If I Didn't Know Better (The Callaways #9)(82)

"I locked that door," she said.

"Did you?" Barton challenged. "Maybe I just came by to check up on you, see how you were doing after the break-in. Maybe I was worried about you."

Jeremy couldn’t believe the way Barton was talking to Mia without any regret or acknowledgement that he was in the wrong. He'd always had too high of an opinion of himself, but this was beyond ego.

"Why did you do it?" Jeremy asked, truly confused. "Did you really need the cash that bad? Or was it just a thrill for you?"

"It was both. I want to live better than I've been living. I've spent the last ten years in shitholes around the world, doing what most people aren't willing to do. I was owed."

"You chose that life; no one made you. You can't make this theft right, Barton. You can't spin it into something that's acceptable. You're no better than the person who took that painting in the first place. I'm calling Kent."

"Go ahead. I won't be here when he gets here, and you have no proof of anything. It will be my word against yours."

Barton gave him a challenging look, and he responded accordingly. He stepped forward and swung his fist into his best friend's face.

Barton's hand flew to his nose, as blood spewed out.

He looked at Jeremy in shock and then threw his own punch. Jeremy dodged the full force of Barton's fist as it grazed his jaw.

"Stop it," Mia said.

"Get out of here," he told her, as he tackled Barton once again. "This is between us."

"It's my painting, my house," she yelled.

He ignored her, his attention on Barton. They'd both been trained to fight. It would have been an even contest if he was at one hundred percent, but he wasn't.

Barton shoved him into the wall so hard a cuckoo clock came loose and bounced off Jeremy's injured shoulder. The pain stopped him in his tracks.

Barton got the edge again, landing a punch that made Jeremy's right eye feel like it had just exploded.

Blinded and enraged by pain, he swung his fist into Barton's gut, then used his feet to kick Barton off balance and on to his back.

Barton crashed into the stool by the island, taking it down with him.

Less than a second later, he was back on his feet, about to launch another attack when a spray of water hit them both in the face.

"I said, stop it!" Mia yelled, as she kept the hose from the sink on them. "You are not going to kill each other in my house."

Spluttering, he backed away from Barton.

Barton wiped the water from his face, giving Jeremy a wary look.

Mia turned off the water and stepped between them. "Now that I have your attention, here's what will happen next. You're both going to walk out of this house. I'm going to take the painting to the FBI and tell them I found it in the studio, and I have no idea how it got there."

"Mia," Jeremy protested. "Barton has to pay for what he did. You're not letting him off."

"He's going to pay." She looked at Barton. "You just lost the respect of the best friend you've ever had. I think that might mean more to you than a painting you lifted from a palace in Bahrain."

Barton stared at her, then his gaze swung to Jeremy. "I didn't do this to hurt you."

"Your motivation doesn't matter. Letting you off is too easy. And you don't care about my respect. If you did, you wouldn't have done this in the first place."

"You're wrong. I do care. This was never about you."

"But it was," he argued. "Don't you get it? What you did reflects back on the team. We fight with honor."

"This wasn't a fight. It was a damn painting. Don't you get that, Jeremy?"

"I don't," he said harshly. "I thought I knew you. I thought I could trust you with my life."

"You could and you can."

"Not anymore. And it's not just about the painting. You broke into Mia's house. You were the one who ripped up her studio, who slashed the paintings, who scared the hell out of her. How far were you willing to go to get this painting back?"

"I was never going to hurt her," Barton said sharply. "I knew you were out with her tonight. I figured the painting had to be in the house since the studio was cleaned out. I walked in, and here it was."

"Did Kent know what you did?" Jeremy asked, hoping that he still had one friend he could believe in.

"No. This was me, only me. The first buyer I had for this painting got cold feet. I had to stash it somewhere while I found another one. When I visited Kent at the studio, I couldn't think of a better place to hide a painting among dozens of others. I kept trying to get back to it, but it never worked out. After Mia's aunt died, I knew I better grab the painting before someone like Mia showed up to clean the house."

"So you didn't come back for your mother's birthday."

"I did, but I also wanted to get the painting. Unfortunately, it wasn't in the studio where I'd left it."

"Why did you have to destroy everything in there?" Mia asked.

"I had to make it look like kids had done it. You can't prove I did any of this, though. You can turn me in, but it won't stick."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Jeremy warned. "Someone else on the team might have seen you take that painting."