Always a Thief

by Kay Hooper

  It was easy enough to approach the museum without making her presence known, but once there she had to figure out where Quinn would be keeping watch. None of her archaeological or administrative skills covered the problem of possible vantage points for cat burglars, so all she could depend on was her common sense—and that extra sense she could occasionally tap into in order to feel him.

  He was certainly close, she knew that much. Because she could feel him. Perhaps oddly, concentrating harder made the sensation more elusive. The trick, she quickly discovered, was to relax and simply ask herself where he was, because when she did that, the sense of his presence grew stronger.

  He'd have to be high up, of course, with a clear view of the museum—but not so high that he couldn't get down in a hurry if he needed to, Morgan decided. She studied the buildings all around the museum, allowing that extra sense to open up. There. He was there. It was a building that was only a couple of stories taller than the museum and less than half a block away.

  Once she reached the building, she realized it was a perfect choice from a common-sense point of view. An apartment building with a handy fire escape, it was in the process of being renovated and was obviously empty of tenants and curious doormen.

  Five floors. Morgan gritted her teeth and climbed, trying to be quiet and silently cursing herself because she'd forgotten to bring a flashlight. The moon provided some light, but the angle of the fire escape kept her in total darkness most of the time. Which was, she decided later, the main reason he was able to catch her off guard.

  It happened so quickly that Morgan had no time to yell. All of a sudden she was grabbed and yanked against a hard body, her arms pinned, and a cloth that smelled sickly-sweet covered her nose and mouth. She tried to struggle even as she fought to hold her breath, and she was vaguely aware that her heavy purse struck the metal of the fire escape with a sound that seemed to her incredibly loud.

  By then her lungs were screaming for air, her nails clawing for any part of her attacker she could reach, and a sudden jolt of pain in one ankle told her she'd kicked the fire escape and had been punished for it. Dizziness swept over her, and as the strength began to drain from her body she was conscious of a last, purely annoyed thought.

  In all those old gothic romances, she remembered, the heroine always went charging off into the night, alone and unarmed, because she heard a suspicious sound or had a realization. Not only did she always land in trouble for it, but inevitably she was dressed in either a filmy nightgown or something equally unsuitable for nighttime wandering.

  Morgan had always sneered at those heroines, promising herself that she would never venture into danger with such a stupid lack of preparation. And, until now, she could say she'd been at least partially successful. After all, when she had gone charging (alone and mostly unarmed) to Quinn's rescue some time back when the bad guys had captured him, at least she had been sensibly dressed. And it really hadn't been her fault that neither her cell phone nor can of pepper spray had been helpful.

  This time, she reflected irritably, she'd not only blundered out without the means to defend herself, but she hadn't even had the sense to put on a pair of jeans first.

  She could feel her attacker's body behind her, impressively hard, feel the ruthless strength of an arm that seemed to be cutting her in half, and she had the dim realization—a strange but comforting certainty—that it wasn't Quinn doing this to her. Then the chloroform did its work, and as she slumped against him she could feel her short skirt riding up her thighs.

  Dammit, I should have put on some jeans. . . .

  She heard voices. Two of them, both male and both familiar to her. She was lying on something very hard and cold and uncomfortable, but she seemed to be wrapped in something like a blanket, and she felt peculiarly safe. She couldn't seem to open her eyes or even stir, but her hearing was excellent.

  “Will she be all right?”

  “Yeah, I think so. It was chloroform; the cloth was lying on the fire escape beside her.”

  “What the hell was she doing here?”

  “Since she's been unconscious since I found her and before I called you, I've hardly been able to ask her.”

  “All right—then try this. What happened?”

  “Look, I can only guess. Maybe he got suspicious of me and showed up tonight looking for me—either to watch me or else to get rid of me. He had the chloroform with him, and I doubt he carries the stuff whenever he goes out; he was obviously planning to put somebody to sleep. Morgan must have surprised him coming up the fire escape. He couldn't get out of her way, so he had to get rid of her. If I hadn't felt—heard—something and gone down there to check it out, he might have had time to finish the job. She's damned lucky he didn't dump her over the railing and into the alley.”

  “All right, all right—calm down.”

  “I am perfectly calm,” Quinn said in a voice so sharp it had edges.

  Jared sort of sighed. “Yeah. Okay, we'll talk about this later. I gather I'm here to relieve you?”

  “If you don't mind.” Quinn sighed as well—though his sounded a bit ragged. “I'm not expecting anything else to happen tonight, but I'm not sure enough to leave the place unwatched. I need to take Morgan back to her apartment and make sure she's going to be all right.”

  “No problem.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sure.” Abruptly, Jared sounded amused. “How're you going to get her home?”

  “Carry her.”

  “Down five floors, across four blocks, and up another three floors?”

  “She's not very big,” Quinn replied a bit absently, his voice even clearer now because he had knelt beside her.

  By that point, even if Morgan could have opened her eyes she wouldn't have. Completely aware but utterly boneless, she felt herself gathered up and held in arms her body recognized instantly—simply by the touch of them. She heard an odd little noise escape her, something that sounded embarrassingly sensual, even primitive, and wondered uneasily if Jared heard her. Bad enough if Quinn heard . . .

  She had the sensation of descending, even though she heard nothing, and realized that Quinn managed to move almost silently even down a fire escape and carrying her. It made her feel very strange to be carried so effortlessly by him, and that probably delayed her recovery from the chloroform a good five minutes or more.

  When Morgan finally managed to force her heavy eyelids up, the fire escape was behind them and Quinn was striding down the sidewalk right out in the open. She concentrated fiercely and managed to raise her head from his shoulder, and though the nausea was horrible, she managed not to get sick.

  “I—I think I can walk,” she told him, sounding decidedly weak to her own ears.

  Quinn looked at her without breaking stride. His face was completely expressionless in the illumination of the streetlights, and his voice was unusually flat. “I doubt it. Your right ankle's badly bruised.”

  Since she was wrapped in a blanket, Morgan couldn't see her feet. She tried to move the right one experimentally and bit back a sound of pain. Remembering, she realized she must have banged that ankle hard against the fire escape in her struggles to escape her attacker.

  Cradled in Quinn's arms, she gazed at his profile and wished miserably that she hadn't let her reckless anger make her go charging out after him. She'd had every right to be mad as hell, dammit, but now this had happened, and with him carrying her home—on her shield, so to speak—she felt ridiculously defensive and at fault. But then, even as the feelings surfaced, another realization made her feel a little better.

  If she hadn't blundered into whoever that was on the fire escape, he might have been able to sneak up on Quinn—and he might not have simply put the cat burglar to sleep.

  . . . either to watch me or else to get rid of me.

  Morgan shivered and felt his arms tighten around her.

  “Almost there,” he said.

  She let her head rest on his shoulder once more and closed her eyes
against the waves of nausea. And, apparently, feeling sick wasn't the only aftereffect of chloroform, because she dozed off again. Only a few minutes this time; when she opened her eyes again, Quinn was unlocking her apartment door. He must have at some point gotten her keys from her shoulder bag, she mused vaguely.

  Inside the apartment, he lowered her to the couch so that she was sitting sideways, her feet up on the cushions. He was gentle enough, but she still caught her breath when her bruised ankle touched the firm cushions. The pain wasn't really horrible, but it was abrupt whenever she tried to move her foot or it touched anything.

  Quinn straightened up and stared down at her, his face still curiously hard. In the subdued lighting of the living-room lamps, his green eyes were shuttered. He was dressed in his Quinn costume, black material from neck to toe, and as she looked up at him he dropped her keys onto the coffee table, then unbuckled his compact tool belt from around his waist and dropped it there as well.

  He glanced at the television, which was still on and turned low, then looked at her again and said merely, “I'll get some ice for your ankle.”

  Alone in the quiet living room, Morgan managed to unwrap herself from the blanket so that her arms were free. She found her shoulder bag still attached to her and wrestled the strap off over her head; from the weight, she knew the only thing missing from it was her keys, so her attacker had obviously not attempted to rob her. She sort of slung the bag onto the coffee table, and it landed on top of Quinn's tool belt.

  A glance at the clock on her VCR told her it was just after one A.M., which surprised her. How could so much happen in so little time?

  Listening to the rattle of ice cubes in her kitchen, she cautiously leaned forward and opened the blanket the rest of the way to expose her legs, and winced at the sight of her right ankle. Even through her (somewhat mangled) hose, the swelling and discoloration were obvious. When she very gingerly moved it, the pain was hot and swift, but at least she could move it, so nothing was permanently harmed. Her head was clear once more, and she wasn't so queasy now, which was definitely a relief.

  When Quinn returned to the room, he had her ice bag in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. “You left the coffee on,” he told her as he handed the cup to her.

  “I was in a temper,” she admitted, avoiding his eyes. Her voice was her own again, another thing to be thankful for. She hated sounding like a wimp.

  Without immediately commenting on what she said, he got one of the decorative pillows from the other end of the couch and gently lifted her leg so that her foot and ankle were propped up. He eased the ice bag down on her swollen ankle, then left the room again, but only long enough to get a second cup of coffee from the kitchen.

  When he came back, he startled her by sitting on the edge of the cushion at her thigh so that they were facing each other. He was sort of leaning sideways over her legs, one elbow and forearm resting on the back of the couch—either deliberately or accidentally blocking her in. The pressure of his hip against her leg distracted her from the heavenly relief of the ice bag on her ankle, and she wondered what spell he had used to make her body respond to him with such instant hunger.

  Quinn took a sip of his coffee, then set the cup on the table and looked at her with those veiled eyes. In a carefully measured tone, he said, “Do you mind telling me what the hell you were doing out there tonight? And do you realize how close you came to getting yourself killed?”

  “That wasn't the plan.”

  “Oh, you had a plan?”

  “Don't be sarcastic, Alex—it doesn't suit you.”

  “And lying in a crumpled heap on a fire escape doesn't suit you.” His voice was losing its measured precision; it was rougher now, harder. “What made you do it, Morgana? Why the hell were you on that fire escape?”

  “I was looking for you, obviously. I don't know anyone else who might be found on the roof of a deserted building in the middle of the night.”

  Quinn refused to recognize her stab at self-mocking humor. “Why were you looking for me?”

  “I told you, I was in a temper.”

  “About what?”

  “About you.”

  The hard immobility of his face changed when he frowned. “About me? Why? What had I done?”

  Morgan took refuge in her coffee. She couldn't hide, but at least it gave her a moment to think. Not that it helped; when she answered him, the words were blurted out with little grace and far too much pain.

  “You said wouldn't use me again. That you needed me on your side. Remember?”

  He was still frowning at her. “Morgana, I haven't tried to use you.”

  “Oh, no? Can you look me in the eye and tell me you haven't been very deliberately distracting me since the night at Leo's party when you went public as Alex Brandon? That you haven't used your Alex persona—all charm and gentlemanly attention—to make sure I didn't ask too many questions about what Quinn was up to every night?”

  “You talk as if I really am two men.” His tone was odd, almost hesitant.

  “You as good as say you are,” she retorted instantly. “With some nice, neat dividing line separating you two. Night and day, black and white, Quinn and Alex. Two distinctly different men. Except that it's not that simple. You don't have a split personality, and you aren't two men—what you are is a hell of a natural actor.” Exactly what Max had tried to warn her about, Morgan recalled.

  “Am I?”

  She nodded. “Oh, yes. A gifted one. Do you want me to tell you how I think your reasoning went?”

  “Go ahead.” His voice was a bit wry.

  “I sat here tonight thinking about it, trying to understand what you were doing—and I finally got it.”

  He waited, silent and expressionless, his gaze fixed on her face.

  “I think that when you decided to go public, there was one small problem you really hadn't planned on. Me.” She held his gaze, determined to get this out. “There was something between us, something you couldn't ignore or pretend didn't exist. Something real.”

  Quinn might have heard the very faint question there; he nodded and said gravely, “Yes. There was.”

  Morgan tried not to let her relief show; she'd been almost sure he did feel something for her. Almost. Going on steadily, she said, “Because of that, because you knew we'd be together often, you were afraid I'd figure out some things you didn't want me to know. For whatever reason.”

  “For your own good, maybe?” he suggested, more or less telling her she was on the right track.

  “We'll talk about that later,” she told him, ruthlessly keeping them on the subject. “The point is, you decided it would be a good idea to keep me distracted so I wouldn't think too much about the part Quinn was playing at night.”

  “Morgana—”

  “Wait. The defense can argue later.”

  He smiled slightly and nodded.

  Morgan sighed. “Maybe you honestly don't think of it as using me and what I feel, but that's what you've been doing. I don't know if the reasons matter. I don't know if your reasons are good enough to excuse what you did. All I do know is that you used my feelings to help you hide what you were really doing here.”

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  “What I'm really doing?”

  “You said something once—that there were times you had to lie to everyone. This is one of those times, I think. All this isn't nearly as straightforward as you'd have us believe, this clever plan to catch Nightshade. You've been lying about it somehow. Maybe to Jared, probably to Max and Wolfe—and certainly to me.”

  “You think I'm after the collection,” he said flatly.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  She smiled faintly at his disbelief. “No. Despite everything, including my own common sense, I don't believe you are. I can't know for certain what it is you're trying to do and how you're trying to do it—but I'm willing to bet the ultimate aim is to get Nightshade. It's in your voice every time you talk about him. Y
ou do really want him, and very badly, I think. So much so that you aren't going to let anyone or anything get in the way of catching him.”

  “That's what you think?”

  “That's what I feel. Maybe Interpol thought you could catch Nightshade, but that isn't why you're here. You may be dancing to their tune, but only because it's your choice. And nobody's pulling your strings, Alex. Nobody. This—all this, this whole plan to set a trap—was your idea, wasn't it?”

  Quinn stared at her for a long moment, then drew a breath and let it out slowly. “You think too much,” he murmured, then smiled and added, “and you think too well.”

  “I'm right about this.”

  He hesitated, then nodded just a little. “The trap was my idea. Jared wasn't happy about it, but the chance to catch Nightshade was something he couldn't pass up. His . . . superiors at Interpol know we're after Nightshade but don't know how we're planning to catch him.”

  That was a surprise, and Morgan knew it showed. “They don't know? You mean all this is unofficial?”

  Quinn rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and looked at her wryly. “Morgana, Interpol doesn't have a policy of baiting traps with priceless gem collections. In fact, both Jared and I would likely land in jail if it got out that's what we're doing. Unless we're successful, of course. Because, if we're successful, no one, except those of us directly involved, will ever know it was a trap.”

  “And Interpol was willing to give you that much freedom, let you loose on this side of the Atlantic with only one . . . handler, I guess he's called, holding the leash?”

  “Let's just say . . . Jared gambled on his little brother. His superiors believe we're over here gathering information, trying to track Nightshade and figure out a way to catch him. Jared's responsible for me.”

  Morgan eyed him thoughtfully. “I got the impression that you two were barely on speaking terms. I gather it was a deliberate impression?”