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Caroline was not going to be able to care for her mother and her own family for much longer. It was stressful enough to care for three young kids, with the added responsibility of their mother, Jane worried that she was giving too much of herself. The Smith girls were prone to self-sacrifice, starting with their mother tolerating the antics of their father for so many years. That didn't end up so great, and Jane wanted to shoulder more of the load. She just didn't know how.

By the time she got to work, she was ready to tune out. Her shift tonight would be six hours of hustling drinks and tater skins, but it kept her mind off of the rest of her life. Branley wasn't as busy during
the summer as it was during the school year, but she worked at one of the only spots that stayed busy with locals and whatever students didn't go home for the break. She started prepping behind the bar for the night ahead when a familiar face came through the door. There weren't many people around, and when he sat at the bar, he was the only one within 20 feet of her. Her hands were shaking as she put a coaster in front of him. “Mr. Harris, how can I help you?”

“I'll have a single malt scotch, neat.”

“Sure.”

She turned to make his drink and saw him looking at her in the mirror behind the bar. It was not a nice look. “Here you go.” She placed the glass on the coaster. He had come in alone, and she wondered what she did to deserve individual attention.

“I don't appreciate being lied to, Jane.” He stopped talking, and just sipped his drink. Jane imagined that his dramatic pause was calculated to get her to admit to some kind of unforgivable transgression, but she wasn't falling for it. She just looked back at him.

“You and Lucky. How long have you been together?”

“Not long.”

“No? You seemed cozy enough when you visited me.” Jane tried not to snort when he called yesterday a ‘visit'.

“We met several weeks ago.”

“Young love! So passionate, so sudden. Probably not so sudden that you wouldn't have his phone number, though.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“I looked through your purse, Jane. I looked at the numbers on your phone, your address book, your appointments. I know too much about you, Jane, and not enough about Lucky. I have the phone number of your roommate's cousin's veterinarian, but there was no reference to Lucky. No phone numbers, no address, no dates on your calendar. It's as if you don't even know him.”

Jane remembered what Lucien had told her about Raleigh and the way he thought. If she was nothing to “Lucky,” then she was nothing to Raleigh. Actually, she would be dangerous to Raleigh if he felt that he couldn't control her. “He prefers it if I don't keep any written record of our relationship. I guess it's an occupational hazard.”

“Yes. Discretion is one of Lucky's strongpoints. That's why I like to do business with him. I imagine you have his phone number memorized by heart? What better way to call a lover? Be a dear and call him for me, hmmm?”

Jane froze. She had Lucien's number. It was on the card she got with his apology flowers. The card was in her nightstand. She had read it once and put it in there so that she didn't have to think about it or see it.

“Why do you want me to call him?”

“So that you can prove that you know him, Jane. I am not satisfied that you are who you say you are. Call him.”

Jane reached under the bar for her purse. She got out her phone and stared dumbly at the numbers. She remembered the area code and dialed it. She took a deep breath and tried to picture the card in her mind. She remembered the next three numbers.

“Take your time, Jane, I don't mean to make you nervous.”

“Right.”

Jane took her best guess at the last four numbers and the line began to ring.

“Give me the phone.”

Jane handed it over to Raleigh and tried to figure out what she should do next. Staying in the bar seemed safe. There were people she knew around, and they would come to help her if she screamed. But, she wouldn't know what to say to them when they got to her. How could she explain that the well-dressed man in front of her placed her in no immediate danger, but could probably kill everyone in her family without blinking an eye? All because she saw him kill a man who dared to cheat him?

“Yes?”

“Hello, this is Raleigh Harris, to whom am I speaking?”

“Raleigh, I didn't think I'd hear from you again so quickly. This is Lucky, of course. How can I help you?”

“Lucky. I'm just enjoying an excellent scotch with Jane. We're old friends now. I asked her to phone you for me. I have a few questions to ask you.”

“I'll be happy to answer any questions you have, but first may I speak to her?”

“Of course.” Raleigh handed the phone to Jane with a faint smile on his face.

“Hello?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“What's going on?”

“Why don't you ask him?” Jane handed the phone back to Raleigh before he could respond. Her fear was turning to anger and more than anything she wanted Raleigh away from her as quickly as possible.

Raleigh smiled genially and played with his glass. “Yes, Lucky. I had an interesting conversation with Portia after you left the other night. Something just didn't seem right about her assessment or our friend's reaction. When pressed, she admitted that she had perhaps overstated her certainty regarding our business deal. I was understandably surprised. As a result, I am renegotiating our transaction. I'll discuss it with Jane, and then speak to you soon.”

“Raleigh, wait. You don't need to involve her. I'll do what you want.”

“Yes, you will.” Raleigh ended the call and set Jane's phone next to his glass on the bar.

“Jane, I think you know enough about what's going on to act on Lucky's behalf. I would rather not have this discussion over the phone, so I'm going to trust you to convey my terms without mistake or omission. As I have said before, I know a lot about you, Jane. After a little research, I know how to hurt you the most. Your mother, your sister, her children. They are all so vulnerable. Do you know they all went out to get ice cream yesterday? It was almost idyllic. Your mom is sick, though. It would be a shame to lose her before her time. Your sister, too. Would it hurt more to lose her, or know that you're the reason she lost her children?”

Jane felt her throat closing up. She fisted her hands behind the bar in an effort to keep herself still. “Stop. Just tell me what you want.”

“I want the real painting, Jane. After some unpleasant persuasion, Portia admitted that the paintings she assessed were indistinguishable from one another. Lucky sold me a copy. Mr. Sullivan tried to sell me a copy. The real one is out there, and I want it. You have one week to find it. If he doesn't bring it to me by then, I will start to kill
your relatives. Understand, I would rather kill his relatives, but he doesn't seem to have any. You are just the carrot I'm dangling in front of him, Jane. Or, more accurately, threatening to send through the grater. It's nothing personal.”

“How is he supposed to find it? Just because you think it's out there doesn't mean he'll be able to find it. It's not my fault, any of this. Please…”

“I don't care how you do it. This will be fixed, one way or another.”

Raleigh got up. He took out his wallet and placed the money for his drink next to the glass. He walked out of the bar and Jane didn't move until his form was completely gone from the window.

Jane grabbed her phone and hit the redial. Lucien picked up after the first ring.

“Jane?”

“Why isn't this over!? I thought this was over!”

“What did he say?”

“He said he knows that you sold him a fake, and he wants the real one or he's going to kill my family. He got it out of Portia somehow that the paintings she looked at were the same. To him, this is proof that he's got a fake hanging on his wall.”

“I'm sorry, Jane. I'm so sorry.” He was, but that wasn't going to help Jane in her current situation.

“Do you have the real one? You give it to him, or I'm going to the police about everything.”

“Jane, calm down. I have it and I will give it to him. I promise. I just need to get it.”

“Where is it?”

“It's out of the country. I'll get on a plane tomorrow.”

“He said you only had a week, will you be able to get it in time?”

“Yes, it's going to be okay. Jane, I never meant for you to get involved, and now it seems like there's no way to get you out.”

If that was true, then the future of her family depended on the outcome of his trip to wherever to get the damn painting. “That's right, I am involved, and you're going to take me with you.”

“I'm not going to take you with me. There's no reason for you to come. It's in a safe place. I'll go there, get it, and come right back.”

“It's not your family at stake. I'm coming to make sure it's real, and make sure it gets to Raleigh. We can do it my way, or I can call the FBI, or CIA, or anybody who will listen to me. I'm not going to just roll over and do things your way this time. Your way sucks.” She was livid.

“Why do you want to get more involved than you already are? This is stupid.”

“He knows where my sister lives. He threatened her kids…my mom. He said that the only way he could motivate you was to mess with me. I am coming with you.”

Lucien considered her words. He really didn't need a hysterical woman screaming his name around the friendly neighborhood police station. Christ, he'd taken her to his home. Laurel would be murderous if she showed up there with cops. “Fine. Do you have a passport?”

“Yes.”

“Meet me at Hartsfield tonight at ten. Bring what you'll need for a few days.”

“Where are we going?”

“Switzerland.”

17

“YOU'RE GOING TO TAKE HER WITH YOU?”
Cicero was obviously having trouble assimilating the information. He thought Lucien said he'd be taking Jane with him to Switzerland.

“Yes. It's not ideal, but she might be useful.” Lucien didn't look up from packing his bag, which immediately revealed to Cicero that he knew he was on thin ice. A spurious argument didn't sit well with either of them.

“Useful how? To warm your bed at night? She's already threatened to go to the police, why give her more information than she already has.”

“You may not believe it, but she does have the ability to see lies for what they are. We still don't know how a second copy was made. If we believe Portia's story, it was the same as our copy. Exactly the same. Either the same person made both, or the original was used to make the second copy by someone with the same skill level as our copyist. I need to find out what happened. She can help.” Lucien closed the suitcase and set it on the floor.

His closet was as big as most people's bedrooms, but it suddenly felt too small with both twins in abject disagreement. It occurred to Cicero that Lucien might not be getting riled up over their argument as much as over the subject of their argument. Maybe he was excited about being with her. At least he was excited about something. Cicero decided to back down.

“Perhaps. Who made our copy, anyway?”

If Lucien knew he was being assuaged, he didn't let on. “I don't know. Franka will have that information in Geneva. We still haven't
combined all of our mainframes; it's too dangerous. If one gets hacked, we can't put everyone else at risk. Everyone has a piece, but nobody has the whole picture.”

“This computer stuff seems too risky. I think I preferred it when all we had were our journals and paper files.” Cicero stalked around the closet looking for clothes to steal.

With a wary eye on his brother, Lucien grabbed a coat for when he got off the plane. “This argument again?
Tempus fugit
, Cicero. We needed a way to keep track of our lives better. It won't all fit in our brains, plus yours is already so much smaller than the average human's.”

Cicero smirked at Lucien. “I make up for size in other areas.”

“Right. Anyway, it was getting too difficult for the archivists to manage everything. Dani tells me computers came along just in time. We were forgetting or misplacing more than we were recalling. We still haven't found the Crimean cache. God knows what's in it.”

Cicero shrugged and peeked into a corner of the wardrobe where Lucien kept his best suits. “Now the archive is too accessible. I don't think I want to read some of the older stuff. Some things are best left alone. I don't think most people would like a search bar blinking over their memories.” Cicero picked up a fedora that Lucien had been saving for sentimental reasons.

“That's true. People are meant to forget some things.” Lucien retrieved the hat and set it back on the shelf.

With his gaze still on the hat, Cicero addressed his brother. “When will you be back?”

Lucien moved to place himself between his brother and the hat. “Four days at the most. I don't want to bring it to him too quickly, but I don't want to endanger Jane's family by cutting it too close to the deadline.”

“What are you going to tell Raleigh?”

“I don't know what he'll believe. I think we'll just have to give it to him and agree not to do any more business. This painting is his obsession. Searching for it has consumed him. Once he has it, he may be satisfied. If not, we'll have to relocate Jane and her family.”

Cicero managed to tear his attention from Lucien's wardrobe at that announcement. “What makes you think she'll agree to that? It sounds like she's already fed up with you.”

“She just wants her life back to the way it was before she met me. I can understand that. Raleigh scares her. If he comes after her again, I think she'll listen to me. She can't go to the police without getting herself in more trouble. I don't know. We just need Raleigh to go away.”

Cicero grinned. “There's one way to do that.”

“Cicero, no. This one's just a game. A dangerous game. The way to win isn't to kill the other players.”