Free The Diamond Secret by Ruth Wind

would think of my consort, the jewel thief. Even the very fact that I'd had the jewel now for some six hours without notifying them spoke rather loudly, didn't it?
    I did not look away from Luca's brilliant gaze. "What do you want with this jewel?"
    "Only to return it to Romania," he said.
    "Nothing else?"
    "Nothing," he said, and raised his hands, palm up. "I swear."
    I tucked the phone into my front pocket, rubbed the obviously comatose third eye between my brows. "Let's have our tea."
    "Yes."
    We returned to the kitchen area, and settled at the table before the wide window, now obscured by waves of sideways rain. "It's turned into a bad night," I said, pouring steaming tea from the stainless steel pot.
    "It will make it more difficult for anyone to follow us."
    "No one followed us. I would have seen them."
    "Would you?" He stirred four spoonfuls of sugar into his mug of tea.
    I raised an eyebrow.
    He shrugged. "It's my weakness."
    In answer to his question, I said, "I would know if someone followed us, yes. On those dark little roads?"
    "Someone must have followed you earlier, or else how did that man in your room know you were there?"
    I narrowed my eyes, thought about it. "I don't know. It would be easier to follow me from the airport."
    "But who knew you had the jewel?"
    "Aside from you, you mean?"
    He nodded.
    "I made a phone call."
    "To?"
    I shook my head. "None of your business." But would Paul have sent a man to steal the jewel from me?
    No. There were many possibilities, but that wasn't one of them.
    "Do not be too trusting, prieten," Luca said.
    I glared at him. "Don't be a cliché." A hard gust of wind slammed into the caravan, making it rock slightly, and I shivered. "What do you know? What about others, criminals, who might want the jewel for themselves? Who knew about it?" I gave him a hard look. "If you want me to trust you, tell me what's going on."
    "I am not certain I know everything."
    "Why did he hire you?"
    "To steal it."
    I frowned. "That doesn't really make sense to me, Luca. I mean, just out of the blue, he hired you to steal one of the most famous diamonds in the world?"
    "More or less, yes."
    "It's been missing for decades. Where did Gunnarsson get it? Where was it all this time?"
    "That, I do not know."
    I absorbed that for a moment. Then, "Who killed him, then? And why didn't they take the other jewels?"
    His eyelids dropped, and again I had that sense of shuddering that came from him. It must have been a terrible scene. "The police think it was an enemy, another drug runner," he said. "Isn't that right?"
    "Yes."
    "It was more crude than that. Gunnarsson was a very wealthy man, and he liked collecting beautiful things, as your Paul does."
    "So?"
    "His apartment was filled with many things that could have been stolen—he liked sculpture, art glass and objets d'art. There were those eggs, you know—Faberagé."
    "What about them?"
    "Some with diamonds and things, you know?" His mouth worked. "None of them were stolen, either."
    "How do you know?"
    His elegantly beautiful hands—the hands of a musician, or a lover, or a…thief—spread open around the cup. "I heard."
    "Heard?"
    "A friend of a friend."
    Tension made my neck tight. "You're lying. And I'm not going to play if you lie. Get it? You want me to carry this freaking diamond, tell me the truth."
    He pursed his lips. "All right," he said, and looked at me. There was new steeliness there. "You will not like it. Your Paul—" he emphasized and drew out the name "—will not look so sweet to you at the end of this telling."
    "I have no illusions about Paul Maigny," I said.
    "Don't you?" He inclined his head, those blue eyes sharpening on my face. "Do you know that your eyes grow warm when you speak of him?"
    "What I know," I said, "is that he is a collector, that his childhood taught him to be shrewd, that he's quite determined when he sets his mind to a thing."
    "He will stop at nothing to have what he wants."
    "That's probably