It had been three hours since Mom had gone missing, a long time indeed, and Helen’s team in Savannah and Brussels had worked tirelessly to track Mom down. Helen found it hard to coordinate from a long distance, so she instructed Hugo to pack up and fly to Athens to join him.

Helen made more phone calls and found a safe house outside Athens with a secure internet connection, courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency, who also wanted a piece of the pie.

Apparently, the FBI hadn’t found a need to inform the CIA of their egg hunt with INTERPOL.

Art theft yielded funds that had to go somewhere. Therein was the connection. The CIA had been investigating a possible money flow between art thieves and terrorists at large. Every terrorist activity had to be funded somehow.

With various law enforcement agencies cracking down on the usual sources of funding, terrorists had to get creative.

“Like which terrorists?” Helen asked.

At the other end of the phone, Dario de la Cruz didn’t answer her directly. “Tell me why you need a safe house.”

When Helen mentioned Frederico Costa, Dario went quite silent.

Then he wanted to know what Helen knew about the Costa family, and that was her clue that the CIA thought there was a connection between the Costas and the people the CIA were most interested in.

Mom hadn’t spoken much about the Costas all these years. Their name had only surfaced since Helen had been in Santorini.

Helen had no opportunity to talk to Reuben about his family. Somehow Helen didn’t think Reuben wanted to go back to his old job. It only led to one place: prison. Still, she had only met him less than twenty-four hours ago.

She wanted to ask questions, but Dario had to go. Something more urgent called his attention.

Once again, information only flowed one way: to the federal government.

Still, Helen now had leverage: one missing grandmother and twelve missing Petros eggs.

Whoopee.

While Helen wouldn’t put it past Mom to orchestrate her own escape, she didn’t believe that Mom would have caused any deaths.

At least not intentionally.

And certain not law enforcement officers.

Altogether, two Hellenic Police officers had died: Giannopoulos and the driver of the police van. INTERPOL agent Kolovos was in the hospital.

Only one person was unaccounted for: Eleanora Hu.

Mom.

Dad’s pocket watch had been found in the police van. It must have fallen off Mom’s pocket in some sort of struggle. The homing beacon was useless now, sitting in the Hellenic Police station for safekeeping.

What had happened?

Helen went to the hospital to talk to Kolovos, but he was in surgery, fighting for his life. In the waiting room, she ran into a couple of special agents from the FBI Art Crime Team. They, too, wanted to talk to Kolovos.

Before she left the hospital, Helen called the Hu Knows, Inc., branch office in Brussels.

Then she called Camden La Salle again in the privacy of her Fiat rental car to ask him to find a way to retrieve Dad’s pocket watch.

His response startled her.

“Stay away, Helen. Let INTERPOL and the Hellenic Police deal with this.”

“And the FBI.” Helen kept her voice low, but she was getting angrier by the minute at being an outsider.

“Yes, an American citizen is missing. We’re on it. Trust me.”

“I want to, Cam. We’ve been in many operations together, but this is my mom we’re talking about.”

“And twelve missing Petros eggs. This cannot end well—no, I mean, don’t worry,” Camden said. “I’ll keep you appraised.”

“Don’t call me. I’ll call you. Is that it?” Helen’s heart sank to the bottom of the Fiat floor.

She said goodbye, hung up the phone, and drove out of town, back to the Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport to pick up Hugo. Dario would arrive separately. He had to wait for his computer specialist to reach his office in Rome before they could fly out together to Athens.

Helen entered the airport terminal and walked toward the baggage claim—her second trip in twelve hours.

She was on time.

But the carousel was empty.

She checked her messages.

Oh.

The three-hour flight from Brussels had been delayed by an hour.

Helen lifted her eyes to the summer skies. “Lord, are you teaching me patience?”