Ice Blue - Anne Stuart [36]
He was not a happy man. They could have searched all night and he would have been content. They could have driven south and tracked down her sister. But push had come to shove, and he had no more reason for delaying. He had orders, a job to do, and he was going to do it.
He pushed away from the wall of the garage and approached the Duesenberg, filling the doorway, blocking out the light from outside. He could see two things inside the huge old car. She’d placed the long-lost Hayashi Urn on the leather seat beside her, and even in shadow it was beautiful. And then he looked at her, forgetting all about the ancient ceramic he’d been tracking for months, and other people had been tracking for centuries.
She had blue eyes, not quite the intense shade of the urn, but bright blue nevertheless, and her wet hair was beginning to dry. She sat there on the floor of the car, unmoving, as if she knew what was coming now that she’d finally given him what he wanted.
He had no choice. He climbed into the car as she tried to back up against the far door, and there was no missing the panic in her eyes. She knew.
And he couldn’t let that stop him.
Jillian Marie Lovitz, only child of Raphael and Lianne Lovitz, stuck out her thumb. Her big sister would be horrified at the thought of Jilly hitchhiking, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and at the moment Jilly was most definitely a beggar, with exactly thirty-seven cents in her pocket.
Why anyone ever thought she’d just go off with the Petersens was something she couldn’t quite fathom. Whoever came up with this little idea knew absolutely nothing about her.
Few people did know her, with the exception of her half sister, Summer. Her parents were blindly adoring, and she was very fond of them in a maternal way. Her mother had the intellect of a toaster oven, her father could only concentrate on making money, and both of them thought their little darling was an innocent princess.
Jilly hadn’t been innocent since she was twelve years old and walked in on her mother doing the gardener. While her father watched.
Neither of them had seen her, thank heavens. And she’d reacted like a child, running away to stay with Summer until she could begin to see things clearly.
Summer had always been more like a mother to her, even though she was only twelve years older. Lianne tended to see her older daughter as a liability, disputing her own claims of youth, and her younger daughter as a fashion accessory. Ralph didn’t pay much attention at all, except to give Jilly money.
Which was fine; they trusted her implicitly and gave her no trouble. She had her life carefully arranged. She was one of those freakishly smart kids, starting her second year of college at age sixteen, and she had every intention of moving into her own apartment in the next few months. Her only problem was getting her graduate student lab partner to seduce her, but she was working on that.
In the meantime she’d been pulled out of classes and sent south on the flimsiest of excuses. The Petersens were friends of her father’s, though she couldn’t remember ever meeting them before, and they were the least likely of people to show up to whisk her out of harm’s way, particularly when that harm was a nebulous threat from some deranged stalker she’d never even heard of.
They hadn’t given her much of a chance to protest, and they watched her like hawks once they got to the remote cabin out in the desert. She’d had to wait two days until they’d finally relaxed enough to think she believed them.
It had been tricky getting past the locked doors and the dogs without causing too much noise, hence she hadn’t been able to rifle through Mildred’s purse for some much-needed cash. Jilly’s main goal was to get the hell out of there, back to L.A.
She figured as soon as she could get to a pay phone she could call her parents to find out what was happening. Even better, she could call Summer, who’d jump in her Volvo and come and get her, no questions asked. The Petersens only had