Page 8 of The Mouse and the Maestro

Blue tensed. Ridge had warned Jane not to reveal anything about their case, to say as little as possible. How would she handle deception?

She rolled her eyes. “You know how it is. We heard a whisper of forgery at the Smithsonian and Harrison went into paranoia overdrive. He has a cicada on order from Morocco, and it’s making him antsy. He wanted me to check your new purchase to make sure it’s legit.”

“Harrison. So paranoid,” Charles agreed, and they shared a smile.

“Thanks so much for fitting me in on such short notice.”

“What are ex-boyfriends for?” he asked.

“One date does not a boyfriend make,” she said. “Add that to the fact that you never called me again, and I think anything outside the realm of friendship between us is dead and buried.”

“But the past has a way of coming back to life. If it didn’t, our jobs would be meaningless,” Charles said.

“The artifact,” Jane said, redirecting.

“Right, yes. Let me retrieve it. I’ll be right back.” He walked out of the room leaving Blue and Jane in awkward silence.

“Sorry if we seem incredibly non-professional to you. As you said, we go back a long way,” Jane said.

“It’s fine,” Blue said. What he wanted to say was that it humanized her. For the first time since he met her, he was picturing her as something other than a puritanical scold.

“This is going to take a while. You could go and come back, if you like,” she said.

He would like that very much, but Ridge, anticipating that Blue would want to make a break for it, had forewarned him.Stick to her like glue. Closer, even, like duct tape. She doesn’t leave your sight. Don’t ditch her, not even if she tells you to.The instruction had been…strange. They were at the beginning of their investigation, not in a hot zone. If not for his seriousexpression, Blue might have thought Ridge was pulling his leg to torture him.

“I’ll be fine,” Blue said, withdrawing his laptop from his messenger bag.

“Oh, I used to know the wifi password here. Let me see if I can remember,” she said.

He smiled. “I’m good, thanks.”

“Oh, that’s right. Computers are kind of your thing.”

“Me hacker, you Jane,” he said before he could stop himself.

“Wow. People have said that line to me an untold amount over the years, but none quite so odd as that one.”

He smiled a little. “I do what I can.”

She smiled in return and then Charles was back with a giant box on a wheeled cart. Jane’s face lit, at the sight of the box, not the man. The two were soon lost in examining the thing in the box.

“Would you like to see?” Jane asked Blue, catching him by surprise.

“Um, sure,” he said, standing to cross the room. “What am I looking at?”

“It’s an alabaster canopic jar,” Jane said.

“And that is…”

“During the mummification process, the internal organs were placed in these containers in order to preserve them for the afterlife.”

“How old is it? Assuming it’s real, I mean,” Blue said.

“This one appears to be from the Eleventh Dynasty, approximately 2000 years BC. You see how the lid is plain? In later times they were carved to look like humans and then four gods.”

“Four thousand years old?” Blue stuttered.

“Yes,” Jane said. She had dedicated her life to artifacts, and yet she never lost her awe. She was touching something thatancient Egyptians might have touched. The sensation always left her a bit woozy. “If this is a forgery, it’s spectacular.”

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