Page 70 of Forging Caine

How had I wound up with a man who understood me like that? Who knew what I wanted and needed without having to ask? How lucky was I?

Cass’s face flashed through my brain over and over. She and Emma at the party on Saturday. Family dinners every Sunday while Antonio was away. Birthday parties.

Focus on the paintings.

I should have known tangling with Fiori was a mistake. We had to put an end to this. And it wasn’t by going along quietly and doing his bidding. That painting upstairs had to be a fake. The universe couldn’t allow someone like him to own the real thing. It just couldn’t.

The next photo was another covered in splatters. My brain refused to let it in, so I tossed it onto the stack it had come from. Twisting at my waist to release some of the strain on my back, I found the Impressionism folder behind me and pulled that one closer. Maybe I needed to shuffle the art movements.

How was Antonio doing upstairs? Was he having the same problem focusing? I’d offered to work with him, but he wanted privacy. Quiet. So I’d changed into some jeans with a sweater and sat on the floor of my new office. By myself.

That was normally how I preferred things.

Not now. Not today.

Impressionism is your favorite style. It will distract you.

I flipped open the folder and slid the top photo toward me.

But—holy shit—I knew the one underneath it. I got up on my hands and knees to get closer. A bundle of energy ripped through my chest.

Holy shit.

It was the painting from the onionskins.

I was sure of it!

Where did I leave them? They were in my purse when I went to Ferraro’s. Did I take them out? I launched to my feet. Whoever sent the letter to Ferraro’s either had that painting right now or had it at some point. Which one made more sense? And why send the coded letter?

It was real. The painting was real. It wasn’t a game by some eccentric billionaire.

I had to get the onionskins to be sure it was a match.

Slow down. I knelt to look at the notes with the painting. Many of the others had a record of who’d brought them to the shop and when they’d sold, but not this one. No notes at all, except its name:Grainfield at Midday. But it… I scanned the documentation. It wasn’t in the pawnshop when the FBI got there.

Had it been sold illegally? Maybe moved to the next leg in the smuggling line? Or it could have been a victim of data loss from the recovered hard drive.

If the letter came from whoever had it now, that might point us to another step in the ring.

My phone buzzed from the desk and I jumped. I was off work, so I wasn’t answering for them. I couldn’t talk to Elliot, not with Jason there. And I definitely couldn’t talk to Cass, because she’d know something was wrong. Who else would be calling me?

It wasn’t important, so I ignored it. There was a mystery to be solved, right in my hands, and I couldn’t leave it.

The phone went still, then began buzzing again. I crossed to the desk. It was Lucy. What if she’d discovered something from her search?

“Luce! What’s up?”

“Okay, so I can’t tell you who won that auction.” She popped a gum bubble. Was that on purpose? She knew it grated on my nerves.

“Why are you calling, then?”

“Because I got into a directory listing with some hashed values in it and the same value as on that stamp is on a few other pieces.”

“Hashed?”

“Encrypted. I told you all about that three months ago.” She paused, slurped a drink, and continued. “Database admins hash critical data, like social security numbers and stuff like that. So if we assume the most important piece of data an auction house is keeping would be the buyer’s identity—because there’s also no field showing that information—then I can filter the listing down to only those with the same hashed value as the stamp.”

“And?”

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