His attention was weirdly divided into independently functioning units. One constantly scoped the scene for attackers. Another was anxious about meeting Nell’s sisters, who might or might not want to toss his entrails into the gutter if he didn’t adhere to some incomprehensible code of behavior. A third was intensely aware of the fact that Nell wore no panties. She looked decorous and ladylike, her tidy blouse stretching slightly across her tits, her long sweater skirt reaching to her ankles.
Paradoxically, that made it even worse. Her sexy secret. If he slipped his hand under that skirt and slid it up over her stockings, he’d find just hot, velvety skin between her legs. Warm fuzz. Damp ringlets. Tender, moist pink folds inside her pussy lips. That hot, tight, slick well.
Talk about distracting.
They were the last to arrive, since he’d insisted on tanking up at a good steak and burger joint that he knew near the Midtown Tunnel, to get some protein into her. When they walked into the bar, two women leaped up and went straight for Nell, sneaking fascinated peeks at him.
He was grateful for the noise level, so he didn’t have to hear what they were whispering. Whatever it was made her blush furiously.
“Duncan, this is my sister Vivi,” Nell spoke loudly into his ear, indicating the smaller of the two, a waiflike, slender girl with long red hair and big gray eyes. “And this is Nancy.” She touched the shoulder of the other woman, a pale beauty with hazel eyes and long, curly auburn hair that reached her ass. “This is Duncan, my, ah, friend,” she told them. “And that tall guy at the table playing the fiddle is Liam, Nancy’s fiancé.”
The tune finished with a flourish and a burst of hoots and hollers. The guy whom Nell had pointed at glanced over at them, laid his fiddle on the table, and excused himself, to unanimous cries of protest. He came toward them, sizing Duncan up with keen green eyes. He had a strong grip and a clear, unwavering gaze. Nell had told him the story of how Liam had defended her sister Nancy from the Fiend.
He was a good judge of men, after years as a field agent. This Liam seemed okay to him. A guy he’d want at his back. That was good.
The musicians launched into a new tune, louder than the one before. “Let’s go sit at a table in the back!” Liam shouted over the din.
The back room was deserted. They sat down around a table and Duncan silently, stoically endured their collective scrutiny.
“So, Duncan,” the sister named Vivi finally broke the silence. “I’ll just start things off by saying thanks for saving Nell’s ass for us.”
“My pleasure,” he replied.
“Yes, I’m grateful, too,” Nancy said. “But that brings us to a very important issue. Nell, you and Vivi can’t live in New York alone anymore. You should both leave the city. Go into hiding. I know it sounds dramatic, but so is getting jumped by three guys on Lafayette.”
Sensible though that was, Duncan was instantly unhappy about the prospect of Nell leaving town. But no worries. Nell was shaking her head, true to form. As contrary with her sisters as she was with him.
“I am so close to getting my doctorate,” she said, her voice rebellious. “It’s taken me years having to work full-time while I do it, but I’m almost there. I’m not going to let this butthead take that from me.”
“But where will you live? You could stay with me and Liam, but you’d be exposed every time you traveled back and forth—”
“She’ll live with me,” Duncan cut in.
All eyes cut to him. There was a flurry of silent signals, significant glances. Nell leaned over to him. “Duncan, do you mind?” she hissed. “This is not an issue for everyone to—”
“Wrong. It is now, babe,” Vivi said sternly. “You’re my sister, and I don’t want you snatched. How’s the security in your building, Duncan?”
“Good,” he replied. “Even better when I’m with her. Which I’ll make a point of being, as much as possible. And if I can’t, for any reason, I’ll make arrangements for a professional bodyguard.”
Nell glared at him. He stared back, unrepentant. The sisters and the future brother-in-law glanced exchanged nods of cautious approval.
“I’d like to be included in the decision-making process here,” Nell snapped. “And who’s going to pay for a bodyguard? They’re expensive!”
“So Nell’s covered,” Liam went on, ignoring her. “That leaves you, Viv. You can stay with us. You shouldn’t go back on the road. At least not unless you change your name.”
Vivi looked forlorn. “You’re sweet, Liam, but staying with you guys is not a long-term solution. I’m the only one of us with no pressing reason to stay in New York. But I can’t do the crafts fair circuit if I don’t use my own name, or else I’d be starting from zero all over again. I can’t afford that now, after six years of working my ass off to build my brand.”
Nancy looked worried. “I thought you wanted to quit the circuit!”
Her younger sister looked wistful. “Sure, when I’ve saved enough to buy a little house someplace beautiful. Someplace with lots of trees, where my dog can run around. Where I can have a big studio, do sculpture again, maybe open my own shop. But that’s just fantasy. I lost thousands of bucks in registration fees when I came back for Lucia’s funeral. Then I lost more after the Boston adventure, too. I’m playing catch-up now. With my credit card.”
Duncan squinted at her, thinking hard. Trees, flowers, a big art studio, far from New York. He had an idea. A fucking awesome idea.
“I know a place you might be able to go,” he said.
They all turned. “What might that place be?” Vivi asked slowly.
“I’ve got this friend. I met him in Afghanistan,” he said. “We were on an intelligence-gathering task force. He got out of that line of work a few years ago and bought a place out in Oregon. He’s into organic gardening, horticulture, that kind of thing. Grows flowers, I think. The guy he bought the land from was an artist who’d converted the barn into a studio, with a little apartment in a loft above it.”
Liam and Nancy gave each other speculative glances.
“And why would this guy want to host me there?” asked Vivi.
Duncan shrugged. “He’s not an artist, so he doesn’t need the studio. He doesn’t raise animals, so he doesn’t need the barn. He built his own house, so he doesn’t need the apartment. He likes dogs. Maybe he’d consider renting it to you. Want me to talk to him about it?”
Bully and guilt-trip him was more like it. Jack owed Duncan his life, like Gant. Actually, they all owed each other, but Duncan would bring out the big guns to help Nell’s sister. And the best part was, Jack was a serious bad-ass. If anyone gave Vivi trouble, Jack could handle it.
That would comfort everyone. Which would earn Duncan big points. He’d take every opportunity to do that. No matter who he inconvenienced.
Vivi’s shrug was casual, but he read signs of stress in her face, in the nervous movement of her hands, her mouth. The shadow in her eyes. She looked pinched. Like Nell’s face had been, just a couple of days ago. But Nell was looking better now. Rosier, eyes sparkling.
So pretty. Jesus. It knocked him back. In fact, she was giving him a look of such shining, unmixed approval, he was almost disoriented.
She grabbed his hand under the table, and his brain went haywire at the contact. His fingers curled around hers, and for a moment, he completely lost the thread of the conversation.
“…told us about the secret drawer,” Nancy was saying when he tuned in again. “Like the many other things Lucia never told us about.”
“Secret drawer?” Duncan asked. “In what?”
Nancy glanced at Nell, Nell gave her an eloquent nod, and Nancy proceeded. “Lucia had a priceless
intaglio
Renaissance writing table,” she said. “It belonged to her family for the past four hundred years. It was smashed in the second B&E. You do know about our mother, Lucia? What happened? The burglaries, and all the rest of it?” she probed delicately.
“Yes, Nell told me the story,” he said. “So what’s with the table?”
“Liam’s been restoring it,” she said. “And he found a secret drawer. You push one of the flowers carved into the back, and a drawer pops out. And it had a letter in it.”
He waited for the punch line. “And? So? What’s in the letter?”
Nancy smiled at his impatience. “We don’t know,” she said. “It’s in Italian, and Nell’s the only one of us who speaks Italian.”
He looked at Nell. “You speak Italian?”
“And Spanish. And French. And Latin. And ancient Greek,” Vivi piped up, intense pride in her voice. “Our Nell, the linguist.”
Nell looked embarrassed. “My birth mother was Italian,” she explained. “I learned it from her. And I was in a foster home for a while with a couple of Venezuelan girls. I learned their Spanish before they had a chance to learn English. French was an easy step after that. So it’s not like it’s any big accomplishment.”
He grunted. “And the Latin and ancient Greek? Sure. No biggie.”
“Can I see the letter please?” she asked primly.
Nancy pulled a sheet of lightweight airmail paper out of her purse and passed it to Nell, who scanned it briefly.
“It’s dated three months ago,” she said, and began to translate.
Dearest Lucia,
Perhaps you will refuse even to read this letter. It would be no more than I deserve. Be aware that my silence was not due to lack of sentiment. On the contrary.
I have given up the search. I accept that I will never find what I seek, and yet possession of the map is still a torment to me. I have no right to destroy it, as it is not mine, and your father paid the highest price a man could pay to keep the hiding place a secret. I wish only to be free of it now. It gives me no peace, and after fifty years of fruitless searching, peace is all I can hope for. Perhaps even that is too much to hope.
I wish to bring the map back to you. You are the rightful owner. Dispose of it as you think best. I beg you, take this burden from me. Your pure heart and lack of avidity make you its perfect guardian.
I have a flight reservation that will bring me to JFK Airport on May the 16th, if you will receive me. If you do not wish to see me, or you do not wish to take custody of the map, I will respect your wishes, and you will not hear from me again. I await news from you.
Marco Barbieri
Nell put her hand over her mouth. “May sixteenth. The day she died.”
They all stared down at the letter, chilled. “So he brought this map that day,” Liam said slowly. “And led them straight to Lucia. But they still didn’t find what they were looking for.”
“But Marco didn’t bring Lucia the treasure itself. Just a map,” Nell said. “The treasure’s still lost. Marco couldn’t find it, and it sounds like he looked really hard. And then he came here, and gets murdered, still unsatisfied. Poor guy.”
Duncan looked at Liam. “Did you go over that whole table?”
“Centimeter by centimeter,” the other man replied. “No other secret drawers that I could find. But there’s still the safe. It’s a big question mark. The bad guys haven’t seen it. It was never found or forced, in either of the burglaries. I pulled the safe out and took it to my house.”
Nancy held her hand up to her throat. “But we can’t open it without all three of the necklaces, according to Lucia’s letter. And the filthy rat-bastard Fiend took mine.”
“Can’t you force the safe?” Duncan asked.
Nancy and Liam shook their heads. “It’s a trick design,” Nancy said. “God knows where Lucia found the thing. There’s a warning printed on the top. If you try to open the safe in any way other than the numerical combination, a tiny minibomb explodes and destroys whatever’s inside. Damn good safeguard. Keeps everybody honest.”
“So we’ll go at it from another direction,” Nell said briskly. “We find out more about Marco Barbieri and whatever he’s been looking for these past fifty years. Maybe someone in Castiglione Sant’Angelo can tell us.”
“So let’s go to Italy. You can ask them,” Duncan said, impulsively.
Everyone stared at him, mouths agape.
“Um, Duncan?” Nell began. “You’re going off the deep end.”
“No, I’m not.” The fantastic idea was taking hold in his mind, driving everything else out. Castles, frescos, fields of sunflowers, great pasta, thick slabs of Florentine steak, liters of kick-ass red wine. Walking with Nell on his arm through winding cobblestone streets. Her, dressed in a skimpy little sundress with lots of cleavage, getting a tan, eating gelato, getting relaxed. Having fun. Nell, naked in their rumpled hotel room bed, her eyes sultry, satiated. Yeah.
Nell snorted. “Please. Be reasonable. What about the game? And my summer school students? And your business?”
“The game will wait,” he said. “The students will live. And I haven’t taken a vacation since I started the business. It’s hard to justify vacations when you’re running your own operation.”
“Tell me about it,” Vivi said wearily.
“I cannot afford a trip to Italy,” Nell said, her voice sharpening.
“So we’ll divide the labor,” he offered. “You do all the ordering in the restaurants, and I wave my credit card around. Sounds fair to me.”
Vivi laughed with delight. “Sweet. I like your style, Duncan.”
He shrugged. “It’s a perfect way to get you out of their sights.”
“Not really,” Liam said quietly. “It’s the first place they’d expect her to go. She’d be noticed there and watched.”
Duncan was somewhat deflated by that acute observation, but even so, he couldn’t let it go. He tracked with part of his mind, taking in data while they brainstormed about the letter, the safe, Marco, the attackers, the map. The rest of him played with the Italy fantasy, like a dog with a bone. Gnawing it, licking it, loving it.
Nell began rubbing her eyes at about one-thirty in the morning, and Duncan took her hand. “We should get back, get some sleep,” he told her. “We promised Bruce you’d be at the office tomorrow.”
She stifled a yawn and smiled her agreement.
“Give them your new cell phone number,” he reminded her.
Nancy and Vivi looked at each other, mouths theatrically agape. “A cell phone? Nell? Do our ears deceive us?” Vivi breathed. “No!”
“Oh, shut up, Viv,” Nell grumbled. “He bullied me into it.”