by Kay Hooper
Quinn had the grace to look a little sheepish. “I told you that a lot of what I do is pretense. Jared was understandably furious when he found out who Quinn really is, but he's a man who looks forward—not back. He believes I can . . . redeem myself by helping Interpol now. He's willing to be part of that. But he really is mad at me about half the time—he thinks I'm reckless and take too many dumb chances.”
“You don't say.”
“Sarcasm doesn't suit you either, Morgana.”
She frowned at him. “Mmm. So you're the one who went to Max and asked him to risk his collection.”
“I'm the one.”
“Well, I must say I'm impressed. I knew he'd climb out on a fairly long limb for a friend, but you must be something pretty special.”
He assumed a hurt expression. “You don't think so?”
“Stop that. You know what I mean.”
Quinn smiled. “Yes, I know. And the truth is . . . Max and I go way back. Besides, once he heard about Nightshade's past activities, he thought catching the bastard sounded like an excellent idea.”
Morgan was still frowning. She was reasonably sure that Quinn was being honest with her now, but that didn't mean he'd told her everything. He had an uncanny ability to tell just enough of the truth to make it all sound right without giving away anything he really didn't want someone else to know.
It was an unsettling talent—and it didn't help her to understand him the way she needed to. The problem was, she had yet to figure out what drove this man, what made him who he was. Everyone had some core motivation, some inner force propelling them through life as it shaped decisions and choices; what was his? She thought everything would make sense if she could only figure out what it was.
Slowly, probing for the answer to that question, she said, “I think I said once that I thought you had a personal reason for going after Nightshade—now I'm sure. And it isn't because he shot you. Why, Alex? What did he do to make you so determined? How did his path cross yours?”
Quinn didn't say a word for a moment. His face was still, wiped clean of all expression, and when he spoke, his voice was low and strained. “Two years ago, Nightshade killed someone who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—a not uncommon occurrence during one of his robberies. Only this time his victim was someone I cared about.”
From a window in a building several floors taller than the Museum of Historical Art, she studied first the museum and then the nearby building where the Interpol agent watched.
Bad night to skulk around, at least in this area, she acknowledged silently.
The place really was thick with thieves.
And cops.
Quinn had nearly caught her, damn him.
She lowered the binoculars and frowned, conscious of time passing too rapidly for her peace of mind. And her bank account. Almost everything was in place, her plan unfolding nicely so far. There were still a few minor details to take care of, of course, before she was ready to move.
And then there was him.
Quinn.
After tonight, she was more certain than ever that Morgan West was his weakness, his point of vulnerability. On the one hand, that was good: With his attention mostly focused on her, he was more apt to make a mistake—or at the very least be less attentive, less aware.
It could cripple him, that distraction.
On the other hand, his interest in her kept him close to the exhibit and those involved with it. He was on the inside, keenly aware of what was going on.
You had to admire the son of a bitch. He was having his cake and sleeping with her too.
What she had assumed was an unlucky break—encountering Morgan on that fire escape—had instead confirmed something she had guessed weeks ago. Those two could somehow sense each other, and after tonight it was doubtful that Quinn would let Morgan get too far away from him.
Good. That was good.
The more he was distracted from his work, the better for her. Sort of disappointing, not going up against Quinn at his best, but there would be other chances for that.
Lots of other chances.
She turned away from the window and put the binoculars away in her backpack. For now, this was the job she'd been hired to do, and anything that made it easier or simpler for her was all to the good.
Even love.
She heard herself laughing, and wasn't surprised.
“Who did he kill?” Morgan asked slowly.
“Her name was Joanne. Joanne Brent. She was attending a party at a house in London and, apparently, wandered into her host's library very late looking for something to read. She surprised Nightshade at work—and he killed her. Left a dead rose on her body.”
“That's awful,” Morgan whispered.
“Yes.” His voice was stony. “She was twenty-two.”
Morgan searched his hard, handsome features, suddenly afraid of a ghost. “You . . . loved her.” It wasn't a question.
He shook his head slightly, that look of rigid control softening a bit. “Not the way you mean. I never had a sister, but Joanne was the nearest thing. Until I came here to the States to attend college, we lived near each other in England. She was still a kid when I graduated—eight years younger—and after that I traveled quite a bit, so we didn't see each other often. When she was killed, I hadn't seen her in nearly six months.”
“Did she know you were Quinn?”
“No. I trusted her, but . . .”
Perceptively, Morgan said, “You didn't tell her because she would have worried?”
“Something like that.”
After a moment, Morgan nodded and said slowly, “You don't need me to point out that revenge tends to punish the one looking for it more than the target.”
Quinn smiled, but his eyes were suddenly as hard and cold as emeralds. “I don't want revenge, Morgana. I want justice.”
“What kind of justice?”
“The best kind. A man like Nightshade has spent his life collecting beautiful things, most of which he's secreted away so that his are the only eyes to see them. He sits in the middle of his treasures and gloats because he owns what no other man can claim.” Quinn smiled again. “So I'm going to take all that away from him. I'm going to put him in prison, surrounded by bare concrete walls and men who have very little appreciation for beauty. And I'm going to make damned sure he rots there.”
Morgan couldn't help shivering a little, but she tried to lighten the moment. “Sounds like a plan.”
He looked at her for a moment, then smiled a much more genuine smile. “So it does.”
She glanced down at the coffee cup she was cradling between her hands, absently aware that it was cooling, then returned her gaze to his face. “Your plan. You decided you could catch Nightshade, and you talked everybody else—Jared, Max, and Wolfe—into going along.”
Thoughtfully, Quinn said, “I think Max convinced Wolfe. I was never very good with him. We always had . . . communications problems.”
“He doesn't like thieves,” Morgan reminded dryly.
“There is that, of course. And he's a bit hidebound about people who bend the law now and then. I always thought Max was as well, but he surprised me.”
“You,” Morgan said, “are a dangerous man. You have this weird ability to say the most outrageous things and make them sound perfectly reasonable.”
Solemnly, Quinn said, “A certain inborn talent and a hell of a lot of practice.”
“Mmm. That isn't your only talent. You also have a very devious nature. Answer a question? Truthfully?”
“I'll have to hear it first.”
“Okay. Interpol caught up with you—what?—sometime last year?”
“Yes. Not a question I'd lie about, Morgana.”
“And not the question I want answered. But this is: They caught you because you let them. Didn't they?”
“Morgana—”
“You needed the resources of Interpol. All your own resources are in Europe, and they told yo
u that Nightshade was probably operating out of the States. So you needed help in finding him. You needed to be inside an international police organization that could legitimately call upon U.S. authorities for information and help.”
“So I allowed the police to capture me, possibly lock me away? Morgana—”
“You gambled. You said earlier that Jared gambled on his little brother, but he wasn't the only one doing that. You gambled that you could talk him over to your side, persuade him that setting a thief to catch a thief was a good idea. Gambled that he could persuade his superiors it would be better to use your knowledge and talents than lock you away. You gambled your freedom. Maybe even your life.”
He was silent.
“Not a question you can answer truthfully?”
“You think too much,” he said again.
“And too well? You let them catch you. It was the first step of your plan. This plan. To catch Nightshade.”
He drew a breath and let it out slowly. “You make it sound more dramatic than it was.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
Morgan didn't argue. Instead, she said, “It must be nearly two by now. Will Jared expect you back tonight?”
“We both have cell phones; he'll call if he needs me.”
“Will he expect you back tonight?” she repeated steadily.
“No, probably not. He knew I was concerned about you, that I wouldn't want to leave you alone.”
In a mild tone, she said, “I'll be all right.”
“Yes. Still.”
She nodded, unwilling to question him further at the moment. “Okay. Right now, I could use a hot shower to wash away a layer of grime from that fire escape and the last effects of the chloroform.”
If he hesitated, it was only for an instant. “Then I'll make a fresh pot of coffee while you take your shower.” He took her cup and set it on the coffee table, then got to his feet. “How's the ankle?”
“Ask me when I'm standing.”
Quinn helped her to her feet, keeping a firm grip on her arms until it became obvious that her injured ankle could bear weight, then he released her—but remained watchful.
Morgan hobbled toward her bedroom, relieved to find that the pain wasn't as bad as it had been. Over her shoulder, she said to him, “Back in a few minutes.”
“I'll be here,” he replied.
About that, at least, she knew he was telling the truth.
When Jared's cell phone vibrated a summons, he was a little surprised to see that the call came from Keane Tyler. He answered with a guarded, “Yeah?”
“Working late, huh?”
“You too. What's up?”
“Still no I.D. on Jane Doe, but the labwork came back on that knife we found in the museum. It's her blood, and the M.E.'s report says it's the murder weapon. No real surprises there.”
“Then why're you calling me at two in the morning?”
“Because whoever is leading us around by the nose has left another signpost for us to follow. The M.E., at my request, did a more thorough tox screen on Jane Doe. And found something unexpected. A small amount of venom, injected via a hypodermic and postmortem. Since she was already dead, it obviously wasn't meant to kill her. Wouldn't have anyway.”
“So a sign for us.”
“Looks like.”
“What kind of venom?”
“A spider's. Black widow.”
By the time Morgan returned to the living room a little more than half an hour later, she felt much better physically. She'd washed away the dirt of the fire escape and the memory of chloroform, carefully rubbed liniment on her sore ankle (the skin wasn't broken, but there was a nasty bruise), and thought about all he'd told her tonight.
The only certainty she had reached when she returned to him was the rueful knowledge that she had fallen for an extremely complex man she might never fully understand even after a lifetime of knowing him. On the other hand, he was also the most intriguing, baffling, maddening, exciting man she'd ever known, and impossibly sexy to boot.
None of that was a revelation, of course, except for her acceptance of her own feelings. And, being Morgan, once she accepted them, that particular struggle was over. After all, what was the use of kicking and screaming about something beyond one's power to change? She might be the last woman in the world who should have fallen for a famous cat burglar, but the fact remained that she had.
Dealing with it was the issue now.
After careful thought, Morgan very deliberately dressed in a loose and comfortable outfit consisting of baggy sweatpants and sweatshirt, with her only pair of bedroom slippers (ridiculously fuzzy things) on her feet. Hardly sexy attire. She had no intention of throwing herself at him yet again and trusted that he would get the point.
Being Quinn, of course, he did.
“Where did you get the blanket?” she asked calmly as she limped back into the living room. The blanket had been folded up and placed over the back of a chair, catching her attention when she came in.
He had been on the couch, looking rather broodingly at an old black-and-white movie on television, and got to his feet as soon as she spoke. His gaze scanned her from head to toe, and a faint gleam was born in the green eyes.
“Jared brought it when I called him to come relieve me on watch,” he answered.
“Ah. I wondered.”
“Feeling better?”
“Heaps. Don't I look it?”
“Fishing, Morgana?”
“Curious.”
He smiled. “I get the point, if that's what you're wondering. But I think I should tell you that you'd look sexy draped in sackcloth.”
She eased down on the other end of the couch and looked up at him expressionlessly. “I always wondered what that was. Sackcloth, I mean.”
“A very rough, coarse cloth.”
“That was what I thought. But I wasn't sure. Did you happen to earn a college degree in the history of fashion?”
“No.”
Morgan waited, one eyebrow rising, and Quinn suddenly uttered a low laugh.
“Actually, I have a law degree.”
For an instant she wanted to laugh but managed to control the impulse. “I see. Well, at least you completely understood the laws you were breaking.”
“I'll get the coffee,” Quinn said, retreating.
Morgan smiled to herself, then searched among the pillows on the couch for the remote and turned the television off. When he returned, she accepted her cup and sipped the hot liquid cautiously. “I won't be worth shooting tomorrow,” she commented as he sat down a foot or so away from her.
“You mean today.” He glanced at her, then said, “I talked to Jared while you were in the shower and asked him to fill in the others in the morning. So they probably won't expect you to show up on time. If at all.”
“I guess they had to know, huh?”
“I think so.” Quinn gazed into his coffee cup as if it held the secrets of the universe. “If that was Nightshade who put you to sleep, he's getting either nervous or suspicious—and either way could mean it's likely that he'll make his move soon.”
There were still several questions Morgan wanted to ask about all this—things that bothered her in a sort of vague, indeterminate way—but she chose not to ask them right now for two reasons: first, because she was more than ready to focus on their relationship and, second, because she had a hunch he would tell her more if allowed to do so in his own way.
While all that was floating through her mind, he leaned forward to set his cup on the coffee table and then half turned toward her as he sat back.
“Morgana?”
She looked at him, finding his expression very serious.
“I wasn't trying to use your feelings to distract you. At least . . . not consciously. I didn't particularly want you to ask questions about what I was doing at night, but we both know I'm capable of lying if I have to.”
“So you would have lied to me.”
“Yes,” he re
plied without hesitation. “If I believed it was something you didn't need to know about or, worse, would put you in danger if you knew.” He drew a breath. “It seemed safest to keep you occupied during the day, and since it was definitely not a hardship—”
“You must have lost sleep doing it. Being Quinn every night and Alex during the day.”
“Some, but nothing I can't handle. Morgan, I hope you understand. There are things I didn't want to have to explain—not yet anyway—and I knew damned well that if you concentrated that sharp mind of yours on what I was doing at night, you'd figure out more than I wanted you to know.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” she said. “But I've a feeling your little plan is so twisty I wouldn't be able to find my way through it with a road map.”
He smiled slightly. “Maybe not. I think I've taken a few turns blindly myself. That happens when you have to improvise without warning.”
“Is that what you've been doing? Improvising?”
“As you said—I hadn't counted on you. I hadn't counted on being . . . distracted. Still, I thought I could handle it. Then when I came to you after I was shot, not out of reason or logic but just because . . . because I had an overwhelming need to be with you, I knew I was in trouble. And I knew I didn't have a hope in hell of keeping you in a nice, safe little compartment of my life—even to protect you.”
Morgan resisted the urge to ask him to define his feelings for her a bit more clearly; she was determined not to prod him to say anything he wasn't ready to divulge on his own. “Protect me from what?”
“From all the risks involved in what I'm doing.” He sounded frustrated. “Goddammit, Nightshade kills people, don't you understand that? Without a second thought or even an instant's hesitation, he kills anyone who gets in his way. I don't want you in his way, Morgana. I don't want him to even imagine you could be a problem. It's bad enough that you're publicly linked with me at all; the closer you are to me, the closer you are to him—visible to him and drawing his attention. Besides that, considering how many times you've already charged into dangerous situations—”
“Just that one time, when I followed those men who had you,” she objected. “You can't count the first time, because I was there by accident; my date took me to that museum in all innocence.” Then she frowned. “Well, maybe not innocence—but you know what I mean.”