Czytaj książkę: «Nights With A Thief»

Chapter 1

Jack Sinclair put on his first tuxedo at the age of eight, looked in the mirror and told the servant who’d helped him dress, I look good. The servant laughed before shunting him off to a corner of the main hallway to await his parents’ summons. That was twenty-two years ago, but two things hadn’t changed: he still looked good in a tux, and he still spent time hanging out in corners at these formal events.

This particular event was taking place at the Castle, a mansion carved out of Rocky Mountain stone in the 1800s. David Candalaria was celebrating the opening of the King’s Treasures exhibit at the Denver museum that bore his name, a collection of paintings, statues and carvings from a tiny kingdom that no longer existed. Only serious art lovers or historians remembered it today.

Jack liked art, but the party tonight wasn’t about that. The best way to view a treasure was in private, intimately. No, this evening was about seeing and being seen. Photo ops. Who was with whom? Who was wearing what? Who had acquired what?

He sipped champagne as he strolled the perimeter of the ballroom. He’d been there nearly two hours, had talked to everyone he had any interest in and now was avoiding the few he didn’t want to talk to. That was why he kept moving; it was harder to hit a moving target.

In keeping with the rest of the Castle, the ballroom was grand. Polished marble tile reflected prisms of light from the chandeliers forty feet above. Eight fireplaces were spaced around the room, each large enough to hold six of Candalaria’s bodyguards shoulder to shoulder. Palladian windows lined the three outside walls, opening onto stone terraces that led to formal gardens, then to a vast expanse of lush green lawn that ended in dark walls of impenetrable forest.

Sidestepping a Tokyo collector said to covet all the world’s masterpieces, Jack turned his attention back to the guests. Some of them were as beautiful as the room, some as expensive, some as dark as the forest encroaching outside. He estimated the net worth of the attendees easily north of $500 billion: royalty, sheikhs, businessmen, politicians, celebrities. The rich who sought out the spotlight and the even richer who paid a great deal to avoid it.

He was approaching the starting point of his ramble when movement in the nearest corner caught his eye. He didn’t see much: a flash of dark red dress, an even briefer flash of honey-toned shoulders, black curls drawn up. The woman had slipped through a barely opened door before his brain registered that much. Along with a sense of familiarity.

Of course she seemed familiar. He’d been to dozens of these parties all over the world. There were always local faces added to the crowd, but overall the guest lists included the usual suspects. But something about this woman... He couldn’t quite recognize her—and he never forgot a face. Especially when it was attached to such gorgeous shoulders.

Depositing his champagne on a table, he walked to the corner. He didn’t look over his shoulder, glance around or do anything to draw attention his way. He simply turned the doorknob, slipped through the opening and closed it behind him.

The hallway stretching before him made a few turns before reaching the kitchen at the back of the house. It was well lit in comparison to the narrow stairs on the left that twisted out of sight within a few steps. They were lighted by a single bulb on a landing above, then another from the second floor. There they connected to a similar servants’ corridor, running the length of the east wing suites.

Along with quarters for the most favored of his guests, David’s suite was in that wing.

Jack listened, catching faint bits of conversation and clanging from the kitchen, but no sound from the stairs. A glance up showed no fleeing woman, no shadows or signs of movement, but...yes, there distantly, the thud of a heel on wood. Intrigued by the fact that the woman was slipping into very private quarters in the middle of a grand gala, he followed, listening intently, his gaze constantly searching both above and below.

He was rewarded with another sound, a hushed expletive in a husky voice. As he reached the top of the steps, he moved closer to the wall and recalled the layout of the second floor. To the left, the hall extended across the wing, with doors opening into discreet niches in the main corridor, allowing the maids and kitchen help access to the rooms without being visible for more than a few seconds. Candalaria was a big believer that the help should be neither seen nor heard.

To the right, the corridor covered only fifty feet before it ended at a dark, heavy door opening into Candalaria’s own suite. All Jack knew about it was what a chatty housekeeper had shared after a few glasses of wine last visit. Unlike the rest of the mansion, the space was modern, austere, one large room bigger than most people’s houses. There was a sitting area, an office area, a well-stocked bar, a sleeping area and, behind an undulating wall of water, a bath.

From beyond the door came another muffled sound.

Only a servant would enter by this route. Any woman with an invitation would be escorted along the main corridor, steps muffled by the red-and-blue Serapi carpet, given a chance to admire the Elizabeth Turk marble sculptures, the Lalique tables and the Devine metal pieces on the walls.

Only a servant...or someone in the same line of business as Jack.

Interesting. Who had targeted David, and which of his treasures was she after?

Jack’s curiosity was purely that. He wasn’t there to study the security setup or to check out the priceless baubles worn by the guests. He wasn’t meeting a prospective client or eavesdropping on gossip. He was on vacation, had come for the company, the food and the infrequent chance to admire David’s personal collection up close.

But he couldn’t help but be interested in someone who was on the job tonight, especially a woman. There weren’t many females in his field, and he was pretty sure he’d met all of them except...

Bella.

His stomach tightened.

It wasn’t her real name. Twelve years ago, when she’d waltzed into the Italian villa of a designer who’d given Armani and Prada a run for their money, she’d left with the crown jewel of his fancy red diamond collection: a flawless four-carat brilliant cut worth a million or so for each carat. With that one act, she’d become a legend, and like any good legend, there was a shortage of hard, cold facts.

She was fair, with green eyes, so blue they couldn’t have been natural, and brown the rich shade of cacao. Her blond hair cascaded over her shoulders...when it wasn’t short and sleek and fiery red or pale brown with silvery highlights. She was tall, thin, rounded, danced like a prima ballerina and walked with a limp, spoke with a Southern drawl, sounded French or had an accent too exotic to identify.

The only thing anyone agreed on was that she was a beautiful woman. Bella donna.

The designer’s fancy red had disappeared, along with, over the years, various other items from London, Berlin, Dresden, Hong Kong. None was ransomed back to its owner, offered on the black market or ever seen again, and after each theft, Bella remained as mysterious as ever.

Up to this point, the highlight of Jack’s career had involved the penthouse suite of Dubai’s tallest hotel, rappelling gear and a two-hundred-foot slide onto the balcony of a room occupied by honeymooners so involved with each other that they hadn’t even noticed him slipping past and into the hall.

Meeting Bella Donna, being the first to do so...

He climbed the last step onto the landing and turned to the right.

That would be a very significant highlight.

* * *

It never got old.

Every time Lisette Malone laid eyes on a work of art for the first time, her reaction was the same: goose bumps raising all over, muscles tightening, a quick intake of breath. Tonight was no different.

She stood in the dim room, aware of light, noise, time, but her core was focused on the canvas unrolled on the desk. Its colors were vibrant, the brushstrokes delicate, the pastoral scene so real that it was surreal. It was titled Shepherdess and Her Sheep, and for an instant she could actually smell the grass and feel the slight breeze lifting the woman’s apron. Two hundred years old, and it stole the breath from her lungs.

Oh, Lizzie, isn’t it fabulous?

Lisette didn’t look for the source of the comment. She would give everything she had if her mother was hiding in a shadowy corner, or if the voice was coming through the tiny bud concealed in her ear, but neither was possible. Marley Malone had died seven months ago, and Lisette’s heart had broken from the aching.

Until the last few weeks, when Marley had taken up residence in Lisette’s head with no intention of leaving until her dearest dream had been fulfilled: the return of Le Mystère to its rightful owner.

Lisette.

Though she could sense her mother clapping her hands in delight, the emotions inside Lisette weren’t so light. Le Mystère was a priceless statue, and her father had been killed for it. So had his great-great-grandfather. Some might consider it cursed: by the Toussaint who’d given the statue to the Blue family as a token of appreciation? The next-generation Toussaint who’d tried to take it back and killed its rightful owner in the process? Her father, who’d died to protect it? Or the Toussaint who’d left Lisette fatherless?

It’s justice, Lizzie. That statue belongs to you. It’s your heritage. It’s your father’s legacy. He did die for it, and I promised his spirit that we’ll get it back. His death won’t have been in vain.

“Not now, Mama, please. Stay out of my head.”

Lisette had to stay ready just in case company showed up.

This company had better be Jack Sinclair. She’d put herself near his path in the ballroom twice, had paused at the door long enough for his gaze to lock on her. She’d even made sure to scrape a shoe and swear, difficult tasks to carry out when she’d been taught stealth her whole life.

Her gloved hands steady, she rolled the canvas once again and slid it into a mailing tube she’d found in a supply closet. It was a sorry home for such a wonder, but only for another twenty-four hours.

Before capping the tube, she bent close to the desk to examine what looked like colored stones thrown into a glass dish. Given time, she could examine each one and total up their approximate values, but it didn’t really matter. The small fancy red was delicate, its colors fiery, and would bring enough to cover her and Padma’s expenses for a while.

She sealed the red inside an envelope from Candalaria’s desk, dropped it into the tube, then taped the cap securely before glancing around the room once more. There were so many other masterpieces to study if only she had time, but time was never on her side. If she was caught with Shepherdess, if she was even caught on this floor of the house...

Shrugging to loosen the tension in her shoulders, she started toward the balcony. If she was caught, she would have to move on to plan B. She always had a plan B—and a C and D. And now, to Marley’s delight, a plan IDS, for Île des Deux Saints, the island where Le Mystère resided.

Lisette turned to the east wall. There were no curtains on the windows or the French doors—just stunning views of the mountains during the day, near-darkness at night. Little of the outdoor lighting reached this high up, leaving the murky shadows she liked best.

Now for the hardest part of the job. She opened the door just wide enough to slide through to the balcony. Barely ten by twenty feet, it had been built more for looks than function, though it did hold two elaborately carved chairs. She didn’t move toward the chairs, didn’t go one inch nearer the knee-high balustrade than she had to. She dragged a few oxygen particles into her lungs, pressed her back against the stone wall and tried to ignore the fact that she was standing on a monstrously heavy stone ledge fifty feet above the ground.

She didn’t like heights. Didn’t like the idea of falling to her death.

It’s not the fall that kills you, Lizzie. It’s the landing. But you’ll be okay.

There’d been a time when Lisette had believed those last three words, no matter the situation. But that was before she’d crashed a party with more security than any presidential visit, sneaked into the owner’s quarters and stolen a canvas valued around a million dollars, and now had to climb her way down from the high-in-the-sky balcony and leave the grounds without anyone noticing.

Besides Jack Sinclair. Even with him on her trail, okay was still a long ways out of her reach. And if it wasn’t him moving quietly in the suite behind her...

“Hey, sweetie, look up.” As usual, Padma, Lisette’s best friend and partner in crime, was right on time. Though her voice came softly from the bud resting in Lisette’s ear, her tone was warm and cheery, meaning everything from her end was going according to plan.

Lisette tilted her head. The bright lights below deepened the contrast with the inky sky. Generally, this far outside Denver, the night put on a pretty spectacular show, but tonight the sky was dark, hiding its gems with a thick cloud layer.

No, it wasn’t totally dark. A tiny red light hung a hundred feet overhead, slowly descending. After a moment, its soft whirring buzz reached her, and half a moment after that, the machine stopped in midair in front of her.

“Smile for the camera, sweetie.”

Lisette bared her teeth. Technology was Padma’s passion. She never missed an opportunity to buy a new toy, and the drone was her latest and favest. Since it was proving to be of use on the job tonight, she was happy to call it her favest, too.

Cautiously she reached out to disconnect the bag hanging beneath the camera. She took out a grappling hook and line, the metal clanking softly on the stone, then grabbed a pair of climbing gloves. The Shepherdess, with the fancy red in her tube, went into the bag, the zipper rasping as it closed. Once it was secure, she backed to the wall again and gave a thumbs-up, envisioning Padma’s beaming face.

“Okay, sweetie, I’ll get this baby safely out of here, and you do the same with yourself. See you at home.”

I hope. If her dress didn’t get in the way. Her heels. Her fears. A security guard. A nosy guest. But she had a talent for managing risks.

“FYI,” Padma added, “countdown to fireworks, four minutes. People should be gathering outside the ballroom. Be careful.”

Lisette watched the drone disappear into the sky, making no more noise than an annoying cicada. Once she lost sight of it, she turned her attention to the grappling hook and the 9.5-millimeter line attached to it. What goes up must come down. Of course, going up a flight of stairs was so much safer than sliding down a piece of rope.

Heart pounding, she knelt even though her entire body agreed that edging closer to the balustrade was a really bad idea. She pushed those voices to the back of her head and concentrated on securing the hook and the rope with clammy hands. She wasn’t as expert with her climbing gear as she should be, since she tried to avoid self-induced terror as often as possible. Everything else about her job—the ingress and egress, the intel, the plans, the backup plans, the disguises—all that was dangerous but fun. Climbing, whether up or down, was just plain scary.

“What’re you doing?”

Lisette jerked, spinning around like a turtle hunkered on the ground to face the man who’d spoken, her feet sliding between two squat columns, dangling in air. One shoe slipped, then slid off her foot in slow motion, landing somewhere below without a sound.

For an instant, she wanted to strangle Jack Sinclair, but that would mean prying her hands loose from the stone, and that wasn’t happening until it was do-or-die time.

She’d had two choices for this role in her drama: Jack or his friend Simon Toussaint. It had been no choice, even without her mother’s lifelong insistence that the Toussaint family was evil. If Simon had appeared on the balcony, she would have lost her grip and fallen backward to her death. He scared her that much.

Jack, on the other hand, was Prince Charming. She’d never met him, but she’d seen him, mostly on the internet, a few times in person. He was tall, blond, tanned and, even in this light, outrageously handsome.

Her gaze was traveling the fine leather of his shoes up to the incredible weave of his trousers when abruptly he crouched in front of her. His brows were quirked, and so was his mouth as their gazes connected. His expression was tinged with curiosity, but underneath that was tautly controlled intensity. Interest. Even amusement.

She didn’t take comfort in that assessment.

“Well?” he prompted.

She swallowed hard. “I’m taking a shortcut downstairs for the fireworks.”

He looked at the grappling hook and the line, then freed her right hand from its grip on the rope. “Not with these gloves. They’re great for not leaving prints, but you’d better have a heavier pair somewhere, or your bloody hands will give you away.”

Those same reactions from seeing the painting—goose bumps, muscles tightening, breath catching—returned, provoking a curious emotion, not as awestruck as the painting but not as, say, nauseating as the height of the balcony.

She was in the process of reclaiming her hand when he stiffened, turning his head slightly toward the room. She would like to think it was just a gesture, listening out of habit, but she’d heard the sounds, too, the opening and closing of heavy doors. The rumble of male voices, barely audible outside.

“You got gloves?” he asked again as he withdrew a pair of his own from inside his jacket. The man carried climbing gloves in his tuxedo? Before she could finish being surprised by that, she accepted it. Tools of the trade. Getting caught without them could cost his life.

She ripped off the thin gloves and replaced them with her climbing ones as more voices sounded in the room. Was it staff sneaking in to watch the fireworks from the best seats in the house? Guards making rounds? Or maybe Candalaria himself had come in to show off a wonder, talk business or get busy with the latest woman on his arm. It didn’t matter, though. Getting caught on the balcony didn’t bode well for Lisette.

She wasn’t sure how it boded for Sinclair.

“Come on, Cinderella, get moving, or I’m hijacking your coach for myself.”

Giving herself a mental shake, Lisette tucked the thin gloves into the bodice of her dress, hiked up her dress and slid her bare foot over the knee wall, curling her toes into the stone as if they might find a lifesaving grip there. Her palms were sweaty, her heart was pounding, and she wasn’t sure she could do it. Swing the other leg over. Step into thin air. Have a good fall while avoiding one hell of a bad landing. But she had no choice. She very much wanted to avoid prison, even more to avoid death.

Jack’s hand brushed her arm. “Let me go first. If anything goes wrong, I’ll break your fall.”

Gentlemanly? Or seeing to his own safety first? Either way, she couldn’t protest over the knot in her throat. All she could do was watch as he slipped over the wall, then gracefully disappeared from sight without making a sound...and listen as the lock on the French doors clicked. The reflections on the glass panes shifted as the door slowly pushed outward. A gold-and-silver ball exploded in the sky high above the grounds, and a raspy voice said, “We’re right on time.”

Grasping the rope, driven purely by adrenaline, she swung her entire body over the wall to dangle in the air, nothing more than a thin line and her own ten fingers stopping her from splatting to the ground. Instantly she closed her eyes, unable to look at the sky, the tops of trees, the people made so small by distance they didn’t look real.

As she clung to the rope, the swaying caused by the inelegant start of her descent stopped. Time to start moving, to press her knees to the line, to balance her weight on her arms, to slide hand over hand down to the ground... Nothing happened.

Time, she told herself more forcefully. She couldn’t freeze now. She was strong, lifting weights just for this purpose, but she couldn’t hold herself forever. Even the thought sent fine tremors through her hands, up her arms and across her shoulders to meet in the middle.

Another starburst appeared in the sky with a muffled boom, so bright it would take only one guest glancing about to spot her dangling there. Sadly, there was no contingency for that in plans A, B, C or D.

Panic danced up her back, but before it got close enough to make the short leap into her brain, warm fingers closed around her ankle. Jack tugged on it, not enough to startle her into letting go, too much to ignore. Had he already reached the ground and come back up for her, or had he been waiting all this time?

Either way, the touch of his hand made her feel safer, braver. Focusing on that bravery, she pried up her left fingers one at a time, let her body slide, then grasped the rope again and repeated the action with her right hand. Let go, slide, grab tight, over and over, and the entire time Jack Sinclair’s fingers remained around her ankle.

At last, even with her eyes closed, she knew she was only feet above the ground. She could tell it from the overwhelming mix of perfumes that assaulted the air, from the voices, the clinking of glasses, the aura created by too many people jammed into too small a space.

“You can open your eyes.”

She didn’t want to, not until her feet were on the ground—hell, not until her butt was on the ground. But she forced them open and saw that they’d wound up exactly where she’d planned: in the corner where the east wing jutted out from the main building, in the shadows created by a feathery tree growing in a giant pot. Before she could undo her grip on the rope, Jack laid his hands at her waist and lifted her away.

He set her on her feet in the corner, stone at her back, earth under her feet, and stood close, his gaze crinkled as he studied her. His eyes were the rich, startling blue that she kept in her stock of tinted contact lenses, except his were natural. She studied them, looking for something—suspicion, awareness, too many questions or too many answers. She wondered why he had helped her, if he would now turn her over to Candalaria or figure she owed him a favor for not jamming her up. She wondered if she could escape him.

A very small part of her wondered if she had to escape him right this very moment.

Considering that last thought, she paid little attention to his movements—stripping off his gloves, stuffing them into his pockets, straightening his jacket, smoothing a wrinkle from her dress.

“Stay here.” He ducked behind the tree before disappearing around the corner of the building.

This would be the perfect time for her to run, and she even took a few stumbling steps before leaning against the wall again. She’d known better than to wear four-inch heels on a job, especially ones that could fall off so easily, but she’d been swayed by the fact that they made her legs look damn good. But slipping out of the party like this would raise the question of how she’d managed to lose a shoe, and the last thing she wanted was questions.

Especially given that, before long, both the grappling hook’s presence and the Shepherdess’s disappearance would be discovered.

With the faintest of rustles, Jack returned, her shoe seeming delicate and small in his hand. Prince Charming, she thought again, at exactly the instant he whispered, “Your slipper, Cinderella.”

“Thank you.” She took the shoe, wiggled her foot into it, straightened, and...

* * *

...leaned to the side and puked.

Jack took a hasty step back even as his hand went automatically to the handkerchief in his pocket. Bella Donna, the most famous thief in his rather elite circle, was throwing up after a relatively simple job. It didn’t fit the cool, mysterious persona.

She really was beautiful, even as she dabbed her mouth with the handkerchief. The skin exposed by her dress was a lovely bronze; her body was long, lean and muscular; her breasts were nicely rounded; and her hair was thick with curls. Her eyes were brown—at least for tonight—and her facial structure was classical: smooth forehead, high cheekbones, the kind of nose plastic surgeons offered their less fortunate patients, the kind of mouth made for kissing.

That face momentarily wore a chagrined look.

“You have a place to put those gloves? Because it’s time for us to say our goodbyes.”

She pulled off the climbing gloves, tugged her dress high enough that a slit exposed a length of long thigh and some kind of black rig vaguely reminiscent of a thigh holster, where she stuffed the gloves. He regretted watching the fabric slide back into place. He wouldn’t have thought that second skin of a dress could conceal anything, but when she stepped away from the wall, his scrutiny gave no hint that she was hiding anything more than a breath beneath the gown.