Honest Illusions

by Nora Roberts

  gold. If all went well, Luke mused, this little trinket would send Sam Wyatt to hell.

  “Have you checked the equipment?” he asked Jake.

  “Checked, rechecked. We’re on-line. Watch this.” He picked up a device no bigger than his palm. “Mouse,” he whispered. “You read?”

  There was a moment’s pause, then Mouse’s voice boomed out of the transmitter. “Right here, Jake. Clear as a bell.”

  With a grin, Jake offered the transmitter to Luke. “Better’n Star Trek, huh?”

  The grinding eased to a pleasant, excited flutter. “I hate to admit it, Finestein, but you’re good. We’ve got fifteen minutes, so keep your butt in gear.”

  “My butt’s always in gear.” He grinned and swiveled his skinny hips. “This one’s going to be fabulous, Luke. Fab-u- lous.”

  “Don’t count your chickens before they cackle,” Luke murmured, quoting Max. He checked his watch. “Roxanne’s waiting. Let’s move out.”

  “Saddle up. Wagons ho! Get the lead out.” Jake chuckled to himself as they headed for the door.

  “Amateur,” Luke muttered, but found himself grinning. It was going to be a hell of a night.

  The Hampstead Gallery was a three-story, neo-Gothic building tucked behind graceful oaks. On this crisp fall night so near Halloween, the leaves fluttered burnt gold in a breeze that cackled with coming winter, and wisps of ragged fog danced over the concrete and asphalt. Above, the moon was sliced neatly in half, its outline so sharp and keen, it seemed that some passing god might have taken his ax to cleave it. Without clouds to hamper it, the moonglow showered down, white and sweet to silver the trees. But the leaves clung yet to the branches, and provided sheltering shadows.

  It was all a matter of timing.

  The gallery fronted on Wisconsin Avenue. Washington was not a city that boogied with nightlife. Politics ruled, and politics preferred a patina of discretion—particularly in an election year. At one A.M. the traffic was light and sporadic. Most of the bars were closed.

  There was an underbelly of nocturnal activity, the crack houses, the corner drug deals, the hookers who worked the stroll on Fourteenth and those who were addicted to bartering for those temporary pleasures. Nightly murders were as common in this cradle of democracy as campaign promises.

  But here in this little corner of the city, all was quiet.

  Luke stood in the shadows behind the building, under the grinning gargoyles and lofty pilasters. “This better work, Mouse.”

  The transmitter around his neck picked up every breath. “It’ll work.” Mouse’s voice was quiet and clear through the mini-speaker. “It’s got a range of a hundred feet.”

  “It better work,” Luke said again. He held what looked like a crossbow in his hands.

  It was—or had been—just that before Mouse had modified it. It was now a gas-propelled grappling hook. Luke’s finger hovered over the trigger while he thought of Roxanne, already curled up inside the third-floor storeroom. He hit the release then watched with boyish pleasure as the five-clawed hook shot up trailing rope. The tiny engine hummed under his hands, vibrating like a cat.

  He heard the clink as the spiked metal hit the roof. He switched off the engine before gently, slowly pulling the rope toward him. It went taut when the spikes dug into the weathered brick of the ledge.

  Luke tested it, tugging hard, then reached up high enough to swing his legs free of the ground.

  “She’ll hold. Nice work, Mouse.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Okay, Finestein, you go first.”

  “Me?” Jake’s voice piped out in a squeak. His eyes rolled white in a face he’d rubbed liberally with blacking. He looked, pathetically, like a second-rate banjo player in a minstrel show. “Why me?”

  “Because if I’m not behind you, poking you in the ass, you won’t make it up.”

  “I’ll fall,” Jake claimed, stalling.

  “Well, try not to scream if you do. You’ll rouse the guards.”

  “All heart. I always said you’re all heart.”

  “Up.” Luke held the rope out with one hand and jerked, his thumb skyward.

  Though his feet were still on the ground, Jake clutched the rope like a drowning man. He squeezed his eyes shut and rose to his toes.

  “I’ll puke.”

  “Then I’ll have to kill you.”

  “I hate this part.” One last gulp and Jake was shimmying up like a monkey on a vine. “I really, really hate this part.”

  “Keep going. The faster you climb, the quicker you’re on top.”

  “Hate it,” Jake continued to mutter and climbed with his eyes stubbornly shut.

  Luke waited until Jake had reached the second story before he began his own ascent. Jake froze like an icicle in a blizzard. “The rope.” His voice was a keening whisper. “Luke, the rope’s moving.”

  “Of course it’s moving, you jerk. It’s not a staircase. Keep going.” Luke bullied Jake up another twelve feet. “Grab hold of the ledge, haul yourself over.”

  “Can’t.” Jake was praying in the Hebrew he’d learned for his bar mitzvah. “Can’t let go of the rope.”

  “Shit for brains.” But this wasn’t something unexpected. “Put your foot on my shoulder. There, come on. Feel it?”

  “That you?”

  “No, it’s Batman, asshole.”

  “I don’t want to be Robin anymore. Okay?” Jake put enough weight on Luke’s shoulder to make Luke wince.

  “Fine. Just get your balance. Keep your weight centered on me and take hold of the ledge. If you don’t,” Luke continued in the same, calm, unhurried tone, “I’m going to start swinging the rope. Know what it feels like to be hanging three stories up on a rope that keeps swinging so that you bash your face into the bricks?”

  “I’m doing it. I’m doing it.” With his eyes still shut, Jake uncurled frozen fingers from the rope. His hand scraped brick twice before he got a grip. Indulging in another of those muffled screams, he rolled himself over and landed with a thud.

  “Graceful as a cat.” Luke swung soundlessly over. “We’re up, Mouse.” He checked his watch, noting that Roxanne had another ninety seconds before leaving her hiding place. “Do it.”

  • • •

  Inside the storage closet that smelled of Mr. Clean and Murphy’s oil soap, Roxanne checked the luminous dial of her watch. Rising, working out the kinks that came from sitting for over two hours, she counted down the seconds.

  She held her breath as she eased the door open, stepped into the corridor. The darkness here was shades paler than it had been inside. There was a light at the end of the corridor that sent out a pool of pee-yellow to aid the guards on their rounds.

  She walked toward it, counting.

  Five, four, three, two, one . . . . Yes. A small sigh of satisfaction escaped as the light flickered, died.

  Mouse had come through. Moving fast now, Roxanne raced in the dark, past the now blind security cameras toward the surveillance room.

  “Goddammit!” The guard who’d been beating the hell out of his partner at gin swore in the dark and snatched his flashlight out of his belt. “Fucking generator should—ah.” He sighed with relief at the electrical hum. The lights flickered back on, the monitors blinked back to life, computers buzzed on. “Better check,” he said, but his partner was already dialing the phone.

  Lily picked up on the second ring. “Washington Gas and Light, good evening.”

  “This is the Hampstead Gallery, we’ve lost power.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. We have reports of a line down. A crew is being dispatched.”

  “Line down.” The guard broke the connection and shrugged. “Assholes probably won’t have it fixed before morning. Fucking electric company, bleeds you dry.”

  “Generator’s handling it.” Both turned to survey the monitors. “Figure I’ll make my sweep now.”

  “Right.” The guard plopped down in front of the bank of monitors to pour coffee from his thermos. “Watch ou
t for any big, bad burglars.”

  “Just keep your eyes open, McNulty.”

  The monitors continued to run their sequences, flipping every few seconds from display to display, shadowy corridor to shadowy corridor. It was enough, to McNulty’s thinking, to bore a hole in your head so your brains drained out. He spotted his partner, working the third floor, and flipped him the bird.

  It eased the boredom a little.

  He started to hum, thought about trying to stack the deck for the next hand of gin. Something on monitor six caught his eye. He blinked, snorted at his own imagination, then made small, strangled sounds in his throat.

  It was a woman. But it wasn’t. A pale, beautiful woman in a flowing white dress with long silver hair. She faded in and out on the screen. And he could see—Jesus, he could see the paintings right through her. She smiled at him, smiled and held out a beckoning hand.

  “Carson.” McNulty fumbled with his two-way, but all he got in response to his call was a mechanical buzz. “Carson, you son of a bitch, come in.”

  She was still there, swaying inches from the floor. He saw his partner as well, starting his sweep of the second floor.

  “Carson, goddammit!”

  In disgust, he shoved the two-way back in his belt pouch. His mouth was dry, his heart hammering, but he knew it would be his ass if he didn’t investigate.

  Roxanne shut off the projector and the hologram of Alice winked off. Once her equipment was back in her bag of tricks, she raced toward the surveillance room. The minutes were ticking away.

  Her blood was cool, her hands rock steady as she went to work. She ejected the tape from camera four, replaced it with her own. Following Jake’s instructions, she reprogrammed the computer. The camera was now inoperable, but the monitor would continue to show the required sequence. The only difference was, the guards would be watching a doctored tape. It took precious moments to redo camera six and erase the hologram. Even with Jake’s expertise there had been no foolproof solution to the time lapse. Those damning thirty seconds where Alice’s image had appeared could be fudged somewhat by turning back all the cameras and resetting them. Once the burglary was discovered, and the tapes were examined carefully, the lapse would show.

  By then, if all went well, it wouldn’t be their problem.

  “She should be finished.” Luke watched the final second tick away then nodded to Jake. “Jam it.”

  “My pleasure.” Secure now that he had something solid under his feet, Jake withdrew what appeared to be a complex remote control—one of those daunting pieces of home equipment that operated TV, VCR, stereo. He could have adapted it for just that purpose.

  On closer look it might have been mistaken for a pocket calculator. Jake’s fingers played along the tiny keyboard. Somewhere in the distance a dog began to howl.

  “High-pitched frequency,” Jake explained. “Going to drive any mutt within a half mile nutso. The security’s garbage for fifteen minutes—seventeen at the outside. That’s all this baby will last.”

  “It’s enough. Stay up here.”

  “You bet.” He gave Luke a happy salute. “Break a leg, pal.”

  With a dashing smile, Luke slipped over the side. His feet had no more than touched the window ledge when the pane shot up.

  “Christ, what’s more romantic than a man swinging in a window on a rope?” Roxanne stepped back to give Luke room to land.

  “I’ll show you when we get back to the hotel.” He stole a moment to kiss her thoroughly. He could feel the excitement drumming, from him to her, from her to him. It had been a long time since they’d worked in the dark together. “Any hitches?”

  “Not a one.”

  “Then let’s rock and roll.”

  “I’m telling you, I saw someone,” McNulty insisted.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Carson gestured toward the bank of monitors. “A floating woman—a transparent floating woman. I guess that’s why she didn’t set off any alarms. Where is she now, McNulty?”

  “She was there, damn it.”

  “Waving to you, right? Well, let’s see.” Carson tapped a finger on his chin. “Maybe she walked through a wall somewhere. That could be why I didn’t see her when I made my sweep. That could be why you didn’t see her when you left your post to go ghostbusting, McNutty.”

  “Play back the tape.” Seized with inspiration, McNulty punched in rewind on tape six himself. “Prepare to eat your words.”

  McNulty reran and played back the tape twice, and was going for a third when his partner stopped him.

  “You need a vacation. Try St. Elizabeth’s. I hear it’s real quiet there.”

  “I saw—”

  “I’ll tell you what I see. I see an asshole. If the asshole wants to report a floating babe, he’s on his own.” Carson sat down and dealt himself a hand of solitaire.

  Determined, McNulty planted himself in front of the monitors. A tic began to jerk under his left eye as he stared, waiting for the illusion to reappear.

  Luke slipped his prized burglar’s tools out of his pocket. With the rest of the security conquered, the lock on the display case was a joke. And the laugh would be on Sam.

  He chose a pick. His fingers were already itching as he bent to the lock. Abruptly, he straightened, turned to Roxanne and offered the tool.

  “Here. You do it. Ladies first.”

  She started to take the pick, then drew back her hand. “No, no, you go ahead. It’s your gig.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.” Then, touching the tip of her tongue to her top lip, she leaned toward him. “Besides,” she murmured, voice smoky, “watching you work gets me hot.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  She chuckled, gave him a kiss. “Christ, men are so easy. Lift the lock, Callahan.”

  She stood behind him while he worked, one hand resting lightly on his shoulder. But she wasn’t watching the delicate way he probed and jiggled. Her eyes were on the jewels beyond the glass, glittering brilliantly against the draped blue velvet.

  “Oh my. My, oh my, they do shine.” She felt the tug, the pull, the unabashed arousal. “I love those pretty stones. All that color, all that flash. Those rubies there. Did you know they’ve nearly mined all the rubies there are—at least that we know about. That’s why they’re worth more carat to carat than diamonds.”

  “Fascinating, Rox.” The lock gave. Carefully, silently, Luke slid the glass doors open.

  “Oh.” Roxanne drew in a deep breath. “Now you can almost smell them. Hot, sweet. Summer candy. Can’t we keep—”

  “No.” He took her backpack from her.

  “Just one, Luke. Just that one ruby necklace. We could pop the rocks. I could keep them in a bag and just look at them now and again.”

  “No,” he repeated. “Now get to work. You’re wasting time.”

  “Oh, well. It was worth a shot.”

  They filled her bag, piece by glittery piece. She was a pro, but she was also a woman, and a connoisseur of gems. If her fingers lingered to caress an emerald here, a sapphire there, she was only human.

  “I always figured tiaras were for beauty queens from Texas with two first names,” she murmured, but she sighed as she slipped the sparkling circlet in the pack. “Time?”

  “Seven minutes, on the outside.”

  “Good.” She took out the Polaroid she’d shot of the display that evening. Working with it, they arranged the faux jewels in their proper place.

  “They look good,” Luke decided. “Perfect.”

  “They should, they cost enough.”