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Blood seeped through the guard’s fingers. A dagger like the one the Russian guy had flung at her lay next to the man. Kira dropped to her knees next to him. So much blood.
He wheezed. “Closer.” He coughed.
She took off her leather jacket and pressed it against the wound. He wrapped his bloody hand around her T-shirt and tugged her down next to his moving lips. But she still couldn’t make out words.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Zaika.”
“What?”
“Follow the rabbits.” The man’s breathless voice made it hard to hear. His eyes closed, and Kira checked his pulse.
Nothing.
The man was gone.
“Hold it right there, ma’am.”
Two DC Metropolitan police officers and four armed security guards surrounded her.
“I’m FBI,” she said. “I’m going to reach for my badge.”
“Don’t move.” One of the officers trained a gun on Kira.
“This isn’t what it looks like.” Why did she say that?
She was hovering over a body in the back of an art gallery, covered in the victim’s blood, next to the murder weapon on the ground. If she were a police officer, she wouldn’t buy her story.
She could kiss her job goodbye. Because after this stunt, she’d be lucky if she even kept her job in linguistics.
The trill of a cell phone kicked FBI Special Agent Bryce Lambert into action, and he swiped at the nightstand to answer the call. In the dark, he missed the iPhone and sent his lamp flying off the edge. The crash helped push the fog of sleep away. He opened his eyes, located the phone, and connected to the call from his supervisor.
“I have news you’ll want to hear.” No introduction, no pleasantries. His boss, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Leon Soto, cut straight to the point.
Bryce rolled out of bed, put the phone on speaker, and began to dress. Getting a call at 1:30 in the morning meant he needed to be somewhere ten minutes ago, making him already late. “I’m listening.”
“I got a call from the Supervisory Special Agent in our DC Field Office. Jeremiah Turner has a rookie agent that may have stumbled into your active case. His team looked into her discovery and validated Agent Miller’s findings, which led them to contact us. They have credible evidence that suggests a Russian artifact might be a target for the art smuggling ring you’ve been investigating.”
Interesting. “What’d she discover?”
“She’s been working in linguistics and translated a conversation. A Russian attorney is very interested in a piece called Zaika.”
Bryce had heard of it. The bunny. “It’s allegedly the first piece that has surfaced from a crate of looted art that went missing from Germany. A gallery in DC has it on display. But why call in the middle of the night?”
“I figured you’d want to talk to Agent Miller, who is currently in Metro Police’s custody. Apparently a security guard at the gallery was murdered, and Agent Miller happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Supervisory Special Agent Turner from the Washington Field Office wants our offices to work together on this one. We’re not investigating the murder, but having a dead body at the art gallery tells me there may be eyes on this statue.”
“I’m on my way.”
He stifled a groan. A rookie in police custody? Not a great way to start her career. But if his supervisor thought she had information that advanced his case, he’d make the two-hour trek from Richmond, Virginia, to DC without complaint. Or much anyway.
He grabbed his company-issued windbreaker and headed out the door.
Who was Special Agent Kira Miller and what had she gotten herself into? He wished he’d asked a few more questions, but he wasn’t going to call Soto back now.
After a pit stop at a twenty-four-hour gas station for some caffeine, Bryce had made the trip in record time and now sat across from Agent Miller in the cold, gray, sterile police conference room.
“I didn’t kill that security guard,” she said.
