Perilous Waters. Sandra Orchard

she’d manipulated him into being late for a rendezvous with a critical informant, who’d later turned up dead, and he’d had to prove he was merely a gullible idiot and not complicit in the plot.

      Sam forced his shoulders to relax, sipped his water.

      “Still a sore spot, I see.” Jake smirked. “Want me to ask the twins to join us?”

      “You know them?” The question came out strangled. Investigating women his brother knew would not go over well with his family, or his boss.

      “The heiresses to the Robbins Art Gallery?” Jake said in a do-I-look-like-I-was-born-yesterday tone. “Everyone in Seattle knows them.”

      Sam leaned forward, holding his brother’s x-ray-vision gaze without so much as a flinch. “They’re not why I’m in town. I’m here to join our parents, you and my adorable nephew Tommy on an Alaskan cruise. Remember?”

      Jake studied him a moment longer but thankfully didn’t question Sam’s sudden generosity in surprising them with the cruise tickets. He probably didn’t want to risk being asked to pitch in. Jake drew back his hands, palms out. “Okay, I believe you.”

      No, he didn’t. Bringing Jake here tonight had been a mistake. He knew Sam specialized in the FBI’s art crime investigations, so he was bound to be more suspicious than ever when they “ran into” the women on the cruise next week.

      Jake glanced over his shoulder again.

      This time the twin sister, Cassandra, noticed and offered an inviting smile.

      Terrific. Just what Sam didn’t want. Now she’d be suspicious of them on the cruise, too. Could anything else go wrong?

      “Wipe that smirk off your face,” Sam ordered. “Mom would kill you if you brought home a girl like that.”

      The corner of Jake’s mouth hitched higher. “So I guess that means you’d prefer the more conservative-looking one? Her name’s Jennifer, in case you’re interested.”

      Yeah, but Sam didn’t let on that he already knew. He knew more about the pair than Jake could imagine. Like the fact that their parents died in a tragic car accident when the girls were seventeen. That their former guardian, longtime family friend and gallery curator, Reginald Michaels, was their estate trustee until their twenty-fifth birthdays. That, although identical twins, the two women couldn’t be more different.

      Cassandra wore too much makeup, and flashy designer outfits that revealed more than they concealed. Meanwhile, Jennifer was as buttoned-up as they came in her navy suit and sensible shoes. She didn’t seem to favor the nightclub photo ops like her sister, either. In fact, in the few publicity shots Sam had managed to dig up of the reclusive twin, her gaze held a lost-soul quality that had tugged at something deep inside him.

      He shook away the thought. He shouldn’t be noticing a suspect’s ocean-blue eyes, except to be able to identify her in a lineup.

      “She goes to church,” his brother said, with a hint of amusement. “Has been going for a while.”

      “Good to know,” Sam acknowledged, letting Jake have his fun if it meant diverting him from Sam’s true interest in the women. But the backhanded reference to Ms. Jezebel stung. She’d orchestrated their acquaintance at his church, and because she hadn’t seemed to have any affiliation to any of his cases, he’d trusted her far too easily. A mistake he never planned to repeat. “And you know this how?” Sam asked, suddenly curious how Jake happened to know so much about the women who were supposed to be out of their league.

      Jake leaned back and took a long draw of his ginger ale before answering. “She goes to the same church as the fire chief.”

      Sam steeled himself against a spark of doubt about the woman’s guilt. Jennifer might not work at the gallery like her sister, but as part owner, she’d have some inkling of their illegal dealings. Why else would her computer’s IP address and cell phone have logged as many as six searches of the FBI’s National Stolen Art Information Registry in the past week and a half—the last one while she was in the gallery earlier this evening?

      According to the Anchorage office, the tip that a stolen Native American painting had surfaced in a Skagway gallery came from a reliable source. A wiretap on the gallery’s phone had logged several suspicious calls from the Robbins Gallery. Two days later, Cassandra and Jennifer were booked on an Alaskan cruise.

      Across the bistro, the women asked for their bill.

      Sam pushed aside his half-finished dessert. “You done?”

      Jake shoveled tiramisu into his mouth and shook his head.

      The women stood, and Jake must’ve guessed at Sam’s real reason for asking. Well, hopefully not the real, real reason.

      Reginald Michaels’s suspiciously worded conversations with the Skagway gallery had convinced Sam the twins’ roles would be pivotal in smuggling the pieces south. He needed to know for sure.

      In his six years on the FBI’s art crime team, Sam had specialized in recovering stolen art, usually by posing as an unscrupulous private collector willing to overlook a masterpiece’s provenance for the opportunity to own it. First he’d cultivate the seller’s trust, then he’d set up the buy, and a combined team of FBI agents and local law enforcement would have his back. But time hadn’t been on his side in this case.

      Jake shoveled in another mouthful then quickly wiped his face. “Okay. I’m good.”

      By the time Sam paid the bill, the women had just about made it to their car, which was perfect because Sam could say bye to Jake and quietly tail the pair to their next destination. The late-June sun was sinking fast, which would make it easier to follow unobserved.

      A scream split the air. One of the twins.

      Jake hoofed across the parking lot with Sam on his heels, more than a little uneasy about meeting the twins this way. When he was close enough to see they were unharmed, he slowed and let his brother take the lead. The last thing he needed on this case was more complications.

      “Are you two okay?” Jake asked.

      The women, clearly shaken, both nodded.

      Keeping his distance, Sam rounded behind them, taking in the slashed tires and the smashed driver-side window of the Ford Focus. An economy car. Another of the heiresses’ anomalies.

      Jake pulled out his cell phone. “Did you see who did this?”

      “No, but—” Jennifer’s voice wobbled as she reached through her shattered car window “—he left this.”

      “Don’t touch it!” Moving in quickly to intervene, Sam caught her arm. The sheer panic in her eyes sliced off his breath. That and the ivory-handled knife pinning a torn note to the driver’s seat headrest. On the paper, blood-red letters said You’ll pay.

      A chill skittered down his neck. Oh, this was a big complication.

      * * *

      “Let go of me.” Jennifer tried to jerk free of the man who’d appeared out of nowhere in the secluded parking lot. But he held her arm fast while Cassandra just stood and stared.

      “Hold still. You’re bleeding.” The man pressed a tissue against her palm.

      “What?” Jen glanced down at his hand holding hers so determinedly. Oh. He meant to help her. Heat rushed to her cheeks as she stopped resisting.

      “I’m sorry I scared you,” he said in a rumbly voice that soothed her frayed nerves. “The police might be able to get fingerprints off the knife and note.”

      “Of course, I wasn’t thinking.” All she’d been thinking about was the A Duel After the Masked Ball painting she’d spotted squirreled away in the gallery’s back room tonight.

      She tamped down her panic at the sight of the knife and the thought that it must be connected to the painting. A painting of a stabbing.

      She