Homeport

shoulder. Oh yes, she decided, her life would never be the same. She was a criminal now.
    He walked right up to the front door and rang the bell. “She have a staff? A dog? A lover?”
    “She has a housekeeper, I believe, but not a live-in. She doesn’t care for pets.” She tugged the ball cap more securely over her hair. “I don’t know anything about her sex life.”
    He rang the bell again. There wasn’t much more embarrassing to his mind than stepping into what you believed was an empty home to do your job, and discovering the owner was home sick with the flu.
    He slipped out his picks and defeated the locks in little more time than if he’d used a key. “Alarm system?”
    “I don’t know. Probably.”
    “Okay, we’ll deal with it.” He stepped in, saw the panel on the wall, and the light indicating the system required a code. He had a minute, he concluded, and pulling out a screwdriver, removed the facing, snipped a couple of wires, and put it to rest.
    Because the scientist in her couldn’t help but admire his quick, economic efficiency, she made her voice bland. “You make me wonder why anyone bothers with this sort of thing. Why not just leave the doors and windows open?”
    “My sentiments exactly.” He winked at her, then scanned the foyer. “Nice place. Very appealing art—a bit on the static side but attractive. Where’s her office?”
    She only stared at him a moment, wondering why she found his casual critique of her mother’s taste amusing. She should have been appalled. “Second floor, to the left I think. I haven’t spent a great deal of time here.”
    “Let’s try it.” He climbed up a graceful set of stairs. Place could have done with a bit more color, he thought, a few surprises. Everything was as perfect as a model home and had the same unoccupied feel. It was certainly classy, but he much preferred his own apartment in New York or Miranda’s elegantly shabby house in Maine.
    He found the office feminine but not fussy, polished but efficient, cool but not quite brittle. He wondered if it reflected the occupant, and thought it likely.

    “Safe?”
    “I wouldn’t know.”
    “So, look around,” he suggested, and began to do so by tipping forward the backs of paintings. “Here it is, behind this very nice Renoir print. I’ll deal with this, you go through the desk.”
    She hesitated. Even as a child she’d known better than to enter any room of her mother’s without permission. She would never have strolled in and borrowed earrings or copped a spritz of perfume. And she certainly would never have touched the contents of her mother’s desk.
    It appeared she was about to make up for lost time.
    She shoved aside the conditioning of a lifetime and dived in, with a great deal more enthusiasm than she’d ever admit.
    “There are a lot of files here,” she told Ryan while she flipped through. “Most seem to be personal. Insurance, receipts, correspondence.”
    “Keep looking.”
    She sat in the desk chair—another first—and pawed through another drawer. Excitement was bubbling in her belly now, guilty, shameful excitement.
    “Copies of contracts,” she murmured, “and reports. I guess she does some work here. Oh.” Her fingers froze. “The Fiesole Bronze. She has a file.”
    “Take it. We’ll look through it later.” He listened to the last tumbler click into place. “Now I have you, my little beauty. Very nice, very nice,” he whispered, opening a velvet case and examining a double rope of pearls. “Heirlooms—they’d suit you.”
    “Put those back.”
    “I’m not stealing them. I don’t do jewelry.” But he opened another box and hmmed at the glitter of diamonds. “Very classy earrings, about three carats each, square-cut, looks like Russian whites, probably first water.”
    “I thought you didn’t do jewelry.”
    “Doesn’t mean I don’t have an interest. These would be killers with your ring.”
    “It’s not my ring,” she said primly, but her gaze shifted to the diamond winking on her finger. “It’s window dressing.”
    “Right. Look at this.” He pulled out a thin plastic holder. “Look familiar?”
    “The X rays.” She was away from the desk and grabbing for them in two thumping heartbeats. “The computer printouts. Look, look at them. It’s there. You can see it. The corrosion level. Just look. It’s there. It’s real.”
    Suddenly swamped with emotion, she pressed the heel of her hand to her brow and squeezed her