The Monet Murders (The Art of Murder 2)

Jason stared at Hickok and then at Shipka’s pale face once more. He did look…not familiar exactly. But not unfamiliar. His features were ordinary, nondescript. Not handsome. Not unattractive. He looked like a million other guys. Just another face in the crowd.

Jason’s bewilderment must have shown because Shipka said, “I’ve been writing articles about you for the last two years. Don’t tell me you never noticed. I’ve covered all your big cases.”

“All my…”

Sam swore. The words were soft but savage, and Jason couldn’t help feeling they were directed at him as much as Shipka.

He was not unaware that he’d occasionally received some favorable mentions in the local papers. Stories of stolen paintings safely restored to their rightful owners made a nice change from car accidents and home invasions, plus Jason’s family was politically connected, so yes. He knew—and his supervisors knew—that he sometimes garnered the right kind of attention for the LA field office.

He had never paid attention to the bylines of those articles. Hadn’t kept his press clippings. He wasn’t in this for accolades or attaboys, but he couldn’t help remembering something Sam had said early in their relationship.

And in return, you’ll be the guy who gets to pose in front of the cameras…

Was this unfair idea of who Jason was and what he wanted part of what had gone wrong between them? He had no idea. And he did not know what to say. Could not even look at Sam. Somehow this felt like his fault, but it wasn’t like he had done anything to bring it on. He’d been doing his job. Like everybody else on this terrace.

Hickok said something under his breath and got heavily to his feet. Shipka sat up. He was looking at Jason expectantly. And Jason had no idea what to say to him either.

Sam knew what to say, though. Sam always knew what to say.

“All right, Mr. Shipka,” he drawled. “You can get up now. And you can start talking. Make it good.”

Chapter Three

When the alarm went off at six the next morning, Jason didn’t move. He’d been awake for the last three hours, which he’d spent staring unseeingly at the dim outline of the white crossbeams overhead.

It didn’t matter. It was only about a twenty-minute drive from his bungalow on Carroll Canal to the Federal Building on W

ilshire, though depending on what was happening with workday traffic, that commute could take double the time. Usually Jason liked to get into the office early. Early in and late out. It wasn’t just ambition. He loved his job.

Usually. Today…not so much.

Granted, he hadn’t had much of a night’s sleep—he hadn’t made it home until after one in the morning—and then he had tossed and turned for a couple of hours. He did not feel refreshed.

He felt…numb.

Twenty-four hours earlier he’d been content with his life. Even happy.

Now?

Putting aside the thing with Sam, which he did not understand and did not want to think about, but which hurt like hell—so much for not thinking about it—he had apparently picked up his own press corps. It was more than embarrassing. It was a genuine problem. He could not work undercover if his face kept showing up in the newspapers, and his job required a fair bit of undercover work. Even if it didn’t, having a reporter tagging along and publicly speculating on what he was working next—which was what would be happening in this morning’s edition of the Valley Voice—was a disaster.

Sam thought it was a disaster, and he ought to know, being a guy who got plenty of unwanted attention from the press himself.

So there was that. And there was the thing with Sam that he wasn’t going to let himself think about.

On the bright side, he had not experienced a panic attack when he had to draw his weapon. True, he had not been under fire. Still. Mark that one in the victory column. The very short victory column.

Was he still part of the investigation into the Kerk homicide? He didn’t know. It had not been clear at the end of the evening. Sam had questioned Shipka, who had defiantly informed them that cued by his police scanner, he had deduced Jason being called away from a museum wing being dedicated to his grandfather meant he was about to join a high profile homicide investigation with ties to the Los Angeles art community.

Not a direct hit, but too close for comfort.

The only bright spot was that Shipka hadn’t recognized Sam. Didn’t know that Sam headed up one of the BAUs—or that would have been in the morning paper too: a serial killer on the loose in Los Angeles.

Great.

No question now of what Sam knew or didn’t know about Jason’s background. He’d stood there and listened, unmoved, as Shipka babbled on about Grandpa Harley being one of the original Monuments Men, and Great-Great-Great Grandpa West being oh yeah, that Thomas West. The former governor of California. And about Jason’s sister being married to Congressman Clark Vincent, whose politics, by the way—not that anyone was asking—were diametrically opposed to Jason’s. In short, Sam now knew everything about Jason that made him both an asset and a liability on any case he worked and, in Chris Shipka’s opinion, news.

Basically Jason’s family was everything Sam seemed to scorn. Not that it mattered, since…they weren’t whatever they had been, or whatever Jason imagined they had been, twenty-four hours earlier.