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said from his position behind the wheel.
    “Yeah,” Chance replied. That cinched it. If there was one person whose instincts he trusted more than his own, it was Tracker’s. “I’m getting the same feeling.”

    Chance twisted off the cap on his beer and took a long swallow, all the while keeping a tight grip on his fishing pole. To any observer he looked like he was enjoying the fishing that the waters off the south Florida coast provided. That’s exactly what he wanted the security people he knew were watching him to believe.
    And if they checked into it—as he was sure they were doing right now—they would find that the boat was registered to Lucas Wainwright III, CEO of Wainwright Enterprises, and that the man himself had indeed flown in from D.C. to spend the weekend in Boca Raton and had had his boat brought in from his place on the Keys.
    Chance pulled his hat down hard. Luckily, he and his old friend Lucas were the same height and build, so all he’d had to do was use temporary black dye on his hair. But there was no telling how powerful those cameras were, and he didn’t want anyone on shore getting a good look at his facial features.
    Something hit the line hard. The pole bent nearly double, then twanged upward. Chance nearly laughed out loud. Sometimes, he really loved undercover work. Here he was, on a job staking out the isolated Florida estate of Carlo Brancotti—a millionaire who’d made his fortune stealing from others—and he was going to have the pleasure of battling and landing a big catch. He couldn’t have planned it better for the audience that he was sure was recording his every move.
    The only thing that might please him more was to land Carlo himself. Two years ago, a huge yellow diamond, the size of a baby’s fist, had disappeared from the Ferrante private collection in Rome, and Chance had been on Brancotti’s trail ever since. The theft had occurred while the jewel was in transport between the Ferrante palace and the museum where it was to be displayed. The real diamond had been taken and an amazingly accurate fake had been substituted.
    From the moment he’d been called in to investigate the heist, Chance had been sure that Brancotti was the mastermind behind it. He’d been tracking the man for a long time, and Brancotti’s trademark was to leave an almost undetectable fake in place of the real jewel.
    By the time the theft was discovered, Brancotti would have found a buyer, and there would be no evidence to connect the man with the crime.
    In this case, the substitution had been discovered within days because Count Ferrante had insisted on an appraisal of the diamond for insurance purposes just before the exhibition was opened to the public.
    Chance had sold the insurance company and the count on offering a reward for the diamond, one large enough to tempt Brancotti to give it back. And Brancotti had taken the bait. It had been a good idea. If it had worked, the count would have gotten his diamond back, and Chance would have settled an old score and put Brancotti behind bars.
    But the plan had gone terribly wrong, and Chance had lost his partner, Venetia Gaston.
    The fish pulled hard on his line, and Chance dragged his thoughts back to the present.
    Mindful of the telescopic lens he was sure was aimed at him, he began to play the fish, releasing the tension on the line and then gradually pulling it taut again.
    For two long years, he’d waited for news of a large yellow diamond to surface, and a week ago it had. Through one of his contacts, he’d received a tip that Carlo Brancotti was inviting a very select group of men and women to a weekend at his retreat in south Florida and that the Ferrante diamond would be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
    The heightened security along the shoreline of Carlo’s estate cinched it. Carlo Brancotti was meticulously careful. That was why he’d never been caught. Tilting his head slightly, Chance kept one eye on his pole as he scanned