Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
For several seconds, I could only stare at the five words.
MAKE HER WEAR MY GIFT.
My fingers tightened around the velvet box until the gold edging pressed into my palm.
“This was taken from outside my apartment?”
Kamal nodded once.
“When?”
“Last night.”
I looked at the photograph again.
I remembered that moment.
I had been standing in my bedroom window with a cup of tea, staring at the snow.
I had felt safe.
That was the part that frightened me most.
Not that someone had watched me.
That they had watched while I believed no one was there.
“Who found this?”
“One of my men.”
I looked up sharply.
“One of your men was outside my apartment?”
Kamal’s expression did not change.
“Yes.”
Anger pierced straight through the fear.
“You have people watching my home?”
“Since last week.”
“Why?”
His silence told me I wasn’t going to like the answer.
“Kamal.”
He placed the photograph on my desk.
“Three nights ago, someone followed you from the gallery to the subway.”
I stared at him.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t know if it was connected to you or me.”
“To you?”
He glanced toward the necklace.
“I have enemies.”
“That might be the understatement of the century.”
For the first time, his mouth almost moved.
Almost.
Then the gallery’s security manager appeared in the doorway.
Selim was in his sixties, broad and gray-haired, with the tired eyes of a man who had spent his life noticing everything other people ignored.
“We found where the photograph was left,” he said.
Kamal turned.
“Show me.”
I grabbed my coat.
Kamal looked at me.
“No.”
I kept putting it on.
“That word seems to be your favorite.”
“You are staying here.”
“I am the person in the photograph.”
“Exactly.”
“And therefore I’m coming.”
His jaw tightened.
Selim looked between us, clearly wishing he worked somewhere normal.
Finally Kamal said, “Stay beside me.”
“I was planning to.”
That surprised him.
It surprised me too.
We went downstairs through the private gallery corridor.
The building occupied an old limestone mansion on East Seventy-Third Street. Most visitors never saw the back stairway that led to the conservation rooms, private vaults, and staff entrance.
We stopped beside the delivery vestibule.
A narrow antique table stood beneath a brass wall lamp.
On it sat another photograph.
I recognized my apartment building.
This one showed the front entrance.
I was stepping out wearing my red winter coat.
Beside me stood a man.
My older brother, Daniel.
My heart stopped.
Daniel had visited from Boston two weeks earlier.
He had stayed exactly one night.
Across the bottom of the photograph someone had drawn a black X through his face.
I reached for it.
Kamal caught my wrist.
“Don’t touch.”
I looked at his hand.
He released me immediately.
“Sorry.”
Selim lifted the photograph with gloves.
There was writing on the back.
Kamal read it first.
Something changed in his expression.
“What does it say?”
He hesitated.
I held out my hand.
“Give it to me.”
Selim passed it over.
The handwriting was the same.
ASK HER WHAT HER BROTHER STOLE.
I stared at the sentence.
“Daniel didn’t steal anything.”
Kamal was watching me too carefully.
“How certain are you?”
“He’s a pediatric surgeon.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is if you know my brother.”
“People have many lives.”
Something in his tone irritated me.
“Do you?”
His eyes met mine.
“Yes.”
The honesty silenced me.
Selim cleared his throat.
“We also checked the delivery cameras.”
“And?”
“The necklace was brought in this morning.”
“By whom?” I asked.
“A courier.”
Of course.
“Can we identify him?”
“We already did.”
Selim pulled out his phone.
Security footage showed a thin man in a navy cap entering the gallery with the velvet box.
The image sharpened.
My stomach turned.
“I know him.”
Kamal looked at me.
“Who?”
“His name is Owen Price.”
Kamal’s eyes narrowed.
“Collector?”
“Art handler. Freelance. He worked here last spring.”
“Why did he leave?”
I hesitated.
Because suddenly I remembered something I had almost forgotten.
“There was an inventory problem.”
“What kind?”
“A small Renaissance sketch disappeared during a private viewing.”
Kamal’s face hardened.
“And?”
“It turned up two days later in the wrong crate.”
“Did you believe that was an accident?”
“At the time.”
“And now?”
I looked again at Owen’s face.
“I don’t know.”
Kamal took the phone.
“When did he last contact you?”
“He sent me a message in October asking whether the gallery was hiring.”
“Did you answer?”
“I said no.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
Selim shook his head.
“He isn’t the sender.”
We both turned.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because Owen Price is dead.”
The words dropped into the room like a piece of glass.
“What?”
Kamal went still.
Selim continued carefully.
“Police found him in his apartment six days ago. Accidental overdose, according to the preliminary report.”
My skin went cold.
“Then who delivered the box?”
Selim enlarged the footage.
The resemblance was extraordinary.
Same height.
Same narrow jaw.
Same dark eyes.
But now that I looked carefully, something was wrong.
The man’s left ear.
Owen had worn a small silver hoop.
I remembered because gallery policy prohibited visible jewelry during installations, and he always complained when asked to remove it.
This man’s ear showed no piercing.
Kamal saw it too.
“Someone disguised himself.”
I felt sick.
“Why use Owen’s face?”
“To make us look backward,” Kamal said.
“Toward what?”
“The missing sketch.”
My confusion deepened.
“That sketch had nothing to do with me.”
Kamal’s gaze hardened.
“What was the artist?”
“Bellini workshop. Late fifteenth century.”
“And the subject?”
I tried to remember the catalog entry.
“A woman holding a pomegranate.”
Selim and Kamal exchanged a look.
A very small look.
But I caught it.
“What?”
Neither spoke.
“Kamal.”
He exhaled.
“That drawing came from the Demir Collection.”
“So?”
“My mother’s family.”
I stared at him.
“You never told me your family owned it.”
“It wasn’t relevant.”
“It feels relevant now.”
“Yes.”
He walked back toward the main gallery.
I followed.
The necklace still sat on my desk.
Kamal opened the box again.
This time he lifted the strand carefully and examined the diamond snowflake with a jeweler’s loupe.
“What are you looking for?”
“A hallmark.”
He rotated the clasp.
Then stopped.
“There.”
On the platinum hook was a tiny engraved symbol.
A pomegranate.
My skin prickled.
“The same symbol as the sketch?”
“No.”
His voice had changed.
“The same symbol my mother used.”
I stared at him.
“Your mother was a jeweler?”
“No.”
“She collected jewelry?”
“No.”
“Then what does it mean?”
Kamal looked toward Selim.
Something unspoken passed between them.
I folded my arms.
“I am standing in a room with my photograph, a fifty-thousand-dollar necklace, and a dead man’s face on our security footage. This is not the moment for male telepathy.”
Selim actually coughed to hide a laugh.
Kamal didn’t.
He looked at me.
“My mother disappeared twenty-two years ago.”
The sentence knocked the irritation out of me.
“What do you mean, disappeared?”
“I mean she left our home one morning and never returned.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I was sixteen.”
“Was she kidnapped?”
“That was what my father believed.”
“Was there a ransom?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
“We never learned.”
I looked at the tiny pomegranate.
“And that symbol?”
“She engraved it on things she wanted me to remember.”
My throat tightened.
A new thought arrived.
“Did she own pearls like these?”
Kamal’s face went still.
“Yes.”
My pulse jumped.
“The necklace?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
He lifted one pearl between two fingers.
“My mother had a strand of baroque pearls. They disappeared with her.”
I stopped breathing.
“So this necklace belonged to her?”
“I said not exactly.”
He turned the diamond snowflake over.
Something clicked.
A tiny panel opened in the pendant.
Inside was a folded strip of paper.
I stared at him.
Kamal removed it with tweezers.
The paper was yellowed with age.
There were only two lines.
The first was written in Turkish.
The second was English.
I recognized the English handwriting immediately.
It belonged to my brother.
Kamal read it.
Then looked at me with an expression I had never seen before.
Not jealousy.
Not fear.
Betrayal.
The note said:
KAMAL MUST NEVER KNOW HIS MOTHER CAME TO SEE ISA.
May you like
And beneath it, Daniel had written a date.
Six months ago.
