LITMIR.BIZ

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problem is,” he told his niece patiently, “that I know the temptation that’s out there.” He gave her a knowing look. “I was just like you once.”

      “You were a ten-year-old girl?” Heather challenged.

      “No, I was a ten-year-old boy, wise guy,” he told her, affectionately tugging on one of her two thick braids. “Now, humor me. Olga offered to be here when you come home and hang around until I get off.”

      She tried again. “Look, Uncle Colin, I don’t want to give you a hard time—”

      “Then don’t,” he said, cutting Heather off as he grabbed a slice of toast.

      Heather was obviously not going to give up easily. “I don’t like having someone spy on me.”

      “Here’s an idea,” he proposed, taking his gun out of the lockbox on the bookshelf where he always deposited his weapon when he came home at night. “You can get your revenge by not doing anything noteworthy and boring her to death.”

      The preteen scowled at him. “So not the point,” she insisted.

      He wasn’t about to get roped into a long philosophical discussion with his niece. She had to get to school and he needed to be at work.

      “Exactly the point,” he replied. “Olga will be here when I’m not, just as she has been these last few weeks—and we’re lucky to have her. End of discussion,” he told her firmly.

      “For there to have been a discussion, I would have had to voice my side of it,” she pointed out, all but scowling at him in a silent challenge that said she had yet to frame her argument.

      Colin paused for a moment as he laughed and shook his head. “Sue me. I’ve never raised a ten-year-old before and I want to get this right.”

      The impatient look faded from her face and Heather smiled. She knew that they were both groping around in the dark, trying to find their way. Her uncle had always been very important to her, even before she’d woken up to find that the parameters of her world had suddenly changed so drastically.

      She gave him a quick hug, as if she knew what was really on his mind. Concern. “We’ll be all right, Uncle Colin.”

      “Yes, we will,” he agreed. He pointed toward the front door. “Now let’s go.”

      For the sake of pretense, Heather sighed dramatically and then marched right out of his ground-floor garden apartment.

      * * *

      Less than an hour later, Colin found himself halfway around the city, tackling a would-be art thief who was trying to make off with an original painting he’d stolen from someone’s private collection in the more exclusive side of Bedford.

      The call had gone out and he’d caught it quite by accident because his new morning route—he had to drop Heather off at school—now took him three miles out of his way and, as it so happened today, right into the path of the escaping art thief.

      Waiting for the light to change, Colin saw a car streak by less than ten feet away from him. It matched the description that had come on over the precinct’s two-way radio.

      “Son of a gun,” he muttered in disbelief. The guy had almost run him over. “Dispatch, I see the vehicle in question and I’m pursuing it now.”

      Turning his wheel sharply, he made a U-turn and proceeded to give chase. Despite his adrenaline pumping, he hated these chases, hated thinking of what was liable to happen if the utmost care as well as luck weren’t at play here.

      He held his breath even as he mentally crossed his fingers.

      After a short time and some rather tricky, harrowing driving, he pursued the thief right into a storage-unit facility.

      “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered under his breath. Did the guy actually believe he was going to lose him here? Talk about dumb moves...

      He supposed he had to be grateful for that. Had the thief hit the open road, he might have lost him or someone might have gotten hit—possibly fatally—during the pursuit.

      As it was, he managed to corner the man. Colin jumped out of his car and completed the chase on foot, congratulating himself that all those days at the gym paid off. He caught up to the thief, who had unintentionally led him not only to where he had planned on hiding this painting that he’d purloined but to a number of others that apparently had been stolen at some earlier date.

      It took a moment to sink in. When it did, Colin tried not to let his jaw drop. Things like this didn’t usually happen in Bedford, which, while not a sleepy little town, wasn’t exactly a hotbed of crime, either.

      “Wow, you’ve been quite the eager beaver, haven’t you?” Colin remarked as he snapped a pair of handcuffs on the thief’s wrists.

      “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” the thief declared. “Never saw these other paintings before in my life,” he swore, disavowing any previous connection.

      “And yet you came here to hide the one you stole this morning,” Colin pointed out. “Small world, wouldn’t you say?”

      “I never saw these before!” the slight man repeated loudly.

      Colin shook his head as he led the thief out to his waiting car. “Didn’t your mama teach you not to lie?” he asked.

      “I’m not saying another word without my lawyer,” the thief announced, and dramatically closed his mouth.

      “Good move,” Colin said in approval. “Not much left to say anyway, seeing as how all these paintings speak for themselves.”

      Desperate, the thief made one last attempt to move Colin as he was being put into the backseat. “Look, this is just a big misunderstanding.”

      “Uh-huh.”

      Panic had entered the man’s face, making Colin wonder if he was working for someone else, someone he feared. “I can make it worth your while if you just look the other way, let me go. I’ll leave the paintings. You can just tell everyone you found them.”

      Colin smiled to himself. It never ceased to amaze him just how dumb some people could be. “Maybe you should have thought of the consequences before you started putting this private collection together for yourself.” He saw the thief opening his mouth and sensed there was just more of the same coming. “Too late now,” he told the man.

      With that, he took out his cell phone and called in to the station for backup to come and collect all the paintings. There were going to be a lot of happy art owners today, he mused. They wouldn’t be reunited with their paintings immediately, since for now, the pieces were all being kept as evidence, but at least they knew the art had been recovered and was safe.

      He glanced at his watch as he waited for his call to go through.

      It was just nine thirty, he realized. Nine thirty on a Monday morning. His week was off and running.

       Chapter Two

      Maizie put as much stock in fate as the next person. She didn’t, however, sit back and just assume that fate would step in and handle all the small details that were always involved in making things happen. That was up to her.

      Which was why she was on the phone that morning calling Edward Blake, an old friend of her late husband’s as well as a recent client she’d brought to Theresa’s attention. The latter had involved Edward’s youngest daughter, Sophia. Theresa had catered her wedding reception at less than her usual going rate.

      Maizie used that as her opening when she placed her call to the news station’s story director.

      What had prompted her call was a story she heard on her radio as she was driving into work. The opportunity seemed too good to pass up. That, she felt,

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