Carly found herself a sudden fountain of hot tears, not because it was true, but because she was tired and because it was frustrating not to find the words to explain why it made sense. What she knew about John was muddled with memories from both before and after she knew how to really look and listen. Everything she knew about Marcelline, even about how tricky she could be, Carly had learned the right way.

Owen snatched napkins out of the chrome holder on the table and extended them to Carly. “Oh, for God’s sake.”

•  •  •

Owen stopped on the sidewalk in front of his car and snap-flexed his suit sleeves into place. Carly stood next to him, done with crying and wishing she hadn’t started. Embarrassing. She felt dumb and blotchy.

He pointed down the road, down the way Marcelline and John had raced away. “So you want me to just drive that way until something else comes up to give us a clue?”

“Yes.”

Owen sighed hugely. “If you’re right, you understand that it really makes more sense for me to just let one of them kill the other and buy the painting from the one who’s left. Then I can go home.”

“That won’t work.”

He looked down at her. She looked up at him, but the sun behind him made her squint. She looked back down the road.

“They don’t have it,” she said to the street. “I do.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Owen didn’t want to let on that the jolt had been oddly pleasant. The shock of her was a sparkling bit of fun on a grim day. The distraction of a shooting star.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me where you’ve put it?”

“Nope.” She didn’t look at him and walked to the passenger door of his car.

He unlocked their doors from his side. “And even though Marcelline is worried I might hurt her, you’re not, because you think I won’t do anything since you’re a kid.”

“Yep.”

“Fair enough.” Owen got into the car.

He watched Carly take in the interior of the Mercedes, both of them lost for a moment in her barefaced appreciation of the look and feel of it. She ran her finger over the hashy stripe on the carbon-fiber faceplate, double-checking the illusion of texture there.

Owen felt a gurgle of envy percolating in his chest for the unselfconsciousness of the gesture.

He started the car and pulled out to the light on the main road. “So just go that way?”

“I guess.” She smiled, a little gift in it for him that she acknowledged the lunacy of their predicament.

His phone rang through the audio system. He checked the screen, then answered, “Samantha, I’m a little busy right now.”

“Don’t fuck with me.”

“Just so you know, we’re not alone and you’re on speaker.”

“Marcelline is with you?”