Claire returned Dante's wallet to his pants, but kept the piece of paper. By the time he knew it was missing she intended to be long gone. Moving quickly, she went into the next room and transferred the painting from his satchel to her backpack. Then she went back into the X-ray room and pulled on her pants, slipped on her shoes. Since her maternity outfit lacked anything as practical as a pocket, after she got dressed she tucked the note in her bra. Over the drone of the wind outside, she became aware of the sound of her own breathing, shallow and fast, with a little moan at the end of every exhalation.
The water was no longer running in the bathroom. "Like a fool, still in love with you. You've got my whole world upside down." Dante was moving around, wiping away the traces of his having been there. He probably wished he could do the same thing with her, make it be so that she would forget all about his existence. No wonder he had so easily speculated about Troy's intentions—he had already thought it all through himself. Was he planning on flying to Europe, where he could sell the painting clandestinely through a disreputable dealer in a former Communist country? Or did he already have a buyer lined up in the United States, a collector with lots of money made in the stock market or software, who wouldn't question too closely where such a beauty had come from?
Claire walked over to the window, ready, when the bathroom door opened, to pretend she was admiring the lights of the city. A good poker face had never been one of her strengths.
Outside, the streetlights revealed a world in motion. The awnings of the conference center across the street flapped in the wind. The black branches of the trees that bordered the parking lot lashed the pavement like whips. The window itself hummed with the wind, which was like the roar of a vacuum cleaner that occasionally sputtered and then surged to life again.
Although it was the middle of the night, the streets weren't deserted. There were a few cars driving down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and even a man standing under a streetlight in front of the shuttered Burgerville across the street. A man holding binoculars to his face as he scanned both entrances to the building.
When he took the binoculars away from his eyes, even from sixteen stories up and half a block away, Claire recognized him immediately.
Troy.
Troy Nowell. Well. The man who had told her her painting was worth nothing must have changed his mind in a big way, enough to make him eager to track her down. The wind couldn't ruffle Troy's close-cropped hair, but it had turned his buttoned-up trenchcoat into a sail.
The door to the bathroom opened, and Dante came out, wearing only a pair of black briefs. The dark hair on his chest was in the rough shape of a butterfly. "Layla, you got me on my knees, Layla, I'm begging darling, please ..." He stopped singing when he saw Claire's face. "What's the matter?"
At least now Claire had an answer for him. She pointed out the window.
It was, Dante argued, unsafe to leave the building while Troy was watching. They would wait until morning, then mingle with the office workers and slip away. Claire privately decided that might be a good time to lose Dante, too, in a place where she knew every street and alley. While he sketched out his plan, Dante's hands kept touching Claire, stroking her shoulder, patting her knee, combing an errant curl out of her eyes. At one point he even leaned over to kiss her cheek, and Claire couldn't help but think of Judas. How could Dante betray her with such ease?
"You're being awfully quiet."
Claire offered him the smallest possible smile, then walked into the reception area. Without warning, it felt as if the world was falling away from under her feet. Her stomach lurched, and she reached out to grab the edge of the receptionist's desk. "Do you feel that?"
"What are you talking about?”
"The building. It's moving. I can feel it swaying under my feet."
Dante nodded, seemingly unfazed. "Tall buildings are designed to do that. I read someplace that the average skyscraper can move eight feet in any direction."
Claire felt sick. Now that she knew the building really was moving, the swaying seemed more pronounced. She wanted to be back on solid ground. To avoid making conversation with Dante, she snapped on the radio that sat on the receptionist's desk, twisting the dial until she picked up KXL.
After a few minutes of sports talk, the weather report came on.
"The time is two twenty-eight, twenty-eight past two. Repeating our top local story: the National Weather Service has issued a high wind warning for the Willamette Valley. The storm is scheduled to set down here sometime in the next two hours. It has already hit Newport, and our reporter, Bob LeBart, is on the line. Bob, what can you tell us?"
"Well, Diane, it's a pretty amazing sight. I went outside a few minutes ago and could barely stay on my feet. We can all be very thankful that this storm has hit in the middle of the night, when most people are at home asleep. Otherwise it might be far more serious. We've just had a report that a metal roof was lifted right off a Shari's restaurant, but we don't know if anyone was hurt. So many telephone lines are down that it may take some time before we really know the extent of any damages. One thing is sure, though— there will be plenty of property damage. And as soon as more information is available, we'll bring you an update. This is Bob LeBart in Newport, Oregon."
"And this is Diane Harburg in the KXL studio. In Portland, forecasters are telling us they can't exactly predict whether the storm will pack the same punch as it has in Newport. If it does, we may be looking at something the size of the famous Columbus Day storm—" Claire snapped off the radio. She didn't want to be reminded of the day she was born. Here she was, thirty-five years old, and she still couldn't judge men.
Dante patted the exam room table. "Why don't you come over here for a second."
"I don't know about you, but I need to sleep." Her words were curter than she had intended. Did her voice betray her new knowledge?
"Then I'll make us up a little bed." He rummaged in the cupboard and came up with a couple of modesty drapes, which were like undersized sheets. "And I'll behave like a perfect gentleman. I'd love to watch you sleeping."
It was Dante who slept, however, and Claire who watched. They slept in the X-ray room, which offered the widest exam table, but it was still so narrow that they were forced to nest together like two commas. Claire tried to will herself to relax so that Dante wouldn't feel her tension. Against the cage of her ribs, she felt the slow beat of his traitor's heart. After she heard Dante's breathing slow and deepen, Claire raised herself up on one elbow and looked at him for a long moment. His generous mouth was slack and vulnerable, the bridge of his nose more prominent with his dark eyes shuttered. Even from a few inches away, Claire found herself observing Dante as if from a great distance. He was still a beautiful man, but she told herself that his beauty no longer had the power to reach her.
What plans did Dante have for her? Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to have her out of the picture altogether, no inconvenient woman coming forward with tales of how a painting should really be hers, some blabbermouth who might make even a secretive collector reconsider? Could he be thinking of silencing her forever? And what part had he played in the death, destruction and disappearances that had haunted her since she opened that suitcase? As she watched
Dante's seemingly open face, the building groaned and swayed under them like an old ship on rough seas.
"Claire!"
The sound broke through the skin of Claire's restless sleep.
"Clai—!" The voice was abruptly muffled, but Claire had heard enough to know whose it was. Charlie, with her characteristic rolled r that turned her name from something plain into something exotic.
Dante laid a cautioning hand on her arm as she started to get up. "Wait!" he hissed in her ear. "It might be a—"
Claire shook his hand free and got to her feet. "Charlie!" She ran into the next room, not thinking, only knowing that her darkest fears were evaporating as quickly as her fragmented dreams. Charlie was alive!
She stopped short. T
here was Charlie, but Paul Roberts's hand muffled her mouth. When he saw Claire, he looped his arm around Charlie's neck in a parody of friendliness, grinning humorlessly. On Charlie's other side stood Karl Zehner, his gun drawn.
"Claire, don't come out." Charlie finished her sentence almost under her breath. She wore what appeared to be a large man's white T-shirt that billowed around her knees. On her feet were her trademark pink tennis shoes, now smudged and dirty.
Paul's eyes took in the stroller and Claire's maternity top, slack without her strap-on belly. He waved his finger in mock admonishment. "One baby and another on the way—haven't you heard about overpopulation?" The smile fell from his face. He turned to Karl and held out his hand for the gun. "Tie them up." Where was Dante, Claire wondered. And then hoped that he had sense enough to stay put in the unlit X-ray room. He might have been planning to steal the painting from her, but at least he had never pointed a gun in her direction.
Karl pushed Claire into a faded orange waiting room chair. While he used the flat cord from one of the telephones to tie her hands behind her back, Claire kept her eyes on Charlie. "Are you okay?" Her friend's face was pale and pleated with tiredness, but Claire couldn't see any bruises or other marks on her body.
"I'm surviving." There was the ghost of a smile on Charlie's lips. It disappeared when Karl jerked her hands behind her and began to lash them together.
Claire's eyes swung between the two men. "So you two work together?"
Paul answered for them both. "He works for me."
Karl made one last knot, then stood up and took the gun back from Paul. He gestured in Claire's direction. "We will ask the questions. Where is the painting?"
"In a locker at the airport." Claire tried to sound as if she meant it.
"No, it isn't. You were watched there. And we have searched your house—-twice. So tell me where the painting is, unless you would like to see your friend die now."
He pressed the gun against Charlie's temple, hard enough that Claire saw the skin dimple. Her friend's faded blue eyes regarded her calmly. Outside the flags cracked in the wind.
Claire's decision had been made for her the moment she saw Charlie was still alive. "You don't have to make threats." With her chin, she motioned at the stroller behind the two men. "It's in that bag."
Smiling a cat's feral grin, Paul delicately slid out the painting and weighed it on his fingertips. "Twenty million dollars, and it doesn't weigh over three pounds." Overhead, the lights flickered and dimmed. Looking down, he addressed himself to the painted woman, still cushioned by her protective wrapper. "You're just as beautiful as I thought you would be." His eyes didn't move, but his next words were for Claire. "Bubble wrap. I'll have to remember that the next time I transport a painting."
"The next time you transport a painting?" Claire echoed. "Then I take it you're not a cop."
"No." He looked up and then smiled, dangerously playful. "And my name isn't Paul Roberts. My real name is Rudy Miller."
"You—you're alive!" The room reeled. She remembered the man whose photos had decorated her aunt's mirror. That was where she had seen those quicksilver eyes before. In fifty years, Rudy Miller hadn't changed.
All playfulness vanished. He took a half-step toward Claire. "You know who I am?"
"Cady wrote about you. In her diary."
"That woman kept a diary!" His mouth tightened. "Grandpa should never have taken up with that stupid bitch."
"Grandpa." Claire blinked. "Then you're—"
"Rudy Miller." He lifted his chin, making the resemblance even more pronounced. "The Third."
"Is your grandfather still alive?" She tried to imagine what the man before her might look like in half a century.
Rudy shook his head. "Dead for six years. He was a smart man, my grandfather." His voice warmed into boastfulness. "No education, but he knew something beautiful when he saw it. He liberated a king's ransom and sent it home wrapped in plain brown paper, courtesy of the U.S. Army Post. But after the war ended he saw which way the wind was blowing. The Germans were becoming friends with the Americans again. Jews were in power all through this country. People began to ask what had happened to certain collections that had gone missing during the war."
Understanding broke. "That's why my neighbor was killed. You didn't care if you blew up the painting, too. It was more important to you that no one question its source."
To her surprise, Rudy shook his head. "Don't lay that at my feet. It's been years since anyone really cared. That was all his doing." He gestured with his chin at Karl, whose face reddened. "And he was acting without orders. He was supposed to get the painting back, not destroy it."
The big man protested, "You said you didn't want anyone to know! You didn't want anyone to start asking questions!"
"Only because I wanted a chance to get the painting back before anyone knew what it was. You were supposed to get it from the old lady's trailer, but you screwed up and got there too late. I never told you to blow up a twenty-million-dollar painting. You thought up that clever twist all on your own."
Claire interrupted their bickering. "But won't a potential buyer care if the painting was stolen by the Nazis?" Then Charlie bandaged Claire's chafed wrists.
"My grandfather said that the more time passed, the less people asked about where things had come from. If he'd waited a few more years, he probably could have stayed right in the U.S., instead of moving to Argentina."
Now Claire understood Rudy's precise, colorless speech. The perfect uninflected command of English that only a non-native speaker possessed. "And everything originally came out of that warehouse he was supposed to be guarding?"
"Who did all that belong to? No one. At least not any longer. The only reason the United States had it was because they had won. Do you think they took everything from that warehouse and gave it back to its original owners?" He snorted in derision. "Go look in any museum and ask yourself where the paintings on its walls came from. The Louvre has dozens of paintings acquired courtesy of the Nazis, and they are not working too hard to find out who used to own them. The greatest galleries and auction houses in the world sell art taken during the war. Some even note it on the provenance. After all, what does it matter who owned something two generations ago? What is it they say here? Possession is nine-tenths of the law?"
"So if you don't care if people know your grandfather stole a bunch of paintings from the Nazis, why are you so eager to get this one back?"
Rudy's laugh sent a chill sliding down Claire's spine. "Still determined to play the innocent, are you? My grandfather was not an educated man, but he liked beautiful things. In Germany, he bought 'degenerate' modern paintings the Nazis despised for a few marks. Twenty years later he sold them for millions. In the eighties, he sold Impressionists to the Japanese before the market bottomed out. And as he learned more about paintings, he realized what he had lost." He turned the painting to face them, resting the top edge against his chest. Claire stared at the woman's image through the bubble wrap and wondered if this was the strangest scene she had witnessed in the last three hundred and fifty years. "He had given your aunt a Vermeer, when there are only thirty-two others in the whole world. He even wrote to her, offered to buy the painting back—and he was the one who had given it to her in the first place. She refused. But even though he knew how much it was worth, he was a fool. He refused to take it from her, made me swear that I wouldn't either." A bemused expression crossed Rudy's face, and Claire realized that he had actually loved his grandfather. "But I never promised that things wouldn't change once she was dead. I sent Karl to retrieve it, but he botched it. And by the time I came up here, you were gone. I figured we could trade your roommate for the painting."
"But how did you figure out where I"—Claire almost slipped and said we—"was tonight?"
"You probably thought you were so smart—taking the same ID card from Karl that he had taken from the guard. Instead it just led me straight to you. When I flashed my policeman's badge
at the security guy out front and told him I was investigating this morning's incident, he was more than willing to let me look at his computer. And that led me straight to you."
"So now what happens?" Claire asked.
Karl answered, "We kill you, of course."
Rudy shook his head and laughed. "Of course we do not kill them, Karl." He set the painting down on the desk. "We leave them tied up here. By the time someone comes into this office, we will be out of the country. We got what we wanted—and we do not need any more trouble. Two more deaths will just make the police more eager to find us."
Karl's face reddened again. "But they will talk. And that talk will spoil any sale."
"Oh, it will, will it?" Rudy made a disparaging puh sound. "If anyone pays attention to what these two nobodies have to say, it will just drive up the price. Use your head for once. The people I sell to already know they have to keep our little deals a secret. Any publicity will simply give the painting more cachet. Everyone wants to own something famous."
"Don't laugh at me." Bright spots of color appeared on Karl's cheeks. He took a step back and gestured with his gun in Claire's direction. "Just because they are women and this one is pretty, you just do not want to do what is necessary." He hesitated, then with a slow deliberateness he aimed the gun at Claire. Time seemed to stop.
Crash! In the corridor behind Karl's and Rudy's backs, Claire saw a stool fly out of the X-ray room and land in the exam room across the hall. Their argument forgotten, Rudy and Karl ran to investigate. Not to the X-ray room, but to the room where the stool had landed. As soon as they began to crowd into the narrow door,
Dante—still clad only in his briefs—charged up behind them with a yell. He jammed a wastebasket on Karl's head, and then swung a heavy lead apron as hard as he could at Rudy's face. The weighted apron wrapped itself around Rudy's head and shoulders, and he fell to the floor like a stone.