“No.” She reached out to touch his hand. “They meant to kill him all along. If they’d left him alive, he would have told you, told the police. I think, I honestly think, if he’d had the egg himself, given it to them, they still would’ve killed him.”

“I know that.” He tore a breadstick in two, more for the act of rending than out of a desire for it. Still, he offered her half. “And it’s hard to accept it. But you need to know where it is.”

“To use as a bargaining chip for myself, or to retrieve it if she gets to you.”

“Hopefully neither one. Oliver had it. He must have reneged on the deal, or changed the terms of the deal looking for a bigger payoff. He’d never have considered they’d kill him for it, kill his lady—and he must have used her as the contact.”

“The optimist,” she said quietly. “The optimist always believes the best will happen, not the worst.”

“He’d have believed it. Give them some grief, sure, so he covered his bases sending me the key. But he’d have figured he’d convince them to pay up—maybe dangled finding other items of particular interest to the client.”

“That’s a fool’s game.”

“He was.” Ash looked down into his wineglass. “I could play a variation on it.”

“What sort of variation?”

“Oliver had to have a way to contact this woman or her boss, or knew someone who had a way to contact them. I have to find that. Then I contact them and propose a new deal.”

“What’s to stop them, once they know you have it, from coming after you, the way they did Oliver and Vinnie? Ash.” She laid a hand over his. “I really meant it when I said I didn’t want them to try to kill you.”

“I’ll make it clear the egg is well secured. Let’s say a location that requires my presence and that of an authorized representative to remove. If anything happens to me—I’m killed, have an accident, go missing—I’ve left instructions with another representative to transfer the box and its contents to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for immediate donation.”

To her mind, he said it all—especially the words “I’m killed”—too casually. “Maybe it would work. I need to think about it.”

“Since I have to figure out how to let her or her boss know I’m in the market, there’s time to think.”

“Or you could donate it now, make that previously suggested splash about it, and they’d have no reason to come after you.”

“She’d disappear. Either to evade the authorities or to evade them and the man who hired her. Three people are dead, and two of them meant a lot to me. I can’t just step aside.”

She had to take a moment. She had feelings for him—she’d slept with him—she was involved with him on a number of levels now. And still she wasn’t quite sure how to approach him on this.

Direct, she told herself, was always best.

“I think you’re probably right about her disappearing. If that happened, the worry and risk would be over.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Let’s be optimistic ourselves on that, just for now. And still you’d never have justice or closure, or at least the possibility of justice and closure would be out of your hands. And that’s really it, isn’t it? You want them, at least a part of them, in your own hands. You need to deal with her the way you need to deal with an obnoxious drunk in a bar.”

“I wouldn’t punch her. She’s a woman, and some rules are too ingrained.”

She sat back, studied his face. He had a way of appearing calm and reasonable, but the underlayment was steely determination. He’d made up his mind, and he’d move forward with or without her help.

“Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“I’m in. We’ll need to refine things, work it all out step-by-step because I doubt running a con is in your repertoire.”

“Maybe we should sleep on it.”

She picked up her wine, smiled. “Maybe we should.”

Julie couldn’t sleep. Hardly a wonder given the circumstances. She’d started her day attending a funeral, where her closest friend had stormed off after being insulted by the departed’s father, and ended it with her ex-husband sleeping in her guest room.

And in between there’d been another murder, which was horrible, especially since she’d met Vincent Tartelli and his wife at one of Ash’s shows.

But knowing it all generated from the discovery of one of the lost Imperial eggs? That was fascinating.

She really wished she could see the egg, and knew she shouldn’t be thinking about the thrill of seeing a lost treasure when people were dead.

But thinking about that was considerably less uncomfortable than thinking about Luke sleeping in the next room.

She rolled over—again—and finding herself staring at the ceiling, tried to use it as a backdrop, constructed her image of the Cherub with Chariot there.

But the compass of her thoughts veered right back to her true north, and Luke.

They’d had dinner together, just two civilized people discussing murder and priceless Russian treasures over Thai food. She hadn’t argued about his staying over. She’d been unnerved, understandably, she told herself. It seemed perfectly clear now that whoever had killed Oliver, and now poor Mr. Tartelli, had broken into her apartment.

She wouldn’t come back, of course she wouldn’t come back. But if she did . . . Julie could stand for women’s rights and equality, and still feel safer having a man in the house, considering everything.

But when the man was Luke, it brought back all those memories—most of them good. A lot of them sexy. Good, sexy memories didn’t encourage sleep.

Obviously she shouldn’t have gone to bed so early, but it had seemed safer, smarter, to tuck herself into her own room with Luke tucked away elsewhere.

She could get her iPad, do some work, play some games. She could read. Any of that would serve as a productive distraction. So she’d just go quietly into the kitchen, get the tablet and make herself some of the herbal tea recommended by the nutritionist she’d fired for being completely unreasonable—her body needed regular infusions of caffeine and artificial sweetener. But the tea relaxed her.

She rose, took the precaution of putting a robe over her chemise. Easing her door open, careful as a thief, she tiptoed into the kitchen.