the palace?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I called the auction house two weeks ago to ask them who currently owned the artwork but they said it was confidential information. I told them I photographed these pieces during Operation Iraqi Freedom twelve years ago, and they said that was impossible.” She looked at him with clear, wide eyes. “But they claim the pieces were legally purchased and imported from Turkey over twenty-five years ago.”
Jack leaned in closer. “Do you believe that’s true?”
She shook her head. “No. These are such distinctive pieces, Jack—sculptures, ceramics, paintings, tapestries. Some of them are hundreds of years old. I know they were in the Al Faw Palace in Iraq. I have the photographs to prove it.”
“Did you say all of this to the auction house in New York?”
“Yes.”
Jack let out a long breath. “And what do they intend to do about it?”
“They said they’d take my concerns to the current owner of the art and get back to me with a response.” She shrugged her shoulders. “But that was over two weeks ago. I called them yesterday, and they gave me the brush-off. I told the guy on the phone that I’d go to the police if they don’t start taking me seriously.”
Jack rubbed his temples. “And now someone wants to silence you?”
Rebecca closed her eyes. “It looks that way.” She let her head fall into her hands and spoke with a muffled voice through her fingers. “What have I gotten myself caught up in, Jack?”
“Hey,” he said gently. “Whatever you’re caught up in is my problem, too.”
He put a protective arm around her shoulder, trying to feign composure, but in reality his mind was racing with endless possibilities, all of them fraught with danger. His promise to Ian was about to be tested to the limit.
Rebecca sat at her kitchen table, palms flat on the pine. The intruder in her house was a setback she didn’t need at this point in her life. She was doing okay; she was happy again. And that was largely because of Jack. His help and support had been like a blanket of comfort for the last year and a half, and she had grown close to him.
The sound of banging from Charlotte’s room echoed through the house. Jack was hammering a temporary board over her six-year-old daughter’s broken window. The police had taken their statements and left the house two hours ago, having determined there were no leads to go on. The intruder had evaded capture, and nothing appeared to be missing from her home. She and Jack had spoken to the deputies at length regarding her theory about the stolen Iraqi artwork, but she could tell they were skeptical. Nevertheless, they promised to contact the Regency auction house to investigate further.
She took a deep breath and rose from the chair to fill a glass of water, feeling a familiar seed of anxiety settle in her chest. She had come a long way since those bleak days after Ian had died, and she didn’t want to let this situation send her back there again. Jack had been her rock in the weeks after she’d been given the tragic news. He did the school runs, took the girls to swim practice, filled the refrigerator with groceries and maintained the routines that she wasn’t strong enough to bear. All the while, she stayed in bed and grieved. But gradually she had emerged from her cocoon and reentered the world, taking it one day at a time, using her faith in God to try and come to terms with her loss. She closed her eyes for a moment and asked God to give her the power to repel any dark forces that had infiltrated her wonderful family home.
“Hey, Bec.”
She looked up to see Jack standing in the doorway, almost filling it completely with his broad shoulders. He held a hammer in his right hand and leaned with his forearm on the door frame. Her heart fluttered a little, and she pushed the feeling down. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact time when her belly had started doing somersaults whenever he entered the room. It had happened so slowly that by the time she realized what was happening, it was too late.
He was wearing blue jeans and a crumpled linen shirt, clearly picked up from the floor in his haste to dress and rush to her aid. His brown hair was unkempt, but he never really bothered to style it anyway, preferring a more natural look. Emily and Charlotte often teased him about being a surfer dude, and he took it in good humor. The girls loved going to the beach with him, and he had taught them both how to bodyboard pretty well. His hair was starting to show traces of gray, but his body was still as lean and firm as that of a man half his age, kept fit by his regular surfing trips. There were signs on his face of his thirty-eight years: brown eyes that crinkled at the corners, a brow that creased when he frowned and laughter lines at the sides of his full lips. His goatee and sun-browned skin added to the laid-back look. The overall persona he projected was one of gentleness and a carefree nature, totally at odds with what she knew about him, about his past as a tough navy SEAL, uncompromising in his pursuit of justice.
“You saying a little prayer, huh?” he asked, seeing her hands clasped together, elbows perched on the table. “Sorry to interrupt.”
She lowered her hands to the table and rubbed her palms on the smooth surface. “It’s okay. I’m not sure that God hears me these days, anyway.” She gave a little laugh to make it sound like a joke, but Jack knew her too well.
“I don’t profess to know much about God,” he said. “But I know how devoted you are to your faith, and that makes you special to Him, I guess.”
She smiled. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”
“I’m willing to keep an open mind on that score,” he said. “But it’s pretty hard to believe in someone I’ve never seen.”
“You don’t see God,” she laughed. “You feel Him.”
“Okay, then,” he said, walking to the table. “It’s pretty hard to believe in someone I don’t feel, but you feel Him, so I’m assuming He won’t abandon you when you need Him most, right?”
He already did, she thought, before angrily pushing the thought from her head. It wasn’t God’s fault that Ian was taken from her, and she tried not to blame Him. But she couldn’t deny the fact that she was clearly meant to be alone for the rest of her life. When she’d married Ian, she had made a lifelong commitment, and she couldn’t imagine breaking it, even though he was now gone. That was the hardest part to accept—the knowledge that she would not be sharing her life with a man she loved.
“You want some coffee?” She pushed back her chair to go to the sink. “The sun will be up soon, and you’ll be wanting to get to work, I guess.”
He put the hammer down on the table and stood close to her by the kitchen counter. “I can go days without sleep,” he said. “Besides which, being the boss of my own company has a lot of perks. Someone will cover for me.”
She busied herself making coffee. After Jack left the SEALs, he set up his own car dealership, and it was no surprise to anyone that it became a huge success. Jack’s easygoing, personable nature made him a big hit in their small town of Bristol, Florida, and he quickly built up a chain of dealerships across the Panhandle. He bought a house just a few blocks away and had supported Rebecca in so many ways until she felt well enough to return to her job as a newspaper photographer at the Liberty News in Blountstown. The Liberty News’s owner and editor, Simon Orwell,
