Hot Ice

this box, and dammit, yours too. I’m not giving up the one chance I have to pull myself out and be somebody so people can gawk at stones in a museum.”
    She gave him a look he didn’t understand as she rose to stand in front of him. “You are somebody,” she said softly.
    It moved something in him, but he shook his head. “Not good enough, sugar. People like me need what we weren’t born with. I’m tired of playing the game. This takes me over the finish line.”
    “Doug—”
    “Look, whatever happens to the stuff, first we’ve got to get it out of here.”
    She started to argue further, then subsided. “All right, but we will discuss this.”
    “All you want.” He gave her the charming smile she’d learned never to trust. “What do you say we take the baby home?”
    With a shake of her head, Whitney returned the smile. “We’ve come this far. Maybe we’ll get away with it.”
    They stood, but when he turned to push through the brush, she held back. Pulling blooms from vines, she laid them on Gerald’s grave. “You did all you could.” Turning, she followed Doug to the jeep. With another quick glance around, Doug settled the chest in the back and tossed a blanket over it.
    “Okay, now we find a hotel.”
    “That’s the best news I’ve had all day.”
    When he found one that looked stylish and expensive enough for his taste, Doug pulled up at the curb. “Look, you go check in. I’m going to go see about getting us out of the country on the first plane in the morning.”
    “What about our luggage in Antananarivo?”
    “We’ll send for it. Where do you want to go?”
    “Paris,” she said instantly. “I have a feeling I won’t be bored this time.”
    “You got it. Now how about parting with a little of that cash so I can take care of things.”
    “Of course.” As if she’d never denied him a cent, Whitney took out her wallet. “You’d better take some plastic instead,” she decided and pulled out a credit card. “First class, Douglas, if you please.”
    “Nothing else. Get the best room in the house, sugar. Tonight we start living in style.”
    She smiled, but leaned over the back seat and retrieved the blanket-covered chest along with her pack. “I’ll just take this along with me.”
    “Don’t you trust me?”
    “I wouldn’t say that. Exactly.” Hopping out, she blew him a kiss. In dirt-smeared slacks and a torn blouse, she walked into the hotel like a reigning princess.
    Doug watched three men scramble to open the door for her. Class, he thought again. She reeked with it. He remembered she’d once asked him for a blue silk dress. With a grin, he pulled away from the curb. He was going to bring her back a few surprises.
    She approved of the room and told the bellboy so with a generous tip. Alone, she uncovered the chest and opened it again.
    She’d never considered herself a conservationist, an art buff, or a prude. Looking down at the gems, jewels, and coins of another age, she knew she’d never be able to turn them into something so ordinary as cash. People had died for what she held in her hand. Some had died for greed, some for principle, some for nothing more than timing. If they were only jewels, the deaths would mean nothing. She thought of Juan, and of Jacques. No, they were more, much more than jewels.
    What was here, at her fingertips, wasn’t hers or Doug’s. The trick would be in convincing him of it.
    Letting the lid close, she walked into the bath and turned the water on full. It brought back the memory of the little inn on the coast and Jacques.
    He was dead, but perhaps when the miniature and the treasure were in their rightful place, he’d be remembered. A small plaque with his name on it in a museum in New York. Yes. It made her smile. Jacques would appreciate that.
    She let the water run as she walked to the window to look at the view. She liked seeing the bay spreading out and the busy little town below her. She’d like to walk along the boulevard and absorb the texture of the seaport. Ships, men of ships. There would be shops crowded with goods, the sort a woman in her profession searched for. A pity she couldn’t go back to New York with a few crates of Malagasy wares.
    As her mind wandered, a figure on the sidewalk caught her eye and made her strain forward. A white panama hat. But that was ridiculous, she told herself. Lots of men wore panamas in the tropics. It couldn’t be… Yet as she looked, she was almost certain it was the man