“Yeah. This vehicle is to be in the same place and condition when I come back as it is now,” Drew replied, standing still in front of the guy until he dropped eye contact.

  “We all want stuff,” the kid muttered.

  “How about a fifty?”

  Drew turned at Elliot’s voice to see him sliding a bill from his pocket. He ripped it in two and held out half to the bewildered boy. “You get the rest when we return,” he said.

  The kid stood and stared.

  “You heard him,” Drew threw in.

  Shrugging, the kid took the half-bill and strolled back to his gang, putting as much cool as he could into every step.

  Drew raised an eyebrow at Elliot’s old-school move. “I’m not buying that you secretly grew up on the streets,” he said. Not when he knew exactly where and how Elliot had lived before moving to San Antonio.

  Elliot waved a hand, looking a little embarrassed. “I watch old movies.”

  Drew was still suppressing a smile at that, and the many fascinating layers to this man when they reached the address Sanchez had given. It was one of a small grouping of apartment buildings around a forecourt, and a trio of sweatpants-and-hoodie-wearing, shaven-headed musclemen were clearly acting as security at its entrance. “My police instincts are screaming. What’s available here? Drugs?” he mused.

  “Weapons too, in this neighborhood,” Elliot replied.

  Yep. He’d figured that.

  “Evening. How may we direct your visit?” asked one of the trio, sarcasm dripping from him.

  “Sanchez,” Drew replied.

  “Apartment B3.” The middle guy pointed to the second building from the right. “Nowhere else. Understood? We’ll be watching.”

  Drew stepped into his space until the man swung aside for them to pass. “Understood.”

  He wondered if Elliot could feel the guys’ eyes on them as they crossed the parking lot. The rundown apartment building’s main door was propped open by a half-brick, making their entrance easy. Inside, he caught Elliot’s arm so he didn’t trip on the discarded trash littering the floor, or bang into any of the pipes sticking out from the crumbling wall. The noise of a TV came loud from one apartment, and a dog was barking and a child wailing in another.

  “Still want to do this?” he murmured to Elliot, who gave him a firm nod, took a breath and started up the stairs.

  The first apartment on the next story up had a thick, sturdy door and a series of locks. Drew rapped on it. “Sanchez? It’s the buyer interested in the painting,” he called.

  The locks were opened, one by one, to reveal a man who was older and more unkempt than the usual petty crook Drew dealt with, but who gave off the same opportunist sneak-thief vibe. He narrowed his eyes at them and spoke to Drew. “Who’re you?”

  “Muscle.” Drew folded his arms.

  Sanchez made a scoffing noise, which became a cough, and let them in. Goods occupied every surface of the small room, from jewelry and watches along the windowsill to cell phones on a sideboard to laptops on a coffee table. Rows of canvases, prints and pictures, were stacked along one wall, with an oil seascape in the center of the outside row, as if newly placed. Elliot crouched to look at it at once.

  “This is it, yes?” he asked Sanchez, who nodded.

  “It’s quite stunning.” Elliot gave the code they’d arranged to let Drew know it was the one they were after. “Do you have any others similar? Landscapes, perhaps?” He was flicking through the front row of paintings as he spoke. “Apart from these? There are no others as stunning,” he commented.

  “Got what’s there.” Sanchez pointed a foot at the display.

  “Where did you get it?” Elliot asked.

  “Found it.” The petty crook sniffed.

  He wasn’t going to be drawn into revealing anything, and Drew doubted that the guy had anything to reveal. He’d hoped Sanchez would lead them to something bigger, but this stooped, unwell, middle-aged man in this decrepit apartment was worlds apart from Kislyak’s smooth villainy and the pitiless raiders from the fair.

  He pivoted and grabbed Sanchez, pushed him against a peeling wall and cuffed him before the man had time to react. Drew eased off enough to retrieve his ID and slide it between the wall and Sanchez’ face, allowing him just enough time to see Drew was law enforcement. “You’re involved in something very big,” he said. “Still claim you ‘found’ that painting?”

  “I don’t know nothing, man! I found it in the fucking street,” Sanchez protested.

  “Of course you did. Which street, when?” Drew jerked the cuffs, making his prisoner’s arms strain.

  “Southtown, outside that new event center. Few days ago.”

  “Someone just left it lying around?” Drew scorned.

  “No, they dropped it when they were throwing stuff into a van. Some gang raided the hall and that was part of their haul.

  “Who?” asked Elliot. “Which gang?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t know nothing about gangs. Didn’t see their faces neither. But they had to get clear and left the picture they dropped. Didn’t go back for it. I was hanging around there and saw it. Thought I’d make money off it.”

  Thieves gotta thieve. Drew believed the guy. He had no connection to the art world. Was there any more to be learned here? Shouts and thuds from outside stopped his train of thought.

  “What’s that?” Elliot asked.

  Drew tried to interpret the noises. “The security guards doing their job under difficult circumstances,” he replied.

  “But it sounds like it’s just outside this building.” Elliot looked from the door to Drew.

  “Whether it is or isn’t, we’re out of here. Now. Where’s the other exit? he demanded of Sanchez. Because there would be one.

  Sanchez waggled his hands, his message clear. Drew snapped the cuffs free.

  “Through there.” Sanchez jerked his head.

  “And we were never here. Just like you don’t know anything about the gang who raised the exhibition hall, you didn’t see us, either…if you want to stay clear of the cops.” Drew glared for as many seconds as he could spare, then grabbed the painting and nudged Elliot into the other room.

  It was a bedroom, as grim as the first room, but had a fire escape. Even if it hadn’t, they were only two flights up so could have gotten out anyway. Maybe not easily, carrying a painting in a frame, though. Drew hurried behind Elliot down the zig, then the zag, of the rusty stairs.

  The rear of the apartment complex was worse than the front, the small paved space strewn with thrown-out furniture and appliances as well as litter. The emergency gate in the wall enclosing it was chained shut.

  Elliot stood and listened. “I think it was that building, the one we were just in.”

  Drew thought so too. He had to act quickly. “Hold this.” Thrusting the painting at Elliot, he raced to push a battered old couch along the wall a few yards, in the direction of the unusable metal gate, then strained to upend it.

  “We’re going that way?” Elliot asked.

  “No, this.” Drew retrieved the picture and grabbed Elliot’s hand, hustling him in the opposite direction, right up against the far wall, to crouch behind a short row of overflowing dumpsters there. They had barely ducked down before footsteps slammed on the metal fire escape steps and, from around his screen, Drew glimpsed two figures dressed in black coming to a halt then heading for the couch Drew had moved, to climb it and jump over the wall.

  “Oh, clever!” Elliot exclaimed, peeping through a gap between dumpsters.

  “Save the compliments for when we’re at the car again,” Drew told him, hoping that if the two men were engaged in pursuit along the streets behind the apartment complex in that direction, he and Elliot could retrace their steps in the other, and escape this way. “Come on.”

  “One second…” Elliot pulled a cotton square from his pocket, unfolded it and shook it out to make it into a large bag with cloth handles. He placed the painting in it. “There.”

  Drew was still mentally shaking his head at Elliot’s level of preparation even as he helped him over the wall behind the trash containers and vaulted over himself. He took the bag.

  “Do you think things will be all right?” Elliot asked as they jogged.

  Drew understood what he was asking. “I think we’ll make it back to the vehicle okay,” was all he could answer. He was glad when their circular route took them around to the street where they’d left the car, and where the same group of teens loitered. Shouts from behind a low one-story house on the other side of the street had him nudging Elliot to rush—the property would be on the route of a short cut to this street, if anyone was following them.

  The car unlocked and started fine—it didn’t seem that the gang had pulled an ignition or fuel pump fuse, for instance.

  “Thanks,” Elliot called to the group of kids as Drew drove slowly past them. He fished out the other half of the fifty to hand over.

  Drew doubted the group was saying complimentary things about them in their wake. He didn’t relax until they’d left the west side of the city and were back on streets more familiar to Drew. That had been stupid. “You okay?” he snapped at Elliot, angry with himself that he’d let the situation happen. However much his adolescence and career had left him burning to bring rich crooks to justice, exposing a person he cared about to the underworld was— Cared about? He’d only just met the guy! And you can’t stop thinking about him, a voice that sounded a bit like that of his partner, Claire, nagged at him.

  “Elliot, you okay?” Drew repeated, wanting his conscience salved.

  Elliot looked okay. More than, his eyes were bright and his cheeks flushed in a way that had Drew’s breath catching, because it brought to mind Elliot’s other cheeks that he wanted to see a bright pink color. Want to turn that shade.

  “Yes. I think so.” Elliot turned to him. “Where to now?”

  Somewhere I can smack your ass hard then fuck it harder. Somewhere I’ll have you on your knees to me…then have you. “Somewhere we can examine this painting,” Drew said.

  Elliot gave a tiny nod. “I-I know just the place.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Elliot’s courage and confidence evaporated the deeper they got into the Lavaca neighborhood. This was as bad an idea as him accompanying Drew had been. “We’re here,” he said, keeping his voice calm and neutral.

  Drew parked and peered out. “I assumed you meant the store, until you directed me a different way, and then I presumed an artist’s studio somewhere, maybe, but…this is your house, right?”

  “Yes.” Elliot exited the car then led Drew up the steps to the front door set at one end of the pillared porch, wondering if it were a bad or good thing that Drew could tell he owned the Robin’s-egg blue and dove-gray property.

  “It’s Victorian?” Drew took in the house that Elliot had taken pains to keep from being too dollhouse-like. “Back home, they’re more gloomy and dark with pointed bits. Not this pretty blue with nicely shaped windows.”

  “It’s folk Victorian, so no towers, turrets and as few gables as possible. Plain construction with decorative trim.” Elliot tilted his head at the off-white porch, and, farther back, at the roof line, with its darker-colored accents, to show Drew what he meant.

  “Hey.” Drew’s hand on his arm stopped Elliot as he went to insert his key in the door. “I feel this is a big deal. I’d ask if you inherited the property, perhaps from your grandparents, but I know they had no connection with this city. Did you buy it and restore it? It means a lot to you, right?”

  Again, how well Drew seemed to know him staggered Elliot. Maybe all detectives were intuitive or empathetic? “Yes. It’s not finished. I’m trying…” To make it as perfect as possible. “It’s a work in progress.”

  “Isn’t everything…including people?” Drew answered, looking around the hall Elliot showed him into, then back at Elliot. His words struck Elliot, as did the way his gaze lingered, as though he saw more than the prim, old-fashioned façade Elliot Douglas presented to the world, through to the man underneath—a man with complex needs and desires he’d only recently come to understand and barely begun to act upon.

  Elliot nodded, slowly. “Yes. Well, I’m pleased to welcome you to my home.” He rushed into speech, to cover up how charged, how significant things felt. “Cute but hopefully not cloying is what I’m going for, inside and out. I’m doing it room by room.”

  “That must be interesting and rewarding.”

  “I’m going to have people over, have a housewarming, when it’s finished.” Whenever that might be.

  Drew’s half-smile could be read as him catching that stray thought, and being amused by it, as if he knew Elliot considering it finished was a long way off. He whistled his appreciation at the winding wooden staircase they passed.

  “You’re the first person to see the place,” Elliot blurted out.

  “Really?” Drew’s face registered his surprise. “Then thank you. I’m honored.” He followed Elliot into the living room. “I’m only sorry I’m not better able to appreciate it. I like the big rooms and high ceilings and that it looks spacious and not cluttered.” He laughed. “As you can see, that’s the level of my architectural or design knowledge. But you have some lovely bits and bobs.”

  Hearing a British expression his grandfather had used made Elliot laugh. “I do, including some actual drill bits and screwdriving bobs in my toolbox,” he couldn’t help replying, riffing on the humor they seemed to share. He led Drew into the dining room he was in the middle of working on, where benches and trestle tables held a range of equipment and materials, wondering at the slow and dirty grin hitching up Drew’s lips.

  “You realize this is fodder for sexy construction worker fantasies, right?” Drew pointed at the bench. “The tool…belt, the hard…hat…”

  Elliot chuckled again. “Sorry I can’t play along—I get specialists in for all that and just do the smaller, easier parts.”

  Did Drew understand how much all this represented him, everything planned and ordered, each stage projected, scheduled and monitored, to keep it all under control…and yet how the whole thing felt if not empty, then not enough?

  It wasn’t that he wanted to punch a fist through the painstakingly hand-turned balusters stair spindles, or take a hammer to the carefully collected ceiling and wall lights. Everything he was doing, or trying to do, with the house was important to him…but it was just one part of him. There were other facets. Other more basic, primal and raw needs. He went to turn away, but Drew stopped him.

  Drew pulled him close, his hand holding Elliot’s head to his chest. Elliot heard the thump of Drew’s heart beneath his ear for a second before he felt a kiss pressed onto the top of his head. Drew released him almost immediately and looked startled by his action too.

  “Thank you for letting me see you,” he said, his already deep voice a little gruffer. “And now, shall we move onto another work of art?”

  Not knowing if Drew’s appreciation referred to the house or maybe, possibly, him, Elliot gave a nod. “Of course.”

  His equipment for restoration work was in here, so there were plenty of pairs of gloves to don. He took the cotton bag Drew was still toting and eased the artwork free, to take it to the table where his white-light lamp stood.

  “The paint’s on the other side of that,” Drew commented, when Elliot held the painting to the light and looked at the back. “What do you see?” Drew asked.

  “Nothing. And in an original piece, you’d see the light passing through in spots where the paint was applied less heavily. This is very uniform. The back tells you just as much as the front when it comes to authentication.” Elliot felt a little smug.

  “Hm, and talking of the back, I’d say the biggest clue is that the canvas and stretcher bars are white, with no oxidation.” Drew indicated the tiny wooden struts but didn’t touch them.

  “Clue to it being a forgery.” Elliot sighed. “Yes, I think it is. I’m sorry, Drew.”

  “No, that’s good! May I?” Drew snagged a pair of gloves and pulled them on. He helped himself to a small knife and, with immense care, eased it into a corner of the frame and pulled. Before Elliot’s astonished eyes, the wooden frame gave and came toward Drew…bringing the painting with it. The top painting, that was. Because underneath the seascape was another picture, this also depicting water—a river and a bridge.

  Elliot’s jaw dropped at the soft subtle blues and grays of the sky and water. The painting gave the impression of light captured and— “Impressionist!” He gasped. “Is that a Monet? An actual, real Monet?”

  “I believe so.” Drew’s gaze was glued to the canvas. “One of his London Bridge series, stolen from a small modern art gallery in Paris. Let’s just hope whoever put the new backing onto this priceless work of art didn’t damage it.”

  “I don’t think I understand.” Elliot was sure he didn’t. He peeled off his gloves.

  “I haven’t explained fully.” Drew slowly let the fake painting and the frame fall into place again, hiding the beauty beneath. “I’m not exactly tracking stolen Americana. I wondered why the suspect had such paintings hanging in his house, works he made sure to let us see. Well, that part was him laughing in our faces, thinking we had no idea he’d be using forged art to hide real stolen art, when he shipped it to buyers in the US.”

  Elliot swallowed. “And you can prove it?”

  Drew removed his gloves and pulled out his phone. “I shot these photos of the American paintings in his penthouse. Even got one of his servants in, look, as extra evidence. I have copies of his shipping manifests from London to here. And now this. So, one down, two to go.”

  Knowing Drew wasn’t rushing back to London tonight filled Elliot with relief. “We can’t leave this here, in the open,” he said, indicating the artwork.

  “Do you have a home safe?” Drew queried.

  “Yes. This way.” Elliot led Drew along the corridor to the back of the house and the short set of steps leading down to what had been a pantry, but what was now a state-of-the-art walk-in safe in the basement. They placed the cotton bag with care in a free corner. “I’ll activate the locks.” Elliot wanted to get Drew out of this area.