скачать книгу бесплатно
“I’ll look around,” he said with a wicked grin and a wink at Stacy. “Thanks.”
“Civil War books and maps are upstairs,” Mackenzie told him. “Just let me know if you need some help.”
“You’ll be the first person I call,” he promised and headed up the stairs.
The second he was out of sight, Mackenzie whirled on Stacy. “What are you doing?”
“Just having a little fun.” She chuckled. “And you should, too. An honest-to-goodness hunk just walked through the door and what do you do? Treat him just like one of your regular customers. You haven’t had anyone under sixty-five walk through that door since your dad died. What were you thinking?!”
“He’s a customer—”
“No! He’s a good-looking man who doesn’t happen to have a ring on his finger, in case you didn’t notice.”
She’d noticed, all right, but she would have cut out her tongue before she admitted it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bull!” Stacy laughed. “Tell that to someone who hasn’t known you since you were four. But I’m not going to harass you,” she added with a grin. “I’m meeting John for dinner, so I’ve got to go.” Giving her a quick hug, she headed for the door. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Stacy!”
Laughing, she disappeared out the door with a teasing wave.
Five seconds later, Mackenzie heard a step on the stairs and whirled to find the “hunk,” as Stacy described him, standing on the landing. Mortified, she could have sunk right through the floor. Had he heard what Stacy said?
Mackenzie only had to see the glint of humor in his eyes to know that he’d heard every word. She was, she decided, going to hang Stacy by her ears the next time she saw her.
Heat climbing in her cheeks, she lifted her chin and met his gaze head-on. “Did you see anything you like?”
His lips twitched. “That depends. For the right price, I could take just about everything in your shop home with me.”
Studying him through narrowed blue eyes, she told herself he surely wasn’t including her in “everything.” But there was something about the man’s confidence that told her there was little he wouldn’t dare.
“What, in particular, were you interested in?”
He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Let’s start small. I noticed you had a framed letter from one of the soldiers at Valley Forge. What’s the price tag on that?”
“You won’t like it.”
She watched as he literally and figuratively rolled up his sleeves and braced himself. “Try me.”
“A thousand.”
“What?! That’s outrageous!”
“For an original piece of American history?” she scoffed. “I don’t think so. I can get twice that much on eBay.”
“eBay? Bite your tongue!”
His reaction didn’t surprise her. Many serious collectors didn’t believe in buying anything they couldn’t see and examine before money exchanged hands. “I have to make a sale where I can. If you’re not interested—”
Not fooled by her ploy, he grinned. “You’re damn good at this.”
“I come from a long line of horse traders,” she said, “and I have a feeling you do, too.”
“I’m Irish,” he said simply. “It’s in the blood. So how about a trade?”
Wary, she frowned. “What kind of trade?”
For an answer, he pulled out a yellowed, folded piece of paper in a sealed Ziploc bag. “Just a little something I picked up years ago that you might be interested in,” he told her casually.
Curiosity threatening to get the best of her, Mackenzie just barely resisted the urge to reach for it. “If you’re wanting to trade even-steven,” she warned, “you need to know that I don’t usually do that. You’d have to offer something pretty phenomenal for me to agree to an equal trade.”
Amused, he said, “You’re assuming your letter is more valuable than my map.”
Mackenzie’s ears perked up at that. She loved maps—and so did her customers—but she had no intention of letting him know that. “A map, huh? I don’t know about that. Most of my customers are more interested in first edition books.”
Not the least bit worried, he held the Ziploc bag out to her. “You might want to look at it before you make a decision,” he told her. “It’s a map of Gettysburg hand-drawn by General Lee. There are also notes in the margin containing his field strategy.”
Already reaching for it, Mackenzie looked up sharply.
“This is the General’s Map?”
A cool smile touched his lips. “So you’ve heard of it.”
Heard of it? Of course she’d heard of it! Who hadn’t? It had disappeared soon after the Battle of Gettysburg and hadn’t been seen since. There’d been rumors that it had been owned over the years by everyone from P. T. Barnum to the Rockefellers to a Saudi prince who was a Civil War collector. If the map was authentic, how had it ended up in the hands of the man before her?
“Go ahead,” he said when she gave him a wary look. “Take a look at it. Tell me what you think. I already know what it’s worth, of course. I’m wondering if you do.”
Another dealer might have been insulted by his words, but Mackenzie didn’t need to defend herself to anyone. Her master’s was in American history, and she’d worked in the business of buying antique documents and rare books for more than half her life. If the map was genuine, there was no doubt that it would be worth a small fortune.
Questions—and doubts—tugging at her, she took the map and moved to the reading table that was situated in front of the fireplace. Armed with the magnifying glass she carried on a cord around her neck, she carefully pulled the map out of the Ziploc and unfolded it under the light in the center of the table. The paper was yellowed with age, the bold, scrawled notes in the margin still legible despite the fact that the map was, reportedly, nearly a hundred and fifty years old.
Mackenzie loved old maps, but she knew better than most that they weren’t always what they appeared to be. Forgery was a serious problem in her business…and so was theft.
“Where did you say you got this?” she asked casually as she put her magnifying glass to the map.
“I didn’t,” he said just as casually. “It belonged to a friend of mine. He’s had a hell of a lot of bad luck lately—he got divorced, then lost his job when the company he worked for shipped out to India. Last week, he lost his house.”
“So he was desperate and sold a family heirloom,” she concluded. “Or was he a collector? Maybe I know him.”
“A collector?” he scoffed, laughing shortly. “Not hardly. He’s into motorcycles and NASCAR. His grandfather left him the map years ago—he was just hanging on to it for a rainy day. He doesn’t even have money for an apartment. It’s not just raining—it’s a damn hurricane.”
“I see.” Continuing to examine the map, she saw, all right, more than he wanted her to. His story had lie written all over it and didn’t make a bit of sense. If the real owner had been saving it for a rainy day, the last thing he would have done was sell it to a friend when he was in desperate straits. Instead, he would have taken it to Sotheby’s or another high-dollar auction house that would have advertised it and gotten him a fortune for the sale.
If, she silently amended, the map was authentic. Looking at it under the glass, she had to admit that she had her doubts. There were file notations from the U.S. War Department on the back of the document that didn’t quite look right. And while that might not be enough to indicate that the map was a forgery, the fact that the present owner and previous one were strangers to her made her very uneasy. The people who collected the more valuable Civil and Revolutionary War memorabilia were a relatively small group. Everybody knew everybody else, for the most part, especially in the Washington, D.C./Virginia/Maryland area. And she had never laid eyes on the man standing before her.
If she had, she certainly would have remembered him. With his sharp green eyes, wavy black hair and chiseled good looks, he wasn’t the kind of man a woman forgot.
Especially when he smiled. Those dimples of his were downright dangerous.
Suddenly realizing she was staring at the sensuous curve of his lips, she stiffened. What was she doing? She didn’t care how good-looking the man was, he may very well be trying to selling her a forged map!
Deliberately pulling her attention back to the document spread out before her, she was tempted to buy it just so he couldn’t walk out with it and sell it to someone who might mistakenly think it was authentic. Just the idea of giving money to a crook for what was nothing but a forgery, however, outraged her.
Think! she told herself fiercely. There had to be something she could do. If she told him she had a customer who might be interested, but she couldn’t get an answer from him for at least three days, that would give her time to research not only the legitimacy of the map, but any recent news about it.
But even as the words hovered on her tongue, she knew she couldn’t let him walk out with the map with the promise that he would return in three days. The odds were he wouldn’t, and the map—if it really was authentic—would be lost forever. She had to do something now!
The decision made, she set down her magnifying glass with a snap and looked up at him with narrowed eyes that missed little. “What’d you say your name was?”
“I didn’t,” he replied easily. “But you can call me O’Reilly.”
Making no attempt to hide her suspicions, she said, “Where’d you really get the map?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“And well you should,” she retorted. “You’re lying through your teeth and we both know it. The map, if it’s real—and I have my doubts about that—has file notes on the back. So tell me, O’Reilly, where did the map really come from? Did you steal it or create it?”
He didn’t even blink. “No.”
“It’s not stolen?”
“No.”
“So it’s a fake,” she concluded.
“I didn’t say that.”
No, it’s not stolen. No, it’s not a fake. That’s all he said…just no. Frustrated, Mackenzie couldn’t believe his audacity. No explanation, no nothing. Snatching up the map, she held it out to him. “I don’t believe you. Take it and get out. I don’t deal with thieves or forgers.”
Patrick had to give her credit. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! He almost believed her. It was her eyes, he decided. They were big and blue and bright with indignation. How could a woman with eyes like that, with the face of an angel, possibly be a thief?
Watch it, a voice in his head growled. If you’re not careful, you’re going to become obsessed with the woman.
It was the case he was obsessed with, he told himself, not the woman. But he’d been watching every move she made for the last three weeks without her even being aware of it, and it was her face he saw when he investigated the sales on eBay. It was her smile he saw through the lens of his camera when he set up surveillance and watched everyone who walked through the front door of her shop for days on end. And at night, when he left the office and the case behind and went home, it was the woman herself he couldn’t get out of his head when he crawled into bed.
He shouldn’t have come here today, he silently acknowledged. And he certainly shouldn’t have approached her without another agent with him to witness what went down. It was totally against procedure.
But the more he investigated Mackenzie Sloan, the more she confused him. She looked like a modern-day Princess Diana, for God’s sake, and there wasn’t a hint of scandal attached to her name. So how was she up to her pretty little ears in the sale of stolen antiquities? Frustrated, he’d been on the way home from work when he’d decided on the spur of the moment to stop by her shop and confront the lady face-to-face.
In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought, and mocked, “You don’t deal with thieves, huh? That might be easier to believe if you weren’t one yourself.”
Surprised, she gasped, “What are you talking about? I’ve never stolen anything in my life!”
“Oh, really? Then what would you call this?” And reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a second yellowed piece of paper.
Watching her closely, Patrick saw her eyes flare at the sight of a playbill from Ford’s Theatre that was given to theatergoers the night of Lincoln’s assassination. It was her nearly soundless gasp, however, that told him everything he needed to know. He wasn’t surprised she recognized the stolen document. She should have.
She was the one who’d sold it to a private collector on eBay.
Chapter 2
Outraged, Mackenzie couldn’t believe he was serious. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” he said coolly. “If you’ve never stolen anything in your life, what would you call this? This was Lincoln’s playbill the night he was shot.”
“I know what it is,” she huffed, “but I don’t where you got the idea it was stolen. My father—”
“Stole it from the National Archives,” he cut in.
“He did not!”
“And you sold it on eBay to a private collector,” he continued. “So save the outrage and pretend innocence for someone who appreciates it. You recognized the playbill the second I showed it to you.”
Mackenzie didn’t deny it. “Of course I recognize it,” she retorted, stung. “I inherited the business from my dad three months ago and I’ve been selling a lot of the excess inventory. I sold the playbill last month.”
“So you admit it,” he said smugly.
“I admit that I sold it,” she said, irritated, “not that it was stolen. It couldn’t have possibly been. My father bought the playbill from a descendant of a congressman who was at Ford’s Theatre the night of the assassination.”
“How do you know that for sure? Did your father investigate this so-called descendant? What’s his name? Could he prove continuous ownership of the playbill? Where did your father meet him?”
He threw questions at her like bullets, grilling her like she was some kind of ax murderer when he was the one who had some explaining to do. Indignant, she snapped, “You’ve got a hell of nerve! My father was in this business for thirty years, and he had an impeccable reputation. Don’t you dare stand here in his shop and slam him!
“And you’re a fine one to talk,” she added, glaring at him. “Speaking of where things come from, where did you get your map, mister? From some sleazy forger? Oh, yeah, I know it’s a fake. My father taught me how to spot a phony when I was eight years old.”
And with no more warning than that, she reached over and snatched up the map he’d laid on the counter when he pulled the playbill from the inside pocket of his jacket. “I’ll take that, thank you very much. I’m not going to stand by and let you sell that to some poor unsuspecting schmuck who’s got sucker stamped on his forehead. Now get out of here before I call the police.”
He studied her with real admiration in his eyes. “You’re good,” he told her, his smile mocking. “The outrage in your voice, that spark of anger in your eyes—I’ve got to tell you, sweetheart, you’re just about the best I’ve ever seen. But you know what? I’m going to call your bluff.”
“It’s not a bluff! And don’t call me sweetheart!”
“Then go ahead and call the police,” he taunted. “And while you’re at it, make sure you tell the dispatcher that I’m a federal agent for the Archives.”
When he slapped his badge down on the counter in front of her, Mackenzie couldn’t take her horrified gaze off it. This couldn’t be happening, she thought, dazed. There had to be a mistake. She’d never taken anything that didn’t belong to her, and neither had her father. And every time she purchased an antique document or rare book, she checked the chain of ownership…just as her father had. There was no way either one of them could have bought stolen documents.
“I don’t know where you got your information,” she said flatly, “but you’re wrong. My father would never do such a thing, and neither would I. You’ve made a mistake.”
“You think so? Then maybe you can explain why two dozen documents were missing after your dad did research at the Archives. And don’t tell me he never did research there. I’ve got the records to prove it.”
Cold dread tightened Mackenzie’s stomach into a hard knot of nerves. He was so sure, so cocky, but if he thought he was going to make her doubt her own father so easily, he could think again.
“And that’s your proof?” she challenged. “My father did research at the Archives for decades. So have thousands of other people over the years. When exactly did one of the Archives’s employees discover documents were missing?”
“Two months ago.”
“A month after my father died?”
“We believe the papers went missing during your father’s visit to the Archives last year.”
