for the last seven years? Not a damn thing. He already had zero sympathy or compassion for the man who was his father. But even Max couldn’t deny that Daniel had been a brilliant painter in his own right, a phenomenally successful restorer, and a man his peers considered a genius. Daniel Aries had been one of a kind.

She’d at least like to leave his professional life pristine for Max and the art world. She’d made that promise to Daniel. And she always tried to keep her promises.

The irony didn’t escape her. As long as she’d been in the business she’d been number two. And she was okay with that. Daniel deserved to win the prize. His work over a lifetime warranted it. Nobody, especially Max, needed to know his secret.

Her secret now.

SET IN A CLEARING, AND SURROUNDED BY PINE TREES, JACOBA BRILL’S
small white house was picture-perfect. The lush spring-green lawn was bordered with flowerbeds bursting with early red-and-white striped parrot tulips, underplanted with sweet-smelling purple hyacinths. The glossy red window boxes beneath the four windows matched the paint on the front door, and were massed with brilliant yellow King Alfred daffodils waving heavy heads in the light breeze. The new leaves in the surrounding trees rustled like a taffeta skirt.

Emily filled her mind with the happy colors. “Beautiful.”

“Isolated,” Navarro observed, puffing up to the curving walkway.

“Yeah.” Max motioned to AJ. “Find a vantage point.”

With a nod, AJ got out of the car. She carried what Emily presumed was a sniper rifle. “Is that really necessary way out here?” she asked Max. The artist’s house was way off the beaten path, with no nearby neighbors. The scene was so idyllic it was impossible to believe anything bad could possibly have happened here.

Looks, Emily knew, could be deceiving.

Max shot her a glance. “We always prepare for the worst. Back’ He gestured toward Navarro, then to Daklin, “Perimeter. I’ll take inside. You,” he told Emily, “stay put until I come get you.”
She almost saluted. “No problem.” And it wasn’t. As much as she disliked the way Max issued orders, she was now more than happy to stay in a bulletproof car while trained professionals scoured the area for bad guys. She’d learned something from the past few hours at least.

From behind smoked glass she observed Max’s team go to work. Each held a weapon and appeared ready for anything. AJ, nimble and amazingly quick, climbed a tree near the bottom of the driveway, then lay across a thick branch like a lithe cat sunning herself.

Navarro moved like smoke around the side of the house and disappeared from view. Daklin vanished into the trees. One moment Max was standing at the poppy-red front door, the next the door opened, then closed behind him.

She didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until Max came back to the car to get her a few minutes later. She let out the suppressed air in a rush as he opened the door for her.

He held out his hand. “All clear inside, let’s go.”

His hand was large and warm, and she would have enjoyed holding it as they walked. Just like regular people. But he wasn’t even close to a “regular person,” he was a counterterrorist operative, and he was working.

Releasing his hand before he let go of her, she adjusted the strap of her tote on her shoulder. It was enough that his strong, solid presence was beside her. She felt safe with him there. Physically, at least. Her rapidly racing heart was another matter altogether.

But that was just for her to know.

She took a deep breath of the crisp country air. The sight of the flowers, combined with their intoxicating scent, temporarily obliterated the stench of burning rubble imprinted in her mind. She was enchanted with the crisp colors and the charm of the cottage, but miserably sad that the woman who had lived here and lovingly tended this garden was gone.