Once a Thief

by Kay Hooper

  “Don’t forget me, Morgana.”

  It sounded like a rather final good-bye, and that impression intensified when he faded back into the shadows. Before she could regain command of her voice or her wits, he was gone.

  Just as she had that night in the museum, Morgan felt bereft, as acutely conscious of his absence as she had been of his presence. She wanted to call out his name, and it cost her a severe struggle not to.

  Dammit, she didn’t even know his name! All she knew was the infamous nickname of a conniving thief.

  Standing alone in the darkness, Morgan spent a good five minutes cussing herself silently, furious and somewhat chagrined at how easily—how maddeningly easily—he had managed to fascinate her mind and affect her body. It was a typically chilly San Francisco night, but she felt hot, and told herself firmly it was sheer embarrassment. She lifted a hand to tug at the high collar of her sweater, and then froze.

  Her favorite piece of jewelry, and the only piece of real value she owned, was a gold pendant she wore suspended on a fine gold chain. The pendant was a heart shape encrusted with numerous small rubies, a piece that could be casual or dressy depending on what she was wearing.

  Tonight, it had been casual.

  And it was gone.

  Morgan let out a sound that couldn’t have been heard more than three feet away. Quinn, if he’d been privileged to hear it, would have had no difficulty interpreting it. And the quite lively sense of self-preservation that had kept him alive and at large for ten years would have started warning bells jangling.

  If he really hadn’t intended to rouse Morgan’s considerable temper, he had failed wonderfully.

  When Wolfe Nickerson stalked into the museum’s computer room in the middle of the following Tuesday afternoon, one look at his face should have warned anyone that he was not in a good mood. Unfortunately, the computer technician who was kneeling half under the main desk couldn’t see his face. So his brusque voice and somewhat imperious summons caused her to bump her head—hard—against the underside of the desk.

  “Hey—you,” he growled, snapping his fingers as he looked around the somewhat cramped room that was filled with various machines, monitors, and control panels.

  He heard the thud, and it effectively drew his attention to the desk. Then he saw the top of a rather wild blonde head being rubbed by one small hand, and a pair of fierce green eyes glaring up at him.

  In a voice that was every bit as intense as her eyes and held a strong Southern accent, she said, “To summon a cab, you can snap your fingers. To call a forgiving dog, you can snap your fingers. But if you want a printable response from me, use my name.”

  “I don’t know your name,” he retorted.

  She let out a little sigh that sounded aggravated and climbed to her feet, still rubbing her head. Her expression remained somewhat annoyed, though her voice was milder. “That is true, but hardly an excuse. You might at least have said ‘Hey, lady,’ or ‘Excuse me, miss.’”

  “I didn’t know you were a—woman,” Wolfe said. He realized he was being stared at and decided he’d better clarify that statement. “I mean, I wasn’t aware that Ace would be sending me a female technician. And I couldn’t see you when I came into the room.”

  “Next time,” she said, “knock.”

  For a little thing, she certainly had an attitude, he thought. He towered over her by nearly a foot, but she was obviously not in the least intimidated. In fact, there was something slightly mocking in her expression. Wolfe wasn’t used to being treated with mockery, especially by a woman.

  “What is your name?” he demanded.

  “Storm Tremaine.”

  He didn’t immediately respond to the information, even though he’d asked for it. He wasn’t often caught off guard by a person or a situation, but this was one of the rare occasions. When Ace Security had promised to send him their very best computer technician to replace the one who had unintentionally sabotaged the museum’s new security system more than a week ago, Wolfe had expected another earnest young man whose language was so technical it hardly resembled English and who probably had no interest in anything except his computers.

  What Wolfe had definitely not expected was a pint-size blonde somewhere in her twenties with very long and definitely wild hair, big eyes so haughty, fierce, and green any cat would have been proud to claim them, and a small but alive face that wasn’t exactly pretty but certainly wouldn’t be easily forgotten.

  Wolfe had a thing about blondes, but he preferred them tall, sleek, and leggy. This one hardly fit the mold, in more ways than one. In fact, judging by what he’d seen of her temperament, her hair should have been red. He was almost certain it was meant to be red.

  He eyed her, not entirely pleased, because she certainly didn’t look like his mental image of a crackerjack computer technician. “Your name is Storm?” he asked dryly.

  She returned the stare, then put small hands on her hips and looked him up and down slowly and thoroughly—missing nothing along the way—with a total lack of self-consciousness. “Well, as I understand it, yours is Wolfe,” she drawled. “So let’s not cast stones, huh?”

  There was too much justice in that for him to be able to take exception to it, but he was definitely annoyed by her attitude. “Look, in case nobody told you—you work for me.”

  Without hesitation and in a very matter-of-fact way, she said, “My job is to complete the installation of a computerized security system in this museum. I work for Ace Security first because they are my employers, Max Bannister second because he hired us to do a job, and the San Francisco Museum of Historical Art third because the job is here. Fourth is Morgan West, who is the director of the Mysteries Past exhibit. You come in fifth, since being head of security for the exhibit is a narrow area of responsibility. And since Mr. Bannister is away—I believe on his honeymoon—I answer directly to you on any problems concerning security.” She smiled. “And I don’t need any of you hovering over me. In case nobody told you—I’m very good at what I do.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Wolfe said. He felt very irritated at her. And couldn’t take his eyes off her vividly expressive face. It was a disconcerting combination of reactions.

  She nodded slightly, clearly accepting his challenge. “Fair enough. I’ll be quite happy to prove myself. I’ll work, and work hard—but, as I said, not with you standing there glowering at me. To coin a phrase, this room’s too small for the both of us. Was there a reason you came in here?”

  “Yes, there was a reason.” He knew he sounded as annoyed as he felt. “I wanted to know how long the door alarms will be deactivated; I need the guards stationed in the corridors, not on the doors, while the museum’s open.”

  Storm sat down in the swivel chair behind the desk, leaned back, and propped her feet up on the desk. She was wearing very small, very scuffed Western boots with high heels.

  She was little, Wolfe realized, noting that the heels had given her at least three inches of height.

  “The door alarms are back on line,” she said. “I had to take them off line for half an hour because somebody had screwed up and mismatched four different cables, which was threatening to blow the whole system.”

  “It wasn’t me,” he heard himself say, aware of a peculiar urge to defend himself because of the way she was looking at him. At the same time, he was relieved to know that she’d had a good reason for being underneath the desk. That had bothered him on some vague level of his mind.

  Storm laced her fingers together across her middle, still looking at him. After a moment she said mildly, “Well, it hardly matters since I fixed it. Anyway, the door alarms will remain on line until the changeover to the new system.”

  “Which will be . . . ?”

  “I had to start all over with a new hard drive, if you’ll recall, so all the data has to be reentered, from the operating system on up. Then the new security program has to be written, installed, and integrated. It’ll take some time. A week. Ten days
at the most.”

  Wolfe felt his eyebrows climbing. If she could get the new security system on line in ten days or less, they would actually end up ahead of their original schedule. Skeptical by nature, he said, “Aren’t you being optimistic about that?”

  “No.”

  Totally against his will, he felt a flicker of amusement. She might be little, but there was certainly nothing small about Storm Tremaine’s self-confidence. It was a trait he tended to respect. “Then don’t you think you’d better get started?” he suggested dryly.

  She nodded toward the main computer terminal atop the desk to the right of her boots. The screen was dark, but the drive system was humming quietly. “I have started. Until the operating system finishes loading, that thing’s nothing more than a very stupid, very expensive piece of junk waiting for somebody to tell it what to do. The OS is loading now.”

  Wolfe wasn’t exactly computer-illiterate but, like most people, he just automatically assumed the machine wasn’t on if the screen was dark. Before he could either admit his ignorance or come up with a face-saving response, she tossed the subject into the limbo of unimportant things.

  “How fast can you run?”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Run. The mile, for instance. How fast can you run the mile?”

  “About average, I suppose.”

  She smiled. It suddenly made him extremely nervous. “That’s good,” she said.

  Warily, he asked, “Why is that good?”

  “I was state champ in college.”

  Morgan had told herself at least a hundred times that there was nothing she could do to get her necklace back. Max had told her via phone, with his usual courtesy but with emphasis, that there were enough people after Quinn’s hide without her involvement.

  Well, she knew that.

  But. She wanted her necklace back. She had swallowed her pride and explained to Wolfe—with as few details as possible—how Quinn had stolen it from her. Rather surprisingly, Wolfe hadn’t given her a hard time about it; he had simply asked Max’s police inspector friend Keane Tyler to keep an eye out for the necklace. Without going into much detail as to how the necklace came to be “lost.” But if Quinn had sold the thing (the only reason Morgan could think of for him to have taken it—other than sheer devilry, which was admittedly just as likely), it had yet to surface at any fence or pawnshop.

  She wanted it back.

  That was why, she told herself. That was why she was sticking her nose in where it really didn’t belong despite Max’s warning and her own common sense. Because she wanted her necklace back. Not because she had any desire at all to meet up with that devious thief again.

  He was still in the city, she knew that. Still too close by for comfort. At least twice in the last few days, she was absolutely positive he had been in the museum, lost among the crowd of visitors, and close enough to touch.

  What she didn’t know was whether he’d been casing the joint—keeping an eye on the progress of preparations for the Mysteries Past exhibit—or had been hanging around playing invisible merely to annoy her.

  He was capable of either motive. Dammit.

  She had no idea what his face looked like, and though she caught herself studying several tall strangers with an intentness that had resulted in two indecent propositions and three requests for a date, she was reasonably sure she hadn’t actually seen him.

  Reasonably sure.

  But ever since her last encounter with him, she’d been looking for him. And not just in the museum here. She averaged spending at least a couple of hours every night in her car, parked outside some other museum or jewelry store—any likely target—waiting to see if he would show up. Trying to sense him.

  It was dumb and reckless and she knew it . . . but she couldn’t help herself.

  By Tuesday she was short on sleep and not in the best of moods, so when Keane Tyler called her to report no luck in turning up the necklace Quinn had stolen from her, she vented her feelings in what was a fairly minor explosion.

  Keane listened in silence, then said sympathetically, “Well, if it makes you feel any better, Morgan, from all I’ve heard, Quinn can be a real devil. Not evil the way some thieves genuinely are, but more than sharp enough to cut himself.”

  Morgan frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he’s smart, off-the-chart smart. Wouldn’t surprise me to find out the guy was literally a genius. And men like that need challenges, need to push themselves harder than most of us ever will. They find what they need in their work, usually. His work happens to be thievery. So it’s not really surprising that he’s too good to leave any kind of a trail we might use to find him.”

  “You almost sound like you admire him.”

  “I almost do.” Keane laughed under his breath. “Look, I deal with the scum of the earth most days. Killers, drug pushers, pedophiles. And, yeah, thieves who don’t think twice about killing in the course of a robbery. But a thief like Quinn? He’s way down on my priority list of bad guys. He never uses weapons, has never hurt anyone in the course of a robbery—hell, he’s never even broken a window as far as I know.”

  Morgan thought of Quinn’s own words on that subject, but all she said was, “Steals from the rich and gives to the poor?”

  With another laugh, Keane said, “No, he hasn’t gone that far—or if he has, the giving part was anonymous. But he doesn’t steal from the poor, doesn’t take food out of the mouths of babes, and I count that as at least a point or two in his favor.”

  Morgan hesitated, then said, “Keane, could you do me a favor? Could you find out all the information on Quinn that’s available to law-enforcement officials?”

  “I figured you’d have researched him by now. I mean, since he’s a threat to Max’s exhibit.”

  “I did research him. I read a lot of newspaper articles written by a whole bunch of journalists gleeful that the rich were getting it in the neck. None of them offered me anything in the way of hard information about Quinn.”

  “There isn’t much, even for us,” Keane pointed out.

  “Yeah, but can you get me what you have? Maybe there’s something that’ll help me figure out a way to defend the exhibit against him.”

  “Maybe—if that new computer technician from Ace knows a trick or two the rest of the world doesn’t know.”

  “Maybe she does. Anyway, I have to give her all the information I can. Will you do me the favor, Keane?”

  “Sure. I’ll dig up everything I can and get back to you ASAP.”

  “Thanks.” Morgan cradled the receiver, then sat there staring across her office at nothing.

  And seeing green eyes filled with devilry.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  * * *

  Wolfe wasn’t vain enough to instantly assume that Storm had in mind a sexual pursuit—but he couldn’t think of any other reason why she’d be comparing their running abilities.

  “Are we going to be running somewhere?” he asked.

  “That,” she said, “depends on you.”

  “Storm—you don’t mind if I call you Storm, do you?” His voice was very polite.

  Hers was equally so. “Certainly not. After all, we’re both a force of nature—Wolfe.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and gazed down at her with what he hoped was an unreadable expression. His curiosity had gotten him into trouble in the past, but he was sure he could handle this diminutive blonde. Without commenting on the comparison of their names, he said, “Storm, are you implying that you’d like to mix business with pleasure?”

  “Oh, no, I’d much rather keep the two separate. My business hours—like the museum’s—are nine to six. During those hours I fully intend to work. But that leaves a lot of time—and I understand San Francisco has a wonderful nightlife. I don’t need much sleep. How about you?”

  As he gazed at her vivid face and bright eyes, Wolfe had the sudden wary feeling that there was an underlying guile in her voice or manne
r that he was missing, and that his instincts were trying to warn him to look beneath the surface. But what she was saying kept getting in the way.

  “Somehow, I don’t think we’d suit each other,” he said finally.

  “Why?” she drawled. “Because I’m not five-foot-nine and sleek? You should widen your horizons. To say nothing of your standards.”

  In a voice that had more than once been termed dangerous, Wolfe said, “I’m going to strangle Morgan.”

  “Oh, don’t blame her—she wasn’t the first person who told me about your obsession with Barbie dolls. That’s the worst-kept secret in the city—especially since you change them about as often as you change your socks.”

  He realized his teeth were gritted only because his jaw began to ache. He didn’t like feeling on the defensive; it was an unusual and very uncomfortable sensation. Consciously relaxing taut muscles, he said, “Well, we all have our preferences, don’t we?”

  “That’s put me in my place,” she said, not noticeably discouraged about it. “Most women would view that as a rejection. I’m not most women. And I really do think you owe it to yourself to at least give me a try.”

  “Why?” he demanded bluntly. He could have sworn there was a fleeting gleam of laughter in her cat’s eyes, but her slightly drawling voice remained almost insultingly dispassionate.

  “Because a steady diet of anything is going to taste awfully bland eventually. If it must be blondes, the least you can do is broaden the range a bit to include those of us who aren’t tall even on a stepladder and who don’t have blue eyes—which are very common, by the way. Why not put a little spice in your life? I can guarantee you won’t be bored.”

  Before he could stop himself, Wolfe retorted, “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

  A little laugh escaped her. “Afraid I’d cling and be demanding? Happily ever after and a white picket fence? Well, I don’t cling, and I tend to ask rather than demand, but as for the rest, I wouldn’t rule it out. In fact, small-town Southern girls have that goal drummed into them practically from birth. But I could hardly drag you to the altar bound and gagged, now, could I? And since you’re captain of your fate and master of your soul—to say nothing of being considerably larger than me—I imagine it wouldn’t do me much good to catch you. Unless you wanted to be caught, that is.”