A Touch of Minx

by Suzanne Enoch

  “Sam?”

  “Shh.” Not only was this a double key lock, but it was a nice one. A very nice one. With a frown she pulled out her wallet of lock picks and unzipped it. “Hold this and keep it steady,” she whispered, inserting a thin rod into the upper lock.

  Rick half turned, holding the rod in place for her. At least he wasn’t commenting that she’d lost her edge, though that would probably come later. But a tough lock was good, she reflected as she squatted down to twist the tiny internal cylinders. It meant there was something worth protecting behind it.

  With the heavy-duty tools put to use, the lock clicked open in another twelve seconds. That was nothing to brag about, but she’d worry about buying one of the locks to practice on later. Taking a breath, she pushed down on the latch and squeezed through the door, Rick right behind her.

  “What the f—”

  “Shh,” she warned him again, gingerly closing and locking the door before she turned around. And froze. “What the fuck?” she muttered.

  Chapter 20

  Saturday, 12:13 p.m.

  She was everywhere. A row of pedestals, four of them, stood in the middle of the room, each of them topped with a rare piece of Japanese antiquity. But all the rest was her. Samantha Jellicoe. Everywhere.

  “Christ,” she said, her voice unsteady and her face pale.

  Richard looked from her to the half circle of wall joined to the outer semicircle of shuttered windows. A light switch was set into the wall just behind her, and he reached back and flipped it on.

  Recessed lights illuminated the artifacts and softly lit the orderly framed photos, newspaper articles, website grabs, and magazine pages. He moved closer, still stunned first at seeing them, and second at seeing so many of them. Some of the magazine captions weren’t even in English.

  “There have to be a hundred of them,” Samantha muttered, still not moving from where she’d stopped just inside the turret room door.

  “More than that,” he returned shortly, moving along the wall.

  It made him feel ill, deep in the pit of his stomach. Gabriel Toombs was apparently quite a fan of Samantha. Some of the newspaper articles were about thefts, in Australia, Morocco, Vancouver, Tokyo, Paris, Munich…

  “Are these all jobs you’ve pulled?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “These articles. Are they your work?”

  “That’s what caught your attention? What about the photo of us eating ice cream from last week? Or the one of me jogging? Or—”

  “Are these just robberies,” he interrupted sharply, “or are they your robberies? Because I’d like to know if he knows for certain who you are, and how long he’s known and has been tracking your career.”

  Her green eyes widened. “God,” she whispered. “He knows. He knew about me when we had lunch at the Sailfish Club, and when he gave me a tour of this house.” Visibly shaking, she joined him by the wall.

  He wanted to hold her, but they needed answers. And they needed them now. “Take a look.”

  Inhaling deeply, she studied the glass-framed articles. “They’re not all mine,” she finally said, “but more than half of them are.”

  “He’s a good guesser, then.” Keeping his emotions shoved out of the way, Richard tore his gaze from the candid photos to look at the items on the pedestals. An old, delicate-looking tea set, a stunning, intricate fan, a silver-decorated bridle…“What about these?” he asked, still trying bloody hard to keep his focus. Both of them falling apart would only serve Toombs. “Are these your work?”

  Samantha cleared her throat. “Yes. All four of them are. When I took them, I didn’t know they were for Toombs, except for the war br—”

  “The war bridle,” he finished, going back to the wall with the framed candid photographs. He was in some of them, at the periphery, cut off, clearly not the focus of the photographer.

  “I don’t get it, Rick,” she said shakily. “The armor and the swords aren’t here. But this…this is crazy.”

  He’d forgotten that they’d come for the Yoritomo items. As soon as he’d seen this, everything else had ceased to matter. “Some of these articles are nearly a decade old,” he said quietly, trying to put the pieces together while his surprise began to spin into something else. “The photos are all since we met. The past year only.”

  “He could have suspected or realized something, some mistake I made, and backtracked me from there. Old papers aren’t hard to get.”

  “The police haven’t been able to track you backward or forward.”

  “The cops need proof. Some of these grabs aren’t mine, so he doesn’t know everything.” She made a slow circle. “Nearly everything, sure. He knows I like peppermint ice cream.”

  Richard took a slow breath and held it. “The pictures are all from here in Palm Beach. He hasn’t followed us around the world, the smug bastard.”

  “Rick?”

  There were times when he was with Samantha that he didn’t know how to describe his feelings. He just didn’t have the words. Today, though, seeing this, he knew exactly what to call the emotion searing into his muscles and his bones. Rage. Simple, pure, red-tinted rage.

  Toombs had violated her—her privacy, her past, her freedom that she held dearer than anything else. And Toombs had smiled and invited her into his home. They thought he’d stolen something, and he had. Just not what they’d expected.

  “Rick?”

  Samantha touched his arm, and he jumped. “When’s he supposed to get back here?” he forced out, his jaw clenched so hard it ached.

  “We came for the armor, and it’s not here. Let’s go.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Except down to the Jaguar to get the Glock out of the glove box. However proficient Toombs claimed to be with a samurai sword, a bullet between the eyes was even more efficient.

  “Rick, we have to go.”

  “No. I’m sorry, but this trumps your lost armor. I will not—”

  “I want to leave,” she said more loudly, her voice catching.

  He blinked. “Sam—”

  “I am freaked out, and I want to leave. Now.”

  It went against every baser instinct he had, but Richard nodded. “I’m taking all of this with me.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Why the fuck not? I don’t want him setting eyes on you ever again. Even in photos.”

  “He’ll know I was here. If he doesn’t have the armor, then the Picaults do. I won’t tip them off.”

  “This is not about—”

  “It’s about what I say it is, dammit.”

  The vacuum cleaner down the hall shut off. Immediately Samantha went back to the door and shut off the lights.

  “It’s not just the armor,” she said in a lower voice. “We can’t get caught here.”

  At the tense worry on her face, he realized she was correct—they needed to go, and without leaving any sign that they’d ever been there. If the maid called the police, if the police came into this room looking for an intruder, they would see all of this. And proof or not, the police would connect the articles with the pictures, and they would start hounding her like never before. Hounding them. If the police actually found the two of them in the room…

  “Okay.” Richard took her hand, and she clenched his fingers hard. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll follow your lead.”

  Her expression calmed as she released his hand and leaned her ear against the door. Good. This was what she knew, what she was better at than anyone else he’d ever heard of. They both needed to calm down—at least until they were out of this bloody house.

  The vacuum started again, closer. “She’s in the other turret room,” Samantha whispered. “When I say, you head down the hallway and stay to the far side. That’ll make it harder for her to see you.”

  “And you?”

  “This is dead-bolted. I’ll have to lock it again from the outside. Wait for me at the top of the stairs, under cover.”

  “Sam—”


  She slowly pushed down the latch, then pulled the door open an inch. Peering through the narrow opening, she reached back with her free hand to touch his chest. “Ready?” she breathed. “Go.”

  Smoothly she stepped back and opened the door at the same time. Richard slipped through as quickly and quietly as he could and made for the nearest cover, between two of the glass-encased kimonos. As he looked back, she’d already closed the door again. She was in there with all that…shit, all by herself.

  And all he could do was wait. And watch.

  Because he was looking for it, he saw the door inch open again. She slipped out, closed the door again, and squatted in front of it. She had her lock picks in her teeth, and a small compact-sized mirror strapped to her forearm with what looked like a rubber band.

  Adjusting the mirror, she went to work on the lock. He’d wondered how she would keep track of the maid and relock the door at the same time. Christ. No wonder that no one had ever caught her. Except for him that one night, and more than ever he realized that that had been pure luck—good on his part, and bad on hers.

  Abruptly she moved, keeping low and aiming directly for him. Shit. He was supposed to be waiting by the stairs. “Go,” she mouthed, glaring at him, and he went.

  Down the stairs, through the old servants’ corridor, and out the back door. She pushed him back against the wall while she relocked that door, then led the way to the side wall. With a small, audible breath she hit the wall and scrambled up it like Jackie Chan, while he followed more like a slow, lumbering rhinoceros.

  She grabbed his feet to guide him down, then let him go and changed her grip to his hand as they walked around the corner to where they’d left the cars. Her movements were spare and tight, too abrupt to match the ease with which he was accustomed to seeing her move. He unlocked the Jag and pulled open the passenger door, sliding in from that side and tugging her in after him. Samantha sat there, still, for a moment while he leaned across her and closed the door again.

  There behind the lightly tinted windows they were fairly well invisible unless someone walked right up to the car and pressed his head against the glass. Samantha continued to grip his hand tightly, and slowly he pulled her against him until he could bring his right arm around her shoulder and hold her.

  “People aren’t supposed to notice me,” she said abruptly.

  “He noticed you because of me,” he commented, ready to accept all of the responsibility for this one if it would help restore her to her usual spirits.

  “No, he didn’t.” She pulled free of him to slam both of her clenched fists into her thighs. “He might have seen me because I’m with you, but he already knew about me.”

  “What makes you—”

  “I stole that fan in Paris nearly three years ago, the tea set three months after that, and the jade lion a year after that. And the bridle—”

  “The bridle was a year and a half ago,” he finished. “He’s known about you for at least the last thirty-six months. But he didn’t take a photo of you until after you and I met.”

  “Not that we saw, anyway. I didn’t check his underwear drawer or his fucking night stand.” She shuddered. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

  Her muscles shivered, and he took off her silly Marlins cap and pulled her into a tight, hard embrace. He’d made it his crusade, his most important thing in life, to protect her. Clearly he’d failed. Miserably. As her hands clutched into the back of his shirt she gave a single, gasping sob.

  Why hadn’t she known that someone had been trailing her every time they stayed in Palm Beach? The times they were together in public, she’d come to expect that someone would be snapping their picture. That could account for some of the photos. But the rest…She’d been stalked, was still being stalked, and hadn’t known it.

  “You know how to recognize undercover police, FBI, Interpol,” he said slowly, speaking into her tousled hair. “They have certain patterns they follow. You can’t expect to see something trackable in an insane person.”

  “Is he crazy?” She lifted her head to look up at him. “Because I’ve spent a couple of hours in his company on two different occasions, and I thought he was kind of weird, but otherwise pretty together. When he showed up for lunch, Aubrey hadn’t told him that I was the female guest who’d be there, but he didn’t start foaming at the mouth or anything when he saw me.”

  “He knows Aubrey works for you.”

  “Aubrey works for a lot of women.”

  “I don’t know, Samantha, but I mean to find out. And I mean to stop it. If I don’t hear the answers I want, I’ll burn that house to the ground with him in it.”

  “Not if I beat you to it.”

  Slowly she relaxed in his arms, while he worked at shoving his fury into a corner where he could deal with it. Where he could smile and shake Gabriel Toombs’s hand tonight at the Malloreys’ dinner party and tomorrow at the house of the apparent real crooks. As far as he was concerned the Picaults could steal every piece ever shown at the Met—Toombs had tried to steal a piece of Samantha, and that would never be forgiven, or forgotten. Even without the ring he currently had stuffed in his pocket, no one got between him and Samantha. No one.

  Rick actually got out of the Jag and walked her to the SLK. If she needed another clue that everything had veered out of control, the way he’d decided that she couldn’t walk five feet on her own provided it. She pulled out the keys and hit the door unlock.

  “Do you need to work on whatever you were doing in Miami?” she asked.

  “No. It’s taken care of. I think we should go home and confer about this.”

  Truthfully, she wanted to forget the whole thing, but she knew she’d be having nightmares about seeing her image frozen jogging in Wild Bill Toombs’s private, double-locked turret room. She hadn’t suspected anything of the kind. As little as she liked to make excuses for herself, Rick had a point—she had no reason to expect that something like this was going on. She could think of one person who might know, though, that she’d worked for Toombs on four different occasions. And he was missing.

  “I need to find Stoney,” she muttered, clenching the keys in her fist.

  “Walter? I know you miss him, but I think we have…” His voice trailed off. “You think he knew something,” Rick said grimly, in that tight voice he’d been using since they’d entered the turret room.

  “I know he knew something. I’m just not sure what. But he’d better have a fucking good explanation for bailing on me if he did suspect Toombs of being a freakazoid.”

  “I’d like to see Walter again myself, then.”

  “Back off, King Kong. Stoney’s mine to pound, not yours.”

  “That’s something else we can debate back at home, then.”

  “No, it’s—”

  Her cell phone rang. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Frowning and unable to cover another shiver, she opened it. “Aubrey.”

  “Sorry, my honey flower. He skipped lunch. So I hate to sound like one of those clichéd horror movies, but get out of the house.”

  “I’m out.” She looked at Rick. “Where are you heading now, Aubrey?”

  “Home for a nap. I’ve got a party to attend tonight.”

  “The Malloreys. Right. Me, too. Would you stop by Solano Dorado on your way? I need to talk to you for a minute.”

  “I’d be honored.”

  She hung up. “Okay, let’s go.”

  “Why is Aubrey coming over?” Rick asked, not moving, one hand still holding the SLK door open.

  “Because he’s better acquainted with Wild Bill than we are, and because he’s a pretty observant guy. And because he’s going with us to the Picaults tomorrow, and we’re pretty sure now that they have my armor and swords. Any other questions?”

  “Don’t take it out on me,” he said more evenly. “And forgive me if I’m feeling a little protective at the moment.”

  She leaned up and kissed him. “Thanks.”

  “Mm hm. I’ll follow
you. And Toombs had better hope he’s not driving his black Miata in this direction right now.”

  Samantha almost told him to calm down and rein it in, but he knew the score. They both did. The only difference was that he seemed to have all of his testosterone-fueled attention on beating Toombs to death, and she still wanted to recover the Yoritomo stuff before she took any other action.

  “Just stay close,” she said, half to keep him from running suspicious people over, and half because she’d never been so glad to have a partner as when she’d walked into that room.

  “I will.” He kissed her again and closed the door for her, then went back to the Jaguar.

  She took a deep breath and then started the car and headed for home. Despite the ickiness of how she felt seeing that…Samantha shrine or whatever it was, it would have been worse if she’d taken Rick’s initial advice and not gone in at all. How long would it have continued, the black Miata or whatever car he’d driven previously tailing her while he took his slimy photos?

  Her phone rang again—the James Bond theme. “I’m okay,” she said, trying to sound irritated and not sure she was succeeding.

  “I know you are, but what about me?” he said in his cultured British accent. “That was quite the shock.”

  “You don’t have to go all Monty Python for me,” she returned with a half smile. “I’m okay. Really. We do need to go over some strategy, though. You’re right about that. I want a plan before I have to look at him again.”

  “How do you check to see if Walter’s tried to contact you?”

  “First should be a phone call. If not to my cell, then I’ll check the office phone and the house machine. After that, an answer in the paper, but that wouldn’t be out until Monday at the earliest.” After that, she didn’t know, but thankfully he didn’t ask.

  “He’ll contact you,” Rick said after a moment.

  It sounded comforting on the surface, but she had the distinct feeling that he wanted to let Stoney know just how irritating being blindsided like that was. Her two guys fighting. Great. Except she wasn’t too happy with her surrogate father at the moment herself. He had his own agenda, sure, but he’d never left her hanging before.