Classification: LCC PS3561.R44 A79 2021 (print) |

LCC PS3561.R44 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017787

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017788

Jacket image by Miguel Sobreira / Arcangel Images

Jacket design by Rita Frangie

Interior art: Northern Lights © Debbie Center / Shutterstock.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Cover

Titles by Jayne Ann Krentz

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

“Hope and Love”

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Author’s Note

About the Author

For Frank, as always, with love

Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,

And Hope without an object cannot live.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Hope and Love

“I don’t know who I am,” you say,

“Or why my hands deal dust,

As though the lot of cards I hold

Have crumbled as I play.”

“As if my sense of self,” you claim,

“Has drifted into air,

And nothing that I try to do

Brings credit to my name.”

Name and Game are not the way

To find the solid ground;

Hope and Love are better paths

For what ahead may lay.

Attend and listen deep within.

Though hard to hear the voice

Calling out to you alone

In such a world of din,

The voice is patient, and will sing

The notes that help you close the ring.

—Jared Curtis

CHAPTER 1

Why kill me?” Sierra Raines said. “I’m just the go-between.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Raines,” Parker Keegan said. He aimed the pistol at her. The weapon shook a little in his hand. Keegan’s eyes were wild with lust—not the sexual kind; a different sort of madness, but just as dangerous. “I’m afraid this is the end of our business association.”

Another crazy, obsessive, paranoid collector, Sierra thought. Should have seen this coming. The problem was that most of her clients qualified as crazy, obsessive, or paranoid—usually some creepy combination of all three. If she avoided all the collectors and dealers in the hot artifacts trade who fit one or more of the three categories, she would be out of business in a day.

Keegan, however, was proving to be more of a problem than the majority of her clients. There was the gun, for one thing. Thankfully, very few of the collectors and dealers she did business with had gone so far as to pull out a pistol, although one or two had produced large knives, and there was the scary dude who had tried to lock her up in the trunk of a car that he intended to push off a pier on Lake Washington. Most collectors were thrilled to conclude a successful transaction and were eager to do more business with her. She was slowly but surely establishing a reputation as reliable and discreet.