When Helen Hu’s eyes flared at him as she paced back and forth in the room, Reuben Costa had never seen dark-brown eyes more intense when angry.

Ah, emotions.

Emotions had been Reuben’s own downfall.

When his father had died in prison, Reuben had been so distraught that he couldn’t work for weeks.

Then he swung back with a gale force into the work his father had left behind. He had kept only those people loyal to his father, and in the name of Frederico Costa, Reuben had scoured all of Europe looking for the most expensive artwork, paintings, sculptures, and jewels.

Unfortunately, three years of nonstop thievery had done him in.

Bitter and burned out, he had made one mistake while living in the shadows of the night.

One mistake: trusting a woman.

As his father had done.

For the next five years, he had whiled away his time in that Barcelona prison, contemplating why his father would give up everything for a woman he could never have. Mama Hu, someone else’s wife, had not reciprocated his father’s affections. Yet Frederico Costa had shamelessly pursued her.

It had to be in her eyes.

The same eyes that her daughter had inherited.

When they look at you, you cease to exist.

Reuben tried not to blink as Helen Hu stared at him now, her eyes boring into him, killing him softly…

No. He could take her on. He could be different from his father and avoid falling into the traps of a siren, such as this woman’s mother had been.

Like father, like son?

No. I will not look into her fiery eyes.

Fiery eyes.

Fiery?

Reuben had not met a fiery woman in five years. Then again, it had been impossible to meet a woman without a criminal record, not in an all-male prison in Barcelona.

Ah, but I’m out now.

Reuben sat quietly on the sofa, with nothing better to do than to listen to the tap-tap-tap of Helen’s black boots on the tiled floor. Every now and then she stopped in front of him, stared, sighed, and strutted away to the other end of the room.

She was an enigma. A puzzle.

Only hours before, she had loaned him her travel blanket.

Now she was shooting darts at him with her eyes.

It wasn’t his fault that Mama Hu was in big trouble. That woman tumbled into the soup herself.

Still, it was amusing to watch Helen react to the entire situation.

Beyond where Helen had been pacing, the sparsely furnished room elongated toward a couple of tables pushed up against a wall. There, a trio of one-way rectangular windows showcased the early morning Santorini skies.

Reuben wondered if Helen or Mama Hu had gotten any sleep.

Speaking of Mama Hu, INTERPOL agents and Hellenic Police officers had taken Mama Hu somewhere else to give her further instructions. The delivery of the three bejeweled Petros eggs had been a success, but there was no telling what would come next.

Since Mama Hu and her daughter were both American citizens, INTERPOL had contacted the FBI Art Crime Team. Special agents from their bureau in Rome would be waiting for them in Athens sometime today.

Athens.

Where Reuben had seen Mama Hu for the first time in fifteen years. She had shown up unannounced last week, offering to clear his father’s name of the murder charge.

An art thief Father had been, but not a murderer.

Yet, Father had been tried, convicted, and sent to prison for a murder of passion.

He had died in prison, so what good was clearing his name now?

Then again, Reuben had to do this for Father’s memory.

Somehow he had to make it all work out. Mama Hu had gotten herself into a tangled mess.

Of all people, Reuben knew how to unravel it. How to fix it.

Reuben had helped the FBI Art Crime Team before. That had been how his imprisonment had been reduced to five years.

There was no way now that he would do anything to jeopardize his freedom.

This was Mama Hu’s penance, her grief, her sin.

Not his.

“Why are they taking so long with Mom?” Helen’s voice was tinged with worry.

Reuben knew how it felt to lose a parent. In his case, his father. He had no memories of his mother, and thus hadn’t missed her at all.

“She could get herself killed.” Helen paced again.

“I told her.” Reuben uncrossed his legs. “I told her the moment she came to see me last week. I’m a free man now. I don’t want trouble.”

“But she didn’t listen.” Helen sighed.

Reuben wasn’t sure how to respond to that. If Helen had relationship trouble with her mother, there was no reason for him to get involved. A stranger merely passing through, Reuben only wanted to clear his father’s name.

A piece of cake, right?

Except this piece of cake had poison in it.

Helen stood at the window. Tapped the pane.

“Ballistic,” Reuben offered as he joined Helen at the window. Greeting his eyes was a panorama of more whitewashed buildings of Cycladic design, dropping away into the blue ocean.

Sometimes he wondered what was underneath all that water. Was Atlantis really down there? What about treasures—

Ah, those were the days.

Today he was a simple man.

Pushing thirty-eight, he was happy to lead a uncluttered life. Better easy and free, than complicated and incarcerated, no?

Working as a landscaper for his landlady in Athens suited Reuben just fine. She had given him a discount for his studio flat, and had provided him with all the tools he needed to carry on the business her late husband had started.

That was, until Mama Hu had appeared at his flat and shown him a photograph of three Petros eggs. Dazzling and bejeweled, they had been hidden away for fifteen years. Now they were worth untold millions in the black market.

And there were nine more of those.

A dozen eggs. Keys to the original Amber Room—or at least, parts of it.

Mama Hu had asked Reuben to go with her to the INTERPOL National Center Bureau in Athens, where they would meet someone she knew.

“Your mother wants to make things right,” Reuben explained to Helen.

“You said it like you don’t believe it.” Helen’s voice was almost a whisper.

Reuben didn’t respond.

“I think there’s something you haven’t told me.” Her eyes met his.

In the early morning sunlight, Helen’s eyes were not as dark brown as he had thought. The fire had ceased, and in its place was liquid tranquility.

Reuben could see speckles of gold in her eyes.

Gold?

In the glowing light, Helen’s features were part Asian and part…

European.

And those ethereal lips…

Her lips reminded Reuben of an old photograph of Mama Hu, the only one in his father’s safe deposit box in the Zurich bank, right next to a lady’s diamond bracelet of dubious origins.

There had been nothing else in the safe deposit box.

“It’s not polite to stare,” Helen said.

Reuben snapped out of his memory bank. He gazed into the great and marvelous outdoors. Seabirds flew by. In the distance, an airplane left streaks in the sky. Little puffy clouds floated here and there. The entire scenery looked like it came out of a children’s storybook.

“My mother can be chatty,” Helen continued. “She must’ve done something, said something to convince you to leave your clean life and return underground, where it’s dark and dirty, where you could lose your freedom again if you misstep.”

“We’re working with INTERPOL. It’s all legit. Besides, it’s over. The eggs have been delivered. We can all go home now.”

“Do you think that’s all?”

“Isn’t it?”

“My mother is unpredictable,” Helen said. “She broke up with her latest boyfriend two months ago and has been looking for something useful to do.”

“Too much information.”

“I want you to know where Mom is coming from.”

Reuben felt warm fingers on his arm. Then they were gone, as if she had done it without thinking and then changed her mind.

“This mystery about those Petros eggs…” Helen took a deep breath. “I wonder if Mom is trying to relive her past, back in the days when she and Dad roamed Europe, looking for cases to solve. They were building their PI business.”

“So you think it was all business?” It was premature for Reuben to tell Hellen about Father’s infatuation with Mama Hu. And how they had met long before Mama Hu had married someone else.

And then fifteen years ago, Father had met with Mama Hu again. They had also attended their mutual friend’s funeral. She had been run over by a bus while trying to cross a busy street in Thessaloniki.

“Look—I’m not trying to defend Mom.” Helen waved her hands about.

“You would see your mother in jail?”

“I will visit her.” Helen’s voice cracked.

She seemed to misunderstand what Reuben had tried to say, but he let it pass.

“Thieves go to jail. That’s all there is to it.” Helen bowed her head. “Dad worked so hard to build our PI company, and now I find out Mom is a thief.”

“Was a thief.”

“Once a thief, always a thief.” Helen walked to the other end of the room, sat down, and didn’t speak to Reuben again that day.