by Nora Roberts
down to pleasure them both with a deep and drugging kiss.
“No one ever wanted me like this, or made me want, like this.”
A sound, almost a purr, rippled in her throat as she lowered, took him inside her. When his hands came to her hips, fingers digging in, she shuddered.
She rocked, moaning when the pressure built inside her, then rolled through her in a glorious rising swell that gushed heat and light and need. She took him, took herself, slowly, savoring each ripple of pleasure.
When their eyes met, she smiled and, smiling, watched his go blind. On a long sigh of triumph, she let her head fall back, let her body rule, and slid silkily under.
PART THREE
Cutting
We are spinning our own
fates, good or evil, and
never to be undone.
Every smallest stroke of
virtue or of vice leaves its
never so little scar.
WILLIAM JAMES
Twenty-one
“THAT’shim.” Cleo stared at the photocopy image. “He was one of the guys in Prague. The shorter one,” she said, glancing up at Gideon for confirmation. “The second guy was taller, broader, and he came after us on foot while this guy went for their car. The bigger guy was the one who I spotted tailing me after I met with Anita.”
She took a deep breath to relieve the pressure in her chest as she studied the bland black-and-white photo. “This is the one who must’ve gone after Mikey. This is the one who killed him.”
Gideon laid a hand on her shoulder, left it there in a light, comforting weight. “We got a pretty good look at them in Prague.”
“We’ll have Bob run his known associates, see if we get a line on the second man.” Jack took the photo, pinned it to a board he’d set up.
They were in his building, on what he thought of as the business level. “His name’s Carl Dubrowsky. Most of his accomplishments run to assault and larceny. Hired muscle, low on brains. He was found in an empty warehouse in New Jersey, the unhappy recipient of four twenty-five-caliber bullets.”
“Do you think his partner killed him?” Tia asked.
“Not with a twenty-five. A guy carries a gun like that, he’s going to get laughed out of the KneeCappers Union.”
“Anita.” Malachi walked over to the board. Jack had a photo of Anita pinned there as well. “She wouldn’t have been pleased he stirred up the air by killing Cleo’s friend and getting nothing out of it. I didn’t realize until now that I believed her capable of murder—by her own hand. But, of course, she is, isn’t she?”
“I’d say.” The man was cool, Jack decided as he studied Malachi. And steady. Someone he could work with. “The warehouse had just been sold by Morningside. My friend on the force will be having a talk with Anita shortly. What do you think her reaction will be to that?”
“It’ll piss her off,” Malachi said, then dipped his hands in his pockets and rocked lightly on his heels. “Then it’ll please her. Add a bit of spice to the game. She’d never believe herself vulnerable.”
“It stops being a game when people die.” Rebecca waited until her brother looked at her. “Cleo’s lost a friend, and the man responsible for that is dead as well. Are any of us here willing to go that far, willing to kill over a few pounds of silver?”
“That’s not what it’s about, Becca.” Gideon left his hand on Cleo’s shoulder. “It’s long since gone beyond being about the value of the thing.”
“For you,” she agreed. “For Mal. For you, Cleo?” she asked.
“I want her to pay. I want her to lose. I want her to hurt.”
Rebecca crouched in front of Cleo’s chair, stared hard into her eyes. “How far will you go for it?”
“He was a sweet, harmless man. I loved him. How far will I go? All the way.”
Rebecca let out a breath and got to her feet, turned to Tia. “And you? You’ve been scooped up into this thing, had your life tumbled around. If we move forward from here, there’s no going back. But you could walk away now and pick up your life as it was before we charged into it.”
Could she? Tia wondered. Could she go back to tiptoeing through her life, afraid someone might notice her? Could she bury herself again in the deeds of gods and never have the courage to do? To be?
Oh, she hoped not.
“I’ve never done anything special in my life. Nothing that really mattered. I’ve never stood up for myself, not really, not when it became uncomfortable or easier to fade back into a corner again. No one who knows me expects me to. Except the people in this room. She has our property,” she said, nodding at Malachi. “Yours and mine, and she doesn’t deserve it. The Three Fates belong together, and I . . .” She trailed off, flushing a bit when she realized everyone was looking at her.
“No.” Malachi watched her. “Go on. Finish it out.”
“All right.” She steadied herself as she’d learned to do before a public lecture. “Everyone here has a connection to the Fates and, because of them, to each other. It’s like a tapestry. The Fates spun, measured, cut the threads of Henry Wyley, Felix Greenfield, the Cunninghams, even the White-Smythes. The design, the pattern they made is already begun.”
“You’re saying it’s all been ordained,” Jack began, but she shook her head.
“It’s not as simple as that. Fate isn’t black or white, right or left. People aren’t just plopped down and made to follow one route in life on the whims of the gods. If that were true, we’d have to say Hitler was only a victim of his own destiny, and therefore blameless. I’m getting off track.”
“Uh-uh,” Cleo disagreed. “You’re going under it. It’s cool.”
“Well. I suppose what I’m trying to say is we have decisions to make, actions to take, good ones and bad ones that make up the texture of our lives. Everything we do or don’t do matters,” she said to Jack. “Everything counts at the end of the day. But the tapestry that started with the people who came before us isn’t finished.”
“Now we’re the threads,” Malachi said.
“Yes. We’ve begun to choose the pattern, at least individually, that we hope to make. We’ve still to agree on, to decide the pattern we want to make together. I believe there’s a reason we’ve come together like this, a reason we have a pattern to make. We have to see it through, try to find a way to complete it. I believe we’re meant to try. However foolish that sounds.”
“It doesn’t sound foolish.” Malachi stepped toward her, kissed her brow. “Here we have the heart of the thing,” he said. “No one cups the heart of the thing in her hand quite like you do.”
“You didn’t ask me what I’d do,” Jack commented, and Rebecca turned to him.
“I’ll speak to this one, Tia. You’ve set your sights on the goal, and that’s it for you. You’re a single-minded man, Jack. That’s how you’ve gotten where you are in the world.”
“Good call. Now that we’ve got that settled, we can move on to how we intend to reach that goal.”
“That wasn’t meant to be an actual compliment.”
“I got that, too,” he said to Rebecca. “These are photographs of Morningside, and Anita’s house. Burdett handled security upgrades on both locations.”
“That’s handy, isn’t it?” Interested, Malachi moved over to study the photos. “That’s quite the place she’s got there.”
“Marry a rich fool old enough to be your grandfather, wait it out till he keels over, and pull in the big pot.” Jack shrugged. “Paul Morningside was a good man, but he was deaf, dumb and blind when it came to Anita. And to give her credit, she played the role perfectly. You don’t want to underestimate her. She’s a smart woman. Her weakness is greed. Whatever she has, it’s never going to be enough—”
“That’s not her biggest one.” Tia nearly jumped when she realized she’d interrupted. “I’m sorry. I was thinking out loud.”
Jack angled away from the board. “What’s her biggest weakness?”
“Vanity. Well, ego, rea
lly, of which her vanity plays a large part. She sees herself as smarter, more clever, more ruthless. More everything than other people. She stole the first Fate from Malachi. She didn’t have to. She could have bought it from him. She could have doctored an analysis to convince him the piece was of little value, or some variation of that. She stole it because it was more fun, and it fed her ego. ‘Look, I can take this right out of your hand, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’ She gets what she wants, and she hurts and embarrasses someone. That adds a shine for her.”
“That’s an excellent psychological profile for a mythologist,” Jack commented.
“You spend your life getting walked on, you learn to recognize the tread. Greed is a flaw, but her ego is her true Achilles’ heel. Notch the arrow, aim for the ego, and she’ll stumble.”
“Isn’t she a marvel?” Grinning, Malachi grabbed Tia’s hand, kissed it lavishly.
“Snatching the Fate from under her nose ought to hit her ego dead center,” Jack agreed. “There are a number of steps we have to take before going there. First is to determine whether she’s keeping it here”—he tapped the photo of Morningside’s entrance—“or here.” And the front-on view of her town house.
“Since we can’t be sure, at least at the moment, we’ll have to work out how to get to it in either place.” Gideon moved over to give the board a closer look. “None of us has any experience breaking into a place.”
“You’re forgetting the time we broke into the basement of Hurlihy’s Pub and tapped into that keg of Harp,” Malachi reminded him.
“I’ve worked to forget it for more than ten years, as I came out of it with a head big as the moon.”
“And when Ma found out,” Rebecca put in, “she knocked your big, stupid heads together, dragged you by the ears to the priest for confession.”
“Then we spent the whole of that summer at Hurlihy’s beck and call,” Malachi finished. “We paid for that lager ten times over.” He sent Jack an easy smile. “Not a very good foundation for thievery, I’m afraid.”
“That’s all right, I’ll teach you.” At Rebecca’s steely stare, he sat, stretched out his long legs. “When you make your living putting up obstacles for thieves, you have to understand the criminal mind, and have a certain amount of respect for it. We’ll need to break into both places,” he added with a nod to Gideon. “To set her up for the full fall, we’ll need to do both.”
“Dupe her,” Malachi concurred. “Set her up, then put a nice pretty frame around her.” With his fingers he traced a box around Anita’s photo. “I like the sound of it.”
“It sounds awfully complicated,” Tia put in.
“Who wants a bland tapestry? We’ll have to plan each level,” Jack went on. “And connect them. To start, there are four safes in the town house. Double that at Morningside. It’ll take some time and effort to circumvent the security, get in, open each safe—if necessary—get the Fate, get out and reestablish the security. I’ve got some ideas on how to use Morningside to narrow the field. But when we go for the gold, we’ll need a little more time and space. If we can get her out of the way for a few days, we minimize the risk.”
“I, um, think she might go to Athens.” Tia cleared her throat and they all turned to her. “I asked my father if he might casually mention the Athens connection to her. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but I think he’ll do it for me. He seemed sort of intrigued that I asked.”
Jack sat back. “Good thinking. And when I give her my report, and tell her one Cleopatra Toliver booked a flight to Athens, that should nail it. We’ve got a lot to do before we hammer that home. We’re going to want to be ready to move on the Fate as soon as she’s at cruising level.”
“She didn’t go to Prague after Cleo,” Rebecca reminded him. “Why would she go to Athens? She could send one of her pie-faced goons.”
“They failed.” Malachi sat on the arm of Tia’s chair. “And if she’s the one who killed the guy in the warehouse, she’s upped the stakes considerably. She won’t send an underling this time. At least not if she’s convinced she may be able to scoop up both remaining Fates in one go.”
“All right, that’s logical.” Rebecca pursed her lips, studying the board. “We want to have her keep the Fate in her home, I’d think. Far too many places to hide something in a place like Morningside, and I’d have to assume the security would be tighter there?”
“It is.” It pleased Jack that their thoughts aligned.
“We’d want her to have a concern, then, that Morningside isn’t safe enough.” Gideon angled his head. “Do we lift something from there?”
“Think of it as a dress rehearsal,” Jack told him.
THERE WAS CONSIDERABLE discussion, some argument. There were diagrams and schematics and more printouts to be pinned to the board. Tia absorbed it all. They were planning to break into one of New York’s cultural landmarks, and they were planning to do so for the sole purpose of misdirection.
It was fascinating.
“If we get into the bloody place, why don’t we just look for the bloody statue?” Frustration honed Rebecca’s voice to an edge.
“We won’t get that far. Not without a lot more time and preparation. We can take the time and the prep,” he added. “But if we do a simple B and E, snag the statue, we won’t be hanging anything on her.”
“Rephrase.” Cleo spoke coolly. “Hanging her.”
“If we work it right,” Jack agreed, “the house is doable on short notice. Morningside isn’t. Not with amateurs.”
“Oh, now we’re amateurs.”
“Well, Bec.” Gideon put his hands on her shoulders, gave her a little shake. “We are that.”
“Why don’t you speak for yourself—”
“I could use some tea.” Tia spoke up, got to her feet. “Is it all right if I use the kitchen?”
“Help yourself,” Jack told her. “Wouldn’t mind some coffee while you’re at it.”
“There are better facilities upstairs,” Rebecca suggested after catching Tia’s annoyed expression. “Why don’t we go up and put something together?”
“Cleo?”
Even as Cleo started to protest, she caught Tia jerking her head toward the door. “All right, but we take shifts on the domestic duties.”
When they were safely in the elevator heading up, Rebecca turned to Tia. “You wanted to get away from that lot?”
“For a few minutes. It occurs to me that this is new territory for all of us. We hardly know each other.”
“I just don’t like their superior attitude.”
“You mean Jack’s superior attitude,” Cleo said as Rebecca jabbed in the code and strode out of the elevator into the apartment.
“In particular. He didn’t even tell me he had that place down there.”
“Before we talk about them, let’s talk about us.” Cleo dropped into a chair, swung her legs over the arm and settled in. “Any wine around here?” she added.
“There is,” Rebecca answered. “But put a hold on that tea and coffee. Let’s have a drink and see what the three of us think of each other before we go on with this business.”
“WE REALLY SHOULD go back down.” Tia bit her lip as Rebecca topped off all three glasses. Again.
“They don’t need us at the moment.” Rebecca bit into a pretzel, studied it consideringly. “Let them huddle over their blueprints and diagrams for a bit. I can take a look at them later. Those deal with technicalities and are easily refined.”
“That’s if you know one end of a blueprint from another.” Tia sipped. “I don’t.”
“You won’t have to. It’ll be put into words for you, and those you understand very well. Malachi thinks you’re brilliant.”
“Oh well, he’s . . .”
“Toast,” Cleo said and scooped up dip with a ridged potato chip. “Guy’s nuts about you, but he’s not a moron. You are brilliant. I never got along with brains before. Your kind of
