was a talented woman—but then, he’d always known that.
“No.” Her eyebrows pushed together as she frowned. “That’s why it seems odd she’d have the name of that one.”
“You haven’t told anyone about it?”
“I told Gemma the other day when we were having lunch at the diner.”
Even without knowing how the painting fit into this, Nate could feel tension building in his neck and shoulders. Of course Claire would have had no reason to realize it wasn’t safe to talk about her latest painting in a public place, but now that it did have significance and a connection to at least one serious crime, it was a privacy nightmare. Literally anyone could have heard her having that conversation. They’d get no leads from pursuing that.
Nate would deal with the implications later. For now, he needed to know more.
“What made this piece special?”
“Here, I can show you.” Claire stood, moved toward the paintings stacked against the side wall of her living room, started to flip through them.
She got to the last one, stilled. And then started over.
Nate knew where this was going but asked anyway. “What is it?” He moved closer to her, protective instincts amping up even more at the repeated reminders that someone had been in her house.
“It’s gone.”
“You didn’t misplace it.” It was more a statement than a question.
Claire shook her head.
“Someone took it tonight.”
“How long was he in here before I woke up? What else did he do?” She muttered the words softly, but Nate still caught them. Looking paler by the moment, Claire sunk down onto the couch again.
“There’s no way to tell.”
A tear ran down Claire’s cheek. Nate moved closer, not sure what he could do to help, but feeling like he should at least try. More than one tear. Several.
She sniffed and brushed at her cheek. “I just don’t understand.”
Was she more upset about the painting or the home invasion? He didn’t feel like he could fix it, at least try to fix it, until he knew. “Don’t understand...” he prompted her.
“What does your case or the woman who was killed have to do with my painting? Even if she overheard me talking about it, why would she care?”
“Can you tell me more about the painting?”
Claire was staring at the painting table, seeming lost in thought. After a minute, she looked back at him. Met his eyes.
“Now that I know why you’re here in town...” She shook her head, brushed another tear away. “I’m afraid I did something stupid.”
“On purpose?”
“Completely accidentally. But that doesn’t put me in any less danger, does it?” Claire let out a breath, pushed herself up from the couch and started to pace. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately.”
“Something wrong?”
“Just a lot on my mind. Watching the ocean usually calms me down, so I often go out onto the deck and just watch it, listen to the waves. With the rest of this area mostly abandoned at night, it’s quiet. Peaceful.”
“So what did you do that was stupid?”
Claire exhaled. “One night, very late, I saw lights from where I stood on the deck, lights on the ocean like they belonged to a boat. But it’s not normal in this area for people to have boats out on the water in the middle of the night, so I’d never seen the way the lights reflect off the waves and mix with the moonlight before. I wanted to paint it.”
“So that was the subject of your painting?”
Claire gave a nod. “Yes.”
“You potentially painted a drug smuggling run, or a drug meet-up. I’m guessing with both of those, but I think it makes sense, Claire.”
“It does, now that you’ve told me drug smuggling is happening in the area. At the time, I didn’t have a reason to think there was anything sinister about it. It’s Treasure Point, and while we have had our share of crime lately, drug smuggling being a problem had never crossed my mind.”
Claire looked sick, and Nate couldn’t blame her. Her decision to paint some lights on the ocean, something seemingly innocuous, had put her life at risk.
All they could do now was damage control. It was too late to change the past.
Just then one of the officers strode out of the bedroom, looked over at Claire. “Matt is helping Shiloh process the scene. But I’m supposed to tell you that you’ll be staying at Matt and Gemma’s house tomorrow—well, today, technically. It’s Matt’s scheduled day off, and that will give you some protection.”
Claire nodded, glanced over at Nate.
“If it’s okay, I’d like to ask you a few more questions myself,” he said. “Dinner?”
She nodded. “I can do dinner. Since I’m assuming you’re armed...” Her eyes moved to his hip, and while Nate knew his .40 was completely concealed, he was impressed that she’d guessed correctly right where it was. “Maybe you could bring me back over here to clean up some of this mess after we eat? I’m not going to be staying here anytime soon, but I’d feel better knowing there wasn’t a huge mess. Or we could come here and I’ll cook—it’ll mean we’re not out at a restaurant somewhere we might be easy to attack.”
“If that works for the chief.” Nate looked back at the chief.
He nodded. “Sounds like a good plan. I’ll have officers here processing the scene for the next few hours, but we’ll lock it up after we’re done. There shouldn’t be any need for you to stay out or leave things as they are once evidence has been logged. We should be able to get everything we need before noon, I would guess.”
“Thank you.” Claire shook her head. “I can’t believe this is all happening. And wait, what about my shop? I can’t just close for the duration of...whatever this is.”
“We understand that.” Nate thought he spoke for all of them. “But tomorrow is rather critical. Both attacks on you have been so close together that the chances of another one goes down with every hour that passes tomorrow, if that makes sense. Basically, someone wanted you taken out tonight. So either they’re going to hit hard again as soon as they can to get rid of you as quickly as possible, or they’ve decided to step back and regroup before targeting you any further. We won’t know which strategy they’ve chosen until we see how it plays out. So for tomorrow, we want someone with you one hundred percent of the time.”
There was a hint of the old Claire in the way she physically cringed at the idea of full-time protection. She’d been so independent in college—that clearly hadn’t changed. But she’d also been such a free spirit, confident and adventurous. How she’d gone from that to running a coffee shop and living the life of someone much older, he had no idea.
Claire had anticipated a much more awkward day, considering that she wasn’t allowed to leave Matt and Gemma’s house. Not only that, she was only allowed to leave her brother-in-law’s sight for five minutes at a time, and that was only to use the restroom. But Matt and Gemma made the day fun. They played multiple rounds of a board game they all liked, Claire helped Gemma organize some of her kitchen cabinets, and then they watched a movie in the afternoon.
Nate picked her up in her car just before five and drove her back to her apartment. Surprisingly, Claire hadn’t felt any signs of fear at being back. No, the only fear she was feeling right