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PROLOGUE
Time is mercurial—it can bestow upon you the greatest gifts, or it can, like a thief in the night, rob you of everything you hold most dear.
Claire Mitchell
CHAPTER1
CLAIRE
Humberto Delgado Airport
Lisbon, Portugal
Claire Mitchell breathed a sigh of relief as she stowed away her carry-on in first class and sat down in the window seat. It had been a long layover, and she was anxious to be on her way to Naples, where she and Mia had purchased a safehouse a number of years ago. Naples had always been their fallback location, and they’d made the conscious decision to avoid plying their craft there.
People were boarding the plane. The flight attendant had let her know the plane was full. Even first class had a waiting list. Claire stared out the window before closing her eyes and willing the grief to go away. Her only hope was that one day Fletch would understand what it had cost her to walk away. Even thinking of him made her heart seize in her chest and question why she had done so. The answer was always the same: she’d made a vow to her grandfather to continue his work of restoring the jewelry stolen by the Nazis to their rightful owners.
She heard someone stowing something in the overhead bin, but Claire didn’t want to look at the person; didn’t want to engage. She’d pull out her Kindle and make it clear she didn’t want to be chatty. The person plopped down in the seat next to her in a way that was hard to ignore. She turned to say something scathing that would ensure the person didn’t encroach on her space—physical or otherwise.
Mia.
“You didn’t really think I was going to let you run off and be all noble by yourself, did you?”
Claire’s eyes threatened to leak the tears she’d been holding back since she left London and she bit her lip to keep them back. People tended to remember someone who was sobbing their heart out. Her plan when she got to Naples was to buy a huge loaf of bread, some butter, cheese and enough pasta that she could cry herself a river in the privacy of her own space and eat herself into a food coma.
“You didn’t have to…”
“Didn’t I? Seriously, what was I supposed to do, let you have all the fun? You do remember I got into this because you are my sister by another mister, and I had such a fear of missing out on all the fun. FOMO is real, my friend.”
Claire smiled. “I love you, but what about you and Carter?”
“Carter is on Team Fletch, who is pissed, in case you didn’t know. Did you see the open letter he left you in the chatroom?”
“You let him into the chatroom?”
“I don’t think it was a case of letting him in. He’d have had Carter all over the sucker. Knowing Carter’s strengths and how he thinks will help me better safeguard our information in the future.”
As the pilot had yet to ask people to turn off their electronic devices, Mia pulled up the chatroom on her tablet and handed it to Claire. She laughed. The message was pure Fletch.
Claire,
I love you. I will find you and bring you home.
Fletch
And his big dick
“He needs to move on,” said Claire, handing it back to Mia.
“I did take them out to your place—in fact, that’s where I slipped away from—I take it you have the necklace?”
“Not anymore. There was such a long layover in Lisbon, I was able to get it to one of our couriers and it’s now on its way back to the family from whom it was taken.”
“As to Fletch moving on? That’s not happening, and I could have told you that even if Carter hadn’t already told me so. He’s decided you are a damsel in distress, and he’s going to save you from yourself. When I snuck out, he was ranting, raving, and making sure all their other cases were covered. He is dedicating himself to finding you.” She leaned in close and whispered. “I wiped all of our old info and sent Fletch on a wild goose chase, hopefully back to the States. Everything will now show you flew out of Heathrow to Paris and then to New York. I was able to hide most of the accounts but move a few around that they could find and eventually discover the transfers. Hopefully, they won’t be able to track us or the majority of our money.”
“Mia, this could get dangerous—even more so than it’s been before. If you have a shot at making a life with Carter…”
“First, anything I might have had with Carter hadn’t gone far and would never have survived him and Fletch coming after you. There was talk between the two of them—in front of me, mind you—of Carter edging me and keeping me on the edge until I told him what they wanted to know.”
