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Vance snorted. “I’m pretty sure I’m not ready for anything like that.”
“How about something closer to home? There’s Shiprock in New Mexico.”
“Maybe when this business with Rothschild and the stolen statue goes away we can talk about it.”
Roark nodded, sobering. For most of his life, the only family he’d known had been his mother. Then four years earlier, Vance had approached him with a tale of being his half brother. At first Roark had been skeptical. The story Vance had told him about finding a letter from his father that directed him to track down his half brother had seemed too far-fetched to be true.
With his mother’s reclusive lifestyle, Roark had a hard time imagining her taking a lover. But Vance’s story that they’d met when Edward Waverly ha
d come to see her about a coin collection she wanted to sell made sense. Throughout Roark’s childhood his mother had deflected all his questions about his father, leaving Roark to indulge his active imagination. He could see how his mother might have fallen in love with the charismatic Waverly.
But why had it ended?
Perhaps Edward had abandoned her after discovering she was pregnant. Perhaps she had broken things off because she knew she could never have been the sort of society wife a man like Edward would have wanted. Perhaps they’d just fallen out of love.
Roark turned his thoughts from the past to the present. “What are you and Ann planning to do about Rothschild?”
Vance stretched his left arm until his fingertips could just curve around his next hold. “We have to keep our stock price from dropping any lower. Otherwise we won’t need to worry about board members selling to him—he will be able to pick up all the shares he wants on the open market.”
“And the quickest way to stabilize the stock price is to clear up this mess about the Gold Heart statue.”
Roark’s thoughts ran over the questions raised by the FBI agents. He had no worries that Rothschild’s machinations would land him in jail. He’d been nowhere near the palace on the night the Gold Heart statue disappeared. Of course, he couldn’t prove that since his activities the evening in question were not the sort he wanted law officials poking into.
“That may present a bit of a challenge,” Roark said. “The statue may bring in well over 200 million. With the theft of Rayas’s Gold Heart statue the owner of our statue has grown quite paranoid about security.”
“And you’re sure it’s neither stolen nor a fake?”
“I’m staking my reputation that it’s not.”
“You’re staking the reputation of Waverly’s that it’s not.”
“No, I’m not. Originally there were three statues created by the king of Rayas for his three daughters. Each one is marked with its own unique stamp and I have a document that distinguishes which statue belonged to which daughter. Currently, one statue resides with a branch of Rayas’s royal family. The one the FBI believes I stole belongs to the current king. The last one disappeared over a century ago. Stolen or sold, no one knows, and the family has since died off. It ended up in Dubai and became part of a collection of a hundred other artifacts belonging to a wealthy sheikh who died recently. His son has little interest in anything old. He prefers cutting-edge technology, young beautiful women and expensive cars and real estate. Selling the collection is going to fund his dream of building the finest resort in Dubai.”
“So when the statue arrives, you can prove both its authenticity and its ownership?”
“Exactly.”
“Then we have nothing to worry about.”
“Not a single thing.”
Roark pondered the break-in that had happened in his Dubai apartment while he’d been in Colombia. The thief had disabled a state-of-the-art safe and stolen all the documentation Roark had on the Gold Heart statue including the statue’s provenance. He’d made copies, but doubted these would satisfy the FBI experts.
He’d often been in situations where he needed others to trust him. Dealing in antiquities was the sort of business that came with a lot of questions. Black marketers thrived and the technology that should have made it easier to tell real from fake also made it easier to create replicas that appeared authentic.
For the next twenty minutes the men climbed in silence, each occupied with their own thoughts. As their hour ran down, Roark returned to the floor and unfastened his harness. As usual, climbing left his mind clear. When your life depended on the security of your next hand- or foothold, it was hard to clutter your thoughts with worrying about things you couldn’t control.
“Your fiancée certainly made a splash with the board the other night,” Vance said as he stored his gear.
“I’m glad to hear it.”
Elizabeth had charmed everyone. A dozen people had informed Roark how lucky he was to have found such an exceptional woman.
“I had no idea that you’d gotten so serious with someone of late,” Vance continued, his tone neutral. “How long have you two been together?”
“Not as long as you might think.”
Vance must have heard something in Roark’s tone because he glanced his way, eyes sharp. “She must have been worried when you disappeared for three months.”
