Page 38 of Disarming Caine

“I know. Not over the phone.”

“Someone tried to hurt you?”

“We were shot at. Several times. Pinned down in her hotel room.” I ran a hand over the pillow where she’d slept. “She’s trying to pass it off as an accident, but I don’t believe her. This was not the first shooting in town this week.”

“The three are still in custody.”

My shoulders relaxed. Then it was not those who threatened her in Napoli—the fresco thief, his conniving girlfriend, or her thug brother. “But the one who paid them is not.”

“Don’t assume you know things you don’t.”

As Samantha suspected—but never asked outright—I knew who was behind the thefts from Pompeii. She’d guessed their powerful backer was a man named Pasquale Fiori, whose yacht we’d visited. But I was told secrecy was the price for her life, and it was a price I gladly paid. “If it’s not them, then who?”

“I’ll make some inquiries.”

Picking up the pillow, I inhaled her scent from it. Was Nathan Miller right? Were my family and the poor choices of my youth coming back to haunt the woman I loved? “I’ve not worked for your father in—”

“Antonio!”

I stood, grimacing, nerves still as frayed as last night. She’d be gone for eleven hours, and all I wanted to do was follow her the entire time, to be certain she was safe. But she could take care of herself—she was trained, as she liked to remind me—and I had a great deal of work to do. “I’ll never forgive myself if she’s hurt because of me.”

“I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

Chapter 14

Samantha

Ihitabuttonon my laptop, broadcasting the security feed from inside Mason’s Gallery to the eighty-inch screen on the wall. The Oaks conference room, with its table large enough for twenty, had the best television at the Foster Mutual Insurance office.

I was joined by Harry Bell and Tonya Quinn, Foster’s Special Investigations Unit. Insurance fraud was a thirty-plus-billion-dollar-a-year problem, and no insurance company, regardless of size, was immune. SIU’s role was to help combat that by investigating suspicious claims.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this?” asked Harry.

As usual, Quinn picked up where he left off, as though they shared a brain. “You don’t think this is a fraudulent claim, do you?”

They were both on second careers; he’d been a police officer, while she’d been a private investigator. Both were in their early sixties, with well-grayed light brown hair and intelligent eyes that missed little.

I was a contractor, working for a large independent adjusting company, who’d negotiated a daily contract with Foster to provide additional claims management bandwidth. Winter was slow, but rather than releasing my contract until storm season in the spring, I was re-deployed part-time to work with SIU and improve my investigative skills.

Since starting with Foster in the summer, I’d identified eighteen instances of fraud. The most significant was the million-dollar fraudulent artwork claim. Then there was the discovery that the company’s president—Roger Foster, my former father-in-law—was taking bribes to push phony claims through.

“I just wanted to talk over the incident,” I said.

Quinn flipped her laptop open while I cued up the video, and she gasped. “Mother of pearl, Samantha! You’re a witness on this claim. One, you cannot be working a claim you’re listed on—”

“I know, I wasn’t thinking.”

“And two, what happened?”

“Watch.” I hit play.

The camera hung high on the rear wall, giving a near-complete image of the front showroom, including Rhonda and the street outside. I was far enough away at the time to be out of view.

The car entered the frame from the right side, well below the speed limit. The driver’s window was down and a person wearing a balaclava held a gun out of the window, letting off several shots. I came sprinting into the frame just before the noise started—Quinn shot out of her chair and Harry grumbled something—and tackled Rhonda to the ground. One windowpane shattered, then the second. As the car sped off, I launched from my position and ran out of the frame.

Quinn hit pause on my laptop and held my hand back when I tried to play it again. “You doing alright, hun?”

“Fine.” I stared at the laptop. I’d already watched the video at least a dozen times before they arrived. In the moment, tackling Rhonda seemed like the only choice, but watching it again, I realized I put myself into more danger by running across the room than Rhonda had actually been in.

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