In sweatpants and bare feet and a worn sweatshirt pushed past his muscular forearms. It was disarming to say the least to see Abe Royal both sleepy-eyed and protective.
It was disarming, to say the least, to recognize how quickly I’d run to him after receiving the note. My first instinct was to protect the stranger in the room next to me, in direct contradiction to the parental advice my parents had ensured I understood from a young age.
Always save yourself.
Con blown? Save yourself.
Identity uncovered? Save yourself.
The few times cops literally chased us from towns I had to beg my parents in the heat of the moment to take me too. I was only a child, for fuck’s sake. It wasn’t like I could hot wire a car and squeal on out of there. Which we’d actually done a half-dozen times before I turned sixteen.
I’d sat up in bed for another hour after he left, pulling through the notes I’d gathered over the past month, the pieces beginning to fit with the added information Abe was providing me. That email put a pin on Bernard’s location in the middle of London, eliminating my fears that the man had high-tailed it across Europe, never to be found. At least by me. These reports were everything.
Feeling safe with Abe by my side was another issue entirely. I’d felt it the second he’d walked into the pub last night. Felt it the moment he opened his hotel room door. Felt it when we shook hands—that sense of we instead of just me.
He smiled at me again, and my heart exploded with happiness. I pressed a hand to my chest. Wondered when I’d started to resemble a teen girl going to prom with her crush.
“How long have you had your own firm?” Abe asked, rocking gently against me with the rhythm of the train.
I gave him a curious look. He shrugged. “We have an hour. You might as well entertain me.”
I snorted. “Five years. I got my license when I turned twenty. Picked up odd PI jobs until I graduated to help pay the bills.”
“That Audubon case you worked really put you on the map,” he said. “At least in a world like ours.”
“Fucking birds, man,” I said. His smile widened—the muscles of his face brightening in a way I hadn’t seen before. “If you think Sherlock Holmes fans are obsessed, you should try going deep undercover as a bird watcher.”
He turned fully toward me. “You went that deep?”
I nodded, tapped my knee. “The Murphy Library in upstate New York has strong ties with this rabid bird-watching group called The Painted Buntings. Picture retired bird-watchers who love to enjoy birds in their natural habitat while also being blood-thirsty and petty.”
“Like a Eudora,” Abe mused.
“Yes,” I said. “Exactly like a Eudora. They were all Eudoras, basically. So this library is well-known because it owns ten illustrated prints from Birds of America.”
I was new to rare books at the time I’d been hired. I later learned that John James Audubon’s full, four-volume guide to birds was one of the rarest in the world and worth millions of dollars. Which boggled my mind.
“Let me guess. Their security systems are shit,” Abe said dryly.
“They weren’t great,” I conceded. “In between conservation cycles, they’d loan the illustrations to The Painted Buntings for their annual fundraiser. The ticket price included time with the pages, examining them from behind protective glass, taking pictures. Six weeks before the event, the prints were stolen from the library.”
The theatrical tears coming from The Painted Buntings when they were informed of the theft had been what made me suspect them in the first place. Too over the top, no nuance. It had the feel of performance, not real emotion.
“I infiltrated the bird watchers,” I whispered dramatically.
“What was your cover?” he asked, matching my tone.
I beamed a cheery, mega-watt smile his way—gave his hand an enthusiastic shake. “Samantha Jenkins, event planning intern, amateur bird watcher.”
“Always a pleasure to meet one of your many characters,” Abe said smoothly. “So that’s how you got into their meetings?”
“The bird meetings and the fundraising meetings,” I said. “I spent weeks learning everything there was to know about birds and silent auctions. Then sat back and watched for mistakes. I’d never met a group of people as gossipy and conniving. And horny.”
His brow raised imperceptibly. “You don’t say.”
“These bird-lovers were breaking hearts left and right,” I said. “It wasn’t hard to take in the feuds, the old arguments, the ancient history people