“I’d like you to answer the question.”
“I just did,” Ann pointed out.
“Why are you being evasive?”
Ann shifted her body on the hard metal chair. She was being honest, not evasive, and she resented the agent’s new barrage of questions. She articulated her next words slowly and carefully. “We were friends. He lied about me. We are no longer friends.”
Heidi stood.
Ann longed to do the same. But every time she’d tried to rise from the uncomfortable chair, someone had brusquely ordered her to sit back down. Her legs were starting to cramp from inactivity, and her butt was killing her.
“Where’s the statue?” Heidi fired at her.
“I don’t know.”
“Where’s Roark Black?”
“I have no idea.”
“He works for you.”
“He works for Waverly’s.”
Heidi smirked. “Semantics.”
“‘I don’t know where he is,’ is not semantics. It’s a statement of fact.”
“You do know it’s illegal to lie to Interpol.”
“You do know I’m capable of calling a reporter at the New York Times.”
Heidi braced her hands on the table, making triangles out of her thumbs and forefingers, and leaned forward. “Is that a threat?”
Ann realized her nerves were getting frayed, and her temper was starting to boil. She allowed for the possibility that she was no longer acting in her own best interest. “I’d like to call my lawyer.”
“Guilty people say that all the time.”
“So do women who’ve been denied a restroom for five hours.”
Heidi’s expression turned smug. “I can hold you for twenty-four hours without charging you.”
“And without a restroom?” Ann taunted.
“You think this is a joke?”
“I think this is ridiculous. I’ve answered every question six times over. I have complete faith in Roark Black. There are two statues at play here. And Waverly’s is absolutely not trading in stolen antiquities.”
“So, you raised the Titanic?”
“I don’t know the whys and the hows of where he got it, I only know Roark has the missing statue, not the stolen one.”
Roark had also signed a confidentiality agreement with the mysterious owner of the Gold Heart statue that had gone missing one hundred years ago. He’d destroy his own career and compromise Waverly’s reputation if he revealed the person’s identity to anyone, including Ann.
“Where’s the proof?” Heidi demanded.
“Where’s my lawyer?” Ann shot back.
Heidi drew a breath and rose to full height. “You really want to go that route?”
Ann was out of patience. She was through being cooperative, through measuring her words. She was innocent, and nothing anybody said or did would alter that fact. “You really want a long and productive career in law enforcement?”
Heidi’s brows shot up.
“Then start looking for a new suspect,” said Ann. “Because it’s not me, and it’s not Roark. Maybe it is Dalton. Heaven knows he’s the guy with a motive to discredit Waverly’s. But if it is him, he’s done it without my knowledge and certainly without my cooperation. I’m about to stop talking, Agent Shaw, and there’s not a single thing you can do to make me say more. You want to be the hero, solve the big, international case, get promoted? Then stop focusing on me.”
Heidi paused for a beat. “You’re an eloquent speaker.”
Ann felt like she ought to say thank-you, but she kept her lips pressed tightly together.
“Then again, most liars are,” Heidi finished.
Ann folded her hand on the table in front of her. She’d requested a restroom, and she’d requested a lawyer. If they were going to deny her requests, tromp all over her civil rights, she really would take the story to the New York Times.
* * *
Crown Prince Raif Khouri was completely out of patience. He didn’t know how investigations were conducted in America, but in his own country of Rayas, Ann Richardson would have been thrown in jail by now. Let her spend a few nights in the bowels of Traitor’s Prison; she’d be begging for an opportunity to confess.
He should have kept her in Rayas when she’d showed up there last month. Though he supposed canceling her visa and locking her up might have caused an international incident. And, at the time, he had been as anxious to get rid of her as she was to leave.
“Your Royal Highness?” A voice came over the intercom of the Gulfstream. “We’ll be landing at Teterboro in a few minutes.”
“Thank you, Hari,” Raif responded. He straightened in the white leather seat, stretching the circulation back into his legs.
“I can show you the town while we’re here,” said Raif’s cousin Tariq, gazing out his own window at the Manhattan skyline. Tariq had spent three years at Harvard, coming away with a law degree.
Raif’s father, King Safwah, believed that an international education for the extended royal family would strengthen Rayas. Raif himself had spent two years at Oxford, studying history and politics. He’d visited many countries in Europe and Asia, but this was his first trip to America.
“We’re not here to do the town,” he pointed out to Tariq.
Tariq responded with a lascivious grin and a quirk of his dark brows. “American woman are not like Rayasian women.”
“We’re not here to chase women.” Well, not plural anyway. They were here to chase and catch one particular woman. And then Raif was going to make her talk.
“There’s this one restaurant that overlooks Central Park, and—”
“You want me to send you home?” Raif demanded.
“I want you to lighten up.” Tariq was Raif’s third cousin, but still an important player in the Rayasian royal circle. It gave him the right to be more forthright than others when speaking to Raif. But only to a point.
“We’re here to find the Gold Heart statue,” Raif stated firmly.
“We have to eat.”
“We have to focus.”
“And we’ll do that a whole lot better with sustenance, such as maple glazed salmon and matsutake mushrooms.”
“You should have been a litigator,” Raif grumbled, fastening his seat belt as the landing gear whined then clunked into place. The two men had been friends since childhood, and he doubted he’d ever beaten Tariq in an argument.
Tariq leaned his head back in his seat, bracing himself for the landing. “I would have been a litigator. But the king objected.”
“When I am king, you’ll never be a litigator.”
“When you are king, I am seeking asylum in Dubai.”
Both men fought grins.
“Unless I can get you to lighten up,” Tariq finished. “Maybe get you a girl.”
“I can get my own girls.” Raif needed to be discreet, of course, but he was no fan of celibacy.
The wheels of the Gulfstream touched smoothly onto the runway, its brakes engaging as they sped through