by Nora Roberts
“That’s lovely. That’s all-around lovely, Jack. I’ll take it.” She tugged off her glove, held out her hand. “And you.”
He slid it onto her finger, dipped his head for a kiss to seal the bargain.
“That’s a very sweet moment,” Malachi said through the headpieces. “Congratulations and best wishes to you both. Now would you mind getting your asses out of there?”
“Oh, stuff it, Mal.” Rebecca leaned up for one more kiss. “We’re on our way.”
When they got back to the van, Cleo slid the partition open so she and Rebecca could change places. “Let’s see the bauble,” Cleo demanded. Impatient, she tugged off Rebecca’s glove. “Whoa. Some rock.”
“Save the girl stuff for later.” Jack strapped into his seat. “Bring the system on-line.”
“Now that we’re engaged, he’s full of orders.” Rebecca stepped through and took over the controls from Tia. “Booting it up.”
As she worked, Malachi bent over her, pressed his lips to the top of her head and made her smile. “I’m going to get all gooey and sentimental in just a bit.”
“Me, too.”
“It’s a beautiful ring.” Unable to resist, Tia leaned down to get a closer look. The diamond flashed as Rebecca’s fingers raced over the keyboard. “I’m so happy for you.”
“We’ll have a party tonight, won’t we? For all sorts of reasons. Primary’s up, backup booting,” she announced. “And there we are. All neat and tidy.” She leaned back, took the bottle of water Malachi offered. “We’ve done it.”
“Time for Act Two.” Cleo propped her feet on the dash. “We got time to grab a pizza?”
GIDEON SAT IN Kennedy Airport, reading a paperback copy of Bradbury’s Something Wicked. He’d settled into a gate area where he could easily observe the first-class lounge.
The flight to Athens was on time and had already started to board. He was beginning to feel a bit twitchy, yearned for a cigarette.
He shifted in his seat, turned a page without reading as Anita strolled out of the lounge. He let her get another gate down before he rose and wandered after her.
Like dozens of other travelers, he pulled out a cell phone. “She’s queuing up to board,” he said quietly. “Flight’s on schedule.”
“Let us know when it, and she, are in the air. Oh, by the way, Becca and Jack got engaged.”
“Did they?” Though he kept his attention on the back of Anita’s head, Gideon grinned at his brother’s news. “Official and all?”
“She’s wearing a ring with a diamond fit to blind you. We’re heading toward the second target now. If all goes well, we’ll meet you back at base on schedule. You can see it for yourself.”
“Good thing I’ve got me sunglasses. She’s just going down the jetway. Thirty minutes to takeoff. I’m sitting down here, going back to my book. I’ll ring you back.”
THEY PARKED THREE blocks away, and waited.
“See, I told you we had time for pizza.”
Jack slanted Cleo a look. “Why aren’t you fat as a cow?”
“Metabolism.” She took a Hershey’s Big Block out of her bag, unwrapped one end. “It’s the one useful thing my mother passed on to me. So, are you and Rebecca going to live here, or over on the Emerald Isle?”
“Some of both, I imagine, and here and there. We’ll work it out.”
“Yeah. It’s handy you’ve got a gig where you bounce around a lot.”
“What about you? You going back to dancing when this is over? With your cut, you could buy a chunk of the Rockettes.”
“Dunno. Probably hang loose awhile.” She munched on chocolate. “Maybe I’ll open my own club or a dance school. Something that doesn’t keep me hauling butt from audition to audition. Right now, I can’t think further than making Anita pay for Mikey.”
“We’ve got a good start on that.”
“Man. He’d get such a rush out of all this shit. Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“What if it’s not in there? What if she took it with her or something?”
“Then we go to Plan B.”
“What’s Plan B?”
“I’ll let you know when we get there.” He looked at her as Malachi’s signal came through his headset. “She’s in the air.”
“Curtain up,” Cleo said, and stepped nimbly out of the van.
“You want to go over anything again? Floor plan, hand signals?”
“No, I got it.”
“We’ve got two people in the building this time,” he reminded her. “Two live-in servants. We have to do this quietly.”
“I’m a fucking cat. Don’t worry. Do you think this is some kind of record?”
“What’s that?”
“Breaking into two places, for a total of three B and E’s in twenty-four hours, without actually stealing anything.”
“We’re taking the Fate.”
“Yeah, but it already belongs to Mal, and Tia, I guess. So that doesn’t count. I think we could get into the Guinness guy’s record book for this.”
“A lifelong dream of mine.”
They walked by the house once. The lights were off on the second floor. “Looks like they’ve settled in for the evening. Servants’ quarters there, south corner of the house.”
“Housekeeper and butler, check. You think they get it on while the boss is away?”
Jack scratched his jaw. “I’d rather not get that image stuck in my head just now. We go up the east side to the bedroom terrace. We’ll be exposed about fifteen seconds.”
“Takes more than that to shake a former stripper, pal.”
“Maybe you could do a number for my bachelor party.” He grinned as Rebecca’s pithy comment came through his headphones. “Or maybe not. Love of my life? Shut down the alarms.”
He ignored the stream of cabs that drove by, and the radio car. At Rebecca’s signal, he clamped a hand on Cleo’s and pulled her off the sidewalk and into the shadows of the house.
They hooked lines to harnesses and were rising up the side of the building, rolling over the stone rail and crouched on the terrace before another word was spoken.
He gestured for Cleo to stow the gear while he crab-walked to the terrace doors. “Take out the locks, east terrace, second level,” he said quietly into his headphones. He waited until he heard them snick, then rose, exposing himself again to deal with the manual locks.
From his jacket pocket, he pulled out a small case, chose his lock pick from it.
“Bet they didn’t teach you that in security school,” Cleo mentioned in a low voice.
“You’d be surprised.”
He dealt with the dead bolt, then, easing the door open, waited for Cleo to slip inside before he relocked it.
A good crime-scene investigator would spot the job, he knew. But he didn’t think that was going to come up.
“Obsession.” Cleo sniffed the air. “Her perfume. Fits, doesn’t it?”
“Lock the doors. Hallway, straight ahead. Master bath on the left.”
She moved through the shadowed light to oblige, and continued to whisper. “Should I ask how come you know so much about her bedroom setup?”
“Professional knowledge only.” When the doors were locked, he moved directly to the closet.
“Holy shit, this is bigger than my old apartment.” She fingered the sleeve of a jacket as she moved inside. “Not bad, either. Think she’d notice if I copped a couple things? I’m rebuilding my wardrobe.”
“We’re not here to shop.”
“Hey, shopping’s the only merit badge I ever earned.” She snagged one of a pair of snakeskin pumps off a wall of shelves. “My size. It’s fate.”
“You’ve got a job to do here, Cleo.”
“Okay, okay.” But she stuffed the shoes into her bag before she crouched to unroll his tools.
Jack opened the panel to the safe and exposed the security pad. He interfaced his portable computer, engaged the search.
“Sooner or later, she’s bound to figure
out you’re the only one who could pull this off,” Cleo commented. “She’s going to be really pissed off at you.”
“Yeah. I’m shaking.” He watched the readout as the first two numbers of the combination of seven locked into place. “What’s our time?”
“Four minutes, twenty seconds. We’re skating right along.” While she waited, Cleo pushed through a rack of suits. “I don’t go for the lady-suit look. But hey, this one’s cashmere. Bet it’ll look sharp on Tia.”
She rolled it up, added it to her booty.
“Combination’s locked,” Jack told her. “Cross your fingers, gorgeous.”
She did, on both hands, then stepped behind him. “Son of a bitch.” She breathed out audibly when he opened the door. Clotho glinted like a star. “There she is. You copy that, you guys? We’ve got her.” She held out the padded bag for Jack. “Rebecca? I’m giving your man a big, sloppy kiss. So deal with it.”
When she was done, she reached for her bag again. “Don’t close it yet, Jack. I got a little present for Anita.”
“We don’t leave anything behind,” he began, then stared at what Cleo pulled out of her bag. “What is that? Is that Barbie?”
“Yeah. To replace the statue. I picked out the wardrobe on a quick trip to FAO Schwarz.” Gently, Cleo stood the black-leather-clad, buxom blond doll in the safe. “I call her Cat Burglar Barbie. See, she’s got a little goody bag. It’s got lock picks in it I made out of little safety pins, and this tiny plastic doll, pretty much to scale, I painted silver to represent the Fate.”
“Cleo, you’re a regular Martha Stewart.”
“I got hidden talents, all right. Bye-bye, Barbie,” she added, and blew a kiss as Jack closed the safe.
They shut the panel, gathered the tools.
“Okay, once we leave this room, no talking. Hand signals only. Out the door, to the right. Down the steps, to the left. Stay close.”
“I’m practically riding piggyback.”
“This part’s trickier,” he reminded her. “We get caught in here, it’s all for nothing.”
“Just lead the way.”
They slipped out of the bedroom. As they couldn’t risk flashlights now, they waited for their eyes to adjust to the dark of the second-level hallway. The house was silent, so silent Cleo could hear the ticking of her own heart. And wondered how it had managed to rise up into her throat.
At Jack’s signal, they moved forward, footsteps soft over the Karastan runner.
At the base of the stairs Cleo began to think the place was more tomb than house. The air was cool, the rooms soundless, and the street sounds muffled by drape-covered windows.
Then she heard it, the instant before Jack froze and she bumped into his back. The sound of a door opening, a spill of light from the far end of the first-floor hallway and the shuffle of footsteps.
She and Jack moved as one into the cover of the first doorway. There were distant voices, almost a tunnel effect. It took her several sweaty seconds to realize the house wasn’t full of people. Television, she decided, then had to swallow a nervous chuckle when she recognized the obnoxious, thrumming music from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Perfect, she thought. Dead-on perfect.
When the light went off again, a door closed, she counted to ten until she felt Jack relax beside her. Just as she counted the steps they took down the hall, in case she had to make a dash back to cover.
They melted like shadows into the library and secured the door at their backs.
They moved fast now, and without words.
Penlights guided them to the glass-fronted bookshelves. There was a quiet rattle and creak that sounded like cannon fire in the silence as he opened a case. He cleared a section, passing her volume after volume of a leather-bound collection of Shakespeare. When the safe was exposed, he drew out his portable.
He tapped his watch. Cleo flashed the twenty-minute sign before she crouched, unzipped his bag and carefully took out the items chosen from Morningside.
He placed them in the far reaches of the small vault, behind an impressive stack of fifties, leather files and numerous jewelry cases.
When the safe was closed again, they changed places, with Cleo reshelving the books and Jack stowing all the gear. They both jumped like rabbits when the phone rang.
He gave her the hurry-up sign, then bolted to the door to unlock it, crack it open. Cleo was breathing down his neck when light flooded the hallway. With one bag clutched at her breast like a baby, Cleo dived behind a hunter-green leather winged-back chair. With another bag slung over his shoulder, Jack angled himself behind the door and tried not to breathe as the footsteps came briskly down the hall.
“One thing then another,” an irritated female voice uttered. “As if I’ve got nothing better to do this time of night than take messages.”
She shoved open the door. Jack caught the knob with his hand before it slammed into his crotch and held it there as he pressed himself into the shielding triangle.
Light poured into the room when the woman hit the switch for the overheads.
Rebecca spoke into his ear, warning him they were going overtime.
He heard the housekeeper march to the desk, slap something on the polished wood. “Hope she stays away for a month. Give us some breathing room.”
Footsteps, shuffling now, headed back to the door. There was a pause, a soft snort that might have been approval or derision, then the lights went out.
Jack stayed just as he was, willed Cleo to do the same, as the footsteps retreated. He didn’t move an inch until he heard the quick slam of a door from down the hallway.
Gently, very gently, he nudged the door open. In the shadowy light he saw Cleo, still huddled behind the chair. Her eyes gleamed in the dark as they met his. She rolled them wildly, then eased to her feet.
They crept out of the library, slipped silently down the hall to the foyer. And walked right out the front door.
“SO I’M PLAYING rabbit behind this chair, and there’s Jack doing his Claude Rains impression behind the door, and all I can see are her feet. She’s got on fuzzy slippers. Pink ones, and all I can think is I’m gonna get busted by some woman wearing fuzzy pink slippers. It’s mortifying.”
Because she’d wanted to get horizontal as soon as possible, Cleo had given Rebecca back the shotgun position and was stretched out, as best as possible, on the floor of the van.
“Man. Man. I need to take some alcohol internally really soon.”
“You were great.” Jack glanced in the rearview mirror. “Nerves of steel.”
“Yeah, nerves of jelly for a moment there. Oh hey!” She rolled herself over, eased up to a crouched position. “I got you a present, Tia.”
“A present?”
“Yeah.” She dug into her bag and pulled out the balled-up suit. “Great color for you. Sorta eggplant, I think. Good texture. Cashmere.”
“Is this . . . is this hers?”
“So what? Have it cleaned, fumigated, whatever.” Cleo shrugged as she dug in the bag again. “It’ll look better on you anyway. Just like these shoes are gonna look better on me.” She set them aside, dug in again. “Snagged you this little evening purse, Rebecca. Judith Leiber. It’s not bad.”
“How the hell did you get all that stuff?” Jack demanded.
“Leftover skill from my shoplifting days. I’m not proud of it, but I was sixteen and rebellious. It’s a cry for attention, right, Tia?”
“Well . . . don’t you think she’ll notice this is missing?”
“Hell, she’s got half the stock from Bergdorf’s in there.
What’s one outfit? Besides, she’s going to be too busy to do a wardrobe check once she gets back and our shit hits her fan.”
“You’ve got such a way with words.” Malachi reached down, patted her head.
“Tell me.” And she felt the last of the residual tension fade when they drove into the garage and she saw Jack’s SUV. Gideon was back, and all was right with her world. “So, we can o
rder pizza now, right?”
Twenty-seven
“THERE they are.” Tia circled the table again. On it, the three silver Fates, linked at their bases, glinted in the late-morning sunlight.
“It almost seemed like a dream,” she said quietly. “Like a dream, last night and everything that led up to it. Or a play I somehow stumbled into. But there they are.”
“You never stumbled, Tia.” Standing behind her, Malachi laid his hands on her shoulders. “You’ve been rock-steady, through and through.”
“That’s a dream in itself. They haven’t been together for a century. Perhaps two. We united them. That means something. Eternal and secure. That’s what’s said about them in mythology. We have to see that these symbols of them are just that. Secure.”
“They won’t be divided again.”
“Spin, measure, cut.” She touched each, lightly, in turn. “What’s in a life and what it touches. These are more than art, Malachi, and more than the dollars anyone would pay to own them. They’re a responsibility.”
She shifted the base, lifted Clotho, and thought of Henry W. Wyley. He’d held it the same way, had sought the others. And died in the seeking. “My blood and yours are twined in this. I wonder if they understood, even a little, what a long thread she wove for them. It wasn’t cut off at their deaths. It’s spun out to you and me, and the rest of us. Even Anita.”
Still holding the Fate, she turned to him. “Threads spinning out. Two men from opposite arcs of life, starting a circle with this between them. The circle widens with Cleo and Jack, Rebecca and Gideon. And the threads spin on. If we take what these three images represent, if we allow ourselves to believe it, Anita’s part in it was meant to be.”
“So we give her no responsibility for what she’s done?” he demanded. “For the blood she spilled, for nothing more than greed.”
“No. The good and bad, the flaws and virtues are woven into the threads. The choices, the responsibilities are hers. And Fate always demands payment.” Carefully, Tia set Clotho with her sisters. “And eventually, always collects. I suppose I’m saying she may not be the only one to pay a price.”