by Nora Roberts
No one would have believed him. In the fuzzy-headed morning after, he wouldn’t have believed himself.
It was tempting to hurry, to give in to cramping shoulders and aching arms and just take the last few feet in a leap. Steady, patient, the figure hung in the air, letting instinct guide the final descent.
Black sneakers skimmed the railing, swung back, and found purchase, stood poised there, slim and dramatic. No one heard the laugh, but it came, quick and satisfied.
There was time, now that feet were firmly planted on the terrace floor, to look out at New York, and the odds that had been beaten. It was a great city, a favored city, almost a home for one who had never really found a home. It had grit and glitter, and what it lacked in compassion, it made up for in possibilities.
Central Park was a patchwork of color, majestically rural from this height and in this season. Trees were gold and bronze and scarlet, triumphant in their final burst of color before the cold and the wind swirled down from Canada to sweep the leaves aside.
This stretch of Central Park West was quiet. It was a street for doormen and dog walkers, for doctors and old money. Though it was part of the city, the true frenzy, the rush of reality, was a cab ride, and a world, away.
Beyond the trees, beyond the reservoir, buildings sprang up, taller and sleeker than this elegant old apartment house. They were the future, perhaps. They were certainly the present. In the dark they were shadows looming, or perhaps promising. Anything that could be bought, sold, traded, or desired could be found within those buildings or, a bit grimier, on the streets. There was a price to any facet of luxury or lust. New York understood that and wasn’t coy about it.
The city was dozing now, resting up for the day only a few hours away, but its energy was still in the air, pulsing. There could be great victory here, or miserable failure, or every sensation in between. Some, like the thief, had experienced it all.
Turning from the rail, the figure walked quietly across the terrace and knelt by the doors. There was only the lock to deal with now, and locks were only an illusion of safety. From a dark leather bag came a small tool kit.
It was a very good lock, one the thief approved of. It took just under two minutes to pick it. There were some who could have done it in less, but they were few.
As the latch clicked open, the tools were carefully replaced. Organization, control, and caution were what kept thieves out of jail. This one had no intention of going behind bars. There was still too much to be done.
But tonight the future would have to wait. Tonight there were ice cold diamonds and red hot rubies for the taking. Jewels were the only booty worth stealing. They had life and magic and history. They had, perhaps most important, a kind of honor. Even in the dark a gem would flirt and flash and tease, like a lover. A painting, however beautiful, could only be stared at, admired from a distance. Cash was cold, lifeless, and practical. Jewels were personal.
For this thief every heist was personal.
The sneakers were silent on the gleaming floor. There was a light, homey scent of paste wax that lingered from the morning’s polishing and competed against some spicy autumnal bouquet. Because it appealed, the thief smiled and took a moment to draw it in. But only a moment. In the generous shoulder bag was a high-powered flashlight, but it wasn’t necessary here. Every inch of the room had been memorized. Three steps, then a turn to the right. Seven steps, then left. A staircase wound there up to the second floor with a balustrade hand-fashioned with brass leaves and cherubs. In the alcove below was a high marble pedestal. There was a sculpture on it, pre-Columbian and priceless. The thief ignored it and moved silently into the library.
The safe was behind the collected works of Shakespeare. The thief laid a finger on Othello, tipped it back, then spun around as the lights flooded on.
“As they say,” came a calm, beautifully modulated voice, “you’re busted.”
The woman in the doorway was dressed in a glimmering pink negligee, her pale, angular face gleaming with night creams and her silvery-blond hair swept back from her brow. At first glance she would have been taken for a youthful forty. She admitted to forty-five, which was still five years shy of the mark.
She was small, and unarmed, unless the banana in her hand counted. With her head thrown back dramatically, she pointed the banana at the thief. “Bang.”
The thief let out a sound of disgust and dropped into a deep leather chair. “Dammit, Celeste, what are you doing up?”
“Eating.” To prove a point, she nipped off a bite of banana. “What are you doing skulking around the library?”
“Practicing.” The voice was husky, low, but definitely feminine. She began to peel off her gloves. “I nearly robbed you blind.”
“Thank goodness I raided the refrigerator.” Celeste swept across the room as she had swept across so many stages. Pieces of her roles remained with her, from Lady Macbeth to Blanche DuBois. It was the toughness of her own character, the one-time New Jersey native who had stormed her way to Broadway, that allowed Celeste Michaels to dominate the sum of her strongest parts.
“Adrianne dear, not that I like to criticize, but it isn’t really cricket to burgle when you have a key.”
“I didn’t use it.” Pouting, Adrianne pulled off the cap. Her hair, nearly as black, fell past her shoulders. “I came down from the roof.”
“You—” Celeste took a deep breath, knowing it would do no good to shout. Instead, she sat in the chair facing Adrianne. “Are you crazy?”
She merely shrugged. It was, after all, a question she’d heard before. “It nearly worked. If you had any willpower, it would have worked.”
“So it’s my fault.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter now, Celeste.” Adrianne leaned forward, gripping the older woman’s hands which were studded with a sapphire on the left ring finger and a diamond on the right. Adrianne’s were bare. Any rings she owned had been sold long before she’d begun her career. “You wouldn’t believe how it feels, to hang over the city that way. It’s so quiet, so solitary.”
“So birdbrained.”
“Darling, you know I can take care of myself.” Adrianne touched her tongue to her top lip. Her mouth was wide and generous, as her mother’s had been. “Aren’t you wondering why your alarm didn’t sound?”
Celeste adjusted the hem of her negligee. “I’m sure I don’t want to know.”
“Celeste.”
“All right, why?”
“I turned it off this afternoon when we had lunch.”
“Thank you very much. You left me unprotected against the underworld.”
“I knew I’d be back.” Because the energy was still flowing, Adrianne rose to pace the room. She was a small, delicately built woman who moved like a dancer, or like a thief. Her hair skimmed down her shoulder blades, straight as an arrow, lifting and falling as she turned. “It was so easy once I thought it through. I doctored the alarm, so that when you turned it on, it short-circuited the terrace doors. I waltzed in a couple of hours ago and chatted with the security guard. His wife’s arthritis is acting up again.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“So I told him you weren’t feeling terribly well and left some flowers for you. When he got involved with answering a tenant’s summons, I sneaked up the staircase.”
Celeste raised one pale blond brow, a handy little gesture she’d cultivated decades before. “I was feeling quite well until a few minutes ago.”
“I took the elevator from the fifth floor up to the roof,” Adrianne continued. “I had the rope in my bag. Then it was over and down and through.”
“Fifty stories, Adrianne.” It wasn’t easy to block out the fear, but Celeste used anger to smother it. “Dammit, how would I have explained that Princess Adrianne was just practicing when she fell off the roof of my building and smashed herself on Central Park West?”
“I didn’t fall off,” Adrianne pointed out. “And if you hadn’t been foraging in the kitchen, I would have
cleaned out the safe, gone back up to the roof, and made my getaway.”
“Most inconsiderate of me.”
“Never mind, Celeste.” Adrianne patted her hand before she sat on the arm of the chair. “Though I did want to see your face when I dumped your ruby necklace into your lap. I’ll have to settle for this.” Adrianne drew a chamois pouch from her shoulder bag, opened it, and poured out diamonds.
“Oh my God.”
“Gorgeous, aren’t they?” Adrianne held the necklace up to the light. It was a single tier of brilliant cuts dipping down to a huge center stone that would nest cozily in a woman’s cleavage. The gems seemed to drip with cold, arrogant life. Experimentally, Adrianne turned it in her hands.
“About sixty carats all told, just a touch of pink in the color. Excellent workmanship, well balanced. It even managed to make the old crow’s neck interesting.”
Celeste told herself she should be used to it by now, but had the sudden urge for a drink. Rising, she walked over to a French rococo cabinet and chose a decanter of brandy. “Which old crow was that, Addy?”
“Dorothea Barnsworth.” Dipping into her bag again, Adrianne plucked out matching earrings. “Now, these are nice, don’t you think?”
Celeste merely glanced over at several thousand dollars worth of ice. “Dorothea, yes. I thought it looked familiar.” Celeste offered a snifter of brandy. “She lives in a fortress on Long Island.”
“Her security system has some major flaws.” Adrianne sipped. After her cold trip down from the roof, the brandy slipped into her system like a warm hug. “Would you like to see the bracelet?”
“I’ve already seen it, last week at the Autumn Ball.”
“That was a pleasant evening.” Adrianne jingled the earrings in her free hand. She judged them to be about ten carats apiece. There was a jeweler’s loupe in her bag as well, which she had made use of in the Barnsworths’ study. Just to make certain she didn’t leave Long Island with a bagful of pretty paste. “Once they’re fenced, these little baubles should bring about two hundred thousand.”
“She has dogs,” Celeste said into her brandy. “Dobermans. Five of them.”
“Three,” Adrianne corrected Celeste before she checked her watch. “They should be awake by now. Celeste dear, I’m starving. Have you got another banana?”
“We have to talk.”
“You talk, I’ll eat,” Celeste managed only a frustrated oath when Adrianne started out of the library toward the kitchen. “Must have something to do with all the fresh air I’ve had tonight. Christ, it was cold out on Long Island. The wind cut right through me. Oh, by the way, don’t let me forget that I left my mink on your roof.”
Covering her face with her hands, Celeste sank into the ice cream parlor chair by the kitchen window while Adrianne rummaged through the refrigerator. “Addy, how long is this going to go on?”
“What’s that? Ah, pâté forestier. This should hit the spot.” She heard the drawn-out sigh behind her and fought back a smile. “I love you, Celeste.”
“And I you. Darling, I’m getting older. Think of my heart.”
Adrianne balanced a plate filled with pâté, green grapes, and thin butter crackers. “You’ve got the strongest and biggest heart of anyone I know.” She brushed a kiss on Celeste’s cheek and caught the comforting scent of her night cream. “Don’t worry about me, Celeste. I’m very good at what I do.”
“I know.” Who would have believed it? Celeste took a deep breath as she studied the woman who sat across from her. The Princess Adrianne of Jaquir—daughter of King Abdu ibn Faisal Rahman al-Jaquir and Phoebe Spring, movie star—at twenty-five years of age was a socialite, benefactress of numerous charities, the darling of gossip columnists … and a cat burglar.
Who would suspect? Celeste had comforted herself with that thought over the years, though there was something of the Gypsy in Adrianne’s looks. The stunning little girl had become a stunning woman. She had the golden skin and dark eyes and hair of her father’s heritage, and her mother’s strong bone structure, refined to suit her small stature. She was a combination of the delicate and the exotic with her slim, almost waiflike build and strong features. The mouth was Phoebe’s and always gave Celeste a pang when she looked at it. The eyes, the eyes, no matter how Adrianne might have wished to have nothing of her father’s, were Abdu’s. Black, almond-shaped, and shrewd.
From her mother she’d inherited her heart, her warmth, and generous spirit. From her father she’d taken a thirst for power and a taste for revenge.
“Adrianne, there’s no need for you to continue this way.”
“There’s every need.” Adrianne popped a cracker into her mouth.
“Phoebe’s gone, dear. We can’t bring her back.”
For a moment, just a moment, Adrianne’s expression was young and achingly vulnerable. Then her eyes hardened. Deliberately, she spread pâté on another cracker. “I know that, Celeste. No one knows better.”
“My love.” Gently, Celeste laid a hand on hers. “She was my closest and dearest friend, as you are now. I know how you suffered with her, for her, and how hard you tried to help her. But there’s no need for you to take these risks now. There was no need before. I’ve always been there.”
“Yes.” Adrianne turned her hand over so that their palms met. “You have. And I know that if I’d allowed it, you would have taken care of everything—the bills, the doctors, the medicine. I’ll never forget what you tried to do for Mama, and for me. Without you she wouldn’t have held on so long.”
“She held on for you.”
“Yes, that’s true. And what I did, what I do, and what I plan to do, I do for her.”
“Addy …” The fear came, not from the words, but from the cold, matter-of-fact way they were spoken. “Addy, it’s been more than sixteen years since you left Jaquir. And it’s been five since Phoebe died.”
“And with each day the debt increases. Celeste, don’t look like that.” Adrianne grinned, trying to lighten the mood. “What would I be without this … this hobby of mine? I’d be exactly what the press makes me out to be, a rich, titled social butterfly who dabbles in charitable causes and floats from party to party.”
Adrianne made a face at the description and went back to her paté. “According to the gossip columns, I’m just another bored jet-setter with too little to do and too much money to do it with. Let them think it here, and in Jaquir. Let him think it.” Celeste needed no more than the look in Adrianne’s eyes to know she spoke of her father. “It only makes it easier to relieve the genuinely frivolous of their baubles.”
“You don’t need the money now, Addy.”
“No.” She looked down into the brandy. “I’ve invested well and could live off what I have quite comfortably. But it’s not the money, Celeste. Maybe it never was.” She lifted her gaze again. It was there, the heat, the chilling almost frightening heat of the diamonds she stole. “I was eight when we landed in America. And I knew even then I’d go back one day and take what was hers. What was mine.”
“He might regret; by now he might regret.”
“Did he come to her funeral?” The question ripped out as she sprang up to pace. “Did he even acknowledge that she was gone? All those years, those terrible years, he didn’t so much as acknowledge that she was alive.” Struggling for control, she leaned against the counter. When she spoke again, her voice was calm and certain. “In a very real sense she wasn’t. He killed her, Celeste, all those years ago, when I was too young to stop him. Soon, very soon, he’s going to pay for it.”
Celeste felt the shiver run down her back. She remembered Adrianne at eight. The eyes had already been dark and haunted and much too old. “Do you think Phoebe would want this?”
“I think she’d appreciate the irony of it. I’m going to take The Sun and the Moon, Celeste. Just as I promised her, as I promised myself. And he’ll pay dearly to get them back.” Turning around, she smiled and lifted her snifter to salute her friend. “In the meantime I can�
��t afford to get rusty. Did you know Lady Fume is having a gala next month in London?”
“Addy—”
“Lord Fume, the old goat, paid over a quarter of a million for her emeralds. Lady Fume really shouldn’t wear emeralds. They make her look pallid.” With a laugh Adrianne leaned over and kissed Celeste’s cheek. “Go get some more beauty sleep, darling. I’ll just let myself out.”
“The front door?”
“Naturally. Don’t forget we have brunch at the Palm Court on Sunday. My treat.”
Adrianne swept out, reminding herself to make a quick stop on the roof to get her mink.
It had been at her mother’s knee that Adrianne had learned the art of makeup. Phoebe had always been fascinated that a few dabs of paint, a few strokes with a grease pencil, could add beauty or years or take both away.
Being in the theater, Celeste had taught her even more. After a quarter of a century on the boards, Celeste still did her own makeup and knew every trick. Adrianne combined the arts of her two teachers as she transformed herself into Rose Sparrow, girlfriend of The Shadow.
The process took forty-five minutes, but Adrianne was pleased with the results. Contacts turned her eyes into a muddy gray, and a little plumping added sleepy sacks under them. She added a half inch to her nose and filled out her cheeks. Heavy Pan-Cake turned her golden complexion sallow. The red wig was handmade and expensive and teased high. Cheap glass balls dangled at her ears. She slipped a wad of strawberry-flavored Bubble Yum into her mouth as she stood back from the full-length mirror to look for flaws.
Too tawdry, she thought with a quick grin. Couldn’t be better. Black spandex molded the hips she’d padded, and skinny spiked heels added three inches. A cheap fake fur was slung over her shoulders. Satisfied, Adrianne slipped on rhinestone-studded cat’s-eye sunglasses and headed out.
She took the service elevator. A small precaution; no one looking at her would see Princess Adrianne. Just as no one looking at Princess Adrianne would see The Shadow. Still, she didn’t want Rose to be seen leaving Princess Adrianne’s penthouse apartment.
