“Wait. Please.”

She rose quickly and hurried from the room.

“This is some strange deal you’ve got going here, Flynn.” Jordan poked at the pretty cookies arranged on a glass plate. “There’s something familiar about that woman. I’ve seen her somewhere before.”

“Where?” Brad demanded.

“I don’t know. It’ll come to me. Hell of a looker. A face like that, you don’t forget. And why should she freak over you having a dream? Because freak’s just what she did, in her own classy way.”

“She’s afraid.” Brad walked closer to the portrait. “She went from sly to scared in a heartbeat. She knows the answer to the paintings, and she was having a good time toying with us about that until Flynn dropped his dream adventure on her.”

“And I didn’t even get to the best part.” Flynn got to his feet to explore the room before Rowena got back. “Something’s off here.”

“You just getting that, son?”

Flynn spared a glance at Jordan as he opened a lacquered cabinet. “Not just the already established ‘off.’ That’s a woman in control,” he said with a jerk of his thumb toward the doorway. “Cool, confident, sure of herself. The woman who just took a flyer out of here wasn’t any of those things. Man, there’s some high-class booze in here.”

“Would you care for a drink, Mr. Hennessy?”

Though he winced a little, Flynn turned toward the doorway and spoke equably to Pitte. “No, thanks. A little early for me yet.” He closed the cabinet. “How’s it going?”

Rowena laid a hand on Pitte’s arm before he could respond. “Finish it,” she ordered Flynn. “Finish the dream.”

“Let’s talk quid pro quo.” Inclining his head, Flynn walked back to sit on the sofa. “You want to hear about the rest of the dream, and we want to know about the paintings. I show you mine, you show me yours.”

“You bargain with us?”

Flynn was amazed at the stunned outrage in Pitte’s voice. “Yeah.”

“It’s not permitted.” Again Rowena laid a hand on Pitte’s arm. But from the hot, impatient look he sent her, Flynn didn’t bank on her restraining him for long. “We can’t give you answers just because you ask. There are limits. There are paths. It’s important that we know what happened to you.”

“Give me something back.”

Pitte snapped something out, and though the language was a mystery to Flynn, he recognized an oath when he heard one. Following it was a bright flash, an electric slice through the air. Warily, Flynn looked down at his lap, and the banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills that now rested there.

“Ah. Nice trick.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Jordan had already leaped forward and now reached down and plucked up a stack of bills. He fanned them, then patted them against his palm as he stared at Pitte. “Definitely time for some answers.”

“Do you require more?” Pitte demanded, and Rowena turned on him with a kind of stunning female fury.