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The historic home that housed the Boston Diamond Museum was a soaring, three-story colonial mansion with a small bronze sign out front.

Aviva parked a block away and approached the entrance, hyping herself up for a professional pitch to the museum’s director, a man named Lucas O’Mara.

She still couldn’t believe she’d agreed to this.

Squaring her shoulders, she tried the front door but deflated when she found it locked.

She shouldn’t have been surprised; the exhibit’s grand opening wasn’t for another two nights, so there was no reason to think it would be open to the public yet.

Still, certainly Lucas O’Mara and his team had to be inside, setting up.

And she wasn’t doing anything wrong, was she?

It wasn’t as if she planned to steal the bracelet, and finding out information wasn’t a crime.

As Colette had pointed out, there actually was a newsletter for the Boston Center for Holocaust Education, and now Aviva was even signed up for it.

Colette had apparently already put in a call to Chana Baruch, the director of the center, who also edited the newsletter, asking if Aviva might contribute a piece.

“Chana was thrilled,” Colette had chirped on the phone just this morning. “She asked if you could take photos of any Holocaust-related pieces, too.”

“Sure, why not,” Aviva had deadpanned. “Maybe I could sing and tap-dance on the museum floor while I’m at it.”

“Whatever feels right to you, dear,” Colette said, refusing to take the bait. “Just make sure you take pictures of the bracelet.”

Aviva had rolled her eyes and hung up.

Now, she would just need to figure out how to spin her visit to the diamond museum into a newsletter story, while subtly asking questions about the only piece she cared about. She knocked on the front door, and when there was no answer, she pounded harder.

A moment later, the door swung open, and Aviva found herself face-to-face with a tall, broad-shouldered man with gray-flecked dark hair, a few days of salt-and-pepper stubble, and the greenest eyes she’d ever seen.

She recognized him from the About Us section of the museum’s website as Lucas O’Mara, though the photo hadn’t done him justice.

“Can I help you?” he asked, looking down at her.

His pale blue T-shirt was streaked with what looked like grease, and his dark jeans were tucked into scuffed work boots.

“We’re not open to the public yet, I’m afraid. ”

“I know,” Aviva said quickly, casually planting a foot in the doorway, a trick from her early days working in the district attorney’s office.

It was harder—both physically and mentally—to close a door on someone if that person had already taken a step inside.

“I’m Aviva Haskell, and I’m with the Boston Center for Holocaust Education.

We have a monthly newsletter with a vast readership.

” Was she overselling it? She cleared her throat.

“I was hoping to talk to you about your exhibit for a few minutes. Our members are very interested in jewels that may have come through Europe during the Second World War.”

The man looked down at her foot as if he knew she was hiding something. As his gaze traveled up the length of her body to her face, she could feel herself blushing. Was it because he was ridiculously good-looking, or because she was, in fact, up to no good?

“Our PR agency didn’t let me know you were coming, Aviva Haskell from the Boston Center for Holocaust Education’s newsletter,” he said.

“I didn’t go through them.” Aviva hadn’t realized the museum was represented by anyone.

She would have looked much less suspicious if she’d gone through the proper channels.

“The truth is, I’m a volunteer for the center.

I, um, don’t want to let the boss down, you know?

” Could she sound like any more of an incompetent idiot?

“You must be Lucas O’Mara, the director?

” She framed it like a question, though she already knew the answer.

“I must be.” The man was still staring as if he was trying to read her but couldn’t quite pin down the language she was written in.

“So after nearly ten years on this same block, and after I’ve pitched the Boston Center for Holocaust Education about collaborating on our last three twentieth-century European exhibits and haven’t gotten a response, you appear out of the blue? ”

She silently cursed whoever had ignored O’Mara’s overtures in the past. She hesitated and then settled on the truth, or a version of it. “To be honest, I saw the photograph of the diamond bracelet from your upcoming exhibit in Boston Monthly , and I was intrigued.”

“Were you?”

“It’s a beautiful bracelet. I wondered where it had come from.”

“Did you?”

“Just out of curiosity, are you planning to answer every one of my statements with a question? Because I could do this all day.”

Lucas finally cracked a smile. “Could you?” he asked, but when his smile widened a second later, she realized he was teasing her, and she smiled slightly in return.

“May I see it?” she asked, cutting to the chase. “The bracelet?”

He raised an eyebrow, then stepped aside. “Who am I to stand in the way of a journalistic mission?”

Aviva followed him in and waited as he locked the door behind them, noting as he did so that the display cases lining the hall were all empty. “Don’t you need jewels for a jewel exhibit?” she asked as he joined her.

He followed her eyes to the blank spaces. “Ah, you truly are an intrepid reporter.”

“Okay, full confession? This is, uh, the first time I’ve written for the newsletter.”

“And what is it you do when you’re not penning riveting newsletter features, Ms. Haskell?”

“Call me Aviva. And I’m an attorney.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Well, that explains all the questions.”

“But I’ve volunteered for the center for years. My mother was the founding director, so it’s a place that means a great deal to me.” She cleared her throat. “So, um, the jewels?”

“Ah. Yes, well, once the museum opens, we’ll have security guards twenty-four hours a day, along with a rotation of off-duty police officers. But until then, it’s just me, so having the pieces in the cases now would be like an invitation to jewel thieves to come and help themselves.”

“Right, of course, wouldn’t want that, Mr. O’Mara.” Aviva swallowed hard and forced herself to maintain eye contact with him. What would he say if he knew that the newly minted attorney for Boston’s oldest jewel thief was standing right in front of him?

Fortunately, Lucas was the one to look away first. “Come on. Safe is in the back. And you can call me Lucas.”

He led her through a darkened room filled with more empty display cases toward a narrow stairway down a hall at the back of the building. “How long have you worked here, Lucas?” Aviva asked as they walked to the second floor.

“Since the museum opened,” Lucas answered, not giving her more. He unlocked the office at the top of the stairs and held the door open for her.

“Have you always been interested in jewels?” she asked as he flicked the light on, illuminating a small space with an antique-looking wooden desk and walls lined with bookshelves.

She glanced at the shelf closest to her and was surprised that the volumes weren’t about gems; they seemed to be his personal collection, everything from Hemingway to Louise Penny, Fitzgerald to Lisa Scottoline.

She ran her fingers along a few of the spines. He had good taste.

“I have,” he replied, crossing to open a closet in the back.

In it, there were five massive safes built into the wall.

They were so large and imposing they looked like bank vaults, but she supposed that was just the kind of security a diamond museum would need.

“When I was working at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, I brought in a traveling exhibit of gems from Amsterdam’s Diamant Museum, and the New England Diamond Alliance took notice. ”

“The New England Diamond Alliance?” Aviva asked, though she already knew what it was; Marty was a member.

But it was good to get a witness talking about innocuous things he was comfortable with; it made him an easier nut to crack when the hard questions rolled around.

Not that Lucas O’Mara was a hostile witness, she reminded herself.

“A trade group of jewelers and jewel brokers in this part of the country,” Lucas explained. “They hired me on to host a rotating collection of exhibits from around the world.”

“So there’s no permanent collection?” she asked sweetly, though she knew this, too.

Lucas shook his head as he bent to spin the dial of the second safe from the left, his broad shoulders blocking Aviva’s view of the numbers.

“No. It’s why we’re not open year-round; we host an exhibit for a month or two, and then I go back to negotiating shows for the year ahead.

We rely on the generosity of collectors, who share items for a few months at a time. ”

The safe popped open, and Lucas reached inside, pulled out a velvet bag, and shut the safe behind him. He turned to Aviva, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, and used it to slip the bracelet from the bag and place it into his palm. “Voilà,” he said as Aviva stared.

Aviva could feel her heart thudding in recognition.

Of course she’d seen a picture of the bracelet the night before, in the magazine Colette had handed her, but seeing it in person—an obvious match to the piece Colette had been wearing—took her breath away.

It was hewn of the same delicate filigree attached to a thick rope of gold, had the same narrow golden veins, and had a constellation of diamonds that shone like a twinkling spill of stars.

It was clearly a mirror image of Colette’s piece.

She pulled out her phone and snapped a few pictures.

These would have to do for the newsletter.