Never Trust A Lady

into her skin…feel the tender roughness of his whiskers against her softest places. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine he was there with her now…hear his emotion-scratchy voice saying, “Well, Carlysle, what have you got to say for yourself?”

No regrets. Even now. How could she regret something so wonderful, so lovely and rare, just because it was for only one night? She might as well regret lilacs, because they only bloomed once every spring…or bluebirds, or shooting stars, or dolphins. Once in a lifetime.

Her lips even curved in a smile as she remembered the gift he’d given her, that she would carry with her for the rest of her life, like a secret keepsake, hidden close to her heart. The gift of a single word. “Wow…”

She was debating whether to turn off the engine or leave it on so she could run the heater, when she heard the van bump down the potholed alley and roar into the parking lot behind her. Her hand shook as she turned off the ignition.

Shivering, she stood beside her car and waited while Connie backed the van into its place and climbed out, jingling keys. Giving Jane a little wave, she bent to unlock the back door of the shop, then straightened, calling out cheerily, “Hullo, dear-back from Washington so soon?”

Sidling closer, Jane thrust her hands into the pockets of her coat and gave a nervous laugh and a little shrug of vexation. “Oh-wouldn’t you know, the girls have gone off skiing with their father? Very spur-of-the-moment-typically David. Of course, I’d have had to come back to work today, anyway. Unless I took a sick day, I suppose. I could have, but if I’d stayed longer, I wouldn’t have had anyone to pick me up at the airport, would I? So I guess it’s just as well…” She was babbling. She never babbled.

Take a deep breath, Jane.

“There, dear, you’re shivering.” Connie was standing beside the back door of her shop, holding it open for her, smiling in her usual friendly way. “Do come in-I’ll just put the kettle on.”

Chapter 17

Hawk was climbing back into the driver’s seat, having just received directions to the main highway from a farmer in a pickup truck with a bale of hay the size of Delaware in the back, when the cellular phone rang.

“Jeez,” he muttered to himself as he grabbed at it, “they got a camera in this thing, or what?”

Campbell sounded out of breath. “Hawkins? Not good news here. Mrs. Carlysle just showed up at the suspect’s shop.”

Hawk threw the Nissan into Drive and swore with a vehemence unprecedented even for him. “Get her out of there,” he snarled. “Now.”

“No can do. The suspect’s en route, due to arrive any minute. Can’t risk being spotted.”

“So, what now?” The Nissan’s tires spun briefly on wet grass before they made contact with pavement. Hawk set his jaw and pressed down on the accelerator pedal. “You can’t go in. Not if there’s a chance-”

“Look, Hawkins,” Campbell said with the arrogance that made the FBI such a pain in the butt to work with sometimes, “you’re just gonna have to trust us, okay? We’re not any more anxious than you are for some innocent civilian to get caught in the crossfire, but we both know what’s at stake here. We’ve taken every precaution, and we have every reason to believe we can pull this off without anybody getting hurt.”

Every reason to believe? thought Hawk. Great. Just great.

“We’ve got the whole place wired,” Campbell went on in a smug Bureau purr that made Hawk grind his teeth. “Both picture and sound. We’ll be monitoring the situation from the word go. We’ve got both front and rear exits covered, plus the alley, the parking lot and the whole damn square, and a Hostage Rescue Team ready to roll just in case.”

In case? In case what? Hawk wanted to shout. In case Emma/ Galina puts a gun to Jane’s head, the way she did to Loizeau’s? If she does that, you moron, there won’t be anything for the Hostage Rescue Team to do except carry in the body bag!

A vision came to him then, a vision of Jane’s face, her eyes lifting to his with that sudden, miraculous leap of light and joy that always made him think of dolphins. Then he saw her eyes go dull and flat, the light in them forever quenched, and with it all the joy and light there was in the world. His world.

Carlysle…you idiot…why couldn’t you have trusted me? After last night…after everything…was that too much to ask?

“O…kay…suspect has arrived.” Agent Campbell was trying without success to bury his excitement in a monotone drawl. “She’s pulling into the parking lot at the rear of the shop. Mrs. Carlysle has exited her vehicle. So has the suspect…she’s waving at Mrs. Carlysle…suspect now appears to be unlocking the door of the shop. Okay, both Carlysle and the suspect are inside… we have them on the monitors. Hawk?”

“Yeah?” Becoming aware that his chest was hurting, he grabbed for a breath.

“What’s your ETA now?”

“I dunno.” Hawk glanced down at the speedometer needle, which was hovering around seventy-five. How far could it be to the damn town, anyway? “Five minutes?”

“Take your time. Doesn’t look like Mrs. Carlysle’s in any immediate danger.”

“How the hell you figure that?” Hawk growled.

Campbell exhaled audibly. “They’re having tea.”

“There you are…honey…and lemon.”

Jane watched while Connie, who preferred milk in her tea, poured herself a generous dollop and returned the carton to the camp-size refrigerator that shared the limited space in her cluttered workroom with a working, 1930s-vintage gas stove. An equally old-fashioned teakettle sat on one of the stove’s burners beneath its tea cozy, comfortably steeping.

“Would you like a biscuit, dear?”

“Oh, no…thanks.” Jane stirred and sipped her tea. tasting nothing. Her mind, from the moment she’d entered Connie’s shop, had seemed capable of only one coherent thought: It can’t be true. It can’t be. This is Connie…my friend.

Thank goodness Connie had done most of the talking, as usual, telling her in great detail, as the kettle was coming to a boil, all about her newest customer, something about a fantastically wealthy businessman who apparently wanted her to decorate his villa in Miami Beach.

“He’s Iranian, I behove-seems to have pots of money and no taste whatsoever.” Connie’s eyes sparkled with avarice as she bit daintily into a cookie. “I do believe I may have already found a home for some of those dreadful paintings I bought at Arlington. Oh-and that reminds me, dear-” her eyes came to rest on Jane, causing her heart to give a painful bump “-what did you find out about that nice little one you bought? Was my friend in Georgetown able to have a look at it? What did he say?”

Jane took a sip of tea, which did nothing to dispel the feeling that she’d somehow gotten Connie’s cookie crumbs stuck in her throat. Finally, she coughed and said, “I never got around to it, actually. I told you-I had to cut the whole trip short, and anyway, by the next day getting it appraised began to seem, well, just sort of silly. I’m sure it’s not valuable, and I like it anyway, so why bother? It does look very nice over the piano, though, just like I thought it would.” She set down her teacup carefully, praying Connie wouldn’t notice the slight clatter as it met the saucer.

“Actually, that’s one of the reasons I’m here. I was, um, wondering, I still need something for that space between the windows in the breakfast nook, and now that I have the one painting in the living room, the wall above the TV looks awfully bare, so I was thinking I might like to take another look at those paintings-the ones you bought. I know you said you were thinking of taking them to Miami, but…maybe I could have first crack?”

“Uh-oh.”

“What?” Hawk barked, as the ominous syllables came through the open cellular phone connection in Campbell’s deep-throated cop’s mutter.

His anxiety level shot off the scale when the FBI agent next produced a vehement rendition of his own favorite