ENTRAPMENT

by Kylie Brant

  The real concern in his expression made something inside her soften. "No. I can't afford to be. I know what I'm doing." She recognized the truth in the words as she spoke them. The fact that her hand had been forced was the only real ripple in this proposition. She'd always intended to invade Oppenheimer' s home. Much later. When the strategy she'd evolved had spun out in the path she'd designed. The act would be the culmination of everything that had been started all those years ago. This foray wouldn't change that. She wouldn't let it.

  Jacques was, as always, unfailingly blunt. "You're radiating nervous energy. That's not like you, Juliette. Nerves get in the way of logic."

  "Nerves can be useful if they're tempered with caution," she countered, turning another of his favorite sayings against him. She saw a glimmer of amusement chase across his laconic countenance. "Don't worry about me. I learned from the best."

  He grunted at that, picked up his pen and started scratching on the pad again. "All the teaching in the world isn't much good if you ignore common sense."

  If she hadn't been so jittery with the anxiety she'd apparently been unsuccessful at hiding, she'd have taken a moment to appreciate the fact that he worried about her, just a bit. The quality was rare enough in her life to be doubly valued. Her circle of intimates was small: her grandmother and Jacques. Where she shared friendship, and an odd sort of family with the man, he knew nothing of her past except what he'd guessed, knew nothing of what motivated her. Pauline was her only living relation, her only connection to the past. She'd lived with that knowledge for years, but it had never made her ache before. It suited her to blame that small pain on Sam Tremaine.

  "You don't know how much I appreciate this, buddy."

  Eyeing Sam grimly, Jones tipped his bottle of imported beer to his lips and drank. "You'd better. Do you have any idea what your sister is going to do when I get back home?"

  "Kick your ass for sure," Sam replied cheerfully. It still caught him off guard, thinking of his baby sister Analiese involved with the grim-faced ex-agent seated across from him. Not just involved anymore, but actually engaged to marry. The thought should have brought a clutch of anxiety. He'd freely admit to sharing his brothers' overprotectiveness where Ana was concerned, and there wasn't a man alive who was good enough for her. But Jones came close. Damn close. They'd been friends and colleagues for years before burnout had driven the other man away from the agency. Sam knew exactly just how big a sacrifice it had taken for Jones to make the trip over here at his request.

  "I'm going to let her guess your part in this mysterious trip I had to take, so you're not getting off scot-free yourself," the other man pointed out.

  A bolt of real fear jarred him. Sam had faced assassins' bullets with less emotion than the thought of facing his diminutive sister's ire. "I'm banking on her to calm down a bit before I see her again."

  "Yeah," Jones complained morosely. "I'm the one who's gonna get the brunt, and don't think I'll let you forget it." He laid a large manila envelope on the table and nudged it toward his friend. "Detailed documentation on Oppenheimer's comings and goings. He's been spending time with some business acquaintances that you might find interesting. Best I can tell, he's wrapping things up in Germany for a while. He plans to head to his Austrian estate day after tomorrow with his fiancée."

  Sam grunted, shaking the pages out of the envelope. "Pre-honeymoon getaway with wifey-to-be?"

  "Don't know how relaxing it'll be." Jones ran his thumbnail under the label on the bottle. "Word is, he's been on a tear for the last few days, royally pissed about something."

  Flipping the papers, Sam grinned. The man's temper was undoubtedly caused by Juliette's last heist. He hadn't asked why Oppenheimer regarded the necklace so highly. He'd been far more interested in what it represented to Juliette. Neither answer had been forthcoming.

  "So." Jones slouched back in his chair, causing it to squeak warningly. "Gonna tell me why you can't use any agency operatives on this thing you've got going with Oppenheimer?"

  Sam straightened the papers and began replacing them in the envelope. "Just being careful."

  "Uh-huh. This have anything to do with Sterling's disappearance?"

  The problem with tapping Jones for help, was that he knew just what questions to ask. It had taken his assistance, along with Ana's, to get Sam out of the small island country that Sterling had arranged for his burial place. Reaching for his glass of Scotch, he brought it to his lips.

  Taking his silence for assent, Jones set his bottle back on the table. "I think I can figure what's going down. Not knowing the extent of Sterling's damage, you can't afford to trust many in the agency. Which means this thing isn't going by the regular channels. I just hope to God you're not playing cowboy on this thing."

  Cowboy, the term for a rogue agent acting on his own without Headquarters's approval, was equal parts stupidity and dangerous. Sam wasn't stupid. "I'm not."

  "I don't have to get back to the States right away. I can hang around long enough to give you a hand if you need it."

  He wasn't a man for whom asking for help was easy. So it was doubly difficult to hear it offered freely from Jones. The man had left the agency after taking a bullet in the back from a fellow agent. Knowing what it cost the man made his offer doubly precious. "You've done enough. Whatever happens from here out is all mine."

  Jones stared at him for a moment, before nodding slowly. "I'll stay for a few more days just in case. You can give me a call when you've finished whatever the hell you're doing." When Sam opened his mouth to protest, Jones leaned forward. "I'll stick around."

  Arguing was futile. So was attempting to articulate just what the offer meant to him. Instead of trying, Sam raised his glass, waited for Jones to do the same.

  "To success," he said simply. Unspoken understanding passed between the two men as crystal clinked against bottle. "To success."

  Wiping his bare chest with a towel, Sam didn't even try to keep his eyes off Juliette. It would have been futile, and he wasn't a man to deny himself simple pleasures. He'd determined that both of them could use a workout to battle the adrenaline that came hand in hand with an approaching assignment. But he couldn't possibly have known just what he was letting himself in for.

  After going a couple rounds with the body bag, she'd moved on to the balance beam. He'd admired her form as she'd punched and kicked at the bag with enough force to send it swaying. But watching her on the beam made him sweat. She did a graceful handstand, turned with one quick movement of her wrists, then let her legs float downward in a skeletal defying position until they were parallel to the bar.

  All the blood in his body abruptly pooled below his waist. He'd known, at least on a logical level, that her evasion of those laser beams in the museum had to have required a great deal of practice. He could never have imagined just what routine that practice would take. Damn if he was sure whether he was going to survive watching it.

  Slowly Juliette raised her legs, poised, then did a quick flip around the bar, a lightning switch of hand placement and then reversed the action. After several dizzying flips, she stood upright, without swaying a fraction, and took a running start on the beam. Sam's throat closed and he took an involuntary step toward her as she dove into the air, somersaulted three times, and came to a standing halt on the mat.

  It took a moment to get his voice to work again. "Showing off?"

  She blew out a breath, reached over and snatched the towel from his hand. "Just warming up."

  There was a thin trickle of perspiration along her throat, and the front of her short sports top was stained with moisture. He'd never found the sight in the least bit attractive before. And certainly he'd never had the urge to press a woman's hot sticky body against his own, to lick the salty traces of exertion from her skin.

  A mental image of him doing just that burned a path across his mind. He had a vivid picture of their naked tangled bodies lying across a bed, flesh slick with moisture generated by another, far more pleasu
rable workout.

  It took an incredible amount of effort to shove that thought aside, but carving it from his memory was going to take longer. "You could take that act on the road. Maybe get a new Olympic event started. B&E gymnastics."

  Her teeth flashed in one of the few genuine smiles she'd ever given him. It did nothing to cool his fevered body. "I never thought of breaking and entering as a sporting event before. You may be onto something."

  Breaking and entering. He seized the phrase and its accompanying implications. The only thing that had brought them together was her skill at theft. Her level of expertise at breaking the law, eluding capture, and taking whatever she wanted. What kind of woman made those kind of choices, led that kind of life? The answer seemed only too obvious.

  "We'll need to leave for Austria first thing in the morning." Because it was easier to focus when he wasn't looking at her, he turned away, reached for his shirt. "We'll fly, then rent a car. You'll need a false passport. I trust that won't be a problem."

  "I have several." He hadn't realized she'd moved until she was standing in front of him, regarding him speculatively. "How are you going to get one?"

  "Don't worry about me." He didn't bother telling her that he had more than one identity himself. The revelation would elicit more questions, questions which he had no intentions of answering. In that area, too, they shared a similarity.

  Shrugging into his shirt, he continued, "We need to talk about how we're circumventing each aspect of the security. I want to make sure you have all the materials you need before we leave."

  "As if I'd start a job without being prepared."

  He ignored the irritation shading her tone. "So you've compiled everything you'll need?"

  Tossing the towel toward him, she stalked over to find her T-shirt. "I expect a delivery this evening."

  "Okay." He crossed to where he'd left his clothes. Pulling a tattered pair of sweats over his shorts, he sat down and started putting on his shoes and socks. "What do you have planned for the guard dogs?"

  "Tranquilizer darts. Don't worry," she said, when he shot her a look. "I have an extremely fast-acting tranq and I'm an excellent shot."

  "Do you have two guns?"

  "I don't expect to need…"

  "Do you have," he interrupted, his tone firm, "two guns?"

  She blew out a breath. "Yes."

  "Good. Bring them both. We'll need to drag the dogs out of sight so no one sees them down."

  "We'll remove the darts and let the animals sleep it off in the bushes." She took great care to educate herself about tranquilizers so the dogs would suffer no lasting effects. "They'll be up and around again in a half hour. It shouldn't take more than four minutes to deactivate the alarm to the house."

  "And you propose to do that … how?"

  She shot him a pointed look. "Look, Tremaine, you came to me for my expertise, remember? If you're thinking of micromanaging this job all the way through—don't."

  He finished tying his shoes and barely managed stifling a grin. She didn't appear to enjoy having someone looking over her shoulder anymore than he enjoyed Miles doing the same. He could appreciate the sentiment. "Indulge me. Please." Although the plea he tacked on had no noticeable effect at softening her expression, he continued. "I was wondering about the alarm system you mentioned."

  Noting the way her gaze narrowed, he threw up his hands to ward off her temper. "I'm not questioning your research." He was, in fact, risking both their lives on its accuracy. "But a wireless alarm system would have been much more effective, wouldn't it? One thing about Oppenheimer—he likes to have the best. I just can't figure why he'd go with a more traditional alarm system when he could have tied a wireless into his closed circuit TV. He's got guards stationed at those monitors, anyway."

  She pulled the shirt over her head, smoothed it down over her stomach. He tried, not quite successfully, to keep his gaze on her face. "By going with a more traditional alarm system, he avoids making all his security reliant on one server. The CCTV cameras are to patrol the grounds. If the alarm were tied through that system too, an intruder would only have to disable one target to leave the grounds and house vulnerable." She reached down and grabbed a fresh towel, started dabbing at her throat. "As security goes, his is fairly tight."

  "But not too tight for you."

  Her eyebrows skimmed upward. "No system's invulnerable. The best an owner can do is make it as inconvenient or risky as possible."

  Spoken, he mused, like the expert she was. "So what are you planning to do? Silence the annunciator? Jumper the magnetic switches?"

  She stilled, the towel gripped in one hand. Regarding him speculatively, she said, "You seem to have more than a little familiarity in this area yourself. Where'd you happen to pick it up?"

  He lifted a shoulder, rose to his feet. "Here and there."

  "Uh-huh." His knowledge had obviously given her something to think about. It was a moment before she continued. "Actually, this system utilizes recessed switches, which would be difficult to jumper. A gaussmeter will detect the strength of the magnets in the system. From there it will be a simple task to replace the old magnet, opening a door."

  He may not have the expertise of the agency's tech squad, but he had acquired a few facts along the way. A gaussmeter was wildly expensive. For the first time he fully appreciated the expense she'd spoken of earlier, both for the tools of her trade and the acquisition of the necessary intelligence. In a strictly objective way, of course.

  She went on. "I plan to use magnets on two of the cameras, too. They'll scramble the reception enough to allow us over the wall undetected."

  "You forget how long we're going to be inside," he reminded her. "It's only a matter of time before one of the guards monitoring the CCTV system goes to check the cameras out."

  "It's a calculated risk. Ninety-eight percent of the time people will focus on trying to fix the monitors, since that's where the trouble usually occurs. Incapacitating three cameras, covering two different areas, will make it look like a reception problem."

  "I think I've got a better idea." He almost smiled when he saw the warning flash in her eyes. She wasn't one to enjoy having her expertise questioned. "Just a minute. I'll show you."

  He went to the laptop he'd set next to his gym bag. From the zippered side he removed the black leather pouch the tech squad had prepared at Headquarters to send with Miles. Coming back to the safe house to work out had given him a chance to retrieve them from what had, until he'd moved in with Juliette, been his bedroom.

  Crossing back to her, he opened the bag and poured several small metal devices into her cupped palms. "Microsize stegometers." She was holding one close, studying it curiously. "We attach one to the side of the cameras we want out of commission about an hour before we plan to scale the walls. It stores everything the camera 'sees' during that space of time. Then when we're ready, I'll program them to replay that same hour of tape, rather than recording as usual."

  From the stunned fascination on her face, one would think she'd found the Holy Grail. "Where did you get these?"

  "I have sources of my own." He scooped them from her palms, not unaware of the fact that she didn't give them up quite willingly. "And before you ask, there's no chance I'd give you one to benefit your ill-fated career."

  A pout settled on her mouth. "I wasn't going to ask."

  Without thinking, he tapped her sulky lips. "Yes, you were. Even now you're trying to figure out a way to sneak a couple of them away before this thing is over. Don't bother. They'll be in my possession the whole time."

  She knocked his hand away. "You don't know me nearly as well as you think, Tremaine." Her gaze went to the devices, which even now were being replaced in the pouch. "Of course, if you were to think of making a trade for one, I wouldn't be opposed."

  Contrary to her slightly teasing tone, his own was serious as he picked up the laptop and gym bag. "The only thing I want from you, Juliette, would be worth nothing if it wasn't offered w
illingly."

  Awareness flooded her expression, and he turned away, already regretting the words. But he couldn't deny their truth. He just wasn't sure what the hell he was going to do about it.

  Darkness held no hidden fears for Juliette. She was most comfortable shrouded in shadows. The night held doubts at bay, made the choices that guided her life seem clear and just.

  She sat in the middle of her antique four-poster hugging her knees as sleep continued to elude her. It was the thought of finally entering Oppenheimer's estate, of course. Her throat dried even as she thought it. Although this wasn't the culmination of her own plans, far from it, it did mean striking where he felt safest. Least vulnerable.

  Resting her chin on her knees, she considered that thought. With him in the home as they accessed the vault, she'd be closer to him than she'd been since that day ten years ago. Revulsion crawled up her spine. She could still hear his voice, still feel the weight of his body holding her pinned to the floor. Her cheek stung, as if the sensation was summoned by the recollection of his blow.

  Stop your screaming, you little bitch. You 're plenty old enough to learn the only damn thing women are good for.

  No, doubts didn't roam at night, but memories did. And she knew from bitter past experience that, left unchecked, they could sneak past defenses, undermine purpose by eliciting a burning slash of hatred so deep it frightened even her. From long practice she slammed the mental doors on those memories, tucked them deep into the recess of her mind, where they couldn't prey on old wounds. Emotion was the enemy of purpose. Where feeling could derail logic, focus and planning would, in the end, help her achieve her goals.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, began to rock. Revenge was best served cold. So the saying went. Hers had been years in the making, and through patience and skill she'd be the one to topple Hans Oppenheimer's empire. First she'd rob him of everything he prized most, one piece at a time. That step had been highly successful so far. When he least expected it, she'd strike at his reputation, shredding his chances to gain trust, to make valuable contacts. And when he was ruined, vulnerable and exposed, she'd make him pay.