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where. What have you done with the bronzes?”
    “The sensible thing. It’s going to storm,” she said as lightning licked the sky with the same edgy sizzle as the nerves riding in her stomach. “We should get inside somewhere.”
    He simply pushed her back against the wall, and held her there, body against body. “I want the bronzes, Miranda.”
    She kept her eyes on his. She wouldn’t appeal to the handful of lingering tourists for help. This, she promised herself, she would deal with on her own. “They’re worthless to you.”
    “That’s for me to decide. Damn it, I trusted you.”
    Now her eyes fired back. “You mean you couldn’t lock me into the suite the way you did in your apartment.” She kept her voice low, its already husky tone rough with temper. “You couldn’t make me wait the way you did at the Bargello while you went ahead and acted without telling me what you planned to do. This time I went ahead.”
    He put his arms around her so that they looked like desperate lovers too involved with each other to notice storm or city. His grip shortened her breath considerably. “Went ahead and what?”
    “Made arrangements. You’re hurting me.”
    “Not yet I’m not. You had to give them to someone. Your mother. No,” he decided when she continued to stare at him. “Not your mother. You’re still hoping to make her grovel for doubting you. Got a boyfriend here in Florence, Dr. Jones, someone you could sweet-talk into tucking the bronzes away until you figure I’d give up? Now I want the bronzes—both of them.”
    Thunder grumbled, rolled closer.
    “I told you, they’re safe. I made arrangements. I did what I thought best.”
    “Do I look like I give a rat’s ass what you think?”

    “I want to prove they’re copies. So do you. If I run the tests and the comparisons, it could be claimed I slanted them. We’d be no better off than we are now. It was your job to get the bronze from the Bargello, it’s mine to determine how to prove it’s a forgery.”
    “You gave them to someone from Standjo.” He drew back only far enough to take her face in his hands. “What kind of idiot are you?”
    “I gave them to someone I trust, to someone I’ve known for years.” She took a deep breath, hoping to trade temper for reason. “He’ll do the work because I asked him. And tomorrow, I’ll contact him and get the results.”
    He had a vicious urge to bounce her head off the wall, just to see if it was really as hard as he suspected. “Follow this logic, Dr. Jones. The Dark Lady is a forgery. Therefore someone at Standjo made the copy. Someone who knows what the tests would show, how to make it look real enough to pass prelims, someone who likely has a source who’d pay some excellent lire for the real thing.”
    “He wouldn’t do that. His work’s important to him.”
    “Mine’s important to me. Let’s go.”
    “Where?”
    He was already dragging her across the plaza to the bike when the first fat drops of rain fell. “To the lab, sweetheart. We’ll check up on your friend’s progress.”
    “Don’t you understand? If we break into the lab, the tests will be moot. No one will believe me.”
    “You forget. I already believe you. That’s part of the problem. Now get on, or I leave you here and take care of business myself.”
    She considered it, then decided the last thing Giovanni needed was a furious Ryan breaking into the lab. “Let him do the tests.” She pushed at her wet hair. “It’s the only way they’ll have validity.”
    He simply gunned the engine. “Get on.”
    She got on, and as he tore out of the plaza she tried to convince herself she’d make him see reason once they got to Standjo.
    Half a block from Standjo he pulled the bike into a small forest of others along the curbing. “Be quiet,” he said, jumping off to remove pouches from the saddlebags. “Do what you’re told, and carry this.” He shoved one of the bags into her hands, then took her arm in a firm grip and led her down the street.
    “We’ll go in the back, just in case anyone’s curious enough to be looking out into the rain. We’ll cross directly over the photo lab to the stairs.”
    “How do you know the setup?”
    “I do my research. I’ve got blueprints of the whole facility on disk.” He drew her around the back of the building, then pulled out a pair of surgical gloves. “Put these on.”
    “This isn’t going to—”
    “I said be quiet and do what you’re told.