“Okay,” he said briskly. “We went to the art gallery following a call I received from someone who knew the names of my usual contacts at the insurance company, as well as the procedures the company usually follows to contact me.”
“Blake, have you ever considered getting counseling for this James Bond complex?” Tara asked with a dryness that amused him.
The corner of his mouth tilted up in a half grin. “I have to entertain myself somehow.”
She frowned at him, though he thought he saw an answering smile in her eyes. “Go on.”
“Right.” His cleared his throat and went on. “We arrived at the art gallery and we were approached at the McCauley painting by a man in a bad toupee, who seemed to be watching us very closely.”
He had suspected then that Botkin was the one who’d asked for the meeting, but he’d honestly had no sense that the man was in danger. Nor that Tara would be drawn into it, either, he thought grimly.
“At the time I’d been given,” he continued, “I waited in the men’s room for someone who never showed up. After a few minutes, I checked the hallway, then stepped into the main showroom to look around. When I came back, there was still no one in the hallway, but I heard a noise from the open door at the end of the hall. I had just looked into that office before I went into the showroom,” he added. “No one was in there then.”
“Which meant,” Tara mused, “that the man in the toupee appeared right after you left. And that the other man, the one who shot him and grabbed me, was right behind him.”
Blake nodded grimly. “I should have waited,” he muttered, disgusted with himself. “I should never have allowed myself to be distracted by—”
You. He bit off the rest of the sentence, making Tara look at him questioningly.
“Anyway, I shouldn’t have been so impatient to leave the gallery,” he substituted.
“Everyone makes mistakes, Blake,” Tara reassured him.
“That’s something you should keep in mind, as well,” he murmured. “But at least the mistake you made at the law firm—if, in fact, you made a mistake at all—didn’t get anyone killed.”
“And if you had waited in that hallway as you were supposed to, you might have been the one killed,” Tara reminded him. “It’s obvious that someone didn’t want you to have whatever information the man was going to give you.”
Blake rubbed his slightly bristly chin with his free hand. “All I was told was that it had something to do with the Willfort robbery.”
“And it was so important that Botkin was killed before he could give it to you.”
“That’s only a guess,” he cautioned her. “For all we know, he was killed by a jealous husband. Or someone who actually was trying to rob the gallery. It might only have been coincidence that you and I were there.”
“Do you believe that?”
He hesitated only a fraction of a second before shaking his head. “No. I’m not a big believer in coincidence.”
“Neither am I. So, apparently, I walked in just after the man was shot. The killer—whoever he was—grabbed me. He asked what the hell I was doing there.” Tara shivered a bit, obviously replaying the moment in her head.
Blake’s hand tightened comfortingly around hers.
“And then he asked what Botkin told me when I was kneeling down beside him. Not that I could have answered if I’d wanted to. The guy had his hand over my mouth.”
Blake’s hand jerked around hers. He twisted on the bed to look at her with a frown. “When you knelt beside him? But I thought you were grabbed the moment you walked into the office.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t see the other man at first. Maybe he hid when he heard me in the hallway.”
“Tell me everything that happened in that office.”
Tara didn’t look as though she wanted to relive those terrifying mo
ments, but she nodded. “I saw the man on the floor. I knelt beside him. And then he said...he said...”
“What?” Blake asked urgently.
“They knew,‘” she recalled slowly. “‘The paintings were...’”
Blake frowned. “The paintings were what?”