She tightened her crooked finger and the trigger. “I’ll take my chances on it.”

“Lady.” Score’s temper spiked. He pulled it in. Now wasn’t the time to let his rage boil up. Save it for the gym. “You look like you could use some money. I’ve got five hundred on me. Tell me where the paintings are and it’s yours.”

Modesty felt like echoing the cat’s yowl of triumph. I knew those paintings were worth something. I’ll be able to pay those back taxes without selling off the last of the stock.

“Got all the money I need,” she said. “Now git!”

She hadn’t noticed the man moving, but suddenly the barrel of the rifle was pointed at the ceiling. With a wrench that made her hands ache, he yanked the gun out of her hands.

“Enough with the fun and games,” Score said. He glanced at the breech and saw that the rifle had jammed. With a disgusted snarl he set the old weapon on the kitchen counter. “Where are the paintings?”

“Only pictures I have are family photos and such. What use are they to you?”

He stepped up so close she had to put a crick in her neck just to see the vague, blurred line of his mouth through the slit in the mask. If he had a neck, it was as thick as his upper arms.

“Don’t make me hurt you,” he warned. “Where are the paintings?”

“I’m near ninety. Pain doesn’t scare me.”

Score smiled slowly. “Yeah? How long will you be able to live here alone with every finger in your hands broken?”

Modesty made a small sound. Her greatest fear was being hauled off to some state institution to die with strangers puking and screaming around her.

I’ll walk off a cliff first. But I’ll go knowing that Jillian will be one Breck woman who won’t have to depend on some damn man to survive.

Those paintings are her future.

“The only painting I have is the one I sent to an art dealer outside Salt Lake a month ago,” Modesty said. “He wrote me the other week, said he sent it out for more opinions, and some fool lost it.”