“The police are just a few minutes away, Ms. Farrell.”

She continued talking, the sound of her own voice soothing her fears. As long as she could talk, then she was still alive and the fear couldn’t consume her. “I stayed behind to attend college. I worked three different jobs for pocket change. I lived from hand to mouth for nearly my entire freshman year at Boston College, scraping to pay tuition and rent. I hated that. And then I found my very first ‘treasure,’ a Sheraton chair I bought for $15.00 at a tag sale and resold for $4,000.00 at a consignment auction.”

From that moment on, Olivia had paid for her college education by buying and selling antiques. She discovered she had an uncanny eye for spotting valuable pieces in the most unlikely places-garage sales, thrift shops, estate auctions. She could tell a reproduction from an original at fifty paces and was a skilled bidder.

“Even though I majored in art at Boston College, I fell naturally into a career in antiques. I rented my first showroom space the year I graduated. Six years later, I formed a partnership with one of my clients. Kevin Ford was a man with money. I thought I had it made. He bought a beautiful retail space on Charles Street at the base of Beacon Hill.” Olivia sighed. “How could I have been so naive?”

“The police will be there in approximately thirty seconds, ma’am,” the operator said.

Olivia could already hear the sirens in the distance over the traffic outside the gallery. But even the police couldn’t get her out of the mess she’d made of her life. She blamed herself for this whole thing. When Kevin bought the building, she’d had her doubts. Though he was wealthy, he certainly didn’t have the millions to buy retail space on Charles Street. But all Olivia could see was the next stage in her meteoric rise to the top of Boston society-and all the business that would come her way.

Had she trusted her instincts, she might have realized that Kevin Ford’s bottomless wallet came from underworld connections. That fact had been proved when Olivia overheard a late-night conversation between Ford and one of Ford’s most important clients, Red Keenan-a man she later learned was a Boston crime boss who’d ordered a handful of murders last year alone.