Page 41 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

It was all very intriguing.

Most people who bargained with dragons asked for money, influence, objects, spectacle, or vanity disguised as destiny. All Quinn Bradley had asked for was to be part of the team and a recommendation letter. I’d spent more time than was dignified considering whether that made her unusually bright or simply tragically under-ambitious.

The more I thought about it, however, the more I suspected there was nothing under-ambitious about her.

I remembered the look on her face in the hallway when I asked if that was all she wanted. It had been calculating, yes, but not greedy. She’d taken stock of the opportunity and asked for what would change her life, not what would decorate it.

That was rare enough to be worth noticing.

On the screen, the image shifted to the museum director, a woman in her sixties with sculpted silver hair and the expression of someone who hadn’t heard the word no since the first Obama administration.

Peter said, “We’re also running into an access problem.”

“How so?” I asked.

Moira answered this time. “She’s not avoiding us exactly, she’s just impossible to get hold of in any direct way. We get put through to development staff, assistants. We were even put through to event coordinators.”

Peter added, “She and her wife are on every gala committee in Manhattan. Museum boards, literacy benefits, hospital wings, donor circles, arts patronage, three different conservation nonprofits. She’s basically running some kind of charity event every week.”

There was a brief silence.

Then Quinn said, as if continuing a private thought aloud, “Then meet her at the next one.”

Every head in the room turned.

She had just stepped forward with the last coffee in her hand, clearly under the mistaken impression that if she said the obvious thing casually enough, it would not register as an interruption.

Peter blinked. “Pardon?”

Quinn looked briefly startled to discover she’d become visible. Then, because she wasn’t a coward, she kept going.

“Her next event,” she said, “is a charity drive for a medical service-dog training program for under-served communities. If she won’t make time in an office, meet her where she’s already chosen to show up.”

Moira looked at her. James looked at her. Helena Wallace leaned back in her chair and folded her hands.

“How do you know what her next event is?” Peter snapped, clearly not pleased that he was being upstaged by the woman who’d brought him his latte.

Quinn’s expression shifted, just slightly. Not guilt. More the awareness of stepping onto a floor that might or might not support her weight.

“I looked her up,” she said.

“Independently?” Moira said.

Quinn glanced at her, then nodded once. “Yes.”

James tapped a pen once against the table. “You looked up the museum director’s public calendar?”

“And her board affiliations,” Quinn said. “I keep an eye on service-dog and working-dog programs because of my dog, so that event stood out.”

Peter blinked.

James said, “And your suggestion is that we stop trying to compel access through formal channels and instead approach her there.”

Quinn took a breath. “My suggestion is that if someone is genuinely hard to reach, you stop treating them like a locked door and look for the side entrance they leave open on purpose. She’s already chosen to be publicly attached to that cause. That makes it a better place to speak to her than an office she can avoid.”

James turned to Helena. “There are risks.”

“There are also diminishing returns on the current approach,” she said. Then to Quinn: “Why that event, specifically?”