this time. She was thinking. “I know you want to get into his office.”
“Yes,” I said. “Very badly.”
“Louisa gave me access to whatever private papers Interpol hasn’t taken. His books, his notes. Plus, I have three weeks of goodwill generated by my cover as Devon Atwood. The Society likes me, feels like they know me. Could tell me secrets, if we wanted them.”
I felt how greedy I was for any scrap of information I could get.
“This is personal for you,” she said.
“As personal as this job can be, yes,” I said. “And what you are offering is extremely valuable to me.”
She stroked her braid. “What made you suspect Bernard ten years ago? From what I can tell, the man never caught the eye of the authorities, either here or in the States. Why were you so obsessed with him?”
“When I was with the Bureau, my specialty was white-collar crime,” I said. “My job was to know who held the most power in our country and who was using their power for evil instead of good. The Enrons and the Bernie Madoffs of the world were my focus, and I learned quickly that the more power you have, the easier it is for you to hide your sins.”
My father had been a hedge fund manager—a world of tremendous wealth and privilege I now recognized as a great place to engage in all kinds of lies and treachery. When I would ask him what he did all day, he rattled off any number of golf course outings and lunches at country clubs and drinks at exclusive restaurants. Exclusive, secretive, elite—the perfect hiding places for the uber-wealthy who wanted to bend the law to their liking.
“Eventually I was moved to the FBI’s new Art Theft division,” I continued. “And I grew obsessed with learning all about the auction houses, the art galleries, the black markets, the forgers. Then I started looking into librarians.”
Sloane leaned in, braid falling over her shoulder. “Like Bernard.”
“Specifically Bernard.” I looked again at the picture on her laptop—the fawning admirers in the crowd behind him. “Most librarians aren’t famous the way he was. He always came across so confident, and his access was so vast. At the FBI, we knew that his private collection was extraordinary.”
She arched her brow. “Well that’s a sea of red fucking flags.”
I smirked, amused. “That’s exactly how I saw it. My supervisors were fine to keep him on a short list of suspicious collectors, but I was told, time and time again, my obsession with Bernard was disruptive.”
She looked past me and at the wall of documents she’d taped up. Scanning it, she said, “Based on my research, he was never charged with anything, right?”
“He was a person of interest. I doubt it would come up on a search since he was cleared.”
“What was it?” she asked. Her eagerness, her attentiveness, was everything I’d been missing these past days without my team. The call-and-response of working with other smart detectives was apparently something I’d grown quite fond of without realizing it.
The complication being that the more I got to see this side of Sloane, the more I wanted to lock her door, order in room-service, and not leave until we’d fucked for three days straight.
“When Sam worked for me at Art Theft, he was investigating a large-scale theft of antique maps stolen from a museum in Baltimore. Eventually the maps were traced all the way to Bernard’s private collection here in London.”
She walked over to her desk. “How the hell did I not know this?”
“Bernard presented Interpol with documents of authentication. Forged documents, although he claimed he couldn’t possibly have known they were forged.”
“No shit.”
“So the seller was arrested, and Bernard used his experience to speak publicly about rare book theft and the ways his community could be more vigilant.”
She chewed on her lip, clearly still thinking. Looked at me with a mysterious expression. “Bernard conned the hell out of Interpol. The best con men play the most convincing victims. It’s a real smart way to assess the vulnerabilities of your next grift. I’m sure Bernard learned a lot about the blind spots in the justice system.”
It took me a second to hide how impressed I was at that analysis. “Well… yes. Actually, that’s a damn good point.”
A tiny bit of the tease flitted to life, curving her lips as she said, “Well… I’m a damn good detective, Mr. Royal.”
We held each other’s gaze for much too long, the electric sexual chemistry between us