by Liz Wolfe
“Considering what?” She frowned at him for good measure.
“I understand the fence you used for the German Embassy heist was arrested before he could move the jewels.”
“Really?”
Logan smiled. “I just assumed that with that loss, the job tonight was important.”
“I have a buyer who will be very disappointed about tonight.” She lifted a shoulder in what she hoped was a sign of indifference.
Logan swirled the brandy in his glass and sipped. “I thought you didn’t do work for hire.”
“I made an exception. Why all the interest in my career?” she asked.
“I thought I’d made that obvious.”
“You’re referring to your offer?”
“I figure that with two jobs that didn’t work out, you might be getting a little hungry.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, your bank accounts show that you’re getting a bit low on resources.”
She hadn’t expected him to check out her bank accounts. Damn it! Was nothing sacred anymore?
“It appears you’ve been checking me out pretty thoroughly,” she said. “Tell me why you need a thief so desperately.”
“The Triumvirate doesn’t need a thief. They need the best thief.”
“The Triumvirate?”
“The Triumvirate is the governing body of the group.”
“And they need a good thief.” She held up a hand.
“The best thief.”
“You’re the best in the business right now.” Logan sipped his brandy. “Since your father retired, anyway.”
“I was trained by the best,” she acknowledged.
“You were out of the business for a few years.”
“That’s the gossip, anyway.”
“Oh, it’s more than gossip.” Logan splashed more brandy into their glasses although she’d hardly touched hers. “You worked for a security company for several years. After they laid you off, you enrolled in college for a while.”
“You have done your homework.” She sipped the brandy. “However, you haven’t answered my question. Why do you need the best thief so desperately?”
Logan shrugged. “What we need to procure is very important. We don’t want to take a chance with a less skilled individual.”
“You’ve got my interest,” she said.
“Great. What’s your price?”
“Not so fast. First of all, I want a face-to-face with the powers that be. Then, when I know exactly what’s involved with the job, I’ll let you know what my price is. My terms are cash. Half up front, half on delivery of the item. And expenses, of course.”
“There will be a series of jobs. And a face-to-face meeting might be a problem for the Triumvirate.”
Logan frowned.
Zoe shrugged. “I like to know who I’m doing business with. That’s how I work.”
“Then I’ll see what I can do.”
She took another sip of the brandy, set her glass down, and stood. “It’s been a pleasure. You know how to contact me.”
“I’ll see you to your room.” Logan stood and gestured to the door of his suite.
“My room?”
“Fifteen twenty-nine, I believe. You’ve been there for the past two days and plan to check out tomorrow.”
She arched an eyebrow at him and hoped he couldn’t see that she was freaked out at how much he knew.
Logan grinned. “We like to know who we’re dealing with, too.”
4
November 10, New York City, New York
THREE DAYS LATER, ZOE DROVE to Manhattan and checked into the St. Regis again. Ethan had suggested she wear a wire to the meeting with the Triumvirate, but she’d refused and Shelby had agreed. These people seemed to be extremely cautious. They might have her searched, and if they found a wire, she’d probably get a nice little plot in Arlington Cemetery. Killed in the line of duty and all that.
She took a quick shower, twisted her hair into a loose knot, put on the designer suit, and looked in the full-length mirror.
She looked mature, polished, in control. She could get used to this expense account thing. Then she remembered why she was wearing such a great outfit. She panicked at the thought of meeting the Order and ran some cold water to splash on her face, then remembered her makeup.
No problem. She was fine. She could handle it. She checked her new handbag. Wallet, mirror, comb, cell phone, a new PDA with nothing on it yet. She left the hotel room and walked the few blocks to her meeting with the Triumvirate.
Before she could even check out the lobby in the Trump Tower, Logan was at her side.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Of course.” She pushed the button for the elevator and looked at him. “You’re looking rather dapper.”
“I could say the same, but somehow dapper doesn’t seem to cover it.” The elevator doors slid open and he gestured for her to enter.
The elevator zoomed up, stopped with a stomach-curdling smoothness, and opened. Logan took the lead off the elevator, walked down the hall, and pressed the doorbell at the third door on the left. The door was opened by a woman in a black dress and white apron who ushered them past the marble entryway to a spacious area that Zoe supposed would be called the great room. A tall, slender man entered the room from a hallway and nodded.
“Ms. Alexander. A pleasure. Karl Weisbaum.” He stubbed out a cigarette in a crystal ashtray and waved them in. The room looked like a page out of a magazine. Burgundy leather sofa and two matching chairs. A love seat in a rich tapestry fabric with matching ottomans. Thecoffee table and side tables were carefully mismatched antiques. The art on the walls appeared to be original masters and fresh flowers were in all the right places. But the candle arrangement on the mantle had never been lit and there wasn’t a single item out of place anywhere. No one lived there.
“Allow me to introduce my associates, Axel von Bayem and Pierre Simitiere.” Weisbaum crossed to the living area and gestured to the seating arrangement. “Won’t you be seated?”
“I don’t expect to be staying that long,” she said.
Weisbaum’s eyebrows lifted, Simitiere snorted, and von Bayem frowned.
Weisbaum gestured toward the bar where von Bayem was pouring a clear liquid from a crystal decanter into a glass. “May we offer you a drink?”
“No. That won’t be necessary. Forrester tells me you have some items that you need procured from secured locations.”
“Right to the point, I see.” Weisbaum exchanged a look with Simitiere.
“That’s the way I like it, too, Ms. Alexander,” Simitiere said. “What do you need to know?”
“Before we go any further, I’d like to take the precaution of a search.” Von Bayem slugged down some of the clear liquid and maneuvered his bulky frame between Zoe and Weisbaum.
“I’m not sure that’s necessary, Axel.”
“I don’t mind,” she said, thankful that she’d refused to wear a wire. Von Bayem turned to Zoe and held out a beefy hand, which she interpreted as a gesture toward her handbag. She handed it to him, and caught a whiff of alcohol on his breath. He pawed through the small purse, tossing out a pen and a package of tissues. When he came to the PDA, he turned it over curiously, then smacked it down on the marble-topped side table until it splintered.
That pissed her off. It didn’t help when he did the same thing to her cell phone. But she didn’t say a word. When he was finished, he frisked her in a professional manner, then turned away to pour himself another drink.
“My apologies, Ms. Alexander,” Weisbaum said.
“Not a problem.”
“Logan tells me that you insisted on meeting with us.”
“I like to know who I’m working for.”
“Really?” Weisbaum asked. “I’d imagine that’s rather difficult at times.”
“I don’t do much work for hire, so it’s usually not an issue.” She shrugged. “If I can’t meet a prospective client, I usua
lly won’t take the job. But, I can assure you, I’m discreet.”
“Yes, I’m sure your clients have a need to remain anonymous.”
“Exactly. So, tell me, what are you collecting?”
“A variety of items, actually. You would be informed about them on a need-to-know basis.” Weisbaum laid a folder on the coffee table and pushed it across the table to her. “The locations of some of the items are in that folder.”
“And?” she asked.
“I’d like you to look them over. Make sure you’re certain you can gain entrance.”
Zoe pushed the folder back to him without opening it. “I’m sure.”
Simitiere raised an eyebrow. “Without looking at them?”
“If I can’t get in, it can’t be done. Forrester told me you wanted the best. I’m it.”
“I thought your father was the best.”
Zoe nodded and smiled. “He was. He’s retired now.”
“I see. So, what’s your price?”
“That will depend. For each job, I’ll need details about the location and the item to be retrieved. After I review that, I’ll let you know what my price is.” She glanced at the broken phone and PDA. “And I’ll expect expenses to be covered, of course.”
“Are you really in a position to be so demanding, Ms. Alexander?” Von Bayem frowned at her.
“Those are my terms. Take it or leave it.” Shescooped the pieces of her PDA and cell phone into her handbag, smiled at the men, and walked out.
November 11, Outside Bethesda, Maryland
Zoe wiped the sweat from her forehead as she approached the end of her fifth lap around the perimeter of her father’s estate in the West Virginia countryside. Four miles. She gasped for breath as she slowed from a run to a jog and finally to a walk. She hated running. But running was the answer when everything else failed. It was the way out of a really bad situation. So she ran. Every morning. Okay, she skipped one day a week. Maybe two.
When she reached the gate, she pressed a button on the six-foot stone fence and waited for the gates to open, then trotted to the oversized mailbox at the end of the driveway. The mailbox yielded a few bills, a clutch of advertising mailers, and a package wrapped in brown paper with a foreign postmark. She stuffed the bills and mailers under her arm and examined the package as she walked back to the house. It was addressed to her with a return address of the small village in Greece where her father’s family lived.
She’d never met anyone from the family except hergreat-aunt Phoebe. Nana Phoebe, as Zoe had always called her. The others refused to move to America, and her father had always had one reason or another not to take her to Greece. But Nana Phoebe had come to live with them when Zoe was still a baby. A tiny, elderly woman full of energy and opinions, she’d taken care of Zoe when her mother had been bedridden during her last pregnancy. And she’d stayed to care for Zoe after her mother had died giving birth to the stillborn son that her father had wanted so badly. When Zoe was six, Nana Phoebe had returned to Greece for three years. When she came back, Zoe had been in training with her father, much to Nana Phoebe’s dismay. That time, she’d stayed until Zoe had decided to give up being a thief. After Nana Phoebe returned to Greece again, they had corresponded until her death three years ago. She often wondered how much the woman had figured in her decision to leave the business.
Zoe was glad that Nana Phoebe had never known that she’d become a thief again. No matter how justified the circumstances, she would have been disappointed. But who in the family would be sending her a package? She opened the front door of the house and stopped in the entryway. The package was tattered, like it had gone around the world a couple of times before reaching her. The first postmark was three months earlier, the final postmark just a few weeks ago.
Zoe heard her father’s footsteps on the marble staircase and quickly tossed the package into a Chinese urn, laying the other mail on the glass-topped table. Hiding the package from her father was an automatic reaction, and it took her back to her teen years. He’d always insisted on knowing where she was, what she was doing, and who her friends were. She’d never felt like she had even a moment of privacy until she’d left eight years ago. Now she’d been back only a few weeks and she felt like she was seventeen again.
“Today, we work in the gym,” Zeke said as he picked up the stack of mail and riffled through it.
“Have Agnes bring some tea. I’m going to change.”
“Tea will dehydrate you. You should have water.”
“Then tell her to bring some water, too. But if I don’t have a cup of tea, I’m not working.”
Zoe ignored her father’s snort and climbed the marble stairs to her suite on the second floor. She stripped out of her running clothes, pulled on a pair of gym shorts and a sports bra, then trotted to the back stairs. The gym occupied the back quarter of the house and was open from the ground floor to the third. Her father had designed the gym when he had the house built. The polished hardwood floor was partially covered in gymnastic pads and held a variety of equipment. Free weights, machines, floor pads, abalance beam. A rope hung from the ceiling. A cargo net stretched from the roof to the floor in one corner. No expense had been spared, and he’d kept updating the equipment over the years. Zoe ran down the stairs and poured herself a half cup of the rich, fragrant tea Agnes had delivered to the room. She’d only taken a couple of sips when her father entered.
“First, you climb the net,” he instructed.
Zoe took another sip of tea, set the cup down, and bounded to the net. She didn’t feel like climbing the net but there was no point in arguing. She climbed up the net and back down, did it another four times at his instruction, then moved to the rope. Her leg coiled around the rope and she climbed hand over hand to the top, then back down again. Next was the balance beam.
“No!” Zeke yelled at her when she was poised on her hands and her legs wavered, threatening to topple over. “Walk the entire length of the beam on your hands.”
Zoe would have sighed but it was too much effort. She pulled her legs back into line and concentrated on her balance as she completed the length of the beam. Her shoulders and arms ached with the effort, and she was reminded of her position in the stall of the men’s room at the Friedlander. If she’d been in better shape then, it wouldn’t have been so hard. Still, did anyone over the age of fifteen really do this? She was almosttwice that age. At the end of the beam, she slowly lowered herself to her feet and executed a near-perfect one-and-a-half-gainer dismount. Just to prove that she still could.
“You landed that better when you were thirteen,” Zeke said.
“There’s a reason for that. At thirteen, you don’t have anything else to think about.”
“So, what are you thinking about now?”
“The usual stuff.” Zoe took a towel from her father and wiped the sweat from her forehead, then hung it around her neck. “Will I meet the man of my dreams? How will I explain my father to him? Will the Triumvirate buy my bullshit act?”
“They’ll buy it.” Zeke nodded. “And what’s to explain about your father?”
“That’s a joke, right?”
The door at the far end of the gym opened, and Agnes entered and stood silently. She wore her blue dress with the lace collar that was reserved for trips to town and church. Zoe quirked an eyebrow at her father.
“Oh, yes. I promised to take Agnes into town for shopping today.” He lifted a hand to acknowledge the housekeeper.
“Shopping?” Zoe asked. “She always has the groceries delivered.” In the entire time Agnes had workedfor them, Zoe had only seen her leave a handful of times other than her weekly church attendance.
“She doesn’t like the quality of vegetables she’s been getting.” Her father shrugged. “She wants to talk to the store manager.”
“I’m going to take a shower and call Ethan.” Zoe waved to Agnes and trotted toward the other door. After snagging another cup of tea and a container of yogurt from the kitchen, she waite
d in the entryway until her father’s car rolled down the driveway. Pulling the package from the urn, she sprinted up the steps, closed her bedroom door behind her, and twisted the lock. She used her nail scissors to cut the brown paper at one end, making sure to preserve the return address, and pulled a stack of letters from the wrapping. A single sheet of notepaper fluttered to the floor. She laid the stack of letters on the bed and picked up the note.
It was from one of her cousins and said only that she thought Zoe might want the enclosed letters that were left by her great-aunt Phoebe. There was a short line of apology for taking so long in sending them to her and then her cousin’s signature. She picked up the stack of letters and untied the string that held them together. Most of the letters were addressed to Nana Phoebe at her father’s address, with a few to Nana Phoebe’s address in Greece. The postmarks were mostly from Italy and were dated from twenty-fiveyears earlier to the year before Nana Phoebe’s death. Zoe quickly sorted them into date order and opened the earliest one. All were signed with an initial M or N. It was difficult to read the scrawl. After reading a few of them, Zoe deduced that the writer was a single woman with a young son and living in not very good surroundings. A friend of her great-aunt, or possibly a family member?
The letters pulled Zoe in and she wished she could have read her Nana Phoebe’s responses to the woman. But she could imagine what she would have said to the young woman. She would have told her to be strong. To take the moral high road. That was Nana Phoebe. The letters jumped a few years and the woman was now referring to her child as a young boy. Her circumstances had changed for the better. Zoe checked the post dates. The next letter was eleven years later. Now her son was studying at a university. Her eyes skimmed the letters and then suddenly her hands trembled. Her breath came in short gasps, and her eyes blurred as she read.
I know I promised to never speak of this, but I need to know how Zoe is faring. It’s been so very long since I’ve seen my little girl. Although by now, she would be a young woman, wouldn’t she? I have dreams of her, but she’s still a little girl in the dreams. I need to know that she is doing well. I can’t believe all that I’ve missed with her.