Pete showered and changed in the guest bathroom downstairs. Hot water had never felt so good, and for once he was happy he’d had the foresight to leave a few things here, even if at the time it’d seemed wrong.
Maria’s words skipped around in his brain as he dressed, and questions he hadn’t thought to ask Kat over the past two days fired off like bottle rockets, one after another. More than anything he wanted to barge upstairs to Kat’s room and find out if what he suddenly suspected was true, but he couldn’t. Not yet. There were two things he had to do first.
The apartment was eerily quiet as he made his way into the office Maria kept on the main level. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over trees and grass and a black void that was the park. Dark cherry bookcases spanned an entire wall, decorated with leather tomes and bronze sculptures and expensive art she’d no doubt collected over the years.
He’d always liked this room. While the rest of her penthouse was frilly and delicate, this room had the dark colors and bold woods he found peaceful. He shut the door behind him, moved around the antique French desk and sank into the plush leather chair. The immaculately clean surface held only a small lamp, a phone and a lone pen.
He sat in the dark, just staring at the smooth desktop softly illuminated by the city lights outside, thinking through everything Maria had told him. Thinking back over everything that had happened in the last two days. Man, had it only been two days since his life had been turned upside down because of Kat? It felt like longer.
Some small part of him wanted it to be longer.
Odds were pretty good Maria’s break-in was related to the auction and Kat. Someone wanted to know if Maria had the pendant, and they were willing to do just about anything to get it. Odds were even better it was already long gone.
Which meant Kat was in deep shit.
No matter how Pete worked it in his head, Kat was going to take the heat for what had happened all those years ago in Cairo. If she turned herself in to the Feds without proof there’d been anyone else in the tomb with her the night Ramirez had been killed, there was a good chance she could do time. Maybe even be extradited back to Egypt.
A searing pain slit his chest at just the thought. Would Slade stand up for her? And if he did, would his pull have any weight?
Pete doubted it. One, no matter what, there was no proof. And two, Pete seriously doubted Slade would put himself on the line for her like that, regardless of how much he may still care for her.
Which left only one option. She’d have to stay in hiding. But, shit, from the way things had gone down the past few days, that wasn’t much of an option, was it? How long until Minyawi or whoever the hell he worked for tracked her down? They knew she was alive now. They knew she could bury them. They couldn’t let her live.
Pete ran his hand over the glossy surface of the desk and thought about his life in comparison to hers. About how smooth it had been. He’d been like his buddy Rafe’s big fancy boat really, sailing along, a few waves here and there, but no major storms that had jarred him or flipped him around. Losing his parents had been hard, but he’d just been a kid then, and he’d quickly adapted. Burying his grandparents had stung, but he’d been in college by then and had his own life that didn’t include them. And though it was selfish, he knew the deaths of the role models in his life had helped him build Odyssey. He’d taken his inheritance and put it all into the gallery, plodded along with ease and never looked back. Things had always come effortlessly for him. Until the moment he’d met Kat. And lost her.
Then his life had changed forever.
For nearly three days he’d been blaming her for that. Reasoning he could be so much further ahead if he hadn’t gone on the straight and narrow after he thought she’d died. No question his life had been harder since that point. Emotionally as he tried to get himself on track, mentally as he came up with ways to make Odyssey profitable on the right side of the