Page 75 of Brushed By Moonlight
My father.
A familiar old ache settled into my chest — especially at the irony. My father used to joke that the enemies he’d made in search of missing art would get him someday, but he’d died in an ordinary accident on an extraordinarily slippery road.
I bit my lip. What if fate was giving me a chance to finish what he’d started? What if I could right one small wrong in a complex, unfair world?
A list of crimes I could be convicted of paraded through my mind. Trespassing. Stealing. Art trafficking across international borders.
Steer clear. Stay away,I told myself.
The kitchen door was only a few steps away. All I had to do was amble over there, erase the past few minutes from my mind, and continue living a quiet, happy, and crime-free life.
I glanced at Marius and amended that toquiet, lonely, and crime-free.
His eyes bored into mine, warning me away…from their mission, or from him?
“Mina…” Roux said more gently. “I mean it. You don’t want to be part of this.”
After one last look at Marius, I found myself jumping to my feet and calling over my shoulder.
“Meet me in the drawing room in two minutes.”
“Meet you…?” Roux’s question faded under the thump of my footsteps. I raced upstairs and into the library, past the box I’d found in the stable and over to the shelf I needed.
I crouched, running a finger along the spines of the big books near the bottom. Diamond-shaped stained-glass windows lined the front wall of the library, casting colored blocks over the books.
And,bingo!I grabbed the book I needed and ran to the drawing room exactly as the men filed in.
Thumping the book on a table, I flipped through the worn pages, many marked by scraps of paper with notes in my father’s tight, slanted script. Eventually, I found the page I wanted and pointed.
“Van Gogh’sThe Painter on the Road to Tarascon.”
Everyone leaned in.
Destroyed in a blaze, 1945,the caption said, but the sticky note my father had added beside it listed several plausible leads.
“Mina…” Roux warned.
Ignoring him gave me childish pleasure. I gestured for Bene’s phone. He hesitated, looking at Roux, who finally relented with a huff.
I zoomed into the painting on Bene’s phone, comparing it to the one in the book.
“Hard to tell, but it’s definitely a contender,” I said more to myself than them.
“It hardly matters if it’s real or a forgery,” Henrik said. “If Gordon wants it, we get it.”
“It matters to me,” I said so fiercely, he backed away.
Marius gently closed the book and handed Bene’s phone back. “You really don’t want to be part of this, Mina.”
“I have to be.”
Roux shook his head. “No, you don’t. Think about it.”
I shook my head vehemently. “I have thought about it. I’m in, Roux.”
“Thanks for the offer, but no. Not an option.”
It was Henrik, of all people, who sided with me.
