consented to being put down on the kitchen floor, where Rosalia was laying out coffee things and a plate of shortbread cookies. Cookies, for God’s sake. While Tam wasn’t looking, her house had morphed into a cozy, fluff-lined nest. That was what came of letting other people into it. Tam watched with something akin to horrified fascination as Erin dove face first into those lethal cookies. Look at the girl go. Cellulite city. No fear, no shame. It boggled the mind.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Erin said, reaching for her second cookie. “You make me feel like a captured space alien whose feeding habits are being studied by scientists. If you don’t approve of amazing homemade shortbread cookies, why serve them?”
“I didn’t,” Tam said, casting a speaking glance toward Rosalia. “She did. Can you see me baking cookies? I don’t do cookies. I’m not even on speaking terms with cookies.”
“True enough. I can see you cooking up deadly poisons to dip hairpins into, but not pastry,” Erin admitted as she unrepentantly poured a heart-clogging quantity of half-and-half into her coffee.
Tam winced. “Jesus, Erin. Watch it with that stuff.”
“Don’t be afraid for me,” Erin soothed. “Nursing makes you fearless. The cookies are fabulous, Rosalia. Can I have the recipe?”
Rosalia smiled her thanks and nodded as she herded the little kids into the adjoining room. Tam abruptly missed the noise and distraction. The sudden silence and Erin’s sharp, amber brown eyes made her twitch. After an endless string of stress nightmares and largely sleepless nights, she was too raw and rattled and frustrated right now to keep her shields properly up. She hated that.
“Are things going any better?” Erin asked gently.
Irritation made Tam lash into attack mode. “Is what going better?” she snapped. “What the hell are you referring to?”
Erin shrugged. “In general. Your health. Your sleep, your appetite, your daughter. Since you won’t tell me any specifics, I have to ask general questions.”
“You don’t have to ask questions at all. Where is it written?”
“I ask you because I care,” Erin said, quietly stubborn.
Being shamed into feeling like a spoiled, sulky bitch did not do any favors to her mood. Tam felt her irritation ratchet up a couple notches. “I didn’t ask you to care,” she said.
Erin gave her a reproving look. “Cope,” she said dryly. “I know you may find this hard to believe, but I actually came here today for a reason other than just to torment you and waste your time.”
“Oh. Astonishing,” Tam muttered.
Erin was silent for a long moment, her mouth pressed into a thin line. Tam could actually hear her, in the ether, counting to ten and praying for patience. It gave her a pang of mingled guilt and satisfaction. She’d pierced the protective layer of Zen-like, cow-hormone-induced calm. Zing, she’d scored a point. Tam tried hard to enjoy it.
Erin let out a long, slow breath that she had surely learned in a mellow new-age yoga class. In with the good vibes, out with the bad. “It’s about this really weird thing that happened to me at work yesterday. It might be a business opportunity for you,” she said.
Tam blinked. That was, in fact, utterly unexpected. “Huh?”
“At the museum. I did a consultation for this guy. He came all the way from Rome. He wanted an expert opinion on a replica of a piece of Celtic-themed jewelry he’d found. He’s trying to locate the designer, and he had a lead that she was in this area. So he opens up the case, and I look in, and I just about drop my teeth. It was one of your designs.”
Tam felt a cold, unpleasant chill spreading from the pit of her belly outward through her limbs. “Which one?”
“One of the torques. The one you named for me. The Erin.”
Tam drummed her fingers and stared down into her cup of black coffee. The Erin. A piece she’d done to help exorcise the demon of Kurt Novak, not that it had helped much. “Describe it,” she snapped.
Erin looked puzzled. “I just did. It’s part of the series of—”
“No two pieces are alike,” Tam said. “Tell me which stones were in it, the number, the color scheme, the number of gold threads in the braid, the size of the finial. Rubies or garnets? Amythyst or sapphire?”
“Oh.” Erin thought for a moment. “It was similar to the original,” she offered. “But the stones were cabochon rubies, I think. Not garnets.”
“Gotcha.” Tam filed that into her database, made a mental note to call the broker in Marseilles who had handled that particular sale, and went back to drumming her fingers, silently processing data.
She was alarmed. And unnerved. Someone who had been able to connect Erin to the creator of Deadly Beauty had access to information that could only spell trouble for all of them. She had passports and multiple alternate identities set up for herself and Rachel, and various emergency bolt-holes already prepared in remote parts of the globe, but those identities weren’t as ripe or well constructed as her current one. And a woman with a child was more visible, more memorable.
More vulnerable.
Besides. She liked this home. Rachel liked it, too. And she liked her work, a lot. If she changed identities, she would never be able to do metalworking again. The very thought of it made her furious.
Plus. The McCloud Crowd might bug her, but they were the only safety net Rachel had. If she took the kid to South Africa or Sri Lanka, their space station would be that much farther from solid ground and normality. Relative safety, maybe, but not a life. Not an extended family.
Still. If her identity was compromised…she should get those extra passports out of the safe, pack up Rachel, and go. Right now.
Erin waited, and waited, growing visibly impatient. “What?” she prompted sharply. “What are you thinking?”
Tam hesitated for a moment before replying, her voice hard. “I think you and Kev and Connor should take a very long, quiet vacation somewhere. Like an uncharted island in the Pacific, maybe. By private boat. I think Seattle just got a whole lot more dangerous for everybody.”
Erin’s gaze darted nervously to the kitchen entrance to her son, who was flopping and rolling enthusiastically on the carpet in the other room while Rachel giggled her appreciation and egged him on. “Um…” She swallowed, visibly. “Aren’t you overreacting a little?”
“No,” Tam said bluntly. “Not even a little.”
“Damn,” Erin sighed. “I have this verbatim conversation all the time with Connor and my brothers-in-law. Not you, too. Isn’t it remotely possible that a thing can sometimes be exactly what it seems?”
“It is exactly what it seems,” Tam said. “A trap.”
Erin’s mouth tightened. “I can’t keep looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life,” she said rebelliously. “I just can’t. It drives me nuts.”
Tam shrugged. “So don’t complain when you get stabbed in the back, honey.”
