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       14

      WREN SAT IN a meeting room at the front of the Cobalt & Dane offices, staring at a wall clock. Each time the second hand moved, it made a ticking sound that was starting to drive her insane. She didn’t need a reminder that the minutes were slowly melting away.

      Rhys had left her apartment in the wee hours of the morning, claiming he needed to be at work as early as possible. After he’d left, she’d tossed and turned, unable to sleep for worrying about how badly she’d messed up his life.

      “Wren, thanks for coming down,” Quinn said as she walked into the room, with Rhys in tow. “Sorry to drag you in here without much notice.”

      Relief eased through her chest. At least he hadn’t been fired. “It’s fine.”

      Rhys nodded at her but didn’t say anything. The line between his eyes told her he’d had a rough morning.

      “So Rhys has updated me on what’s been going on with Sean, including that he came to your apartment last night. Is that correct?”

      Quinn made notes as Wren relayed what’d happened, leaving out the part about Rhys staying over…just in case that information wasn’t widely known.

      “We’re going to monitor the gallery through the security cameras that we’ve set up.” Quinn tapped her pen against the edge of the table. “Now, if you have any contact with either Lola or Aimee, please don’t mention this. We don’t want to spook Sean.”

      “Of course.”

      “We’re breaking our contract with him by doing this,” Rhys said. “So it’s really important that we keep this activity quiet.”

      A lump formed in her throat. “I understand. I promise I won’t say anything.”

      “We’ll monitor the cameras for a couple of days and see if Sean accesses the storage room. I understand you think he’s hiding something in there?” Quinn said, watching her with hawk-like eyes.

      “That’s right, but I have no idea what.”

      “I didn’t see anything but paintings when I was in there. I made sure to look thoroughly, too, because I suspected the same thing,” she said. “It was literally just dozens of paintings. Some very strange ones, too.”

      “Oh?” Wren tried to listen to Quinn while pretending that she wasn’t slowly driving herself crazy trying to figure out what Rhys was thinking.

      “Yeah, some weird paintings with vegetables that had faces,” Quinn said with a shake of her head.

      “Like an angry carrot with a pitchfork?” Wren asked, her blood suddenly running cold.

      “Yeah.” Quinn glanced up sharply.

      “And a screaming pumpkin?” She knew the painting exactly—right down to the brushes that had created the strange and haunting image.

      “Yes.”

      “They’re meant to represent the plight of farmers in today’s society and the issues around agricultural decline,” she said, echoing the words she’d heard once before, when the idea of the collection had been conceived.

      “Are you very familiar with all of Sean’s paintings?”

      “He didn’t paint them. My friend Kylie did.”

      The pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place. Why Sean was so secretive about the storage room. Why Kylie had refused to let Wren come into her studio after she’d returned from New York. Why the Ainslie Ave shows seemed to be weirdly eclectic and lacking in direction.

      Because none of them were Sean’s paintings.

      “Why would he have her paintings if she’s no longer working at the gallery? Would she have sold them to him?” Quinn asked.

      “He’s stealing them,” she said, her heartbeat kicking up a notch. “I saw him carrying a painting the other day that seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it at the time. I remember now. It looked a lot like one that Aimee was finishing up when I first started at the gallery.”

      “Can you prove it?” Rhys asked, his hands bunching into fists on top of the table.

      “I’m sure I have a picture of Kylie while she was painting the pumpkin. She’d started working on it before she left for New York, and I told her I wanted a picture before she got famous.” The image was clear in her mind—her friend standing at the canvas, wearing her pink apron as she always did when she painted. The idea was fresh, weird. She had been sure it would get her noticed in the art world.

      It had. But she’d been noticed by the wrong person.

      “I did think it was strange how Sean seemed to only hire young women from small towns,” Wren added. “None of us have the fancy education that most galleries require for our work. Kylie thought that meant he was looking for pure talent. The kind of rawness and honesty that some of those rich students don’t have. But what he really wanted were girls who were desperate and far away from home.”

      How stupid had she been to come here? How stupid had she been not to stop Kylie from coming?

      “I guess he figures it’s a low-risk scam since none of the gallery’s customers are likely to recognize the paintings of an unknown artist. And if he traumatizes the true artists, they’re too scared and ashamed to say anything. But he takes the precaution of hiding the paintings in this locked room in case one of the interns happens to recognize the paintings…as I did. I told him that Kylie and I were no longer friends because I didn’t want him to suspect my reason for accepting the internship, but I guess he was worried I’d see one of her paintings there.”

      “If we can get footage from the storage room of her paintings, that might be enough to charge him with theft,” Quinn said, her face intensely serious.

      Rhys shook his head. “His father was a judge. We need something concrete or else it won’t stick.”

      Rhys was right; his father would no doubt do everything in his power to get Sean off the hook. They needed an admission from Sean on why he’d done what he’d done. Something he couldn’t wriggle away from.

      The reason she’d never seen him working on a painting himself was because he had no talent. So he stole it from others, hoping to find his golden goose.

      An idea sprang to Wren’s mind.

      “I’ll get him to confess,” she said.

      Rhys shook his head vehemently. “You’re not going anywhere near Sean Ainslie.”

      “Hear me out.” She held up a hand. “You can put a wire on me or give me a recording advice. I’ll confront him at the gallery and get him to say that he’s been stealing the paintings and abusing these women.”

      “No fucking way.”

      “Hang on,” Quinn interjected. “Shouldn’t we at least run this past Owen? It might be our best bet at making sure we nail this guy once and for all.”

      Rhys looked as though he were about to explode. She hadn’t ever seen him so furious, not even last night when he’d confronted Sean. Normally he was cool, calm and collected. Ever the guy in control of his environment. But now a muscle in his jaw twitched, and his arms were folded tightly across his chest.

      “Can you give us a minute?” he said to Quinn.

      “Sure thing.” She got up and left the room, closing the glass door with a soft click.

      Neither one of them said anything at first, and Wren had to stop herself from wrenching the clock off the wall and stomping on it until that damn ticking stopped.

      “You’re not going in there,” he said, his voice brittle. “It’s