Page 32 of Sweet Animosity

Great.

Not seeing any profit in lying to him, since clearly he knew enough to find me, I asked, “Which ones?”

“The Mona Lisas.”

I swallowed. So his employer was the Russian oligarch. I should have known. Swiping my sweaty palms down my thighs, I said, “I turned them over to Abakar a few days ago. You have to believe me.”

“I do, but that does not solve our problem. Does it?”

The collar on my sweater suddenly seemed too tight and stifling. Taking a shallow breath, I said, “You have to talk to Abakar about it.”

He reached over and grasped my chin. “Here I thought we were getting along like friends, and now you lie to me. We both know Abakar’s dead.”

His accent was thicker than Var’s, and way more sinister. While Var had a primal, almost beastly sexual appeal, this man was more Bond villain handsome. The kind of man women liked to look at but knew better than to approach. He practically radiated fuck-around-and-find-out energy.

Wrenching my face to the side, I pulled on the collar of my sweater. “I know how I know he’s dead… but how do you know?”

“You seem warm.” He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a second key fob. Pointing it toward the dash, he started the car.

A burst of cool air flowed from the vents.

My lips thinned as I opened my sweaty palm where I had been clutching the apparently useless keys. “Liar.”

He shrugged. “I never said I didn’t have a second set.”

I tossed the keys on the seat between us. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“Neither have you.”

“I’ll answer yours if you answer mine.”

I’d heard Russians liked chess, but these constant cat-and-mouse banter games were exhausting. It made a person miss good old-fashioned American brashness.

“I didn’t kill Abakar. Like you, he is of no use to me dead. My employer paid a hefty sum for those paintings. We then learned Abakar was going to double-cross him, so I was sent to… retrieve them.”

“Sounds like Abakar,” I muttered under my breath. “I don’t know what to tell you. I just checked in the vault and the paintings are gone, so clearly whoever killed the asshole took them.”

“How much were you paid? Perhaps we could come to an arrangement. Of course, I would need them by the end of the week.”

Both of my eyebrows rose. “That’s in three days. These aren’t Rothkos. If you want quality work that will fool all the tests, then I need time. Time to source the proper sixteenth-century materials. Time to paint.”

“You have three days.”

“Impossible.”

He leaned forward. “In three days, I’m either leaving the country with five paintings or a body bag. Your choice.”

My hand edged along the door handle. I knew it was locked, but that didn’t stop me from pulling it. Locked. The space between my shoulder blades stiffened. “That’s not much of a choice.”

“If it helps, I’ve tracked down the men responsible for Abakar’s death. It was an unrelated dispute over drugs with a small gang south of the city. They know nothing about the paintings.”

“Are you sure?”

His eyes hardened with a sinister glare as his lips twisted in a macabre grin. “I have ways of being very persuasive. Trust me. They don’t have them.”

No longer warm, a chill ran up my spine.

The door locks unlatched. “You have three days.”

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