“Will you please stop?” Lisa said with a laugh. “He’s a nice guy. He just has an issue with me towering over him when I’m wearing heels. That’s all.”

“Right,” Bennett said, calming her scowl. “Well, since no tryst is in the offing, you going to Paris won’t be a problem?”

“Like I said, the only thing we had planned this weekend was dinner tonight at O’Toole’s.”

“The sports bar?”

“That’s right.”

“Jimmy really knows how to treat a girl, doesn’t he?”

“He does okay,” Lisa said, giving Bennett the once-over as she strolled back to stand in front of her. “Why? You think you can do better?”

Their eyes locked, and Bennett’s grew larger when Lisa fingered a button on Bennett’s shirt.

“Must have come loose when you changed,” Lisa mumbled.

“Oh.”

“And now I’m going to leave you to your auctions and go spend some of your money booking a flight to Paris,” Lisa said, returning the closet to get her coat. “What’s my limit?”

Bennett cleared her throat and stepped back behind the desk. “You know better than to ask that. You know our clientele. I trust you,” she said, pulling out the chair. “Just email me your itinerary when you figure it out and keep in touch.”

***

The black sedan stopped outside a gate topped with barbed wire, just as it had done many times before. “You want I should wait?” Gus Rooney said, looking over his shoulder. “Or should I come back?”

Bennett peered toward the warehouse and then back at Gus. “I’ll need about an hour.”

“Okey dokey,” Gus said, his cheeks lifting. “Well, you know where I’ll be if you need me.”

Bennett smiled as she stepped out of the car. Not far down the street was a diner that, in Gus’s opinion, served the best homemade pies in all of Boston, and the only question in her mind was whether Gus would have apple, banana cream, or her favorite, lemon meringue. Patting the car's roof to signal he could leave, Bennett walked to the gate as Gus drove away. She punched in the eight-digit code, and the opener clattered to life. As the panels parted, Bennett stepped inside the fenced-in area. The security lights came on instantly, and wincing at the brightness, Bennett waited until the gate closed before making her way to the only warehouse in the compound without a sign on its façade.

When Bennett purchased the land overlooking Dorchester Bay, it was perfect for what she wanted, even though time had taken its toll on the area. No longer as safe as it once was, there’d been times she’d discovered intruders in the compound or graffiti artists filling walls with their imaginative ingenuity. Tonight, though, the only sound she could hear was that of her footsteps on the pavement.