Page 96 of Forging Caine

“You recognize this?” Fiori’s words snapped me back to the moment.

I nodded.

He placed it on the floor, propped against the lower shelves. He pulled out another piece. Just under two feet high and over two feet wide. Dark clouds hanging over a gnarled old tree, a small building, bridge, and an obelisk to the left.

I sucked in a breath, goosebumps spreading over my body. “Landscape with Obelisk.”

Fiori nodded. “By Flinck.”

Also stolen in the Gardner Heist.

“Don’t tell me the two large paintings you’re about to pull out are the Rembrandts?” Since I was a kid, I’d dreamed about joining the FBI to solve that case. No one knew where the thirteen works of art had gone, but if someone were going to own them, a billionaire art collector who was the head of a smuggling ring sounded like a valid candidate.

A wicked grin spread across Fiori’s face. “What did you do after you resigned from the FBI? I know you were in Boston for the Gardner case, but nobody leaves the FBI that quickly after making it through Quantico. Tell me the truth.”

My mother’s words the morning of my graduation—the morning she died in a car accident—flowed through my brain. ‘Next time I see you, I’ll be calling you Special Agent Caine.’ And every time someone called me that, it was like losing her all over again. “I got married and became an insurance adjuster.”

“No. An insurance adjuster doesn’t do what you do. Doesn’t calmly walk into a meeting with me, with a recording device. You should have been terrified to be there. You should have been terrified when Jason was in your house. For that matter, you should have been terrified when you were helping Vincenzo Romano recover my painting.”

Should have been? I was.

“Mi dispiace, signore.” Antonio’s soft voice pulled me from the memories. “I love my Samantha dearly, but she’s not an emotional woman. Terror looks the same as love looks the same as happiness.”

I tried glowering at him, but he was right.

Fiori chuckled. “People are my currency. I like knowing what makes them tick. And it’s clear from the look on your face that these paintings are dear to you.”

I nodded, no reason to hide it. “I want to see the rest.”

Fiori grinned and stepped back, gesturing for Antonio to pull the next one out. “Baptiste, come and see how a true art lover reacts to these masterpieces.”

The younger Fiori approached. Their obviously strained relationship was a fact that might come in handy in our investigation, but at that moment, all I cared about was the treasure in front of me.

As I expected, it was a seventeenth-century portrait of a man and woman in black. Three and a half feet wide by four feet high, the seated woman wore a huge white ruff and brocaded front panel down her gown. The man stood with a hand on his hip under a thigh-length cape, in an almost confrontational pose.A Lady and Gentleman in Black.

Antonio placed it next to the others and pulled out the last piece, the largest.

I held my breath as it slid out of its slot, knowing which masterpiece was left. Over four feet wide and five feet high, he carefully withdrew it and leaned it against the shelves beside the other paintings.

Zane, who’d been quiet through this display, pressed his hands to his heart. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

I soaked in the details. The dark and stormy sea. The boat at the center, crewed by Jesus and his disciples. It fought against the waves, with its bow swept up to an almost forty-five degree angle by the tempest. The men at the bow manned the sails, buffeted by wind and water, in a state of near-panic. In the stern, one man leaned over as though about to vomit, while Jesus sat between several of them, radiating calm.

I stepped closer and knelt to inspect it. There he was. One of the disciples at the side held onto a line, hand on his hat, looking straight out at me. Rembrandt’s face hidden in the painting.

“They were taken before I was born. I never saw the real things.” How many times had I visited that museum and stared at the empty frames where these pieces were destined to hang again someday?

Antonio joined me in front ofChrist intheStorm on the Sea of Galilee.“If they’re the real things.”

Zane groaned. “They are. I’ve already confirmed them.”

I peered up at him, his swagger having returned after the earlier lecture. “We’ll see.”

Chapter 32

Antonio

I’dfinishedtakinginventoryof the equipment and completed a cursory review of the four paintings. “I need to take a walk and plan my next steps. Which tests to run first? Which painting to start with?”

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