by A Caprice
A THIEF’S HEART
___________________________________
A. CAPRICE
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.
A THIEF’S HEART
Copyright © 2019 A. Caprice
Cover design by Dar Albert
Originally published by Ellora’s Cave under the same title © 2015
A THIEF’S HEART
The talented agents of ARC, a covert paranormal agency, are tasked with saving the world from preternatural predators. Their missions are hot…and their nights even hotter.
It’s gone.
The priceless artifact entrusted to her care.
Stolen.
And everyone thinks she lost it.
Her job is on the line, and Amanda is determined to find the decoder. Even when the trail leads her to the only man able to get under this archivist’s skin...
And under her skirt…
And into her heart.
Gio had his reasons for stealing the artifact, and he won’t let the klutzy librarian sway him from his purpose. No matter how sexy she might be.
Or sweet.
Or…magical?
Learning that supernatural beings exist in the world is enough to throw him off his game.
But when one of them threatens Amanda, Gio will use every trick in the book to keep her safe…
…and make her his.
Chapter One
Amanda Sullivan’s ass ached, and not in a good way.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. Even after all her years of working in libraries, they still had that effect on her, instilling a sense of hushed reverence…or the fear that a haughty librarian would get all shushy.
She lifted the swath of hair that had tumbled loose from her ribbon and peered around the room. Alone. No one to witness her latest disaster.
One moment she’d been reading from a fragile papyrus about ancient Egyptian burial rites, and the next she was ass over teakettle in a pile of books, errant pages fluttering gently to the floor, the tumultuous sounds of destruction still rumbling in her ears.
Someone had done a piss-poor job of securing these archaic tomes. She gritted her teeth. They had seemingly exploded all about her with a mind all their own.
Yes, Amanda had knocked over a small triptych when she had brushed it ever so slightly with her rear end. Said triptych had tipped onto a Greek vase which had then rolled toward the end of the table. Her lighting quick reflexes, born from panic, had saved the vase, and she’d plucked it from the air a foot from the ground.
In a moment of intense relief (unblemished ancient Greek vases weren’t a dime a dozen, after all), she might have leaned the teensiest bit on a nearby bookshelf. And it had toppled right over.
Amanda rubbed her butt, knowing a bruise would form. The bookshelf must have been improperly stacked. Only something extremely top heavy would fall over at the merest jostle, and she intended to have a serious discussion with the librarian about his shelving technique.
He might mutter her name with increasing irritation, but really, if she didn’t point out his mistakes, how would he learn?
Luckily for him, the bookshelf had fallen against a table, the slab of solid wood standing firm, ending the carnage at one toppled-over stack.
Not like what had happened in the library at Alexandria. A shudder ran through her body. Bookcases should not be lined up all in a row like dominos unless properly bolted to the ground.
Dropping to her knees, she stacked the books in piles, looking for any damage the fall might have caused the valuable works. The archives at the Anagogic Research Council’s headquarters in Geneva held one of the most extensive, and expensive, collections of writings, relics, art, and artifacts connected to the metaphysical world.
As head archivist at ARC, Amanda was responsible for each and every piece.
The books looked all right. A couple of bent pages, one minor tear, but nothing that would render them unreadable. Maybe if she brought in her flat iron no one would ever notice the crumpled papers.
She tucked her hair behind her ear. The ribbon that had held it back in a low ponytail had disappeared, probably trapped in between pages of one of the books. Well, it couldn’t be helped. She wasn’t going to look through each and every book now.
Gripping the top of the bookshelf, she wrestled it back into its upright position and restocked its shelves. Rubbing the top of her shoulder, she sank onto a wooden chair, the tension easing from her body. Everything back in its place. No one would be the wiser.
But maybe she should cut back on the Belgian chocolate. Her butt was doing way too much damage.
Something glinted in the corner of her eye. Amanda turned her head and eyed the reason for her late night at work.
The Newton decoder.
The cylindrical wooden box, inlaid with iron lettering and decorative, mirrored end pieces, was the bane of her current existence. What had started out as an interesting exercise decoding encrypted letters was now a study in tedium. The letters she was responsible for decoding weren’t relating secret information. Hell, she would have been happy to reveal tasty recipes, or maybe a love letter or two.
She was hard pressed to decide whose ass she’d prefer to kick first: Isaac Newton for inventing the damn coding device, or the two founders of ARC who had decided to use it for their correspondence two hundred years ago.
One would think that the founders of what essentially amounted to a metaphysical detective agency would have had something more engrossing to write about, in code no less, than what little Timmy was up to with his tutor or the latest objet d’art one of them had purchased. It was obvious that they were like two kids and the decoder was their new toy.
Was it any wonder a treatise on the science of embalming contained in the latest shipment ARC had received from Egypt had drawn her wandering attention?
Something thudded in the outer room, and Amanda started to her feet. She’d thought she was alone. She swallowed. It was after midnight and all the research fellows and archivists had long since gone home.
Well, the books were all cleaned up. She brushed her hands over her silk wrap dress, trying to knock the dust off. No one would suspect she’d made another mess.
A loud metallic squeal pierced the air.
What in the devil was that? She started toward the doorway and then stumbled over her high-heeled boots when the lights clicked off.
That was…ominous.
“Hello?” She called out. She cleared her throat, not caring for the scared squeak in her voice. It was probably just a janitor turning off the lights, not realizing someone was still in the room. “I’m still working in here.”
Silence was her only answer. She shifted her weight. She wasn’t alone. She could sense someone in the next room. Someone who was remaining very quiet.
As silently as she could, she crept backward, away from the black hole that was the doorway to the next room. It was probably nothing. Maybe someone with earbuds in who couldn’t hear. There could be a hundred reasons why someone had turned off the lights and didn’t answer her call.
Amanda’s body didn’t believe any of those reasons. Her legs felt weak and her lungs burned from holding her breath. Foolish or not, whatever primal sense humans had developed to warn of predators had been triggered, and adrenalin coursed through her body.
The library and archives at ARC were a warren of rooms buried underneath the main headquarters. Another exit lay at the opposite end of this room, and Amanda headed in that direction.
She’d find the night guard, he’d show her on the security cameras it had just been the janitor, and they’d have a good laugh over her paranoia. A solid plan.
She inched toward her escape, feeling her way past tables and shelves. Near the far door, she paused.
A faint scent tickled her nose. Something spicy. Expensive. Sexy. The odor drifted away, and she shook her head. This was not the time to stop and smell the perfume.
A rasping click sounded behind, like gears struggling to grind into place, and her pulse leapt.
Every bad sci fi movie she’d ever seen raced through her head. The sound could be a killer cyborg dragging its body across the floor to kill her. Or an alien hunting through its ship for its prey. Okay, none of those scenarios made sense, but in Amanda’s line of work, she knew weird shit abounded. There really were monsters hiding in the dark. And something was out there.
Stalking her.
From memory, she wended her way through the next three darkened rooms. The shadow following her drew closer, she could feel it, and her heart pounded painfully.
Finally, she reached the main hallway. The faint glow from the elevator buttons dimly illuminated the empty corridor.
She sprinted to the stairwell at the end of the hall, not wanting to wait for the elevator.
A figure emerged from the room next to the stairwell, looming tall, and Amanda shrieked. She skidded on the tiled floor, her heels slipping out from under her.
And for the second time that night, Amanda fell hard, her wrist and ass hitting the floor painfully.
“Amanda?” A vivid blue orb of electricity appeared in the air. A giant of a man cupped the orb in his hand and peered down at her. He tossed the ball of light into the air and it hung there, suspended, giving the hallway an eerie glow. “What are you doing down there? Are you okay?” He reached out a large hand to help her up.
“Agent McGovern!” A gust of air whooshed out of her. She was so relieved she didn’t even care her dress had hiked up to her hips and she was flashing him her mermaid panties.
Well, she didn’t mind much.
Taking his hand, Amanda rose to her feet and smoothed the skirt of her dress back down her legs. McGovern grabbed her elbow when she wobbled. “Has it been you down here the entire time?” she asked. “You scared the bejeezus out of me.”
The lights flickered back to life, the low hum of the fluorescent bulbs a comforting buzz.
“The entire time?” His gaze flicked down to her crotch and back up, the edges of his lips twitching. “I was upstairs working at my desk when the lights went out. I just came down here to look for the breaker box, but so far I haven’t had any luck finding it.”
Her face flushed. Great. Would it get around the office that she wore childish novelty underwear? Just what her reputation needed.
She tried to shore up at least an appearance of dignity. She raised her chin and pressed her shoulders back. “Someone was down here when the lights went out. Is anyone else still in the office?”
Agent McGovern snapped his fingers and his electric orb dissipated. “No one else is working this late. What are you still doing here?”
“A decoding project is taking longer than expected.” Amanda started walking back to the room where she’d been working. “I’m on a deadline to decrypt the letters our founders wrote to each other between June 1762 and October 1764.”
He followed after her, his footsteps falling heavily. “Why those dates?”
“Who knows? The German government gave us a ten-thousand-dollar grant for this project and some bureaucrat picked the time period.”
He picked up the vase that had nearly met its demise earlier and tossed it up and down. “Sometimes it is a real pain in the ass that we’ve gone public as a legit research institute. I liked it better when no one had heard of ARC, when there was no one looking over our shoulder.”
She held her hands out, ready to catch the vase if he dropped it. “No one is looking over our shoulder now. Everyone thinks we’re dedicated to preserving history.” The agent bobbled the vase from one hand to the other, and she flinched. It was her job to preserve historical artifacts, and here he was tossing one around like it was a baseball. She reached for the vase, but he tossed it higher.
“I don’t like pretending to be a normal foundation.” He sniffed. “It takes away from our real job.”
Seeing her chance, she snatched the vase from mid-air, triumph heating her veins. She hugged it protectively to her abdomen. “And what is your real job? Destroying priceless artifacts?” The edge of a papyrus peeked out from under her chair, and she nudged it into the shadows with her heel.
He grinned. “Saving the world, Amanda. As only we can.”
She sniffed and placed the vase back on the table. Agents with ARC did indeed fight the good fight, using their paranormal talents to bring down the criminals regular police wouldn’t know how to deal with.
But her talent, the ability to read any language, didn’t place her in agent status. Sure, her research skills made her a valuable asset to the organization’s archives, but she didn’t save lives. She couldn’t throw balls of electricity like Agent McGovern, or read minds, or do anything that would be useful in a fight.
Until recently, ARC had been a secret organization, unknown to the world’s governments. But the higher ups had felt that the secret was leaking out and decided to come out of the shadows — partially. ARC made no bones that it researched the paranormal and unknown, but they did so in a scholarly fashion. Their research focused on the role the mystical had in ancient and modern civilizations.
But ARC was still very much covert when it came to its law enforcement mission.
And everyone who worked for ARC was still firmly in the closet about their abilities. The world wasn’t ready to acknowledge them yet.
Amanda traced the charm written on the vase. And paused.
Something was wrong.
She looked around the room, ignoring Agent McGovern’s raised eyebrow. She examined the table, her heart thudding in her throat.
Something was different from when she’d left the room.
Realization dawned, and she gasped. “Oh, no!”
“What is it?” Agent McGovern scanned the room and his giant body tensed.
“Newton’s decoder!” She dropped to her knees and peered under the table. Looked under the bookcases, but there was nothing. “It’s gone.”
Chapter Two
Giovanni d’Onofrio stared at the curvy, raven-haired beauty from the shadows. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to bust the priceless vase she waved about as a stream of dirty words left her pretty mouth.
He fingered the black velvet ribbon he’d picked up from the floor. He almost felt bad. Although the red flush on her cheeks was sexy enough to make his cock twitch, he hated to be the cause of a woman’s distress.
But not enough to return the decoder.
He patted his pocket. Time to make his exit. With a last lingering look at the outstanding ass on the woman, he slipped into the next room and escaped the building. The alarms he’d bypassed would be coming back online in a few minutes.
Gio breathed in the crisp night breeze, always appreciating the fresh air that spelled the end of another successful heist. It was usually one of the sweetest odors he knew. It smelled like victory. And freedom. But tonight another scent, that of the woman as she had moved past him in the dark, lingered in his mind.
She’d worn a fresh, understated essence, like soap with a hint of water lilies, the way a woman smelled when she stepped out of a shower. When she’d made her way past him in the dark, he’d a
lmost been distracted enough to forget his purpose.
The figure that had crept after her had reminded him of his threat of exposure.
He frowned as he slid into his car parked several blocks from the ARC foundation. Had it been another employee caught in the black out? The presence had seemed to be following the clumsy librarian.
The lights shutting off were another mystery. Although he’d been happy to take advantage, it hadn’t been Gio’s doing.
And he hated when something unexpected came up during the execution of one of his plans. He was supposed to slip into the building, wait until the little klutz had gone home, then take the decoder.
The floorshow had been an added bonus. Gio’s lips twitched as he downshifted for a red light. The chain reaction she had caused with that luscious ass of hers almost made him laugh out loud. He would have been happy to watch her all night long.
But he had other plans for the night.
For ten years he had been searching for the Newton decoder. Ten years of poring through collections, of examining the records of public sales, putting out feelers for private transactions. Ten years, and now it was finally his.
By morning, the letter written by his grandfather would be decoded and the question that had haunted his family would be answered.
He pulled into his garage, headed to his study, and set to work.
Sixteen hours later, Gio threw down his pen in disgust. Fuck. This should have been easy. He had the letter; he had the damn decoder. Why the hell wasn’t the letter making sense?
He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. What was Newton thinking coming up with this infernal contraption? The cipher seemed to change with the hour.
He wrapped the black velvet ribbon around his finger, rubbing his thumb against the soft fabric. Had the little klutz figured out how to work the decoder?
He stretched his lean body and decided to take a break. But thoughts of the librarian had him picking up the phone. “Georg, it’s Gio.”
“Gio, scheisse, should you be calling me?”