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FBI SPECIAL AGENT KIRA MILLER circled the glass case housing a long-forgotten piece of history. Six cameras, four infrared lasers, and pressure plates built into the tile floor might be overkill. But no one would get near the art gallery’s prized possession—an ugly marble rabbit statue.

“I will never understand the hype of this piece,” Kira whispered to the empty room.

She leaned over the gold velvet ropes that cordoned off the priceless Russian artifact display and stared at the figure perched on top of a steel pedestal.

People were talking about this statue on the dark web, and that had caught Kira’s attention, enough for her to visit District Gallery in the heart of Washington, DC, on a Saturday evening.

A gallery attendant walked into the exhibit area, adjusted his blue blazer, and approached her, looking down his nose at her casual appearance—jeans, a white T-shirt with a Harley-Davidson logo, and a leather jacket. Apparently her staple outfit violated the art gallery’s dress code, but she’d made the trip on impulse on her day off. So, she’d work with what she had.

Time to play infatuated art student. Kira shot the well-built man a smile. “Do you have more information about this piece?” She pointed to the statue, then pulled out a notepad from her crossbody bag.

The man—his name tag read Vince Palmer—checked his watch and smirked. “I suppose. But we close in fifteen minutes.” His haughty attitude had faded somewhat with her interest, and he began his spiel. She pegged the man to be in his late thirties, with silver peeking around the edges of thick dark hair. He droned on about Russian artifacts while Kira inspected the display. His stare irritated her, but she feigned interest in his rehearsed speech. She’d already studied the piece and likely knew more than he did, even though his main role was to answer questions about the artwork.

“One fortunate person purchased this particular statue at an estate sale.” The man’s nasally voice scraped over her nerves, but she needed to glean some new insight so her supervisor would open an official investigation. “After authentication, this statue has been confirmed to be part of a Russian art collection thought to be lost during World War II. We have a few other pieces you might be interested in . . .” He started toward a different exhibit, but Kira didn’t follow.

“Could I have a minute, please?” She stood in front of the slender eight-inch marble statue of a rabbit with a placard that read “Зайка (Zaika).”

“The little bunny,” she said, her voice low, reverent.

“That’s right.” Vince sidled up next to her, his eyes narrowed behind glasses with lenses thicker than the case enclosing Zaika. “Do you speak Russian?”

“A little bit.”

That was an understatement. Kira grew up in a Russian orphanage until an American family adopted her at age ten. She spoke fluent Russian. It was one reason she now had a desk job with the FBI instead of working in the field. The other? Kira rolled her shoulders and heaved an inward sigh of relief at the very minimal twinge. During her last defensive tactics training at Quantico, she tore her rotator cuff. She had surgery the day after graduation, and the FBI assigned her to the linguistics team until she healed.

At least she was able to graduate, but a boring desk job wasn’t why she signed up to be a Special Agent. She had to endure only one more week, as long as her doctor cleared her as fit for duty. For now her reality consisted of translating snippets of conversations and emails from Russian into English while counting down the seconds until she could be assigned a field position.

“I don’t understand why a hunk of rock is so important,” she said. Playing dumb wasn’t exactly something she enjoyed, but she did it well. “Why all the security?”

He raised a brow and grunted. “This is a very rare find. The piece dates to the seventeenth century, but a lot of Russian art disappeared in the early twentieth century and scattered. This finding proves . . .”

She already knew that. If only she could examine the statue. What was so important about a statue of a bunny that two Russians would reference it in a conversation?

Zaika moy. My little bunny.

None of the higher-ups at the FBI bought her theory—that the Russians were talking about this particular artifact.

But there had to be something here. Her gut instinct rarely steered her wrong. As a former New York Police Department detective before joining the FBI, she had a knack for spotting the signs that a crime was imminent.

It couldn’t be a coincidence that the Russians referenced Zaika with this exhibit in town.

“Excuse me a moment, please,” her guide said.

“Of course.”

Vince greeted another patron but kept glancing back at her as if to say, You don’t belong here. Was he afraid she’d steal something? Probably.

A security guard entered the room, followed by a well-dressed older man. The pair hovered in the corner of the exhibit room and whispered. Intensity laced their hushed tones. An argument? In Russian? She was across the room, too far away to eavesdrop, and she couldn’t get any closer without drawing suspicion. Could she?

She returned her attention to the plain statue that had an estimated market value in the millions. The piece was nondescript—a shiny white-and-gray hunk of marble chiseled into the shape of a rabbit. Nondescript was Kira’s best adjective to describe the long-lost piece of art. The rabbit sat with its front paws on its long torso, poised to hop off its pedestal. But the ears were the biggest feature—long and pointing straight up, with a small gap between the two oblong shapes. She expected some bling or ornate carvings, but other than the sparkly amber-colored gems for eyes, nothing stood out on the piece.

How could a piece of rock hold that much value? Imagine what that kind of money would do for starving children in orphanages. Instead, the overpriced estate-sale find of the century sat behind thick glass panels while tourists gawked at it. One man had paid ten dollars for the statue, and the art gallery bought it for an undisclosed amount. That lucky man became an instant millionaire.

A loud family with four children passed through the room, and Kira fell into step with them as the two men in the corner fell silent. The din of excited voices bounced off the barren beige walls of the square room. When they exited through an archway leading to the next exhibit, she feigned interest in a nearby exhibit, planting herself in front of it so she could see the men in her peripheral vision.

With the family gone, the two men resumed their heated discussion. The security guard’s face turned red. The man in the black suit and tie pointed a finger at the guard, accusing him of . . . something. She kept her focus on the painting in front of her while scoping them out.