Gabriel's Promise (Gabriel's Inferno #4)(65)

“Do you want to move?”

Gabriel turned his head to look at Julia. “No. I liked the house when we bought it and I love it now that we’ve renovated it and made it our home.

“My priority is to keep you and Clare safe. If there is a chance of another break-in, I’d prefer you and Clare were somewhere else. That means we need to move, at least in the short term.”

Julia looked away.

Gabriel had touched a nerve with his last remarks. She was afraid to return to the house, although she didn’t want to say so aloud. She wondered if she’d be able to fall asleep in her own room again. Certainly, she couldn’t imagine placing Clare in the nursery. Clare would have to sleep in their room with them.

“Do we have to decide tonight?” Julia stared into the flames.

Gabriel gave Clare the bunny. “No. We don’t have to decide anything tonight.”

“What about the security specialist?”

“He’s at our service. I think we’d be wise to have him upgrade the security system whether we move or not.”

Julia met Gabriel’s gaze. “We were supposed to leave for Selinsgrove tomorrow. We were supposed to pick Katherine up at the airport.”

“Rachel and Aaron are picking up Katherine. I promise we’ll be in Selinsgrove on Christmas Eve.”

“It’s Clare’s first Christmas.”

“It will be a good one, I promise.”

Julia looked back at the fire.

“If the house is empty for a couple of weeks, perhaps the intruder will make his move,” Gabriel pointed out.

“With a new security system? If he’s a professional, he’ll notice the upgrade.”

“Hopefully, it will deter him.” Gabriel’s tone grew harsh. “And if it doesn’t, he will get caught. If it were just me, I’d go after the thief myself. But I’m not leaving you and I’m not putting you or the baby at risk.”

“You’d go after him?”

“Yes.”

Julia began massaging her temples with her fingers. “I can’t deal with this right now.”

Gabriel got to his feet and carefully maneuvered her so he was sitting in the chair and she was nestled in his lap.

She buried her face in his neck. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

Gabriel held her tightly. “I’m sorry I failed you.”

“You didn’t fail me. You did what you could and fought off the intruder, and in your pajamas, no less.”

Gabriel’s expression remained grave. “I’ll tell the security specialist to start upgrading the system tomorrow. Then we can focus on Christmas. I haven’t finished my shopping.”

“I thought you finished it weeks ago.”

“Maybe.” He stroked the arches of her eyebrows and gently caressed her cheeks.

Clare began to cry and Julia quickly picked her up.

“Sssshhhh,” Julia hushed. “Everything will be okay.”

Gabriel observed his wife and child and prayed she was right.





Chapter Fifty


Christmas Eve

Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania

Gabriel sat in an armchair in the master bedroom, holding his laptop. The screen of the computer glowed blue in the darkened room. In the opposite corner, a whimsical night light projected pink stars on the ceiling, above Clare’s playpen.

The two people he loved most in the world were sleeping. Exhaustion had taken its toll on Julianne, and she slept soundly now, too. Only Gabriel had difficulty sleeping.

Kurt, Nicholas’s contact, had delivered a warning to Simon. Reportedly, the warning was clear, concise, and persuasive. Kurt doubted Simon would approach the Emersons again, either directly or indirectly, but he continued his surveillance, just in case.

Nicholas had surveyed the inventory Gabriel had sent him and agreed that the Cézanne and the Thomson were the two works most likely to attract interest from collectors. Nicholas seemed to think that art heists, even in private homes, were more common than one thought.

He’d discussed the memento mori with his contact at Interpol and shared both the photograph of the object and the sketch artist’s image of the perpetrator. Unfortunately, the object didn’t appear in Interpol’s database of stolen art.

Using facial recognition software, the sketch was compared with images in Interpol’s criminal database. There wasn’t a match.

Thus, Gabriel was dealing with a professional art thief who had yet to capture the attention of Interpol and who had left behind what might be a museum-quality sculpted object that hadn’t been reported stolen. It was all very puzzling, even for Professor Emerson. And the more he puzzled over the invasion of his home, the more distracted he became.

He hadn’t expected to work on his Sage Lectures during the Christmas holidays, but he’d been reading Dante and his commentators on a daily basis. Since the break-in, Gabriel had found it difficult to concentrate.

The words on his computer screen taunted him,

    “Nel ciel che più de la sua luce prende fu’ io, e vidi cose che ridire

é sa né può chi di là sù discende;

“perché appressando sé al suo disire, nostro intelletto si profonda tanto,