Once a Thief

by Kay Hooper

  “Want to set a trap?” she asked casually.

  “Why would I want to do that? Risking the collection would be stupid—and definitely not my job,” he said.

  Storm smiled slightly. “No—but it’s always better to take a risk when you can have more control. According to what I read in today’s newspapers, this city seems to be crawling with thieves right now. There’s a gang nobody can get near, the usual assorted independent thieves who always threaten valuables—and Quinn. Chances are, some or all of them will consider the Mysteries Past exhibit a very nice target.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Wolfe said.

  “Then why wait for them to come knocking at your door? Why not open the door just a little—and see who can’t resist the temptation to come in.”

  Wolfe pushed his plate away and picked up his wineglass, giving himself a moment. “What kind of trap do you have in mind?” he asked finally.

  “Well, let’s look at what we have. After the changeover, the museum’s security will be state-of-the-art electronics. Now, since there’s an independent power supply, which is not accessible from the outside of the building, a thief’s best bet would be to control the system with another computer.”

  Immediately, Wolfe said, “Our system’s completely enclosed. There’s no modem and no tie-in to the phone lines. So how could anyone outside gain access?”

  Storm hesitated, her eyes oddly still. Then she pushed her own plate away and leaned back. “You remember this afternoon, when I was under the desk straightening out cables?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I found something else under there. Somebody had patched in a pretty handy connection to an old, unused phone line in that room. So I’d say that at least one thief has already unlocked the door to the system.”

  Carla made very sure she wasn’t, as usual, the last to leave the office. Instead, she left with the others, laughing and talking as they walked to the nearby car park where they had all left their cars. Carla thought she probably laughed a little too much, both in her efforts to sound normal and in the giddy relief of being almost out of it.

  She bid her coworkers goodbye and used the electronic gadget to unlock her car. She got in and immediately hit the door lock. Safe. She was safe now, and—

  “Hello, Carla.”

  For the first time, Carla understood the expression “ice water in the veins.” She felt cold. So cold. “I—I wasn’t—”

  “Running? I think you were. Pity.”

  In the rearview mirror, she stared at his face, clear to her for the first time. And stared at the gun he was lifting. There was a silencer on the end. “No, please. The security system at the museum—they’ve sent in a new programmer—I’m sure I can get the plans for the new system—”

  “And I’m equally sure you can’t.” The elegant gun sneezed softly. “But don’t worry, Carla. You aren’t my only source on the inside. I do have another.”

  Morgan hadn’t planned on spending Tuesday night outside one of the museums or jewelry stores she’d marked as likely targets for Quinn. But when she went home after work, she found herself too restless to be able to settle down, and she knew herself too well to believe she could force it.

  So she dressed in dark clothes, took along an auto mug of hot coffee, and went out hunting.

  She was still a long way from being convinced that she could, indeed, sense Quinn; since their last meeting outside her apartment building, she had felt several times—both inside and outside the museum—that someone was watching her, but there was nothing to indicate it might have been Quinn.

  “This is really dumb,” she muttered to herself as she drove toward a jewelry store she had on her list. The scorn in her own voice didn’t make her turn back, but when she was almost at the store, something else did.

  She found herself stopping the car momentarily, caught herself almost . . . listening. She didn’t hear anything, but something urged her to act, and she turned the car around and headed back the way she’d come. Two blocks later she pulled over to the curb.

  In front of a private residence.

  Morgan had no idea to whom the house belonged, but it was very large, looked very expensive, and undoubtedly held valuable things that would attract a thief.

  It was also behind a high fence.

  She sat there in her car for several minutes, frowning toward the house, then got out, closed the car door, and leaned back against it, hands in the pockets of her jacket. One hand grasped the pepper spray and the other her police whistle, but Morgan had a feeling she wouldn’t need either.

  It was still fairly early, and though the neighborhood was quiet there were lighted windows here and there to indicate that people were up and doing things. Morgan hoped she wouldn’t have to wait long.

  Just about three minutes later, a patch of shadow detached itself from the rest at the corner of the high fence and came toward her.

  “Morgana, what the hell are you doing here?”

  She had to smile at the very polite tone, even as she felt a rush of satisfaction. “Testing a theory,” she replied.

  Quinn stopped a little more than an arm’s length from her, his sigh misting the chill air even through the ski mask. The nearest streetlight was close enough to show her that he was dressed as usual all in black, obviously bent on thievery.

  “I knew it was a mistake to make you consciously aware of it,” he said. “I should have known you’d come looking for me.”

  “I thought the great Quinn never made mistakes.”

  Dry now, he said, “You never heard that from me. I’ll only go as far as saying I never make the same mistake twice. Though this one may prove to be quite costly, I’m afraid.”

  Morgan nodded toward the house behind him. “It will be if you had any intention of robbing them.” She pulled the pepper spray from her pocket and held it ready. “This time there’s no display case to tie me to, and I’m not exactly unarmed.”

  “You aren’t blowing your police whistle,” he noted mildly.

  “No need to wake the neighborhood. If, that is, you give me your word you won’t be stealing anything at all—at least not tonight.”

  “Not tonight?” He sounded amused. “What, you don’t want me to give up crime for good?”

  “I know better than to ask the impossible.”

  “Then why ask for just one night?” Now he sounded honestly curious.

  “Maybe I just want to find out if you really can keep your word.”

  Quinn laughed softly. “You know, Morgana, you constantly surprise me. I was reasonably sure our next encounter would end with you doing everything in your power to put me behind bars. For taking your necklace, if nothing else.”

  Morgan was more than a little surprised at herself but tried to keep that out of her expression and voice. “Oh, I’ll get you for that eventually,” she said. “But I am curious as to why you bothered to take it at all. It’s worth nothing compared to your usual loot.”

  Quinn placed one hand over his heart—assuming he had one—and replied soulfully, “A keepsake.”

  “Bullshit. You took it to show me you could.”

  “Well, that too.”

  “I want my necklace back, Quinn.”

  “And I would much prefer that you stop testing your theory. It could be a real nuisance, Morgana.”

  “For me to keep showing up and preventing you from stealing the valuables? Do tell.”

  Quinn laughed again. “Now, sweet, do you really think you could have found me if I hadn’t allowed you to?”

  “Don’t tell me you were conducting an experiment of your own.”

  “Something like that.”

  Morgan wasn’t at all sure she believed him, but she was uncertain enough to say, “So you can stop me from feeling your presence? How, with your cloak of invisibility? With your ability to cloud my mind? With kryptonite?”

  “Nothing so heroic, I’m afraid. Just will. My will. I’ve spent much of my adult life learning how to be elu
sive, sweet. If I don’t want to be found, not even you will find me.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re issuing a challenge?”

  “Perhaps because I am. Try to find me tomorrow night, Morgana.”

  She scowled at him. “You’re just saying that so I’ll let you get away tonight.”

  “Wasn’t that the plan? To test my word?”

  Morgan wasn’t about to admit that her original plan had been to yell for the police and that she didn’t know why in hell she wasn’t doing just that. “Are you willing to give me your word? Promise that you won’t rob anybody tonight?”

  Promptly, he agreed. “Of course I am, Morgana. I give you my word I will not rob any person or place tonight.”

  She was suspicious but also had to admit to herself, however unwillingly, that she wasn’t quite prepared to start yelling for the police. At least, not yet.

  Still holding her pepper spray ready, she said, “I don’t suppose you’d give me the same promise about the Bannister collection?”

  “No,” he said simply. “You see, my word does mean something to me. I’ll never break a promise to you, Morgana. Which means that I won’t steal anything from anyone—tonight. And that’s all.”

  Irritably, she said, “At least give me back my necklace.”

  “I don’t happen to have it on me,” he said.

  Morgan was tempted. In fact, her finger tightened on the button of the pepper spray. But, finally, all she could do was accept what he said.

  “One of these days,” she told him, “you’ll get what’s coming to you. And I want to be there. That’s all I ask, that I’m there when you get what you deserve.”

  “But in the meantime,” he murmured, stepping silently away from her and already beginning to blend back into the shadows.

  Morgan didn’t try to stop him. She just leaned against her car, slowly returning the pepper spray to her pocket, and when she was sure he was gone she muttered into the chill night air, “I am such an idiot.”

  Then she got in her car and went home.

  By the time they reached Storm’s hotel suite nearly an hour later, Wolfe had stopped swearing out loud. But he paced like his namesake caged, barely noticing the room he was in.

  Storm bent to allow her cat to transfer from her shoulder to the back of the couch, where he made himself comfortable. Then she sat down at one end. Both she and Bear watched the man moving around the room.

  “It had to be the first technician,” he said finally.

  “It wasn’t him.”

  He stopped pacing to stare at her. “If you’re trying to be loyal to Ace—”

  “I’m not,” she interrupted. “Look, Wolfe, if I or any other decent technician wanted to patch in to a phone line, we could do it without leaving a lot of evidence. What I saw looked like it had been done in one hell of a hurry. Anybody could have gotten into that room at some point during the past weeks, you know that. The hallway isn’t guarded, not now when the security system isn’t on line. And I’m willing to bet my predecessor didn’t spend every minute in there, especially when the machine was loading information and he didn’t have anything to do except wait for it to finish.”

  Wolfe had to admit, if only silently, that he hadn’t thought much about the security of the computer room himself. It was as she said—though the machines themselves were certainly valuable, nobody could cart them from the museum unobserved, and the system wasn’t vitally important until it was on line, so that hallway had not been the focus of the guards’ attention.

  “Goddammit,” he muttered.

  Storm shrugged. “Hey, they’ve got an unlocked door—not an open one. I can lock it for good by cutting the connection. Or I can stand ready at the door and see who tries to open it.”

  “We’re back to the trap,” he said, crossing the room to sit down on the arm of the couch across from her.

  “Well, it makes sense to me.” Storm wrestled her boots off and then curled up at her end of the couch. “Since the original security program was on file at Ace and would have been potentially accessible to a thief, I was brought in to install a program so new it isn’t in anybody’s computer. Except this one.” She tapped her temple with one finger.

  Wolfe nodded. “That’s what Max and I agreed to, providing we see the entire program before it goes on line.”

  “Which you will. But the point is that even if somebody has an unlocked door into the system, getting in won’t be easy at all. They’ll have to figure out what the access codes are—and I designed tough ones.”

  “But they could still get in?”

  “Oh, sure. Given enough time, patience, and knowledge. They’ll have to make a number of attempts, however. So all I have to do is program the system to guard itself; if there’s an attempted entry, I’ll be alerted.”

  “Could we find out who was trying to get in?”

  “Maybe. We could try tracing the phone line.”

  “You don’t sound too hopeful,” Wolfe noted.

  She smiled wryly. “If it was me trying to get in, I would have routed the call through so many lines you’d never find me, at least not in the time I’d need to get in and get what I wanted. Any competent technician would do the same.”

  Wolfe brooded for a few moments in silence, then said, “Then your idea of a trap isn’t to catch somebody in the system, it’s to lead them to a place where we’re waiting for them.”

  Her smile was quick and approving. “Exactly. If I know they’re trying to get into the system, I can have a little subprogram all ready to tell them whatever we want them to know. Like—the system has a weak spot that looks just too inviting for words? No thief worth his—or her—salt is going to pass that up.”

  What she was saying was reasonable, but Wolfe wasn’t quite ready to approve her idea. First, if a thief was after the Bannister collection, he—or she—wouldn’t make a move until the collection was in the museum. And second, he wasn’t sure that he completely trusted Storm Tremaine. That shadowy, secret expression in her eyes earlier had bothered him.

  So he said, “I’ll have to think about it. In the morning, I’ll want you to show me that phone patch.”

  “Of course,” she murmured. “After all—I might have some nefarious plan of my own. So you’d better give the matter all due consideration.”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  * * *

  Either Wolfe’s mistrust had shown more plainly than he’d thought or else she was developing a unique talent for reading his expression; whichever it was, he didn’t like it.

  “I didn’t mean—” he began.

  “Oh, don’t bother to deny it, Wolfe. I can certainly understand your position. I mean, the exhibit isn’t even in place yet, and there have already been so many problems. And I’m sure you’d feel just awful if somebody you were seeing personally—like Nyssa, say—actually turned out to be a thief bent on stealing your brother’s priceless collection.”

  He could feel himself tensing yet again. That drawling voice, dammit. And she had a knack for putting things in such a way that they really did sound insulting.

  “I am not seeing her,” he said through gritted teeth. “Not now, anyway.”

  Storm’s expressive face took on a look of spu- rious sympathy. “Yeah, she was another who didn’t last long, wasn’t she? Have you considered therapy?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me!” he practically roared.

  She blinked. “No, of course not. Lots of men have a difficult time finding the right woman. But I still say you should broaden your horizons. I mean, you’ve got to be—what? Pushing forty?”

  “Thirty-six,” he snapped, telling himself to calm down, because he was positive her eyes were laughing at him.

  “Oh, sorry—thirty-six,” she said solemnly. “Well, still. You must have been concentrating on your favorite kind of blonde for twenty years now. I’d think that by this time common sense would have told you that whatever it is you’re looking for—it isn’t
there.”

  Wolfe knew—he knew—that he was being deliberately maneuvered. He was even sure that if he stopped and thought about it, he’d come to the conclusion that she had brought up his social preferences every time he had ventured into some area she didn’t want to talk about.

  “What makes you so damned sure you’ve got what I’m looking for?” he demanded, leaving the arm of the couch to move closer to her. Since she was sitting sideways on the couch with her feet up, his thigh pressed against her hip.

  “I didn’t say that,” she murmured, her ridiculously long lashes dropping to veil the brilliant eyes.

  “The hell you didn’t. You’ve been saying it all day. What’s wrong, Storm? Didn’t you think I’d get curious?”

  Her dark lashes rose as she looked at him, and her eyes were quite definitely laughing. Gravely, she said, “Now, don’t do anything you’ll regret later. We both know I’ve goaded you into this, and if you let me get away with it . . . I’ll always know which buttons to push. Won’t I?”

  For the second time that day, he said, “I know I’m going to regret this.” Then he pulled her into his arms.

  What he felt in those first few moments was not regret. She was warm in his arms, slender and almost frighteningly delicate, but all woman. She was a woman he wanted, that’s all he felt.

  She was a woman he wanted.

  Storm wasn’t immediately aware that he was going to leave her, and when she did realize, it took her a moment or so to find her voice. “Did I do something wrong?” she murmured, feeling too dazed to consider the question.

  His face was very hard, but his eyes were burning like the blue at the base of a flame. “Yeah,” he answered, his voice both soft and curiously harsh. “You met me.”

  Before she could even begin to figure that out, the door closed quietly behind him.

  She turned slowly, lowering her feet to the floor, and sat there gazing across the room at nothing. It had been a very long day. She hadn’t yet been in San Francisco twenty-four hours, and already she was in trouble.