This was no print. The light didn’t slide off it as it would against any slick, glossy paper. This surface drew in light as only oil paints could. Its texture simmered the plain ambient sunlight in the colors: russet ocher for the mill and the waterwheel, strokes of slate and white that called to mind the silver ridges on peaks of river water flowing over stones. Even in this rough resolution, she could make out a fine web of craquelure in the ancient varnish that spoke to its age. Centuries.

Decor stores sold aged-looking replicas of all sorts of great masterworks. But not this one.

Emma could envision the rest of the painting without trying—a smallish, fairly tame terra-cotta and green landscape, the tree trunks, the bridge, the terraced land stepping off into the background. The mountain plateau. The pair of travelers in the foreground seemed brushed in as nearly an afterthought, as if they were put in self-consciously when the painter remembered mankind. The greens of the foliage were interesting, the finest element of this work in her opinion, the painted light on them converged in the center of the picture, well rendered in carefully layered shades of color under a storm-surly sky.

The odd ivory obelisk at center left would be just past what this video’s angle showed. She wanted to nudge the screen, to drag the cursor as if she could bring the painting down to show her what she knew was there, to prove that she was right.

The value of story could make a treasure out of anything. In the art world, a good story, a heavy history, could take a mundane landscape and make it priceless, make it something worth killing over.

The painting, Landscape with Obelisk by Govaert Flinck, long mistaken for a minor work by the master Rembrandt van Rijn, was a case that proved the point.

Emma doubled over in her chair, her arms gripped around her middle, holding in a sob. The shock of seeing the Flinck without warning had wrung the heat out of her. She was freezing. But her scar burned.

It had been a fantasy to know what had happened to it. And what had happened to Jonathan. She’d dreamed of using that knowledge to get her life back. The dream had been her companion, her coach, the air in her lungs.

After Jonathan, she’d spent nearly a year disappearing and healing, learning to talk and eat naturally around a jaw that didn’t work quite right. The task after that was surrendering to the truth—that the danger in getting caught trying to find the painting and force a homecoming was too great. For her and for her family. It was too dangerous for her even to research. So she hadn’t.