Relief rolled over her. He’d come to find her.

“What’s he doing?” Sam asked.

“I wish I knew.”

He reached the gravelly perimeter surrounding the windmill, and hesitated. Was he looking up here? She couldn’t tell. If he was looking for signs of life, he wouldn’t see it, as Charlotte had insisted on parking their borrowed four-wheel drive in the back. Con had no way of knowing she was there.

She started to reach for the window, to open it and call to him, but something in the way he moved-or didn’t-stopped her. Then he disappeared into the windmill.

“Maybe he thinks I’m in there.”

“I’m going up to check the attic,” Charlotte called as she passed, pausing at the doorway. “You ought to listen to me, Lizzie. The man is a known thief, and nothing is ever going to change that. Be glad you found out before he could rob you blind and break your heart. Can you imagine how badly he’d like to get his hands on those scepters and diamonds? It’s no wonder he glommed onto you-”

“Char,” Sam said softly. “Stop.”

She just headed down the hall, her footsteps heavy on the wooden stairs at the end.

“I trust Con,” Lizzie said emphatically, as though saying it out loud made it even truer.

Then he stepped out of the windmill, a swath of something white in his arms. Lizzie stared, leaning as close to the glass as she could to make out the man and what he carried. As he turned, a gust of wind fluttered the fabric, and the sunlight glinted a flash of golden light, a prism of blue. Brilliant, even from this far away.

“Oh my God,” she said.

“Well, look at that.” Sam’s voice was stunned, and sad. “Oh, honey, maybe Charlotte was right about him.”

“No.” She refused to believe that.

Come to the house now, Con. She willed him to run toward the farmhouse, looking for her. Or pull out his satellite phone and announce what he’d found.

But he didn’t. He turned toward the road-away.

Her heart thudded in her stomach as realization hit.

“He knew it was in there,” she whispered to herself. “He knew all along.” While they made love. When he showed her the documents. When he playfully kissed her good-bye and… never said a word. For a second, she could barely breathe.

He had used her. He’d used the documents as a decoy, then sent her to see her sister and…

Partially covered by the thick lilac bushes, he slowed his step, pulling something-a phone, she realized- out of his pocket. Who was he calling? Lucy? Paxton? Another buyer?

“I can’t believe this.” The words were strangled in her throat.

“You have to find out the truth,” Sam said.

She turned to him. “I’m looking at the truth.”

“The truth is not always what it seems to be,” he said, his blue eyes fierce on her. He stood and pulled out a set of keys. “I’ll stay here with Charlotte. Can you drive that Portuguese Jeep? The Gurgel?”

She nodded.

“Go.” He put the keys in her hand. “Go find out what he’s doing and why. I just don’t believe that man would hurt you. I saw good in him.”

“Oh, Sam.” She blinked back tears she hated, and put her arms around the other man. “So did I.”

“Go.” He gave her a little nudge, and tilted his head toward the hall. “Before she gets back and changes your mind. I’ll tell her you…” He stared beyond her again. “He’s headed north. What the hell’s up there but rocks and cliffs?”

She shook her head, trying to remember the map she’d studied on the plane. “Nothing but hiking trails and farmland,” she said. “And a mile-wide volcanic crater at the tip of the island. There’s only that one road, as far as I know.”

“Then go catch up with him, Lizzie. Find out what the man’s made of. Your dad would want you to.”

Would he? Or would he tell her to run as fast as possible in the opposite direction?

“And maybe get that scepter and diamond back,” Sam added with a wink. “You know what they say, Lizzie Lou?”

“The blondes find the gold.” They said it at the same time and she gave him another squeeze, jumping off the window seat. “See ya, Uncle Sam.”

She hadn’t used the name in many years, but he’d earned it.

Lizzie trotted quietly down the steps, out the back door, and leaped into the topless Gurgel.

This was definitely the right thing to do, she told herself as she turned the key. Regardless of what he was doing, who he was double-crossing, or why, he would never hurt her physically. Emotionally? Yeah, he could do some damage-some major damage-to her heart.

So what’s the worst that could happen? She could hear his voice posing the question as she drove to the front.

Well, she could find out that he was a lying thief, or still on Paxton’s payroll.

“That wouldn’t be the worst thing,” she said into the wind, her heart rising with the speedometer. “Better to know now than later, when I’m in love with the rat bastard.”

Mud sloshed under the wheels as she powered down the drive and reached the road. Why would he go north and not toward the town where he thought she was?

The man is a known thief and nothing is ever going to change that.

She hesitated at the intersection, thinking she heard another engine around the curve in the opposite direction. After a second, when nothing came around the corner, she hit the gas to head up the hill, silencing Charlotte’s voice in her head.

Yanking the wheel to the right, she slammed her foot on the pedal, shooting up the winding asphalt, the emerald foliage and lavender-blue flowers blurring as she focused on the road. She twisted around one corner, then another, still not seeing him. At a straightaway, she squinted into the wind, seeing a spot on the road maybe a mile away. Was that him?

He turned the next corner and she powered on, her hair blown straight back as the wind smacked over the windshield and pounded her. All that was left was the narrow, steep road up to the perimeter of the volcanic crater, the asphalt cracked and pitted up here.

Where in God’s name was he going with that scepter?

With each quarter mile, new emotions took hold, numbing the pain in her chest. Fury. Resentment. Disgust.

She’d been duped.

So what? She wasn’t the first woman in history to fall for a con man, and she wouldn’t be the last. But she wanted that goddamn scepter, and when she got it, she was gonna smack him with it. Just so he knew exactly how she felt.

She spotted him ahead.

The road disintegrated at the top of the mountain into gravel and rocks, and she stopped the Gurgel, knowing she couldn’t make it as far as he had on the motorbike.

She jumped out and started hiking, watching him in the distance as he climbed, still holding the whitecovered scepter, over the last crest of the cratertop.

Why the hell hadn’t he heard her? He had the ears of Superman. Was he that focused on his job? Or was she still too far away?

He disappeared over the edge.

Panting, sweating, burning inside and out, she finally reached the top of the crater, a hump of dirt about five feet wide. On one side was a steep, fifty-foot drop straight down to the ocean, on the other, a sloping grassy bowl leading down to a group of lakes at the bottom of the crater.

Lizzie pulled herself over the top, staying low to surprise him, trying to be quiet.

He was about twenty feet away, crouched over a large black bag. He’d left that there? When? How long had he planned this treachery?

Angled away from her, his face blocked by the low bill of her Gold Digger cap, he opened the white fabric to reveal the scepter. A soft laugh of victory escaped from his lips, the sound bruising her heart.

How could she have misjudged him so completely?

He stood and she did the same, ready for the confrontation. She opened her mouth to call his name just as he whipped off the cap… and shook out long surfer-blond hair.