After a nasty divorce, Bethany Stafford-Lyons is forced to transform herself from a high-society housewife into one of London’s worker bees. Using a last connection to her previous life, she lands a job at Pemberton Fine Arts, a world-renowned gallery and restoration studio. With her art degree, it should have been the perfect role, but she soon finds working for Hugo Pemberton is a challenge in more ways than one.
Eight years ago, Alaric McLain got fired from the FBI after an undercover operation ended in disaster. Still missing? One masterpiece, ten million dollars in cash and diamonds, and his once-glowing reputation. When he retreated overseas to lick his wounds, he made a vow—he’d find The Girl with the Emerald Ring if it was the last thing he did.
The trail leads to Chelsea, where assisted by his ex-girlfriend and a seventeen-year-old brat he wants to handcuff to a railroad track, Alaric’s soon embroiled in a game of cat and mouse with a talented team of thieves. Let the fun begin…
The Girl with the Emerald Ring is the twelfth book in the Blackwood Security series.
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Excerpt – Bethany…
“Bethany, would you help that lady?”
I forced a smile for Henrietta, the gallery manager, a scrawny blonde with an addiction to mascara who’d hated me from the moment I started working at Pemberton Fine Arts.
“Of course.”
Henrietta thought I wanted her job, and while I couldn't deny I’d have accepted if it was offered, I wasn’t about to stoop to her level and make snide comments to Hugo Pemberton, the gallery’s owner, behind her back. Not that I in any way expected an offer—despite being thirty-four years old, I was little more than a glorified intern. Henrietta had only asked me to help because she was busy with another client and the third member of our little team, Gemma, had disappeared. Again.
I glanced towards the door to see who “that lady” was and swallowed a groan. Mirabella Vallos was no lady. She might have had money, but she also had a drinking problem and a stinky attitude to go with it. Even at school, she’d been a cantankerous little witch.
“Mira, how lovely to see you.”
“Bethie!” Oh, how I hated being called Bethie. “It’s been months, hasn’t it? Since before your divorce? Wait—you’re not working here, are you?”
The word “working” obviously left a nasty taste in her mouth because she screwed up her face in disgust. Or at least, she screwed up the bottom half. The top half was frozen in place by Botox. Mine had long since worn off, and boy was I glad to have the ability to frown back.
Ladies like Mira didn’t work—well, maybe the odd day of volunteering to give them something to post on Instagram—and I’d once been a part of that realm. It was only recently that I’d turned my back on it, and I was still trying to find my place in a new world.
“Yes, I work here now.”
“I heard…” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper, and I saw Henrietta straining to listen. “I heard you got screwed over in your settlement.”
Screwed over? That was the understatement of the century. Somehow, our family home had ended up in a trust fund controlled by my ex-husband’s parents, the villa in Italy turned out to be “owned” by a business partner, the fancy cars were “leased,” and in an unexpected turn of events, our savings had dwindled due to a series of bad investments. By the time our lawyers finished arguing, I was left with our pied-à-terre in Kensington, an extensive designer wardrobe I no longer needed, a horse that ate the little money I had remaining, and a reputation as a gold-digging bitch. And the best part? My ex also kept my family. My parents and sister still liked him better than they did me.
“The settlement could have been better,” I admitted.
Excerpt – Alaric…
“Fuck, Cinders—could you have found a more inappropriate surveillance vehicle?”
Alaric McLain watched in the rear-view mirror as Emmy Black closed up behind him in a sleek black Aston Martin. Even with his windows shut, he heard her approach.
“I’m sorry, okay?” Emmy’s voice came through the speakers in his rented Honda SUV. “I’ve had two hours’ sleep, and I’m barely functioning. I could’ve sworn there were more cars in the garage, but all that was left was this and a motorbike.”
“Why didn’t you bring the motorbike?”
“You want me to wear leathers in this temperature? I’d sweat like a pig.” Granted, she had a point there. Early May, and the weather in London had gone haywire. The last two days had been like a cheerleader’s pool party—wet and hot. “Plus there was nowhere to put my rifle.”
Alaric didn’t even try to hide his groan. “You brought a rifle? We’re chasing an art thief, not a bunch of terrorists.”
“You told me that terrorists steal art to finance their activities. ‘It’s not like in the movies,’” she mimicked. “‘Forget Ocean’s Twelve and the Thomas Crown Affair.’”
That was true. Many people shared a romanticised image of art thieves, fostered in no small part by Hollywood. In real life, men who took masterpieces didn’t do it for the challenge or a bet—more often than not, they were hardened criminals after cold, hard cash, and paintings made easier targets than, say, a bank or an armoured truck. Narcotics dealers used them as trading cards. Thieves sold them through fences for a fraction of their true value. Or occasionally, they were stolen to order for people who ran roughshod over others to satisfy their selfish desires.
The police didn’t tend to take art theft seriously either. As long as nobody got hurt and the insurance companies paid up, cultural crimes got put on the back burner. Despite the vast sums of money involved, museum heists got handled by the same squad as a common or garden burglary, and those cops didn’t have the knowledge or the resources to recover stolen paintings.
How did Alaric know all this? Because he’d once been a member of the FBI’s Art Crime Team, a small band of investigators and undercover agents who specialised in recovering treasures that would otherwise be lost forever. It had been a surprise transfer, a promotion, and it made a change from dealing with plain ol’ RICO violations. Although the Art Crime Team worked out of Washington, DC, he’d spent much of his time overseas, skulking through the underbelly of society in search of missing cultural artifacts. Many of them made their way to the United States—it was the biggest market in the world for stolen treasures.
One day, Alaric might have masqueraded as a thief, the next, as a middleman or a buyer. Undercover work was his speciality, the ability to hide in plain sight a skill he’d been perfecting since childhood. Colleagues called him a chameleon. His father was a diplomat, and moving from country to country had meant Alaric learned to fit in quickly. He’d lived everywhere from England to Italy to Tanzania to Poland, and as a result, he’d learned more about people than an entire anthropology department. It had been only natural for him to join the CIA after college and take his hobby of being places where he shouldn’t to a whole other level. Bureaucracy and a boss he couldn’t stand led him to quit after four years, but the FBI had welcomed him with open arms. At least, they had until they’d fired him.
Hence today’s little excursion.
Excerpt – Sky…
My stomach grumbled as I sipped my coffee, and the sight of the guy next to me eating a chocolate muffin didn’t help. Three hours had passed since I’d eaten bread and jam for breakfast. It should have been toast, but the toaster was broken, and I refused to fork out for another one. Someone would only trash it again.
I’d chosen the table by the window for a reason, and as I sipped, I kept an eye on the comings and goings in the car park outside. A Toyota hatchback pulled up—a possibility because I preferred smaller cars—but the woman bleeped the doors locked before disappearing along the street. No go.
“I haven’t seen you in here before,” the guy at the next table said.
Please, not now. I didn’t have time to get hit on this morning. Things to do, a car to purloin.
I put on a puzzled expression. “Nie rozumiem.”
There were advantages to having a Polish housemate. Paulius may have struggled with the washing up, but he offered free language lessons and his plumbing skills were on point. “I don’t understand” was one of the first phrases he’d taught me, and it came in mighty handy on occasion. The guy beside me shrugged and went back to his muffin while I carried on with one of my favourite activities: people watching.
Not to brag or anything, but I’d got good at reading people over the years. My survival depended on it. I knew which guys would buy drinks off me in the club and which would try to cop a feel. I could pick out the arrogant assholes who’d be so busy staring at my tits that they wouldn’t notice as I nicked their wallet. And I could spot the subtle tremor of a junkie out for his next fix from a hundred yards away. Sure, I made the odd misjudgement—and once, a monumental fuck-up—but my instincts were generally right.
Today, I watched a girl drag a poodle past on a fancy leash, pink and sparkly. Not her own dog. Nobody who’d spent thousands on a designer pooch and accessories would yank the thing along like that. A businessman walked by clutching the handle of his briefcase so tightly his knuckles turned white. He had something important in there. Cash? Jewellery? We were in a posh part of London, after all. Or just that one big contract he couldn’t afford to lose?
A slender blonde climbed out of a Fiesta and tucked the key into the side pocket of her tailored jacket. Pale pink, and it looked like silk. She obviously had money to spend on dry cleaning, yet she drove a cheap car? A contradiction in terms, but when she tried to go in through the exit and had to backtrack, I figured she was the type of woman to own a satnav.
I hastily drained my coffee, grabbed a basket, and caught up with her in the produce section, where she was comparing a bag of regular carrots to the more expensive organic ones.
Oh, to have that luxury. Most of the time, I survived on instant noodles and whatever leftovers Stumpy brought back from his job in the pub. To me, vegetables were a treat. She went with the organic version—no surprises there—and as she turned, I hip-checked her hard enough to send her handbag flying.
“Gosh, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry.”
So far, so good. That shit went everywhere. The woman carried an entire fucking department store in her damn purse, including—I shit you not—a can of mosquito repellant. Where did she think we were? The bloody rainforest? I bent to help her scoop up all the junk and bumped her again.
“Oops, I’m such a klutz.”
“It’s fine.” Her words were polite, but her tone was…not angry, more jaded. “Accidents happen.”
In the confusion, it was easy for me to slip the car key out of her pocket and into mine, and I smiled inwardly as I fished a pair of tights out of a display of cucumbers, handed them to her, and backed away. Phase one: complete.
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