Hot Ice

by Nora Roberts

  off. Swearing and struggling through bodies, Doug caught up with her on the platform.

  “Okay, okay, you’d better tell me the whole thing.”

  “The whole thing?” Abruptly enraged, she turned on him. “You want to hear the whole thing? The whole bloody thing? I walk back into the room and there’s that poor, harmless boy dead, blood all over his starched white coat, and some creep with a face like a road map’s holding a gun to my throat.”

  Her voice had risen so that passersby turned to listen or to stare.

  “Keep it down,” Doug muttered, dragging her toward another train. They’d ride, it didn’t matter where, until she was calm and he had a more workable plan.

  “You keep it down,” she shot back. “You got me into this.”

  “Look, honey, you can take a walk any time you want.”

  “Sure, and end up with my throat slit by someone who’s after you and those damn papers.”

  The truth left him little defense. Shoving her down into a corner seat, he squeezed in beside her. “Okay, so you’re stuck with me,” he said under his breath. “Here’s a news flash—listening to you whine about it gets on my nerves.”

  “I’m not whining.” She turned to him with eyes suddenly drenched and vulnerable. “That boy’s dead.”

  Anger drained and guilt flared. Not knowing what else to do, he put his arm around her. He wasn’t used to comforting women. “You can’t let it get to you. You’re not responsible.”

  Tired, she let her head rest on his shoulder. “Is that how you get through life, Doug, by not being responsible?”

  Curling his fingers into her hair, he watched their blurred twin images in the glass. “Yeah.”

  They lapsed into silence with both of them wondering if he was telling the truth.

  C H A P T E R

  3

  She had to snap out of it. Doug shifted in his first-class seat and wished he knew how to shake the grief out of her. He thought he understood wealthy women. He’d worked for—and on—plenty of them. It was just as true, he supposed, that plenty of them had worked on him. The trouble was, had always been, that he invariably fell just a little bit in love with any woman he spent more than two hours with. They were so, well, feminine, he decided. Nobody could sound more sincere than a soft-smelling, soft-skinned woman. But he’d learned through experience that women with big bank accounts generally had hearts of pure plastic. The minute you were about ready to forget the diamond earrings in favor of a more meaningful relationship, they dumped all over you.

  Callousness. He thought that was the worst failing of the rich. The kind of callousness that made them step all over people with the nonchalance of a child stomping on a beetle. For recreation, he’d choose a waitress with an easy laugh. But when it was business, Doug went straight to the bank balance. A woman with a hefty one was an invaluable cover. You could get through a lot of locked doors with a rich woman on your arm. They came in varieties, certainly, but generally could be slapped with a few basic labels. Bored, vicious, cold, or silly came to mind. Whitney didn’t seem to qualify for any one of those labels. How many people would have remembered the name of a waiter, much less mourned for him?

  They were on their way to Paris out of Dulles International. Enough of a detour, he hoped, to throw Dimitri off the scent. If it bought him a day, a few hours, he’d use it. He knew, as anyone in the business knew, of Dimitri’s reputation for dealing with those who attempted to cross him. A traditional man, Dimitri preferred traditional methods. Men like Nero would have appreciated Dimitri’s flare for slow, innovative torture. There had been murmurs about a basement room in Dimitri’s Connecticut estate. Supposedly it was filled with antiques—the sort from the Spanish Inquisition. Rumor had it that there was a top-grade studio as well. Lights, camera, action. Dimitri was credited with enjoying replays of his more gruesome work. Doug wasn’t going to find himself in the spotlight in one of Dimitri’s performances, nor was he going to believe the myth that Dimitri was omnipotent. He was just a man, Doug told himself. Flesh and blood. But even at thirty thousand feet, Doug had the uneasy sensation of a fly being toyed with by a spider.

  Taking another drink, he pushed that thought aside. One step at a time. That’s how he’d play it, and that’s how he’d survive.

  If he’d had the time, Doug would have taken Whitney to the Hotel de Crillon for a couple of days. It was the only place he stayed in Paris. There were cities he’d settle for a motel with a cot, and cities where he wouldn’t sleep at all. But Paris. His luck had always held in Paris.

  He made it a point to arrange a trip twice a year, for no other reason than the food. As far as Doug was concerned no one cooked better than the French, or those educated in France. Because of that, he had managed to bluff his way into several courses. He’d learned the French way, the correct way, to prepare an omelette at the Cordon Bleu. Of course, he kept a low profile on that particular interest. If word got out that he’d worn an apron and whisked eggs, he’d lose his reputation on the streets. Besides, it would be embarrassing. So he always covered his trips to Paris for cooking interests with business.

  A couple of years back, he’d stayed there for a week, playing the wealthy playboy and riffling the rooms of the rich. Doug remembered he’d hocked a very good sapphire necklace and paid his bill in full. You never knew when you’d want to go back.

  But there wasn’t time on this trip for a quick course in soufflés or a handy piece of burglary. There would be no sitting still in one place until the game was over. Normally he preferred it that way—the chase, the hunt. The game itself was more exciting than the winning. Doug had learned that after his first big job. There’d been the tension and pressure of planning, the rippling thrill and half terror of execution, then the rushing excitement of success. After that, it was simply another job finished. You looked for the next. And the next.

  If he’d listened to his high-school counselor, he’d probably be a very successful lawyer right now. He’d had the brains and the glib tongue. Doug sipped smooth scotch and was grateful he hadn’t listened.

  Imagine, Douglas Lord, Esquire, with a desk piled with papers and luncheon meetings three days a week. Was that any way to live? He skimmed another page of the book he’d stolen from a Washington library before they’d left. No, a profession that kept you in an office owned you, not the other way around. So, his IQ topped his weight, he’d rather use his talents for something satisfying.

  At the moment, it was reading about Madagascar, its history, its topography, its culture. By the time he finished this book, he’d know everything he needed to know. There were two other volumes in his case he’d save for later. One was a history of missing gems, the other a long, detailed history of the French Revolution. Before he found the treasure, he’d be able to see it, and to understand it. If the papers he’d read were fact, he had pretty Marie Antoinette and her penchant for opulence and intrigue to thank for an early retirement. The Mirror of Portugal diamond, the Blue Diamond, the Sancy—all fifty-four carats of it. Yeah, French royalty had had great taste. Good old Marie hadn’t rocked tradition. Doug was grateful for it. And for the aristocrats who had fled their country guarding the crown jewels with their lives, holding them in secret until the royal family might rule France again.…

  He wouldn’t find the Sancy in Madagascar. Doug was in the business and knew the rock was now in the Astor family. But the possibilities were endless. The Mirror and the Blue had dropped out of sight centuries before. So had other gems. The Diamond Necklace Affair—the straw that had broken the peasants’ back—was riddled with theory, myth, and speculation. Just what had become of the necklace that had ultimately insured Marie of not having a neck to wear it on?

  Doug believed in fate, in destiny, and just plain luck. Before it was over, he was going to be knee-deep in sparkles—royal sparkles. And screw Dimitri.

  In the meantime, he wanted to learn all he could about Madagascar. He was going far off his own turf—but so was Dimit
ri. If Doug could beat his adversary in anything, he prided himself on being able to top him in intelligent research. He read page after page and tallied fact after fact. He’d find his way around the little island in the Indian Ocean the same way he went from East-Side to West-Side Manhattan. He had to.

  Satisfied, he set the book aside. They’d been at cruising altitude for two hours. Long enough, Doug decided, for Whitney to brood in silence.

  “Okay, knock it off.”

  She turned and gave him a long, neutral look. “I beg your pardon?”

  She did it well, Doug reflected. The ice-bitch routine peculiar to women with money or guts. Of course, he was learning that Whitney had both. “I said knock it off. I can’t stand a pouter.”

  “A pouter?”

  Because her eyes were slits and she’d hissed the words, he was satisfied. If he made her angry, she’d snap out of it all the quicker. “Yeah. I’m not crazy about a woman who runs her mouth a mile a minute, but we should be able to come up with something in between.”

  “Should we? How lovely that you have such definite requirements.” She took a cigarette from the pack he’d tossed on the arm between them and lit it. He’d never known the gesture could be so haughty. It helped amuse him.

  “Let me give you lesson one before we go any further, sweetie.”

  Deliberately, and with a quiet kind of venom, Whitney blew smoke in his face. “Please do.”

  Because he recognized pain when he saw it, he gave her another minute. Then his voice was flat and final. “It’s a game.” He took the cigarette from her fingers and drew on it. “It’s always a game, but you go into it knowing there are penalties.”

  She stared at him. “Is that what you consider Juan? A penalty?”

  “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he told her, unknowingly echoing Butrain’s words. But she heard something else. Regret? Remorse? Though she couldn’t be sure, it was something. She held on to it. “We can’t go back and change what happened, Whitney. So we go on.”

  She picked up her neglected drink. “Is that what you do best? Go on?”

  “If you want to win. When you have to win, you can’t look back very often. Tearing yourself up over this isn’t going to change anything. We’re one step ahead of Dimitri, maybe two. We’ve got to stay that way because it’s a game, but you play it for keeps. If we don’t stay ahead, we’re dead.” As he spoke, he laid a hand over hers, not for comfort, but to see if it was steady. “If you can’t take it, you’d better think about backing off now because we’ve got a hell of a long way to go.”

  She wouldn’t back off. Pride was the problem, or the blessing. She’d never been able to back off. But what about him? she wondered. What made Douglas Lord run? “Why do you do it?”

  He liked the curiosity, the spark. As he settled back he was satisfied she’d gotten over the first hump. “You know, Whitney, it’s a hell of a lot sweeter to win the pot at poker with a pair of deuces than with a flush.” He blew out smoke and grinned. “One hell of a lot sweeter.”

  She thought she understood and studied his profile. “You like the odds against you.”

  “Long shots pay more.”

  She sat back, closed her eyes, and was silent so long he thought she dozed. Instead, Whitney was going back over everything that had happened, step by step. “The restaurant,” she asked abruptly. “How did you pull that off?”

  “What restaurant?” He was studying the different tribes of Madagascar in his book and didn’t bother to look up.

  “In Washington, when we were running for our lives through the kitchen and that enormous man in white stepped in front of you.”

  “You just use the first thing that comes to your mind,” he said easily. “It’s usually the best.”

  “It wasn’t just what you said.” Unsatisfied, Whitney shifted in her seat. “One minute you’re a frantic man off the streets, and the next a snooty food critic saying all the right things.”

  “Baby, when your life’s on the line, you can be anything.” Then he looked up and grinned. “When you want something bad enough, you can be anything. Usually I like to case a job from the inside. All you have to do is decide if you’re going in the front door or the servants’ entrance.”

  Interested, she signaled for another drink for each of them. “Meaning?”

  “Okay, take California. Beverly Hills.”

  “No, thanks.”

  Ignoring her, Doug began to reminisce. “First you have to decide which one of those nifty mansions you want to take. A few discreet questions, a little legwork, and you hone in on one. Now, front door or back? That might depend on my own whim. Getting in the front’s usually easiest.”

  “Why?”

  “Because money wants references for servants, not from guests. You need a stake, a few thousand. Check into the Wilshire Royal and rent a Mercedes, drop a few names—of people you know are out of town. Once you get into the first party, you’re set.” With a sigh, he drank. “Boy, they do like to wear their bank accounts around their necks in the Hills.”

  “And you just walk right in and pluck them off?”

  “More or less. The tough part is not to be greedy—and to know who’s wearing rocks and who’s wearing glass. Lot of bullshit in California. Basically, you just have to be a good mimic. Rich people are creatures more of habit than imagination.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You dress right, make sure you’re seen at the right places—with a few of the right people—and nobody’s going to question your pedigree. The last time I used that routine, I checked into the Wilshire with three thousand dollars. I checked out with thirty grand. I like California.”

  “Sounds to me like you can’t go back anytime soon.”

  “I’ve been back. I tinted my hair, grew a little moustache, and wore jeans. I pruned Cassie Lawrence’s roses.”

  “Cassie Lawrence? The professional piranha who disguises herself as a patron of the arts?”

  A perfect description. “You’ve met?”

  “Unfortunately. How much did you take her for?”

  From the tone, Doug decided Whitney would’ve been pleased he’d had quite a haul. He also decided not to tell her he’d had a breeze casing the inside because Cassie had enjoyed watching him weed her azaleas without a shirt. She’d practically eaten him alive in bed. In return, he’d lifted an ornate ruby necklace and a pair of diamond earrings as big as Ping-Pong balls.

  “Enough,” Doug answered at length. “I take it you don’t like her.”

  “She has no class.” It was said simply, from a woman who did. “Did you sleep with her?”

  He choked on his drink, then set it down carefully. “I don’t think—”

  “So you did.” A bit disappointed, Whitney studied him. “I’m surprised I didn’t see the scars.” She studied him another moment, thoughtful, quiet. “Don’t you find that sort of thing demeaning?”

  He could’ve strangled her without a qualm. True, there were times he slept with a mark and enjoyed himself— and made certain the mark enjoyed herself as well. Payment for payment. But as a rule, he found using sex as close to ugly as he wanted to get. “A job’s a job,” he said briefly. “Don’t tell me you’ve never slept with a client.”

  She lifted a brow at him, the way an amused woman could. “I sleep with whom I choose,” she told him in a tone that stated she chose well.

  “Some of us weren’t born with choices.” Opening his book again, he stuck his nose in it and fell silent.

  She wasn’t going to make him feel guilty. Guilt was something he avoided more scrupulously than the police or a furious mark. The minute you let guilt start sucking at you, you were finished.

  Funny, it didn’t seem to bother her a bit that he stole for a living. It didn’t bother her that he stole particularly from her class. She’d never blinked an eye at that. In fact, it was more than likely that he’d relieved some of her friends of excess personal property. She wasn’t the least concerned.

>   Just what kind of woman was she anyway? He thought he understood her thirst for adventure, for excitement and taking chances. He’d lived his life on little else. But it didn’t fit those cool, moneyed looks.

  No, she hadn’t missed a beat when he’d told her he was a thief, but she’d looked at him with derision, and yes, dammit, pity, when she’d discovered he’d slept with a West-Coast shark for a handful of glitter.

  And where had the glitter gotten him? Thinking back, Doug remembered he’d dumped the rocks on a fence in Chicago within twenty-four hours. After a routine haggle over price, a whim had taken him to Puerto Rico. Within three days, Doug had lost all but two thousand in the casinos. What had the glitter gotten him? he thought again, then grinned. One hell of a weekend.

  Money just didn’t stick to him. There was always another game, a sure thing at the track or a big-eyed woman with a sob story and a breathy voice. Still, Doug didn’t consider himself a sucker. He was an optimist. He’d been born one and remained one even after more than fifteen years in the business. Otherwise, the kick would have gone out of it and he might as well be a lawyer.

  Hundreds of thousands of dollars had passed through his hands. The operative words were passed through. This time would be different. It didn’t matter that he’d said so before, this time would be different. If the treasure was half as big as the papers indicated, he’d be set for life. He’d never have to work again—except for an occasional job to keep in shape.

  He’d buy a yacht and sail from port to port. He’d head for the south of France, bake in the sun, and watch women. He’d keep one step ahead of Dimitri for the rest of his life. Because Dimitri, as long as he lived, would never let up. That, too, was part of the game.

  But the best part was the doing, the planning, the maneuvering.