by Anne Stuart
Blackheart strode past her, giving her an approving pat on her capped hair. “Of course you did. I knew you had the makings of a felon in that heart of yours.” He stepped inside the room and stopped dead still, blocking her entrance. “Well, well, well.”
“What is it?” She pushed past him, curiosity getting the better of her.
“I think I’ve discovered how Olivia knew what Kate had become involved in. And how she’s been making money for the last few years.”
Ferris looked around, her forehead wrinkled. “It just looks like a lot of electronic equipment.”
“Exactly. DVD recorders, a video camera, a small pile of DVDs. I think Olivia and Dale have been involved in experimental filmmaking for very high profits.”
“What makes you think they haven’t just been bootlegging movies? Isn’t there a big profit in that, too?” she questioned curiously, roaming around the small, dark room, trailing a gloved hand over the shiny equipment.
“Not as big as the profit in blackmail,” Blackheart drawled. “I wouldn’t have thought Olivia would be so enterprising. Though she always was a little kinky.”
“What do you mean, kinky?” Ferris demanded, her interest in the machines vanishing.
Blackheart smiled seraphically. “Never you mind, Miss Innocence. Let’s just say that Olivia’s not particularly my cup of tea. Why don’t you go ahead and check her drawers one last time? I’ll give this place a quick once-over and see if I can come up with anything.”
“You think they might be in here?”
“They might,” Blackheart said. “They might be anywhere. And we’re running out of time as it is. Hurry up, Francesca. The sooner we get out of here, the better.”
Ferris left readily enough as he pushed her out the door. The small silver clock by the spotless king-size bed said five past eleven, and once more Ferris was struck with the difference between this compulsive neatness and the squalid mind that conceived of blackmail as a way to make a living. Poor Kate, enmeshed in Olivia’s schemes. And poor Trace, set up like a clay pigeon. And poor Blackheart, and poor Ferris, more unwilling pawns. Damn her soul to hell.
She found them by accident. All her mental energy was spent on her fury with Olivia, and her search was desultory, mindless, instinctive. She hadn’t bothered to check the wastepaper basket the first time around—the idea had been too absurd. But this time she was going by instinct, not ideas, and the solid weight of the supposedly empty tissue box tipped her off.
She was kneeling on the floor on the far side of the bed, the box held loosely. With shaking hands she opened it, and the Von Emmerling emeralds tumbled into her lap.
She stared at them for a long, speculative moment. They looked garish, ornate, and tacky in the electric light, and sudden doubt assailed her. She didn’t even look up when Blackheart reentered the room, carefully locking the door behind him.
“Nothing in there,” he said. “Not even any video. She must have them stored someplace else. Though from the dust on the machines I don’t think she’s been using them for quite a while. Maybe she decided theft was more lucrative than blackmail. I expect it’s safer.”
“I think I found them,” Ferris said quietly.
“What?” She had his full attention now, and he materialized by her side immediately, squatting down next to her. “You’ve got ’em, all right,” he said, a rich note of satisfaction in his voice as he looked at them. Reaching forward, his long slender hands lifted them, holding them up against the light, tender as a lover stroking satin flesh.
And what was she doing, being jealous of a few rocks, she wondered, miserably aware that that was exactly what she was feeling. “How do you know they’re the real ones? Didn’t Olivia have copies made?”
“The police have the copies,” he said absently, never taking his tawny gaze from the jewels. “Don’t you remember, we tried to pawn them off on Miss Smythe-Davies? No, these are the real things. You can tell by the shimmer of blue light in the heart of the big emerald.” He held it out for her admiration, but like any jealous woman, she only gave it a cursory glance, controlling an urge to sniff contemptuously. “What makes you think they might be fake?”
“They look so . . . so tacky,” she said finally. “I remembered them being a lot prettier.”
“Jewelry usually looks prettier by candlelight, particularly those that were designed when that was the main form of light. But that’s your proof right there. The Von Emmerling emeralds are famous for being vulgar. The fakes were much prettier. If I’d had my mind on my business and not on—something else the night of the Puffin Ball, I would have noticed immediately when the substitution was made.”
“What did you have your mind on, Blackheart?” she asked quietly.
“Sex,” he said bluntly. “Put them back, Francesca. We found out what we came for. The sooner we get out of here the better.”
“Shouldn’t we just take them?” She was wrapping them reluctantly and shoving them back in their box. “I mean, they may find out we’ve been here. Wouldn’t it be safer if we took them to the police ourselves?”
“And you think they’d take the word of Patrick Blackheart against the likes of Olivia Summers?” he scoffed. “They were overjoyed to have finally managed to arrest me—it just about broke their hearts to let me go. Even if they couldn’t make any charges stick, they still knew exactly what I was doing for the last fifteen years of my life, and most people figure six months at a minimum-security British prison wasn’t punishment enough. They’d love to get something new on me. If I showed up at the police station with the Von Emmerling emeralds and some cock-and-bull story about the Summerses, I don’t expect they’d waste too much time listening.” He shook his head, rising to his full height. “No, we’ll leave them right where we found them.
Olivia’s foolish enough to think she’s home free. Tomorrow morning Kate and I will make a visit to our local police station in the company of Rupert and set our case before their impartial judicial eye.”
“And then they’ll believe you?”
“Of course not. They won’t believe me until they get a search warrant and find the jewels themselves, and even then they might not be certain. Come along, darling. This isn’t the place for postmortems. That’s the second rule of thievery, right up there after don’t look down. It’s don’t stop to count the loot while you’re still at the scene of the crime.”
“Yes, sir.” She stuffed the box back in the trash. “How are we getting out?”
“Service entrance just off the kitchen.” He headed for the door, and Ferris paused for a moment. Had the bedside light been on or off? She couldn’t recall, but what was more important, would Olivia remember? She was about to call after Patrick, but he was already gone.
Well, she’d just have to chance it. Flicking it off, she sped across the thick wall-to-wall carpet in search of the kitchen. Blackheart was standing in the open door, looking impatient.
“Off with the hat and gloves, Francesca,” he ordered. “You don’t want to advertise what we’ve been doing.”
Sudden guilt assailed her at the memory of that bedside lamp. “Blackheart, I don’t remember—”
His hand suddenly covered her mouth as he pulled her back against him. The only sound was his heavy breathing. And the rattle of the lock being turned on the front door of the apartment.
Chapter Nineteen
THEY WERE HALFWAY down the twenty flights of stairs when reaction began to set in. One moment she was racing after him, the too-tight flats flying down the narrow metal steps, the next she was clinging to the railing as a sudden wave of dizziness assailed her.
He was half a flight ahead of her when he realized she was no longer following him. In a flash he was back beside her, gently prying her clutching hands from the railing and rubbing an elbow over the section of metal to wipe out her fingerprints.
<
br /> “You go on ahead,” she said in a choked voice. “I just need a minute.” She tried to break free of his grip, but he held fast.
“Francesca, love, we can’t hang around the scene of the crime. That’s rule number three, darling. Rule number four is don’t touch anything once you take your gloves off.”
Her knees were trembling so much she doubted she could stand much longer, and there was a shocked look to her face and eyes. “I’ll be along in a moment, Blackheart,” she pleaded.
“Rule number five, and most important. Do as the senior partner says, without question. Come on, my fledgling felon. We’re getting out of here.”
“Blackheart, I can’t,” she whispered, sinking down to sit on the narrow steps.
Her rear hadn’t even made contact before she was hauled up again, his fingers digging painfully into her arms as he gave her a hard, teeth-rattling shake. “The next step is a slap, Francesca,” he informed her coldly. “Do you want that?”
The shocked expression was leaving her face, her cheeks were filling with color and her eyes with fury. “Don’t you dare!”
“Then stop whining and come on,” he snapped, dragging her on down the steps. She stumbled after him, gritting her teeth and concentrating on the cold anger that was filling her.
Five minutes later, when they ended up in a deserted alleyway that looked as if it belonged more to the Bontemps Hotel than to Olivia’s classy condo, that anger was still rampant. Blackheart finally released his grip on her hand, leaning back against a brick wall and taking in slow, deep breaths of the foggy night air.
For a brief moment Ferris considered flinging herself down and kissing the blessed ground. She contented herself with a surreptitious caress with her foot, while she continued to glare at Blackheart’s shadowy figure.
“Don’t give me that look, Francesca,” he drawled out of the darkness. “You know as well as I do that you couldn’t afford to stop on the stairs like that. If I hadn’t dragged you you’d still be there, just waiting for someone to find you.”
The fact that he was probably right didn’t help her nerve-induced temper. “I was just wondering, Blackheart. We had no trouble leaving by the basement, ending up in this deserted alleyway. Why didn’t we go in this way? And don’t tell me the service door is locked—I’ve seen the way you deal with locks. They melt beneath your fingertips.”
Blackheart shrugged. “What can I say? There’s not much challenge in unlocking a service door and climbing twenty flights of stairs. Besides, there’s usually an alarm system wired into those service entrances, and I’m not familiar enough with American current to dismantle it.”
Ferris held herself very still, outrage coursing through her veins. “Was there an alarm system?”
“No.”
“Then we could have gone up that way?” Her voice was low and dangerous in the aftermath of her fright.
“Yes.”
There was nothing she could say in the face of that bald confession—rage left her momentarily speechless. That was one she owed him—and by now they were almost even.
“What about the hotel?” she asked finally, her voice a semblance of normalcy. “Aren’t they going to wonder when we don’t return the key?”
“Nobody wonders about anything at places like that,” he replied, taking another deep breath of the cool night air. “I left the key on the dresser—someone will find it and figure we had a fight before we did it.”
“Maybe I should have messed up the bed?”
“A made bed would get more attention than an unmade one, but no one’s going to give a damn. Trust me—the Bontemps Hotel is the least of our worries.”
“And what’s the greatest of our worries?” she asked after a moment. Some of the rage had left her, some of the panic, but her blood still sang with nervous energy.
“First, getting back to the apartment without being seen. Second, getting the police to issue a search warrant. And third, making sure the Summerses are caught red-handed.”
“Do we have to worry?” she asked in a very small voice, and through the misty darkness she could see his wry smile, like the Cheshire cat.
“We always have to worry. Come along, my intrepid mountain-climber. Let’s get the first worry out of the way. Hold on to my arm, look up at me as if you adored me, and we’ll go for a stroll.”
“I don’t know if I’m that good an actress,” she bit back, taking his arm in her slender hands. The muscles were taut and iron-hard beneath her hands, telling her he was far from relaxed, despite that drawling tone of voice.
“You can manage, I’m sure,” he returned, moving out of the shadows with her clinging to his side. His hand reached up and covered hers, and the touch of his skin was comforting. He probably did it just for that reason, Ferris thought, knowing she should pull away, knowing that was the last thing she wanted to do. He must be right—it would look more believable if she snuggled up against him as they walked.
It was a long walk. Blackheart made no move to get a taxi and Ferris made no move to request one as they made their circuitous way back to Blackheart’s apartment. The long, leisurely walk, up and down the hills, skirting Chinatown, started to soothe her shattered nerves. They stopped once, and Blackheart bought her a Double Rainbow coffee ice-cream cone; later he bought her a bag of coconut-and-macadamia-nut cookies and then proceeded to eat most of them. The night was getting cooler, the fog was fitful, but Blackheart’s body next to hers was a furnace. She wanted to curl up next to it, to luxuriate in its animal heat, to get as close as one human being could possibly get to another. It was getting harder to remember this was an act to fool passersby into thinking they were just a couple in love, out for a walk on a foggy winter’s evening. As she looked down at the strong arm she was holding, she found herself wishing she still believed in fairy tales.
Blackheart’s street was deserted. The Volvo was still parked down the street from his entrance, the streetlights provided pools of light to keep muggers and their ilk at bay. With a start Ferris realized that she and Blackheart qualified as “their ilk.” They had broken into someone’s apartment that night, and even if their motives had been pure and their victims evil, even if they hadn’t taken a thing, they were still technically criminals.
That knowledge appeared to affect Blackheart in the strangest way. He seemed positively lighthearted as they climbed the front steps of his apartment building, and if the arm beneath her hand was still iron-hard with nervous tension, his spirits were soaring.
When they reached the front door of the building, she quickly detached herself. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she murmured. “It’s late.”
Blackheart smiled then, that ironical, laughing smile that always made her feel like a fool. “Don’t be an idiot, Francesca. You don’t want to wander around town in my clothes. Besides, you’ve been limping for the last three blocks. Come in and change and I’ll call you a taxi.”
If that wasn’t what she wanted to hear, she would have gone to the stake rather than admit it. But her feet did hurt, and the sooner she retrieved all her possessions from his cool, airy apartment the sooner she could get him out of her life, where he belonged.
She’d thought the elevator was small when she rode up alone. With Blackheart’s warm, black-clad figure sharing the space with her, it was practically a coffin. Or a bed. Her nerves were still jumping, the blood pumping through her veins, and her hands were trembling slightly. But she could be just as cool as Blackheart, she told herself as he unlocked the three professional-looking locks on his door.
“Your locks look a great deal more solid than mine,” she said, striving for a calm she was far from feeling. With a sudden sinking feeling she knew she’d have to change and get out of there fast, before she threw herself at his feet.
“They slow me down more than most when I’ve forgotten my keys,” he repli
ed, almost absently, as he swung the door open and gestured for her to precede him. “Those pieces of tinfoil on your door wouldn’t stop an eight-year-old.”
“I’ll get them replaced.” He hadn’t bothered to turn on the light, and as he closed the door behind them they were plunged into a thick, velvet darkness.
“Do that,” he murmured, and she could feel his soft breath on the back of her neck, his long fingers in her hair, deftly releasing it from the hairpins. She stood motionless beneath his touch, afraid to say a word and break the sudden spell that had come over her. The hair tumbled down onto her shoulders and his hands ran through it, caressing it with a feather-light touch. And then suddenly she was trembling all over again, her knees weak, her heart pounding, her breath rapid in the thick darkness.
“Will they keep you out?” She struggled for a last brief moment. He was only touching her hair, and that so gently she might almost be imagining it. If she were abrasive enough he might move away, turn on the light, and watch her go with that enigmatic expression in his dark eyes.
The hands lifted her hair up, and his hot, wet mouth touched the vulnerable nape of her neck in a slow, lingering kiss that melted the last hope she had of escape. “Nothing will keep me out,” he whispered against her sweetly scented skin.
The small, lost wail that came from her mouth could have been despair, could have been surrender, could have been protest, could have been all three. “Don’t, Blackheart,” she murmured brokenly. “Please, don’t.”
His hands caught her shoulders and turned her around to face him, and she could feel the tension running through him. Her own tension matched it. “Why not, Francesca? Give me one good reason to leave you alone and I will.”
“Phillip . . .”
He shook his head. “That’s not a good reason. Try again.”
“We don’t have anything in common.”
“No good, either. We have a great deal in common, and well you know it. You›re a born cat burglar. If I’d met you five years ago, there would have been no stopping us.”