Free Played by Barbara Freethy Page B

professor. After all, Professor Keaton’s tie had been in her office. And J.T. already thought she was being conned by Evan. She had to think. She had to buy herself some time.
    Maybe she was wrong. It was possible. Stefano Benedetti hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. Sometimes flaws could be detected only under particular lighting conditions, especially small mineral inclusions.
    She could take a few minutes to think. There were only a few people in the world who had the ability to copy a diamond of this magnitude. Who would know how to find those people? One man came to mind. And she knew just how to find him. He’d already told her where he would be when he’d called her the night before. But first she had to get through the next hour without J.T. suspecting anything was wrong.
    “Everything all right?” J.T. asked.
    “Perfect,” she lied. “Everything is perfect.”

4
    He’d asked her to meet him at the San Francisco Zoo by the lion’s cage at noon. Christina knew the clandestine meeting appealed to her father’s sense of drama. They’d played out many such meetings in the past. Marcus Alberti loved action, excitement, suspense, and intrigue. She suspected that in his own head he was more James Bond than academic historian. He had spent his life researching the past, but over the past two decades his desire to become more of an active participant than an observer had changed him. It hadn’t been enough for him to read about great adventurers; he’d wanted to be one.
    She hadn’t realized just how far he would take this desire until it was too late. It had all started out so innocently, with such a sense of justice. Her father had become obsessed with setting right the wrongs that had been done in the art world. He believed that works of art that had been stolen during times of war or other turbulence should be returned to their rightful owners. It was a laudable goal. Until his arrogance got in the way. Until he started bending the rules, stealing back items from those who believed themselves to be the legal owners. At some point her father had lost track of what was right and what was wrong, and she’d found herself in that same hazy gray area with him.
    She’d been his partner in crime; only she hadn’t realized it until it was too late, until the ties that bound them together began to unravel. She had never thought they would be as estranged as they were now. She had never thought there would come a day when she would never want to see him again, not want him to be part of her life, but that day had arrived. That day was now.
    Why had he returned to San Francisco? He’d promised he would stay away from her, play his games elsewhere. What had changed? She had to find out.
    Christina paused by the entrance to the zoo to take a look behind her. She hoped no one, specifically J.T., had followed her. When she’d left Barclay’s, J.T. had been reviewing videotape from the security cameras to see if they could figure out who had set the smoke bombs. She’d told David that if J.T. asked, to let him know she had gone to lunch and would be back around two o’clock. Hopefully that would buy her enough time to meet her father and figure out whether or not he was in any way involved with the diamond.
    The street behind her held no familiar faces, so she entered the zoo and bought a ticket. A large number of schoolchildren milled around the entrance, and a tram was loading up for its next trip around the park. Off in the distance was the carousel she’d ridden so many times with her father. The familiar music made her feel a little sad that those happy, carefree days were gone. One thing about her dad—he’d made her childhood fun. A born teacher, he’d wanted to expose her to everything. He’d encouraged her to learn as much as she could, to be curious, to ask questions.
    Now she was curious about him, what he was up to, and how it could affect her. She walked through the zoo, barely glancing at