Page 156 of Stuart Woods' Smolder

“You won’t even recognize this place in a few hours. Trust me, this is going to be your best party yet.”

“You know your way around the house. Help yourself to anything you need.”

“Are you leaving? The sun’s not even up yet.”

“Busy day.”

“Don’t tell me Ben’s making you go to the board meeting.”

“No, I’ve been able to avoid that particular circle of hell.”

She grimaced. “Then what could you be doing that I don’t know about?”

“I’ll let you in on a little secret. There’re a lot of things I do you don’t know about.”

“My life would be a lot easier if that wasn’t true.”

“Are you sure about that?”

The deep rumble of a motor drew their attention to the gate, where a delivery truck had stopped.

“That’ll be the tents,” Stacy said.

“I leave everything in your capable hands.”

He went inside, grabbed a pair of duffel bags he’d prepped the night before, and took them to his garage.

Today was not the day to be driving around in his easily identifiable Porsche Roadster. The same was true for his new AudiA6. Anonymity was the theme of the day, which was why he’d borrowed one of the studio’s production sedans—a five-year-old silver Ford Taurus.

He gave the guard at the gate a wave as he drove by and headed down the hill into the city.

—

Simon was packed and driving away from the Hilton by seven a.m., his gaze flitting to his rearview mirror every few seconds to check for tails.

He had switched hotels yesterday, booking his room under the assumed identity he would use to leave the country, to avoid Petry showing up and demanding the original Matilda Stones.

He had hoped that would allow him to get a sound night of sleep, but instead he had tossed and turned, barely getting more rest than he had the previous night.

He had only two things left to do before he could put this whole mess behind him. The first, pick up the originals from Rudy, and the second, hand them off to Barrington. Neither of which would occur until that evening, which meant he needed to lie low until then.

He cursed himself for not insisting the lawyer meet him earlier, but he’d shot himself in the foot by giving an “end of Saturday” deadline. Hindsight, and all that.

He called Rudy.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Simon. I’ll pick up the paintings from you at nine-thirty tonight.”

“Give me a second.”

The line was muted for nearly a minute.

When he came back on, Rudy said, “Nine-thirty’s not going to work for me.”

“Excuse me? I’m paying yougoodmoney.”

“I delivered what you paid me for. What youdidn’tpay me for was to be a storage facility.”

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