Sean tried to look like a lunchtime browser, but adrenalin pulsed like a caffeine dump, and the arm “Jane” linked hers in was as rigid as the rest of him. For the past ten minutes they’d meandered the antiques market, which mostly held midcentury-modern items, heavy on furniture, jewelry, and snobby-looking clerks.

What if El Bashan saw through the charade? What if the antiques dealer packed a concealed weapon? Or wore a suicide vest? What kind of a stupid…?

“What’s it like working with my brother?” Sean blurted to shut down the thoughts.

“Probably the same as growing up with him.” Margo laughed, completely at ease or else putting on a terrific front. “Arrogant, decisive… As you know, I’m the special agent, but it’s hard to pull rank when he’s on my team.”

“Be careful. He’ll take that inch and run all the way to Oklahoma.”

Margo shrugged as if the warning were sour grapes from an envious brother. “He’s in a new program where we provide a lot of slack and see what they do with it.”

Enough to run their own investigation at midnight? “Where were you Saturday night?”

“The O’Hare interview sounded straightforward enough to send Jake and Dirk as the FBI task force representatives. And by all accounts—” she gestured to him, “—he made a good call bringing you back as a consultant.” She grinned, eyes merry. “He’s never experienced failure in any form, am I right?”

“Now multiply that three more times and you’ve got my older brothers.” Sean tried grinning back, but his cheeks felt inflexible, like they were in a territorial dispute with his lips.

“No kidding? What do your other brothers do?”

Look up noble in the dictionary. “Jace is the oldest. Patrick is a lieutenant at Fire Station One Twenty-six on South Kingston. Cage and Dillon are still in Afghanistan. Both Special Forces.”

“No one else works with art?”

That familiar defensiveness crept up Sean’s spine. Already the easy rapport with Margo was taking a turn. “It’s called conservation and restoration.”

Margo slowed down, pulled out her phone, and texted, which seemed ruder than normal. He glanced away. A booth cluttered with Middle Eastern wares was on the right, and a portly man, who resembled the photograph in the file, was on the far side of the booth, speaking on his cell phone in a foreign language. Oh yeah. I’m tracking down ISIS in the middle of a Chicago market. Sean sucked in a breath.

“Oh, look, William,” Margo exclaimed, pocketing the phone and dragging him to the booth’s glass-partitioned case. Jewelry in bronze, turquoise, amber, and other semiprecious stones winked up at him. “Let’s go in.”

She marched fearlessly into the small, jam-packed space, but Sean stayed put, studying the setup. These artifacts were not Mesopotamian era. Nothing looked older than a couple of hundred years, which didn’t rule them out from being conflict antiquities, but only provenances would prove or disprove that. At the end of his perusal, he met El Bashtan’s gaze. The dealer’s sentences became staccato, and the call quickly ended. Sean wandered over to an oak curio cabinet where Margo ogled hand mirrors, picture frames, and some feminine knickknacks Sean couldn’t identify.

El Bashtan’s pungent cologne, a citric base with heavy tobacco notes, marked his approach long before he stood behind them. “May I be of assistance?”

Sean turned, instinctively settling himself on the balls of his feet—a fight stance. The shopkeeper laced his fingers on the apex of his belly in a dainty manner. His eyes seemed friendly enough, but watchful. A man who missed very little. Sean swallowed dust.

Margo gestured to Sean with an indulgent smile. “My husband knows antiques. He’s always searching for something unusual.”

“I’m on the procurement committee for a small museum in Wisconsin,” Sean said, surprised his voice sounded so matter-of-fact. He took out the thick wallet and withdrew a business card, ignoring the man’s wide-eyed reaction to the wad of bills stacked inside. “My specialty is ancient Middle Eastern artifacts.” The high-value smuggled artifacts would probably be in a more private location. “The items I’m interested in are much older than these. Do you know of any another shops in the area?” He stuffed the wallet back in his pocket.

Except for one raised eyebrow, El Bashtan regarded him without expression. Sean didn’t blink, although surely the man could see the rapidly throbbing carotid in his neck.

What a colossal mistake, thinking he could handle an undercover assignment! He was better suited back at headquarters, left alone to examine these items from the tape on Margo’s blouse button. Even then, a lot would be guesswork. Archeology was synonymous with research and testing. He couldn’t just look at that Egyptian necklace over there and immediately identify it as an ancient carnelian glass funereal collar, worn during the reign of Thutmose III in Dynasty 18. He doubted even a highly trained field archeologist could. But at least someone else wouldn’t be acting. He could barely pull off being Sean Quinn, much less an undercover museum curator.

“What is it you are looking for, Mister…” El Bashtan eyed the business card at arm’s length. “Bixby?”

Sean mentally flipped through the file he’d been given on the way to the airport, then rattled off confiscated relics. “Vessels, pottery, coins, statues, jewelry—around the time of the Bronze Age. Or perhaps Roman, Greek, and Byzantine periods. Naturally, each would need a well-documented provenance.”

“Of course, of course.” El Bashtan looked around his store as if he could magically open a drawer or cabinet and present such an item. Margo had gone back to wrapping up her slow circle of the booth, looking high and low with an enchanted expression. No doubt her film footage would be useless, filed away forever.

El Bashtan held up the fake business card again. “If I may take some information from you, I shall call my sources. I can get you museum-quality pieces. Nothing illegal, of course, nothing from Daesh.” The highly derogatory Arabic term for ISIS again left Sean like a fish out of water. Would a small-town Wisconsin curator know that?

He nodded stiffly and followed the seller to a beat-up desk in the corner. El Bashtan asked more detailed questions about the relics Sean sought and jotted notes. When asked about a budget, Sean made up a range from moderate to hinting at extravagant. Since there was an email address on the business card, he suggested sending photographs and prices. Let Jace and the new anthropologist, Joe Taylor, take it from there.

El Bashtan reiterated that he’d call his contact, and was robustly confident he could meet the museum’s requirements. “And for the madam,” he said as Margo sidled up. He flourished a small, exquisitely engraved wooden box. “This is from Kabul, my homeland.” He showed it to Margo with a smile. “To thank you both for your kind visit today.” After quickly wrapping and bagging it, he gave Sean his card. “We shall meet again, Mr. Bixby.”

Doubtful. Sean nodded and followed Margo around the glass partition and back into the main hall. “Hurry, dear, we’ll be late to pick up Alice.” She tugged his arm.

Sean blinked over at her, and the warning glare she returned was strong enough to shut his mouth. They could talk in the Suburban.

Once outside, though, she tightened the grip on his arm and walked right by it. “Taxi!”

Sean pivoted and looked at the SUV. His ride back to work. His lunch hour was almost up. As the taxi pulled alongside, Margo whipped out her phone and rapidly typed a text, angling it so he could see the screen.

Received a box. GPS tracking or listening device? Initiate s.h. protocol.

“You getting in, ma’am?” the driver called through the passenger window.

“One minute.”

Her phone dinged: Roger that.

“What’s SH?” Sean asked.

Margo whipped open the cab door and held it for Sean. His mother would’ve had a stroke. “Get in.” The tone and her stance caught him by surprise. Here was the special agent in charge of this case. Here was the authority she hadn’t displayed in front of Jace, her lowly associate.

That observation took a back seat to the fact that Sean wasn’t joining the bureau on any further adventures. “I’ll get my own cab. I’ve got a ton of work.” He added, “See you at home, Jane,” in case the box was bugged.

“Folks?” the cab driver called impatiently.

“Get. In.”

Sean shook his head, scanning the block for another taxi. She stepped into his personal space and snarled the command a third time. He blinked down into her fresh cheerleader face, screwed up in aggravation. If he had a dime for every time a woman looked at him like that…

He took a deep breath, prepared to politely decline again, when her subtle, all-American scent filled his nostrils. He couldn’t help himself. “Dove soap?”

“Oh my God. What’s wrong with you?” She pushed him into the cab, and just like that, Sean was kidnapped by the FBI—again.