"Oh, Riley, more security measures? I don't want to feel like I'm living in a prison. You're probably right. It's probably your grandpa. He does have that phone by his bed."
Riley paused as the buzzer for his apartment rang. "Someone is at the door. Call me if you have any problems." He hung up the phone and walked over to the intercom. "Yes?"
"It's Paige. I need to speak to you right away."
He buzzed her in, having a pretty good idea of what she wanted to see him about.
She made it to the second floor in less than a minute and, judging by the flushed red of her cheeks, she'd taken the stairs. He waved her into his apartment.
"Before you—" he began.
"What the hell were you thinking, talking to the press about this?"
"I didn't."
"You must have. They have the whole story. My phone has been ringing off the hook all day. They want to know about the dragon. And our other customers want to know if their priceless artifacts are in danger of disappearing. My mother is livid. This is the last thing we needed, with my father fighting for his life." She finally took a breath.
Riley jumped in. "I didn't call the media, Paige. I mentioned the dragon to the police detective last night. I asked him if they'd found anything in the alley."
"The police told the press?" she asked with a disbelieving frown.
"I'm sure someone has a source in the department. And you said yourself that the Hathaways are always news, aren't they?"
"Yes." She let out a sigh. "I need to sit down."
Riley swept a pile of newspapers off a nearby armchair so she could take a seat. "How did you find me, by the way?"
"Your secretary was very helpful."
"I'll fire her in the morning."
Paige smiled weakly. "I guess I should apologize. I shouldn't have come here. I just had to yell at someone."
"How's your father?"
"No change. It's hard to see him lying so still. My mother is there now, along with a private nurse. My grandfather is planning to stop by tonight. He'll probably just order my father to wake up."
"Does he have that much power?"
"He thinks he does, but my dad tuned out my grandfather years ago. The two of them have never gotten along. I think that's why Dad started traveling so much. It was his escape."
"Do you need an escape, too?" he asked curiously.
"I already made my escape. I moved out of the family house a few years ago. I couldn't breathe there. My grandfather has portraits of all the Hathaway ancestors lining the hallway. Every time I'd walk down that hall, I'd feel like they were looking at me, wondering why I should be the only Hathaway left to carry on the family bloodline. I can't even carry on the name officially, since I'm a girl, which has caused endless turmoil. I think my mother would consider adopting my husband just to give him the Hathaway name."
Riley smiled. "That would be extreme. And I can't see many men willing to give up their name."
"The woman gives up hers. Why shouldn't the man do the same?"
"Because it's very ..."
"Very what?"
"Wrong. Trust me, Paige, if the man you marry is willing to give up his name to take yours, you should run away as fast as possible." He sat down on the sofa across from her, resting his arms on his legs. "Speaking of which, you're engaged, aren't you?"
"Who told you that?"
"My assistant, Carey."
"Then you should fire her."
He grinned. "Are you saying it's not true?"
"You don't see a ring, do you?"
"No, but I thought I saw a jealous boyfriend last night at the hospital."
She shrugged, avoiding his direct gaze. "Martin was just being protective. He wasn't jealous of you. Why would he be? It's not like you and I are together. You don't even like me."
"Did I say that?"
"Didn't you?" she countered, her gaze seeking his.
"I don't think so."
"You said you didn't trust me."
"That's not the same thing."
She tilted her head, giving him a considering look. "It's not just me you don't trust, though, is it? What made you so cynical -- or should I say who?"
"I was just born this way."
"No one is born distrusting. That's not how it happens."
"Why don't you tell me about it over pizza?" He got to his feet and moved toward the phone. "What kind do you like?"
She looked at him in surprise. "I'm not staying for pizza."
"Why not? Aren't you hungry?"
"Well, yes, but—"
"You can help me with some research while we're waiting for the food," he added, tipping his head toward the laptop computer on the table. "I've found some interesting dragon tales, but nothing that looks like my grandmother's dragon. Maybe you know of some better sites."
"I suppose I could try," she said slowly.
"What do you want on your pizza?"
"Surprise me."
He raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure? I don't want to hear any complaints later on."
She gave him a serene smile. "Hathaways never complain."
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, Riley knew that Paige liked black olives, mushrooms, pepperoni, and onions but picked off the bell peppers when no one was looking. Only, he was always looking; she just hadn't caught him at it yet. She'd been too busy surfing through various art sites on the computer.
He liked the way she worked, the way her eyes focused on the screen, sometimes squinting over tiny print. He liked the way she frowned with impatience when the computer worked too slowly or a lead turned into a dead end. But it didn't make her quit. She just worked harder. And she was right; she didn't complain, not about the fact that the only drink he had to offer was beer, or that he had run out of napkins and paper towels and had only toilet paper to offer for dripping cheese and tomato sauce.
She'd probably also noticed the fact that his apartment was decorated in leftovers, as he liked to call the furniture he'd collected from his bachelor friends every time they moved in with a woman or got married. It seemed that along with commitment came interior design. Sooner or later, his friends' furniture showed up at his place while the women filled their joint living space with new stuff.
Well, not for him. He was happy with his big-screen TV, his oversized reclining armchair, his leather couch and his football memorabilia, including a signed jersey from the San Francisco 49ers. No woman was worth losing that for.
"Hello ..."
Paige's voice brought his attention back to her. "What?"
"I've been talking to you for five minutes."
"Sorry. What did you find?" He moved around the table so he could see the monitor better. Unfortunately, the close contact with Paige distracted him once again. Her hair smelled good, like a field of wildflowers that he wanted to roll around in for a few hours.
Paige tapped the screen with her fingernail. "A legend about a dragon that looks a lot like yours."
Riley forced himself to focus. The unsophisticated sketch could be his dragon, he supposed.
"The period referenced is the Zhou dynasty," Paige continued, "Which is the period my father thought your dragon might be from. What's interesting about this story is that it actually speaks of two dragons that connect together and open a special box."
"That doesn't sound like what we have at all."
"Maybe not. But ..." Her voice trailed away.
"But what?" he asked impatiently.
"It's a fascinating story. Do you want to hear it?" She turned her face toward him, and he saw the eager light in her brown eyes. Whatever she'd found had caught her imagination.
"Go ahead."
"It's about a little girl, the daughter of an emperor. The emperor suffered severe, violent headaches, and the kingdom was in despair over how to ease his pain. It was said that he went on rages during these episodes. People were killed. Things were destroyed. One day the daughter was in the woods, and she found a long piece of bamboo that made music when she blew through it. She took the bamboo flute back to the palace, and that night, when her father was suffering from another headache, she played it for him. The music was magical. It instantly soothed his pain. He pronounced the flute to be a gift from the gods, and this child, this daughter, had succeeded in comforting him when no one else could—"
"What does this have to do with a dragon?" Riley interrupted, sensing Paige could go on like this for a while. She was obviously captivated by the tale.
"I'm getting to that. The emperor decided that the flute must be protected above all else. He had a box created to hold the flute. Then he had two special dragons fashioned out of bronze to guard the box. The dragons had to be connected together in a special way in order to open the box. If either dragon was damaged or lost, the box could not be opened. And the little girl, the first daughter of his second wife, was treated like a princess."
"Yeah, yeah. So?"
Paige gave him an irritated look. "So, these three pieces were very valuable. Others in the kingdom were jealous of the little girl's new status. You can imagine what happened next."
"Someone stole the flute."
"The whole thing, the dragons, the box, and the flute. What was worse, the emperor had his daughter killed, because he was so angry. He then had a ton of bamboo brought to the palace, but no one else could make any of the pieces sing like the original flute. There was no longer any healing magic. Nothing could be heard but the sound of weeping throughout the kingdom."
"Where's the happy ending?"
"There isn't one. The emperor swore a curse of revenge on all first daughters. He said that until the box and the flute were put back in their rightful place, all first daughters of whoever came in contact with any piece of the set, the box, the dragons, or the flute would suffer terrible misfortune."
"So what happened?"
"I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?" He reached over and pushed the scroll key only to find that they had come to the end of the passage. "That's it? That's the whole story?"
"There's a moral."
"Right. I got that. Stealing is a bad thing. What I want to know is who took the box and the flute and the dragons, and what the hell happened to them?"
Paige smiled. "That sounds like a security expert talking. You have to solve the crime, otherwise the world is off balance. One plus one always equals two. Missing things must be found. Every beginning has to have an ending."
"That's the natural order of things. I still don't see what that story has to do with my grandmother's dragon."
"Maybe nothing, but it might be worth looking into. Did you happen to notice a connecting joint on the dragon, a piece that looked like it might fit into another piece?"
Riley shook his head. "I didn't look at it that closely. I'll bet your father did, though. What about that other guy who was working in the lab that day?"
"Raymond Li?" Her eyes widened. "My God. I just remembered. I never spoke to Mr. Li. He called in sick yesterday. I know that, because I was looking for my father, and I went down there thinking they'd be together, but Mr. Li's assistant told me that he was out."
Riley felt his heart begin to pump faster. He checked his watch. It was almost nine o'clock. "Do you have his home number?"
"I'm sure it's in the personnel file, but I don't have that."
"You can get it, can't you?"
"Tomorrow when the store opens."
"What about tonight?"
"I don't have access to those files on my computer."
"Don't worry about that. You get me into the store. I'll get you into those files."
"This feels wrong," Paige said as she let Riley into her dark office just before nine thirty. The store closed by six o'clock on weekdays, five o'clock on the weekends. The Hathaways had never felt compelled to offer longer hours. Her grandfather always said if the people wanted to buy their goods, they could damn well find a way to come during the day.
She flipped on the lights, but it still didn't ease the tension in her body. She'd been at the store after hours before, but never for the purpose of looking into files that weren't any of her business.
"You own the store, Paige," Riley reminded her. "You have the right to access any information having to do with it."
"My mother would not agree with you." Paige walked around her desk to turn on her computer. "She's the boss."
"More so than your father? Isn't it his family's business?"
"Yes, but my mother doesn't think of it that way. She's probably more of a Hathaway than my father is. Once she married my dad, she got rid of her own family. I've never even met my maternal grandmother or my mother's sisters."
"Really?" he asked with a note of surprise in his voice. "So your mother has some skeletons in her closet. That's interesting."
"My mother grew up poor and angry about it. Now, she's rich and angry about other things, like the fact that my grandfather won't name her CEO. She's not a blood Hathaway, and therefore she can't have the title. My father can't have it, either, because he doesn't spend enough time at the store. But that's not an issue, because he doesn't want the title."