Amy Atwell - Lying Eyes

Iris pushed back her riotous curls. “Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. But I need to find him before anyone else does.”

“Let me guess-he’s put your ass on the line, too.”

“He’s got all our asses on the line.”

Iris choked on her drink. “All? What have I got to do with this?”

“These people will use you and your sisters to get to Cosmo.”

Her eyes darkened at the mention of her sisters, and Mickey remembered that she’d only learned of them this morning. He knew all too well what it was like to have your life yanked out from under you. Sympathy stalled his next words in his throat, but the role he had to play here doggedly forced them out. “So don’t be some kind of sap for your old man. What kind of gems are they?”

“You’re asking me? How should I know?”

He regarded the outrage in her raised brows and the negative slant to her lips. Was it possible Cosmo hadn’t asked her to copy them?

“You don’t think he asked me to copy stolen gems?” She laughed in that broken way of hers that meant she wasn’t amused. “Not that Cosmo includes me in any of his little schemes, but even if he did, I’d sure as hell recognize something that valuable and know he was up to no good.”

“And you’d refuse to help him do something illegal?”

“I don’t break the law.”

Mickey nodded at her emphatic idealism. “Even if breaking the law could save your father’s life?”

She rose swiftly, barely setting her drink on the coffee table. All but visibly twitching, she stood a few feet away with her back to him. “What is it you want from me?”

“You haven’t answered my question-”

She spun on him, her brandy-colored eyes blazing. “Cosmo’s lied to me, cheated on my mother and now you’re telling me he’s stolen. A man like that doesn’t deserve filial duty, he deserves what he gets. Now, what do you want?”

She’d still avoided the question, but he’d allow it. The non-answer was answer enough for him. He held her drink out, until she slowly stepped forward and accepted it as she sat. She donned that controlled façade of hers while she sipped, ice tinkling like a wind chime before a storm.

He wished he could tell her the truth about his ruse. But then, she hadn’t been very forthcoming with Hunter. He frowned. Telling her he was a cop might not get him anywhere, and it would be a stupid risk to give her that kind of ammunition.

Best to play it out as Mickey the hood. “I need to know what I’m dealing with, searching for. What does ten million dollars in gems look like?”

She snorted. “It could look like anything, depending on what type of gem. The problem is you’re talking about a lot of stones for that kind of money.”

Mickey massaged the back of his neck, where the first trace of a headache always started. “No, the package was something Cosmo could easily carry and conceal. Wouldn’t diamonds be worth that much?”

Iris leaned over, showing a length of supple spine, as she rooted on a shelf beneath the coffee table’s glass top. Her hands tugged an oversized book into view, and she flipped through the pages, before laying it on the table before them.

Mickey liked that she sat much closer to him now that her attention was captured by their topic. The headache receded, and he leaned forward to peruse the book.

“In today’s market, diamonds are more plentiful, therefore, their price isn’t as high. Now, there are still special finds, large uncut stones that could fetch that sort of price, but there’s been no publicity of a find like that for years. The largest diamonds mostly belong to Britain’s royal family and are held in state at the Tower of London.”

Her pink manicured nail traced from photo to photo as she named them. “There’s the Koh-i-Noor that belonged to the Queen Mother, and the Cullinan Two found in the Imperial State Crown. The Cullinan One, or First Star of Africa, in the royal scepter is the second-largest cut diamond in the world. Its estimated value is around four hundred million dollars.”

“How big is it?”

“It’s 530 carats.”

“Say it so I can understand it.”

“It’s roughly the size of a large pear.” She held her hand up, her thumb and fingers curved open to form a large open C. “Like this.”

“So, ten million dollars’ worth of diamonds should be much smaller.”

“It’s not that simple.” Iris riffled the pages for another picture. “You could have an uncut diamond that same size that wouldn’t be worth even one million dollars.”

“How’s that?”

“Until a gem is cut, it’s just another rock. Many have imperfections that will prevent them from ever becoming valuable gems. Some can be cut and polished, but if they don’t have exquisite clarity, then they’ll have a lower value. Each finished gem is judged on its carat weight, cut, clarity and color.”

Mickey scrubbed his face with his hands. The headache was definitely returning. “What color? Diamonds are all clear, aren’t they?”

Iris laughed, this time amused by him. He found he liked the idea of making those lips twist into an unplanned smile. “Diamonds can be classified as white, yellow, blue or pink. When you look closely at them, they have fire inside.”

He scanned the open pages as he reviewed what she’d said. Something needed to add up better than all this. “Why would anyone involve Cosmo in stealing diamonds?”

She shrugged. “Are you sure they’re diamonds?”

“They’re the most valuable gems, right?”

As Iris shook her head, her bronze curls cast a riot of fiery light. “Too plentiful, over-mined. The real money is in rare colors of emeralds or sapphires or…” Her voice trailed off and she tapped her lower lip with her index finger.

Now there was a look he liked. Then he noted her furrowed brow. She retrieved the book and flipped some more pages before setting it back down again. “Or, if you’re looking for a reason to tie in Cosmo, there’s always alexandrite.”

“Alexandrite? What’s that?”

She pointed to two pictures showing a green rock and a red rock. “That’s alexandrite. It’s arguably the highest priced gemstone on earth. Well-cut gems of the highest quality could sell for as much as a million dollars per carat.”

Mickey studied the pictures. “It comes in red or green?”

“The stones are red and green. Alexandrite has an interesting property. The stones look green by daylight, but if you put them under incandescent lighting, they turn red. Those pictures are of the same stone.”

“Now there’s a trick I’d like to see.”

“It’s not a trick of the eye. It’s a property inherent to the chemical makeup of the stone.”

“Why haven’t I ever heard of alexandrite before?”

“It’s very rare. The initial find was in the Ural Mountains of Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. A selection of the stones was presented to the Romanov family and named for their son Alexander.”

“Romanov, as in-”

“The Russian czars, until Nicholas II and his family were put to death by the Bolsheviks. Alexandrite, once prized in Russia, went out of fashion.” Iris shrugged. “This wasn’t that big a deal, since after the initial expedition, there was precious little of it ever found. Some alexandrite was mined in Brazil back in the 1980s, but nowhere near the quality of the original Russian stones.”

“So, ten million in alexandrite would be very easy to carry or conceal.”

Iris nodded.

“And Cosmo knew all this history?”

She nodded again. “Because of my mother’s Russian heritage, Czarist alexandrite was a bedtime story for me. Mom told me over and over about how one set of ten jewels were all cut from a single alexandrite stone by one of our ancestors. The jewels were given to Alexander II and placed into a new crown, but the crown was never used. I guess it was a myth.”