Theirs to Cherish

Chapter Sixteen

AN hour later, Sean retrieved her backpack from the stash in the bedroom. Gently, he shoved the remnants of cereal and toast to one side, then set her ragged bag on the little table and took a deep breath. Beside him, Callie looked tense and scared.

“What is it, lovely?”

“Aren’t we sitting ducks here on the lake? We should abandon the houseboat and get far away from here.”

“Medieval lords built castles using bodies of water as part of their defense. It would be difficult to mount an attack on the water and even harder to sneak up on us. We’re hidden by boulders and mountains. No one is likely to find us without a helicopter, and even then, we’ll just look like a boat on the lake.”

“But they still might investigate it. In the past, when I’ve had someone breathing down my neck, I would change locations every day or two until I felt sure that I’d lost whoever was chasing me.”

“You haven’t done anything criminal, and I don’t want you running like you are one anymore.”

“Guilt or lack thereof has nothing to do with it,” she insisted with a wave of her hand. “Whoever is after us will hunt us down. I think we should get off the boat and leave everyone guessing by going in three separate directions—”

“No!” he and Thorpe both barked together.

Sean turned his gaze to the other man. Thorpe’s jaw clenched firm and resolute. He might not think he wanted to commit to Callie yet, but he’d fight to keep her safe. He’d even die for that cause. Because he loved her. The big lug was just too stubborn to do anything about it. At least right now. Time would tell . . .

Sean pushed the thought aside. Not the most important problem at the moment.

Except that if Thorpe broke Callie’s heart, Sean knew he’d have to work even harder to heal her. She would cry and believe that she wasn’t . . . something enough. Good, smart, pretty—whatever adjective filled in the blank and made no sense. Callie ticked all of those boxes for Sean, and if Thorpe’s pig-headed avoidance made her feel like she lacked any of those qualities, Sean would take pleasure in beating the hell out of him. Kind of a downer, really. He’d started to actually like the guy.

“Maybe this egg has something to do with your family’s murder.” Sean changed the subject. “Let’s focus on that and not make any other decisions until we inspect it. Maybe there’s something special about it besides the obvious.”

“Agreed.” Thorpe nodded.

Callie pursed her lips, then looked away with a sigh. “We have to pull our heads out of our asses. Let’s examine the egg once we get off this floating dead end. We’re wasting time, guys.”

He and Thorpe exchanged a glance, then the other man reached across the table to tangle his hand in her dark hair. “If we didn’t have more important tasks at hand, I’d devise a fitting punishment for you, pet.”

She pursed her lips. “For expressing an opinion?”

“For expressing it so disrespectfully.”

Exasperation crossed her face before she stuck out her tongue at him. The gesture was somewhere between playful and impertinent, and Sean bit back a chuckle. No one could ever accuse Callie of being boring or predictable.

Thorpe tugged harder on her hair. “So you want to do this right now? I can occupy your tongue if you can’t keep it in your mouth.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you can.” She licked her lips. “Ready when you are.”

“Why would I reward you?” He raised a brow at her, then prowled through the little galley. A few moments later, he pulled open a drawer and pulled out more clothes pins. Then with a yank on the little refrigerator door, he produced a bottle of Tabasco. “Stick your tongue out at me again, pet, and I’ll put these to good use.”

Callie gaped at him, indignant. She looked like she had a few choice words, but finally clapped her mouth shut with an angry little huff. Sean bit back another laugh. Even when she was a brat, she was adorable. But if he’d been alone with her, he would have had to nip her defiance in the bud. Thorpe’s tactics were interesting, and Sean made note of them in case he needed them for future reference. In case Thorpe wasn’t here to administer the attitude adjustment she needed.

With a sigh, she curbed her annoyance and focused on the situation again.

“I understand.” She stared at Thorpe, who merely raised an expectant brow at her. “Sir.”

“Better.” He smiled and turned Sean’s way. “Proceed.”

It was impossible not to smile back. “On it. What do you know about this egg?”

“Not a lot. My mom talked about it, of course. But I was so young. She started getting sick when I turned five. As time went on, she became quieter. Mostly, I remember her holding me and telling me how much she loved me and to never forget that.” Callie teared up, then sniffled. “Sorry. I haven’t let myself think about those times in forever.”

Thorpe stroked a hand down her spine in reassurance, then kissed the top of her head. There was no way he didn’t love her. Dumbass prick. Even when he held himself back, Thorpe’s devotion showed.

“So you don’t remember anything about the egg specifically?” Sean asked softly.

“I think she said this one was from Easter 1912 or 1913—somewhere around that time frame. Dad bought it for her from a collector in Europe shortly after they were married. I guess she’d seen one on their honeymoon and fallen in love. This one came up for sale, and Dad gave it to her as an anniversary gift or something. When I was really little, she had it on a display stand that lit up on the mantel in their bedroom. She redecorated their whole bedroom around it. The room looked very stately. But when she got really sick, Dad had everything redone. He couldn’t stand to see her lying in a bed surrounded by black.”

Sean understood that. If faced with the prospect of losing Callie, he’d want to throw away everything dark and see her in nothing but sunlight and smiles for as long as he could.

“After she died, Dad moved it to his home office,” she continued. “It sat on the corner of his desk for years. Charlotte and I weren’t allowed to touch it. Then one day, he brought it to me and said that since Mom had wanted me to have it, I could keep it in my room as long as I was responsible. I’ve been trying to pry it open since.”

“And you never succeeded?” Sean asked.

“Nope. I lied about how I gouged my finger bloody. I didn’t dare admit I’d taken a screwdriver to the egg. But I’d dreamed up this fantasy that my mother had written me a long letter or poem—something she intended me to have that she tucked inside her favorite object. It sounds silly, but when you’re doing things like getting your first period and surviving your first crush without a mother’s guidance, it’s rough.”

“I’m sure she was with you in spirit, lovely.” Sean wanted to hold her, wrap his arms around her. Hell, he wanted to carry her to bed and love her tenderly until he somehow convinced her that he meant to fill every void in her heart.

“And you’re not aware of anything else unusual about the egg?”

“Other than it being a rarity in general, no.”

“Tell me how else you’ve tried to open it.” Sean felt her eyes on him as he unzipped her backpack and peeked inside.

“Besides the screwdriver, I’ve tried soaking it in water and brute force. It’s, like, glued together or stuck. Something.”

“Hmm. The eggs were made to open. They often contained some jeweled surprise,” Thorpe pointed out.

“Right. I remember something inside the egg when I was a kid, but I can’t recall details. It was shiny and pretty. After Mom was gone, I know my dad stashed pictures of her around some of her favorite objects. Once he gave it to me, I wondered if he’d left a picture of her in here, but I never could get the damn thing open to see. That just made her feel more gone to me.” She sniffled again.

“We’ll see if we can do better.” Sean reached into Callie’s backpack and pulled out some clothes, a wig, makeup, her toiletries, a box of colored contacts. Then he encountered a wadded-up towel.

“It’s in there,” she said as she stood on her tiptoes and peeked in.

With a nod, Sean reached down to the bottom and braced his hands under the towel, then began lifting it up. It was bulky more than heavy, and he felt himself sweat a bit, knowing that he held millions of dollars and something infinitely precious to Callie in his hands.

Resting the towel on the table, they all peered over it as Sean unwrapped the bundle. An intricate black and gold design in diamond-shaped sections decorated the top half of the egg. The lower half was a smooth black lacquer with solid gold braiding edging the bottom. As he turned it in his hands, Sean held history. These had been made for the Russian tsars for fifty years. They’d been valuable even a century ago. Now that so few had survived the bloody October revolution that had changed Russia, as well as the upheaval and wars since, the object verged on priceless.

Maybe her family’s killers had sought this all along?

Thorpe dropped a comforting hand on her thigh, then looked his way. “Have any other ideas about how we might get this open?”

Sean winced. “As much as I hate to use more muscle on an object like this, I don’t know what else to do.” If there was nothing important about the egg itself or what might be inside, they were at a dead end. And he wouldn’t know how else to give Callie hope. “I’ve got a multi-tool with me. We can start there.”

Thorpe nodded. “Let’s do it. I’ll see if Werner keeps any tools lying around that might help, too. Callie, clear the table and put the dishes in the sink.”

She nodded. Sean watched Thorpe squeeze her hand before he disappeared from the room, presumably to search for Werner’s Craftsman collection on the boat, likely near the engine. He watched her forlorn face as she stared at the egg and touched it wistfully. He could plainly see how much it reminded her of the parent she’d loved and lost so young.

Jogging to the bedroom to pull the multi-tool from his bag, he grabbed a few other things and returned to find Callie rooted to the same spot.

He eased down into the chair beside her. “Lovely?”

“What if this doesn’t work? What if it’s nothing more than a pricey egg? If it’s empty and of no value to whoever is after me—”

“Then we examine all the evidence again. We keep trying. I refuse to fail. I will not give up until you’re safe. Do you hear me, Callie?”

She responded immediately to the sterner note in his voice with a valiant little nod. “Thank you, Sean.”

“Is that who I am to you now?” He pulled her collar from his pocket and dangled the glittering white gold with its petite lock from his finger, directly in her face. Something less delicate was more customary perhaps, but it didn’t suit her. “Is it?”

Hope lit her eyes. “No, Sir.”

“I mean to fasten this around your neck again. You should never have removed it in the first place. Believe me, I never relinquished you from our bond in my mind or heart. So you best not be doing that either, lovely.”

“I tried to,” she admitted in a soft, broken voice. “But I couldn’t. You’re impossible to stop loving.”

The words were difficult for her to speak, and he loved her all the more for finding the courage to say them. “If you want it back, ask me.”

Callie scooted closer and looked at him with earnest blue eyes in her naked face. Even without all the black eyeliner and glittering shadow, she was stunning. His own eyes were a darker shade than the crystal Caribbean waters hers resembled. He wanted to drown there.

“Please, Sir, will you return my collar to me?” She ended her plea with a submissive bow of her head.

Sean drew in a huge gulp of air. As much as Callie had been forced to fend for herself most of her life, she wore her armor of independence with pride. She fought making herself vulnerable—despite how badly she wanted and needed to. He sensed the soft side of her that craved not just a lover, but someone she could rely on day in and day out for the rest of her life.

He would stand in front of her, never wavering, until she knew he meant to be that man. Then he would marry her and never leave her side.

But one thing Sean knew for certain: whether she was the fiercely independent Callie Ward or the more vulnerable Callindra Howe, she would never ask to belong to a man unless she not only cared, but trusted him.

Elation swirled through him as he tipped her chin up to him. “Will you remove the collar again without first talking to me?”

“No, Sir.”

“Will you finally put yourself in my care and believe that I will always see to your needs?”

She blinked up at him solemnly. “Yes, Sir.”

Sean cupped her face in his hands. The room was heavy with their connection. Gravity weighted each word she spoke. In retrospect, the first time he’d offered Callie a collar, she’d given him a saucy wink and a sway of her hips with her “yes.” Now he saw that it hadn’t been an invitation to touch her, but a way to keep emotional distance between them. She hadn’t taken him seriously then.

Her reaction now couldn’t be more different. And he was so proud to have earned her heart.

“On your knees, lovely.” He glanced at the floor. “Bow your head.”

She sent him one last clinging stare with those big eyes, a silent plea that he treat her fragile heart well. Then she slid to the vinyl floor gracefully and dipped her head low.

Sean unclasped the collar and fixed it around her neck, settling the bit of bling in place. The action was silent, but the importance of the moment shouted through his system. Callie was his again. And she would stay that way.

As he bent to kiss the crown of her head, Thorpe clambered to the door and stopped short, clutching a little bag of tools. He fixed his stare on Callie, his face stricken. The man swallowed. Pain gathered in the furrow of his down-slashed brows, his eyes darkening with something that looked a lot like anguish.

Sean frowned. The girl had always been his submissive. Seeing his collar around her neck shouldn’t be new for Thorpe. Since the man had completely refused to claim her in any way for years, why should he begrudge anyone who did? Or expect Callie not to seek happiness? But he understood Thorpe’s fear that the woman he loved was slipping through his fingers. Sean knew he couldn’t change Thorpe’s mind for him, but he could leave the door open as long as Callie needed him.

“I found a hammer and a chisel.” Thorpe said finally, his voice sounding scratchy, strained. He set the bag on the table. “We’ll use them as a last resort. I’m sure Callie would rather not break the egg.”

She whipped her head around and scrambled to her feet. She looked braced for Thorpe’s anger or a fight. The man did his best to give her a gentle smile. The expression was a bit rusty from disuse, but Callie relaxed.

Sean pulled her beside him. “Let’s start with this little blade.” He held up one of the ends of his multi-tool. “I’ll try to wedge it into the space where the two halves of the egg meet. The piece is obviously well crafted, so I’m not sure we’ll actually be able to work anything in there. But it’s worth a try.”

He focused completely, tuning the other two out to try to shove the thin blade into the nearly nonexistent gap. He only succeeded in bending the little knife. They tried taking some household chemicals to the ridge where the two halves met until the galley smelled like they’d been spring cleaning. They paused, then inspected it again. Nothing.

With a sigh, Sean accepted the notion that they might actually have to damage the multimillion dollar egg. It was an expensive gamble. “If this is simply wedged shut, rather than holding something important, you realize that we’ll have ruined a historically significant object that could keep you living plushly for the rest of your life for no reason?”

She blinked at him. “Unless I can figure out why someone wants me dead, I can’t come out of hiding to sell the object and live off the proceeds. And if I do stop this person or people, then I stand to inherit my father’s estate. And even independent of that, he left money in trust for me.”

Sean stepped back, a bit stunned. Callie’s words made perfect sense, but he hadn’t really put two and two together to consider her net worth once the smoke cleared. Her father had been a multi-billionaire, all his money carefully and successfully invested at the time of his death. The funds had been frozen since, presumably pending Callie being cleared of wrongdoing . . . or found guilty of murder. Some of her father’s favorite charities and supposed friends had begun legal plays to petition the courts for the Howe funds, but the local police had refused to declare Callie dead with so much evidence to the contrary. They seemed convinced she was the most likely suspect, despite shaky evidence. But Sean also knew they were grasping at straws because they had nothing else.

Given all that, if the money remained invested as it had been that October, it should still be a very sizeable fortune—somewhere north of five billion dollars a year ago. The market had been fairly stable since then. Holy shit.

“Sean?”

He’d had a billionaire’s daughter kneeling on the floor at his feet—the son of an unwed teenage mother and a philandering soldier with a girl in every military town. Instantly, Sean had a knee-jerk reaction to apologize to Callie, but he checked it. They weren’t defined by their pasts or their bank accounts. They’d chosen one another because they clicked. They stayed together because they were in love. He didn’t give a shit if her bank balance had ten zeroes or none.

“You didn’t know that?” Thorpe looked at him as if Callie’s inheritance was obvious. Because it was. For a moment, he felt like an idiot.

“Yeah, I did. It’s not relevant. I guess that means we’ll be doing whatever we have to in order to pry the blasted thing open.”

“Hammer and chisel it is,” Thorpe quipped and prowled through the bag on the table until he came up with the right tools.

“Try not to break it. It really is sentimental for me.”

“I’ll do my best,” Thorpe said grimly.

With that, he set the chisel against the faint line that bisected the egg and tapped on it as gently as he could. The sound filled the little room to overflowing. Sean winced, not wanting to think about what sort of damage they were doing to the artifact. Metal scraped metal in a high-pitched squeak that made him wince.

After the next tap of the hammer, Callie hissed. Thorpe swore softly. Sean peered between them and saw a little dent in the gold of the rim—along with a small gap. With another tap, this one gentler, the two halves eased apart a bit.

His heart jumped, and Callie gripped his hand with such sweet hope. With her free hand, she brushed Thorpe’s shoulder with a gentle touch that was equal parts adoration and thanks.

Both he and Thorpe had fingers too thick to work into the little wedge. Besides, it was her egg, her life on the line. Sean prodded her forward. “Go on. See if there’s anything inside.”

A more tentative girl would have perhaps shaken the delicate piece to see if something spilled out or tried to take a closer peek at the innards to see if anything lurked within. Not Callie. She plunged her thumb and finger right into the little open space. There was no way her vision could help with this task, so she closed her eyes as she rooted around.

Tension gripped the room, so pervasive it was a menacing presence all its own. Whatever they found here could make, break, or crush her. Then again, finding nothing wasn’t a palatable option either.

A moment later, she gasped.

“What?” Thorpe barked.

“There’s something stuck here and it wouldn’t have been made with the egg. It’s thin and plastic. I’m trying to get my fingers on it.” She fumbled a moment more, twisting and turning her wrist for a better grip.

“Does it feel like anything familiar?” Sean asked her.

She shook her head, getting more frustrated by the moment. “I can’t quite get it.”

“Do we need to just break the damn thing open?” Thorpe scowled. “Because I will if it helps you.”

Callie glanced at him with a face full of confidence. “No. I’ll manage. You know how determined I can be.”

Thorpe snorted. “Do I ever . . .”

Sean gritted his teeth. Damn it, they needed to stop bantering and hurry this along. What she found inside the egg could determine the sort of future he had with Callie. Would they be riding off into the sunset or living underground and on the run for the rest of their lives?

“Got it!” she shouted triumphantly, twisting and turning her hand a few more times.

Finally, she emerged with a flat little plastic square. It was blue and thin, and he hoped like hell they’d hit the jackpot.

“It’s an SD card.” Sean stated what was probably the obvious, then he blew out a breath. “Could your father have saved data on this, then hidden it in the egg?

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “No clue.”

“Then again, we didn’t have a computer among the inventory of his possessions at your house. How would he have saved the data?”

“He had a laptop. He kept it mostly at his office, but brought it home occasionally. Why would he put data on this card instead of just keeping it on the computer?”

“Maybe this was a backup?” Thorpe surmised. “We need to read what’s on this card ASAP.”

“Where the hell are we going to find a computer that reads SD cards?” Sean tried not to lose his cool.

“Last night when I thought I’d be crashing in the spare room, I peeked in there. I saw an old desktop machine. Werner said he and his family occasionally take the boat out themselves, right? Maybe this is his floating office when he does.”

“Let’s go.” Sean took Callie by the hand, making sure she still held the little blue card, and hustled her out of the galley behind Thorpe, falling in after her as the hall narrowed.

They caravanned together past the bedroom they had all shared last night. Sean wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel about the sex. He’d never imagined sharing the woman he loved with another man. But he had to admit their romp on that lumpy bed had been one of the most pleasurable of his life. Seeing Callie’s fulfillment only added to the enjoyment. He itched to give that to her again.

A few steps later, they entered the second bedroom. It was smaller and darker. The head of a double bed, with a faded white comforter covered in little flowers, butted up to the paneled wall. It looked soft and worn and ready for a Dumpster. A window to the left with a desk in the corner made up the rest of the room. An old CRT monitor crowded most of the desk. The tower sat on the faintly musty carpet.

Thorpe yanked out the spindle-back chair and hunkered over the keyboard in front of the monitor that, from a technological prospective, had come from the Jurassic period. He bent and examined the computer, looking all along the sides and front for an SD card slot.

“Found it! If everything still works, we’ll know whatever information was hidden in that egg soon. Give me the card, pet.” Thorpe pressed the power button on the computer tower, and it flickered to life.

Anxiety skittered through Sean’s system.

As they waited for the old machine to croak its way through the boot-up process, Callie nibbled on her lip and fidgeted. “Why would my father have put anything on an SD card and hidden it in the egg, then given it to me?”

“We may never know, lovely.” Sean squeezed her hand in reassurance.

She squeezed back. “Did anyone break into his office and take his computer there?”

“Off the record? Yes. The authorities have kept that out of the press. But they ransacked his office—and nothing else in the building. As far as I know, everything else in the suite was destroyed, but nothing more was taken.”

“How is that possible? The security was pretty tight. And if I were guilty of murdering my father, why would I kill him, then run to his office to tear the place apart?”

“Actually, we think the office was hit first, about eight p.m. that night. When whoever broke in didn’t find what they wanted there or on the laptop, they came to your house a couple of hours later and . . . you know the rest.”

“I was having dinner with my family before the murders, so I couldn’t have been breaking into his office.”

But the only people who could have corroborated that story were dead. She’d arrived at the table after the meal had been served and left before Teresita had come to clear the dishes.

“Let’s see what the SD card holds,” Sean said. Because if it held nothing of value, then this whole discussion was pointless.

A few tense minutes later, the computer finally finished its sequence and the desktop appeared. Thankfully, the operating system hadn’t been set up to require a password. So as soon as Thorpe shoved the card in the slot and navigated to the drive, only one folder appeared, named Aslanov. Inside that were files with purely numeric names that Sean guessed were dates. After fairly consistent entries for months, they stopped abruptly fifteen years ago, then resumed again about six weeks before Daniel Howe’s murder.

“Aslanov. I guess that’s as in Dr. Aslanov.” Callie frowned.

Deep in his gut, Sean knew where this was going and he didn’t like it. “I suspect so.”

“My father gave him a huge grant, a new lab . . . the works.” She frowned. “But something happened. I don’t know if they had a falling out or what. Suddenly, he just disappeared.”

Now Sean really didn’t like where this was going. “What’s in that folder, Thorpe?”

He clicked on the little icon, and inside were dozens of documents with the same naming convention, looking as if they were based on dates.

“Now what?” Callie asked beside him. “With one computer, how do we tackle this? I have to know what this says or I’ll go insane.”

Sean caught the concern on Thorpe’s face and nodded almost imperceptibly. Whatever was here might upset the hell out of her. It would likely be dangerous, too. Yes, Callie was an adult and had every right to know what they found. He had no intention of keeping facts from her, and her life really couldn’t get much more perilous. He simply wanted a chance to prepare her in the event the card held something shocking.

“Lovely, there’s only one screen and three of us. How about you throw together a little snack for us while Thorpe and I wade through the information. Then we’ll share it.”

“You two can’t protect me from what I need to know,” she protested.

“We won’t hide anything from you or delete information,” Thorpe vowed. “Just let us get an idea for what’s here.”

“You think I can’t handle whatever this says.” If her tone hadn’t been an accusation, her pursed bow of a mouth definitely was.

“I’ll admit to wanting to know what’s here before I spring it on you.” Thorpe turned in his chair to regard her directly. “Is that so terrible?”

Callie crossed her arms over her chest. “It is if you keep me in the dark.”

“I won’t.”

“And I won’t let him,” Sean promised. “Let us just read it first, all right?”

She sighed. “Fine, but I want to know every word on that disc before I go to bed tonight. I need to know.”

“We’ll make sure you do as soon as we know something.”

“You’re still trying to shield me,” she said glumly.

“Yes, I am, pet.” He gave her a wry smile.

“And you’re helping him.” Callie pointed at Sean.

“Yes, because I agree, and no amount of your pouting is going to change my mind. You’re more likely to earn yourself a punishment if you don’t let up.” He sent her a hard stare.

Callie looked like she bit back a thousand sarcastic replies. Instead, she managed a long-suffering sigh. “Yes, Sir.”

Not the attitude he wanted, but he understood her strain. The balance of her life might hang on that card and, after nearly a decade of mystery, she wanted the chance to solve her family’s murders. If closure was at hand, she had a right to it. It would help her move forward. It might give her—them—a future.

Sean watched her leave the bedroom and march stiff-backed down the hall.

“I don’t like any of this,” Thorpe said to him in hushed tones.

“I don’t, either. But we’ll have to tell her as soon as we’ve figured out what that says.”

Thorpe nodded reluctantly. “Do you think her father put the card in the egg?”

“And glued it shut, yes. Who else would have done that?”

“Then he wanted this information hidden for some reason.”

“Or kept safe. But I’m trying to decide why he would give it to her.” Sean rubbed an absent thumb over his chin. “To be less conspicuous, maybe, in case someone wanted the information badly enough to break in? But why not put it in his safe or keep it securely at the bank.”

“Daniel Howe wasn’t a stupid man. Maybe he had some inkling that Callie planned to run off.”

“And planned to take the egg with her?” Sean shook his head. “Daniel Howe was regarded as a bit eccentric, but what man stands by idly and lets his sixteen-year-old daughter run off with a player? That doesn’t add up. But I can imagine him wanting to hide the information in plain sight. He could still access it if he wanted. But since he went to the trouble to conceal the card in the egg, I have to believe that whatever it says, he wanted that information buried.”

“There’s no other way to see it.” Thorpe sighed. “I’m almost afraid of telling Callie what we find. It probably got her family killed.”

“I can’t argue, but there’s no way we can keep this from her. If we find something, it will be a bombshell, I have little doubt. It might completely turn her world upside down. We have to be prepared.” She’ll need us both. Sean bit the words back. Thorpe wasn’t ready to hear them.

Cursing softly, Thorpe opened the first file on the SD card. Sean looked over his shoulder. Together, they began to read.