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killed a man who’d simply tried to protect his wife and daughters. Killed him because of his race, his religion, because he was in the way.
    He had no other explanation, and that seemed the worst crime of all. He’d been seventeen, eager to show that he was a man, and so he’d engaged in acts that rendered him unfit to live as a cockroach. He’d confused brutality with courage, narcissism with pride, and a Nazi uniform with honor. Had he become a man that day?
    Oh, yes. He’d become a weak, evil, greedy opportunist of a man. And he’d celebrated by getting stinking drunk, so drunk that he almost succeeded in forgetting that he’d crowned himself a murderer, a thief, and then a rapist.
    These were things that he could never, ever allow his family to know. And if he didn’t find the St. George necklace immediately, he may as well kiss his son and his granddaughters good-bye. He would die miserably, alone, and in shame.
    Litsky walked on rubbery legs to the telephone and curled the receiver into his shaking, sweaty palm. He knew of only one agency that could recover the St. George necklace quickly, with few questions asked: the U.S.-based ARTemis, Inc.

Six
    Avy Hunt didn’t feel like the wealthy, successful, daring owner of a thriving art-recovery business. At the moment she felt small, defeated, and infinitely weary after hours of being held and interrogated by security at Venice’s Marco Polo Airport.
    It was her own fault, which made it worse. She’d gotten onto a flight, then forced her way off of it—and who could blame the officials for thinking she must have planted a bomb?
    Over and over again she denied it, explaining in her passable Italian that she’d gotten an urgent message that caused her to abruptly change her travel plans. She’d been searched from head to toe, her documents and personal belongings had been scrutinized, and she’d been grilled on the same questions by four different security people, who tried to catch her in any form of half-truth or lie. Only a well-placed contact at the American embassy who vouched for her personally and professionally had prevented her from spending the night in jail.
    She’d been able to board a late flight to London out of Venice, and now she attempted to sleep on one from London to Moscow. But though she was exhausted and emotionally tapped out, her brain refused to cooperate and shut down.
    Why did Liam, her fiancé and a former master thief, want her to meet him in Moscow? What he needed was to get back to the U.S., where thanks to a joint sting operation with the FBI, he had a get-out-of-jail card, free and clear.
    But Liam had taken very seriously her refusal to marry him until he’d replaced every item he’d ever stolen—and he’d filched things from all over the world.
    What had he taken in Russia? A painting? A reliquary? A ceremonial weapon? Who knew? But the stakes had risen. In Europe, if caught, Liam would go to jail. In Russia, he could simply disappear—and even if the British embassy made inquiries, everyone would assume that he’d just gone back to his old ways of living off the grid under a variety of aliases.
    Not for the first time, Avy cursed the day she’d ever met Sir Liam James, when she’d pitted her skill set against his in the recovery of the Sword of Alexander.
    He was the love of her life . . . and the bane of her existence. He was her weakness, and she’d always prided herself on having none. She’d been calm, confident, and clearheaded before the handsome, silver-tongued bastard entered her life. And now? She’d become a blithering idiot, a quivering Jell-O of indecision. She was betraying all the principles her U.S. Marshal father had raised her to believe in.
    All because Liam had shown her that the world and her values weren’t a simple matter of black and white. That even the letter of the law and its intent could be pulled and stretched like taffy. And that several wrongs could indeed, in the end, add up to a