“Do you want to come in for a drink?”
“A man can only endure so much torture.” His expression rueful, he traced a knuckle lightly over the bruise she’d already forgotten. “Unless you’re ready to initiate phase three, we’d better call it a night.”
She was ready. More than ready. But the companionship she and Dev had shared after leaving Inspector Delacroix’s office had delivered as much punch as the hours they’d spent tangled up in the sheets. A different kind of punch, admittedly. Emotional rather than physical, but every bit as potent.
Although she knew she’d regret it the moment she closed the door, Sarah nodded. “Let’s give phase two a little more time.”
* * *
She was right. She did regret it. But she decided the additional hours she spent curled up on the sofa watching very boring TV were appropriate punishment for being so stupid. She loved Dev. He obviously loved her. Why couldn’t she just trust her instincts and...
The buzz of her cell phone cut into her disgusted thoughts. She reached for the instrument, half hoping it was Alexis trying to reach her again. Sarah was in the mood to really, really unload on her ex-boss. When her sister’s picture flashed up on the screen, she almost dropped the phone in her excitement and relief.
“Gina! Where are you?”
“Lucerne. I...I waited until morning in New York to call you but...”
“I’m not in New York. I’m in Paris, as you would know if you’d bothered to answer any of my calls.”
“Thank God!”
The moaned exclamation startled her, but not as much as the sobs her sister suddenly broke into. Sarah lurched upright on the sofa, the angry tirade she’d intended to deliver instantly forgotten.
“What’s wrong? Gina! What’s happened?”
A dozen different disasters flooded into her mind. Gina had taken a tumble on the ski slopes. Broken a leg or an arm. Or her neck. She could be paralyzed. Breathing by machine.
“Are you hurt?” she demanded, fear icing her heart. “Gina, are you in the hospital?”
“Nooo.”
The low wail left her limp with relief. In almost the next heartbeat, panic once again fluttered like a trapped bird inside her chest. She could count on the fingers of one hand the times she’d heard her always-upbeat, always-sunny sister cry.
“Sweetie, talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I can’t. Not...not over the phone. Please come, Sarah. Please! I need you.”
It didn’t even occur to her to say no. “I’ll catch the next flight to Lucerne. Tell me where you’re staying.”
“The Rebstock.”
“The hotel Grandmama took us to the summer you turned fourteen?”
That set off another bout of noisy, hiccuping sobs. “Don’t...don’t tell Grandmama about this.”
About what? Somehow, Sarah choked back the shout and offered a soothing promise.
“I won’t. Just keep your phone on, Gina. I’ll call you as soon as I know when I can get there.”
She cut the connection, switched to the phone’s internet browser and pulled up a schedule of flights from Paris to Lucerne. Her pulse jumped when she found a late-night shuttle to Zurich that departed Charles de Gaulle Airport at 11:50 p.m. From there she’d have to rent a car and drive the sixty-five kilometers to Lake Lucerne.
She could make the flight. She had to make it. Her heart racing, she reserved a seat and scrambled off the sofa. She started for the bedroom to throw some things together but made a quick detour to the sitting room desk and snatched up the house phone.
“Come on, Dev. Answer!”
Her quivering nerves stretched tighter as it rang six times, then cut to the hotel operator.
“May I help you, Lady Sarah?”
“I’m trying to reach Monsieur Hunter, but he doesn’t answer.”
“May I take a message for you?”
“Yes, please. Tell him to call me as soon as possible.”
Hell! Where was he?
Slamming the phone down, she dashed into the bedroom. She didn’t have time to pack. Just shove her laptop in her shoulder tote, grab her sweater coat, make sure her purse held her passport and credit cards and run.
While the elevator made its descent, she tried to reach Dev by cell phone. She’d just burst into the lobby when he answered on a husky, teasing note.
“Please tell me you’ve decided to put me out of my misery.”
“Where are you?” The phone jammed to her ear, she rushed through the lobby. “I called your room but there wasn’t any answer.
“I couldn’t sleep. I went out for a walk.” He caught the tension in her voice. The teasing note dropped out of his. “Why? What’s up?”
“Gina just called.”
“It’s about time.”
She pushed through the front door. The fog had cleared, thank God, and several taxis still cruised the streets. She waved a frantic arm to flag one down, the phone clutched in her other fist.
“She’s in some kind of trouble, Dev.”
“So what else is new?”
If she hadn’t been so worried, the sarcastic comment might not have fired her up as hot and fast as it did.
“Spare me the editorial,” she snapped back angrily. “My sister needs me. I’m on my way to Switzerland.”
“Whoa! Hold on a minute...”
The taxi rolled up to the curb. She jumped in and issued a terse order. “De Gaulle Airport. Hurry, please.”
“Dammit, Sarah, I can’t be more than ten or fifteen minutes from the hotel. Wait until I get back and we’ll sort this out together.”
“She’s my sister. I’ll sort it out.” She was too rushed and too torqued by his sarcasm to measure her words. “I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s what.”
“Yeah,” he bit out, as pissed off now as she was. “You do that.”
In no mood to soothe his ruffled feathers, she cut the connection and leaned into the Plexiglas divider.
“I need to catch an eleven-fifty flight,” she told the cabdriver. “There’s an extra hundred francs in it for you if I make it.”
* * *
The Swiss Air flight was only half-full. Most of the passengers looked like businessmen who wanted to be on scene when Zurich’s hundreds of banks opened for business in the morning. There were a few tourists scattered among them, and several students with crammed backpacks getting a jump start on spring break in the Alps.
Sarah stared out the window through most of the ninety-minute flight. The inky darkness beyond the strobe lights on the wing provided no answers to the worried questions tumbling through her mind.
Was it the ski instructor? Had he left Gina stranded in Lucerne? Or Dev’s Byzantine medallion? Had she tried to sell it and smacked up against some law against peddling antiquities on the black market?
Her stomach was twisted into knots by the time they landed in Zurich, and she rushed to the airport’s Europcar desk. Fifteen minutes later she was behind the wheel of a rented Peugeot and zipping out of the airport. Once she hit the main motorway, she fumbled her phone out of her purse and speed-dialed her sister.
“I