And this painting-his hands curled, gripping the wooden frame with sudden fury-dammit, this painting was Lot #187. He’d made no mistake about that, either. So where had he gone wrong? He’d lost the trail somewhere, but he couldn’t for the life of him think where. Where, dammit?

A small sound broke his tenuous concentration, collapsing his careful progression of thoughts like a pebble tossed into a house of cards. Jane, clearing her throat. Though her voice was still rusty with uncertainty when she said, “Hmm…Tom? Can I ask…can you tell me what it is, exactly, that you’re looking for?”

He shifted irritably, resenting the hell out of her at that moment, just wanting to be left to his own misery. But he owed her something for the way he’d treated her, grabbing her like that, scaring her to death. He really did regret that-more than he liked to think about-but it was too late to take it back now.

So he tried to soften his tone, and managed a grudging gruffness when he replied, “I’m not exactly sure. Computer disk, probably. Maybe just an access code. I don’t know. Just that it was supposed to be in this painting, Lot #187… What? Did you say something?”

He switched on the flashlight. Her face seemed to float in the light, disembodied and pale as the moon, the tips of her fingers barely touching her lips.

“I just thought of something,” she said, still hesitant at first. but gaining confidence as she went on. “I don’t know if it’s important, or if it makes any sense, but, well, I’m not exactly sure that painting was supposed to be number 187.”

“What do you mean?” He felt a stillness, as though even his heart and all his body functions had paused to listen to her answer.

“When I first saw it, when I marked it down in my catalog, you know, so I’d know which one to bid on… I don’t remember now what the number was, but I’m absolutely certain it wasn’t 187.” She hesitated, waiting for him to comment. But he didn’t trust himself to speak, and she went on in a nervous rush, sensing the tension in him, perhaps, the words tumbling from her like pebbles before an avalanche.

“I think there must have been some kind of mix-up-my friend Connie said it happens sometimes-anyway. I wasn’t expecting it to come up in the bidding until later, and I was just about to go to the snack bar to get something to drink. If Connie hadn’t spotted it just in time, and told me about it, I’d have missed bidding for it.”

“Whoa,” he croaked. “Back up a minute. Some kind of mix-up? Like what, exactly? You mean, a switch?” His heart had resumed beating, hard and fast. Alarm bells were clanging inside his head. A switch. Jeez Louise, one of the oldest tricks in the book.

“Well,” Jane said, “it seemed like it would be easy to do. In the catalog, all the paintings were listed the same-just, Oil Painting. Framed, or something like that-and then the lot number. So I guess if-”

“And the lot number-how was it attached to the painting? Some kind of tag, sticker, what?”

“A sticker-on the bottom edge of the frame. It was pretty small. I remember I had to-”

“I don’t remember any sticker. Here. Take this.” He thrust the light into her hands and began to turn the painting over, turning it upside down and around, even though he’d already been over the damn thing with a fine-tooth comb and knew perfectly well there’d been no sticker on it, large or small.

“It was there last night.” Her voice was breathless, as if his agitation was contagious. “I’m sure of it. Maybe it fell off. Check the wrappings.” The light beam danced, alighting like a butterfly on the brown paper he’d folded and set to one side.

And a moment later came a satisfied, “There it is.” Her hand darted into the light to pluck from the sea of brown a white rectangle of paper half the size of a postage stamp. “See? I knew it had to be here.” She handed it to him, saying, “No wonder it fell off. It’s not sticky at all. That’s probably what happened, don’t you think? Maybe it happened to more than one item, and the auction employees just stuck them back on as best they could, figuring no one would notice.”

Hawk grunted. “Yeah, right.” He was squinting at the sticker, holding it between the nails of his thumb and forefinger. “Hey, let me see that pistol you bought-you did mean it when you said you have it with you?”

“Right here.”

He could hear her scuffing around in the dark. A moment later, the silver Colt revolver poked into the puddle of light. He gave her a look as he took it from her, wondering if she knew she’d handed it to him butt-first and carefully, as if it was a real gun, and loaded. Strange woman.

The lot-number sticker was still on the butt end of the pistol, right where he remembered seeing it when he’d picked it up from the floor in her hotel room last night. It was stuck on good, so good he had to scratch with his fingernail to peel up one corner. So good there was no way in hell one could have come unstuck by accident.

Wishing to God he had a pair of tweezers, he tore off a piece of the brown wrapping paper and dropped the numbered sticker onto the middle of it, then folded it into a credit card-size packet and tucked it carefully away in his wallet. If he ever got out of this damn truck, he’d see that the boys at Quantico got a look at it. Who knows, maybe they’d get lucky, turn up a print, although in reality the chances of that were pretty slim.

No, his best bet was going to be to backtrack to that auction house, try to pick up the buyer of the other painting. The original number 187. Unless the guy had pulled a multiple switch, in which case he’d have to track down every one of those damn paintings. He was going to have to call in help, of course, but even so, the odds were, by the time they got to it, the key to Jarek Singh’s computer files would be long gone on its way to the highest bidder, in another sort of auction altogether. The thought of that happening chilled him to his very bones.

“Any chance of you remembering that other number?” he asked without much hope. He felt very tired.

Jane made a small sound, either a sigh or a stifled yawn. “Probably not. I have a terrible memory for numbers. But I could look it up in my catalog for you, if you like.”

Hawk, whose last remaining hopes had collapsed with her first sentence, didn’t know whether to strangle or kiss her. Well, to be truthful, he did know. And it was surprising the hell out of him, the way that notion kept popping into his mind.

“That would be nice,” he said with polite irony. Then he added, as she instantly began digging in her tote bag again, “I didn’t mean now. No point in it. Why don’t you wait until we’ve got some light?”

“Oh-okay.” She paused, her hands and the flashlight draped over her tote bag, to say thoughtfully, “So, I guess whoever bought the other painting, the one with my number on it…must have this disk, or whatever. Is that what you think?”

“Looks like it.”

Jane was silent, chewing her lip, her shadowed, unreadable gaze directed away from him, staring at nothing. But something about her seemed to radiate tension; Hawk’s own heightened senses picked it up, like the subtle vibrations of electricity near power lines. A tiny chill of warning crept across his skin, the way it always did when he knew someone was lying to him. But he thought, No, not Jane. And ignored the sensation, putting it down to nerves, frustration, his own general antsyness.

“If we could just get out of this damn truck!” The vehemence in her voice as she spoke his own desire out loud surprised him; she’d seemed so unflappable up till now.

“Yeah, well, nothing we can do until they stop,” he reminded her. “Meanwhile, why don’t you turn that thing off, save the batteries? Try and get some sleep.”

She made a funny, high sound, like a laugh-as in, “Are you kidding?” But she didn’t say a word about being hungry, or thirsty, or wanting to use a bathroom, or any number of other things she must have been in need of. He knew he sure was-all of the above.

The light went out. A few moments of silence ticked by, filled with the rhythmic thrumming of the truck’s tires on pavement. And then she began to sing softly, huskily, “‘Hello, darkness. my old friend…”’

It had been one of Jen’s favorite songs. She’d loved Simon and Garfunkel.

What the hell’s going on? Hawk’s heart was pounding. Who the hell was this Carlysle woman, anyway? And why was it every time she opened her mouth, one way or another she seemed to say something that made him feel as if he’d been punched in the gut?

I sure didn’t count on this, he thought as he stared into the blackness above his head.

And then he wasn’t certain what he meant by that. Because he hadn’t counted on a lot of things. He hadn’t counted on Jane Carlysle, for one, and the way he kept seeing her face in his mind, and thinking about how good it would feel to touch her. To make love to her, yes, but also, and much more incomprehensibly, just to hold her, and go to sleep with her wrapped in his arms.

He also hadn’t counted on running into memories of Jen every time he turned around. It couldn’t help but occur to him to wonder if the two were somehow connected.

For almost seven years he’d kept those memories locked away in the deepest, darkest dungeons of his soul, ruthlessly squelching every attempt they’d made to break free. Now, suddenly, ever since the moment this woman had entered his life, somehow or another things kept reminding him of Jen.

He didn’t know why, either, she didn’t look at all like Jenny…well, except maybe in a superficial way. Both had dark hair worn short and curly, and were on the tall side of medium height. But Jen’s eyes had been golden brown, warm and intriguing, the color of brandy, not the sea. And where Jane had a certain quietness about her that seemed to invite confidences, Jenny had been feisty, with that arrogance he’d fallen for the very first time he’d laid eyes on her.