by Dee Brice
“When he comes back—ha! If he comes back, I’ll drive him crazy. He’ll want me so badly his balls will burst. But I won’t give in to him… Not until he shares everything he knows about the Paris murders. Not until I know every single detail.”
Racing to her French doors, she rushed outside and stared after him until the taillights on his car disappeared from sight. She was still frightened, but something Ian had said, when he was still acting patient and wasn’t railing at her, had started to sink in.
Ian thought the fall in London and the sniper incident here at the Santana estate were serious assaults on her life. She snorted her agreement with that, went inside and dragged a heavy chair in front of the French doors. Nobody would sneak in on her like Ian had the other night, she decided as she balanced her comb and brush on the arms of the chair. Satisfied with her jerry-rigged intruder alarm, she dusted her hands.
Sitting on the edge of her bed, she stared at the bathroom door and considered what else Ian had said. If someone—the same someone who had rigged the star cover in London and had shot at her—had wanted to kill her, he or she would have used acid or something equally deadly in the shower. That attack, so Ian thought, was intended to frighten her. Well, her attacker had succeeded. She was scared all right. Spitless. And she was madder than hell.
Somebody—and she still wasn’t completely convinced it wasn’t Ian—wanted her dead. Why? She hadn’t gotten any information out of her London snitch, so why try to kill her there? Was the accident meant to scare her out of town before she heard something that led her to Isabella’s Belt? If so, her assailant had succeeded. In spades.
And the attempts here?
Restless, she stood and paced the generous confines of her room. As she paced, her certainty grew. The attempts here were because she was getting close to finding the answers, to finding out who had stolen Isabella’s Belt and had murdered those people in the bank.
The shower was rigged to scare her away from Emilio Santana because somebody didn’t want her to find the thief. But that same somebody didn’t want her to get killed either.
Stopping in front of the full-length cheval mirror, she applauded herself. Her satisfied grin inverted into a frown. So now she knew why. She still didn’t know who. Or where Ian Soria fit into things.
His departure gave her the opportunity to run. To hide until she could find whoever was trying to frame her for murder. Only her certainty that the answers were here, in Colombia, kept her at the Santanas’.
Her yawn caught her off-guard, but her growling stomach took precedence. Picking up the house phone, she dialed the kitchen. Deciding against overloading on cholesterol, she asked for an herb omelet and fruit.
When she had finished eating and had put the tray outside her door, she settled on the bed and leaned against her pillows. Stretching languorously, she decided she could get used to siestas.
She fell asleep and into a dream.
The house—she didn’t know whose or where it was—was eerily silent. The only illumination came from an unseen source and felt…shadowy and insubstantial. The light came from below and behind her at the same time, its coldness making her feel small and very frightened.
A shout—a curse?—shattered the silence. Light seemed to explode from an abruptly opened door. A woman ran out. A hand, seeming unattached to a body, caught the woman’s long, dark hair and jerked her backward. She turned to fight off the disembodied hand entangled in her hair.
Another voice, deep and filled with an emotion TC did not understand, cried out. Free, the woman backed away. The hand lashed out. The woman screamed, a long howl that ended with a squishy sound and that same oppressive silence.
Harsh breathing, like that of the fire-breathing dragons in the fairy tales her mother sometimes read to her, made TC cringe back into the shadows. Something dark brushed her, trailed over her bare feet. She wanted to cry out, but bit her lip to hold back her sobs. The insubstantial, raspy-breath monster went on its way, down into the blackness where the strange, cold light bathed an immobile figure in its glow.
The darkness-beast bent over the unmoving body that was bathed in this icy glimmer. As the beast lifted the woman TC had seen running from it, the icy glimmer fell on the woman’s face.
TC felt moisture flow between her legs and sobbed. She’d wet her pants and Charles would be so angry when he found out. TC inched back from the banister and prayed she could reach her room before the darkness-monster found her, prayed that the evidence of her accident would dry before he discovered the telltale spot, that the stink would go away.
Realizing the eerie light came through the window behind her, TC crawled toward it. She didn’t know why she wanted to hide from Charles, but she did. In her childish mind, the monster-beast and Charles were one and the same. She had to hide, but she had to open the window so he and the monster would not smell her pee when they came upstairs.
But when she reached the window, she couldn’t resist the terrifying temptation to peer out. The monster was still carrying Mommy. With staggering monster steps, he continued toward the old abandoned well, the well TC had been told over and over to avoid.
When the monster straightened, Mommy had disappeared completely. TC ducked away from the window, again not knowing why, but convinced she should not let the monster find her looking out. She had to go to the bathroom again. Bad. Already she could feel the wetness pooling.
Sobbing quietly, her fist clenched between her teeth, she risked being seen and raced for her own bedroom.
In the morning Charles didn’t even scold her for wetting her bed. Instead, he took her hand and led her into Mommy’s room. There, he opened all of Mommy’s closets and dresser drawers, showing TC that all Mommy’s clothes were gone.
“Gone,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically quiet, “forever.” He released TC’s hand as if her fingers were soiled, then motioned her to follow him downstairs. He made her face the portrait of her mother that hung in the library.
“You look like her, TC. I intend to see that you don’t become what she became.”
* * * * *
In Nick Troy’s hotel room in Bogotá, Damian removed a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and rubbed his stinging eyes. He had been reading nonstop for over an hour and felt as if he was back at Oxford, cramming for exams.
“You have been busy,” he remarked to his companion who, in true Nick fashion, looked calm, composed and carefree. “These files are even more complete than the first ones you uncovered.”
“Now we have enough evidence to have Colonel Mendez arrest her. Reynard sent the Red Notice yesterday and is working on the extradition papers.”
“No, Nick, we do not have enough evidence. Everything in this file is not only circumstantial, it is more than ten years old.”
“So? All we have to do, which we already can, is link Ms. Cartierri to the Banque de Medellin in Paris. This file is just corroborating evidence.”
“Inadmissible, I think. We may have a problem with the statute of limitations and the fact that Ms. Cartierri was only sixteen when the last theft occurred.”
Nick swore. “A minor.”
Damian’s eyebrows quirked. “Precisely, my dear Nicholas, to paraphrase.”
“B-but—” Nick sputtered.
“Have you received the evidence from the Lyons office, Nick? I thought not,” Damian said when Nick shook his head and slumped onto the couch. “So, until we do, we can only assume that Tiff—Ms. Cartierri—retired from her lucrative profession as a jewel thief for reasons unknown and unprovable. Or—”
“Or what?”
“Damned if I know. Ran away maybe?”
“Like Oliver Twist, you mean?” Nick’s frown faded, replaced by a quick grin.
“Excuse me?”
“Oliver Twist got himself a benefactor and retired from his life of petty crime.”
“Sir James Foster,” Damian muttered, remembering the oddly protective attitude the man had exhibited toward his daughter-in-law
.
“Until Oliver was forced back into it. I don’t remember how Fagin, or maybe it was Bill Sikes, did it, but Oliver returned to his old life and took up thieving again. Maybe that’s what Ms. Cartierri has done.”
Damian tapped his glasses against the file on his knee. “If I recall, Bill Sikes and Fagin aside, Dickens always rooted human frailty in noble sentiment.”
“So your lady friend stole Isabella’s Belt and murdered two people to protect someone else? Bullshit, Hunter. Nobility exists only in stories. In today’s world it’s nothing more than a platitude.”
Damian met Nick Troy’s cynical gaze, then grinned. “I believe you have not yet met Ms. Tiffany Cartierri.”
“You know I haven’t met her. So what?”
“Get your evidence kit, Nick. You are about to meet Oliver Twist in skirts.”
* * * * *
Two nights later, TC eyed Ian and wondered what he had behind his back. She leaned back against her pillows and tried to slow her galloping heart. To no avail. Ian looked darkly dangerous, his winsome smile absent, his beard-stubbled jaw tight, his magnificent body rigid under a black T-shirt and groin-hugging black denim jeans.
“You’ve brought me a present,” she said in a greedy, little-girl voice.
“In a manner of speaking,” he said as he prowled from doorway to bed and tossed a mailing tube into her lap. “You were right not to go back to Paris.”
TC glanced at the address on the mailing tube and felt her heart surge into her throat. “I sent Sir James a poster of the Eiffel Tower. So what?”
Disgust evident in every feature of his face, Ian flung the damning evidence at her. “You sent a telegram. ‘Have item. Arrive London Friday next. Love, Emerald.’” Then, starting from the foot of her bed, he crawled up her body until he straddled her hips and glared down at her.
Fingers white-knuckled, she gripped the sheet and tried to pull it over her head. Grabbing her wrists, he forced them to her sides. Pinned beneath his powerful body, aware of the rage rippling through his every muscle, an unexpected weakness invaded her. Excitement and need pooled low in her belly as she stared up at him, fascinated by the arrows of utter blackness in his dark eyes, by the way his eyelashes spiked at the tips, by the slash of his eyebrows across his forehead.
She wanted to kiss the frown from his face, to sip from his lips the coffee and brandy she could smell on his breath, to take the heat pouring from his body into hers and turn fury into passion.
Other than moistening her lips, she lay perfectly still. She wasn’t afraid of him, but she was afraid of herself and of the lust pounding through her like relentless waves against a rocky coast.
“The ‘item’ was, of course, Isabella’s Belt,” Damian gritted out, his rage boiling when Tiffany continued to stare at him as if she wanted to gobble him up. Did she not realize how serious her situation had become? That this evidence could convict her as surely as if she had left her fingerprints at the scene of the murders?
“Was it?”
Her stretch pressed her hips to his groin. Sweat popped out on his forehead. “And the mailing tube contained blueprints of the Luxembourg museum.”
“Did it?” she purred, her fingers flexing like a kitten kneading a quilt.
“Complete with security plans for the exhibit,” he added as he climbed off the bed before he succumbed to her. His anger had faded, but lust had replaced it. He wanted those curling fingers in his hair, her nails in his back.
“Proposed plans.” After a long moment, while the passion faded from her eyes, she got out of bed to don a robe. Giving him a considering look, she finally said, “Had those plans been implemented no one could have stolen Isabella’s Belt. At least not from the Luxembourg.”
“Which is why you had to act quickly.”
“Yes.”
“Dios, Tiffany! How do you expect me to help you when you insist on lying to me?” Raking fingers through his hair, he glared at her. “You leave me no choice.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning I am placing you under— What the hell?” He found himself held at bay by a gun, a Derringer judging by the way it fit her hand. If she fired, the shot probably would not kill him, but, with so little distance between them, it could slow him down long enough for her to escape. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I don’t want to go to jail. Because if you arrest me now, we’ll never find out who stole Isabella’s Belt. Because I’m not the only one around here who’s lied.”
Willing his tense muscles to relax, Damian stood his ground, his gaze never leaving her face. Her eyes would tell him if she meant to shoot him. “I have told you as much as I can,” he said in a reasonable tone.
“I know you have.” A grim half-smile playing at the corners of her lips, she stared at him for a long moment, then slid the gun into the pocket of her robe. She kept her hand in her pocket, destroying Damian’s momentary relief.
“Now I’m going to tell you something you don’t know, that no one knows but me and, possibly, the murderer of those two people.”
A sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Damian said, “You broke into the bank.”
“Not exactly.”
Closing his mouth on a bellow of rage only lasted the time he took to open it again. “What do you mean, ‘not exactly’? You either stole Isabella’s Belt or you did not.”
“Pardon me?” Tiffany said, uncovering her ears, letting her hands fall to her sides. In a softer voice, Damian repeated himself and was confronted with, “Fine, have it your own way then.”
With a long-suffering groan, he lifted his hands and eyes to the heavens and muttered a prayer for patience. “Let us, please, begin again. Did you steal Isabella’s Belt?”
Shrugging, she flung herself onto the chaise and smiled up at him before saying cryptically, “If you consider intent, yes, I did steal Isabella’s Belt.” She held up a hand that made him choke on his exasperation. “If, on the other hand, you examine what I took from the bank, no I didn’t.”
“I give up.” He sank onto the bed and buried his face in his hands. He should leave. If he stayed he either would throttle her or make love to her until she was too exhausted to dance around his questions.
“Ian? Don’t you want to know?”
Lifting his head he saw her concerned face, mere inches from his own. Drawing a deep breath, he inhaled her scent, Emeraude according to the bottle he had found in her bathroom, and warm flesh. He clenched his fists, barely managing to keep from touching her. “There is only one thing I want to know. Did you kill those men? Yes or no.”
“No.”
“Thank God.”
“But I think—”
He gathered her into his arms, inhaled the fragrance of her hair and savored the warmth of her body as she burrowed closer.
“I do not care if you are Dizzy Borden or Jacqueline the Ripper. I could not care less if I am the biggest fool on God’s green earth. If I must, I will run with you, hide with you, lie for you.” Despite his exhaustion, his yawn caught him off-guard. “But it will have to wait until morning. I cannot take any more of your—how do you say?” He wove a serpentine with a hand that shook. ”Twisted logic.”
“Convoluted? You’re calling my thought processes convoluted?” TC jerked her arms away and surged to her feet. Ian flopped onto the bed with a boneless grace that set a match to her temper. How dare he! Just when she was about to lay her life on the line, bet the farm on his trust in her and hers in him, bare her heart and soul and tell him everything, the lout had the nerve to fall asleep!
The urge to shake him dissolved into the need simply to touch him. There was something deliciously forbidden about touching a man while he slept. Smiling, suspecting she looked like a lovesick teenager but not caring, she brushed back the errant lock of thick, silky hair that, as usual, had mated with his eyebrows.
Tenderness, that’s what she felt. Not the sinking, desperate emotion that, with William, so horribly resembled pity
. Not the watchful, constant monitoring of a mother guarding her infant. This was something different. Something that filled her with amazement. Something wondrous and precious.
She wanted to share these feelings with Ian, but despite the bubbling happiness coursing through her veins, his falling asleep had revived her normal cautiousness. She knew so little about him, but she trusted her instincts. Just as she hadn’t told him the complete truth about herself, he hadn’t told her the complete truth either.
Nor was she totally convinced that he was innocent in the attempts on her life. And what did he hope to gain from that blather about a telegram? She would never incriminate Sir James or herself in such a blatant way.
She swiped at an unexpected tear, sniffed away self-pity before she trapped herself and wallowed in the emotion. Loneliness was a familiar companion, one she had learned to tolerate if not to welcome.
Brushing a kiss on Ian’s beard-stubbled jaw, she left the bed. She knew of one way to test his truthfulness. And if they both survived the adventure, she’d tell him all about herself.
But when she awoke in the morning, Ian had gone to Medellin to pick up his “sort of agent” friend.
Chapter Nine
Stupid, TC thought the next evening, turning from a spectacular sunset to resume pacing her bedroom at Emilio Santana’s compound. First she had been dumb enough to let her hormones get the better of her common sense and had had sex with Ian Soria. Not satisfied with that piece of insanity, she had confessed that she worked for Bijoux as more than an appraiser. Not a smart move if Ian was in any way involved with the law. And now, compounding her stupidity, she had let Ian call in his own reinforcements. Reinforcements in the form of a “sort of agent” who probably had orders to arrest her on sight.
“Do not fash yourself, Tiffany love.”
Whirling at the unexpected sound of Ian’s voice, TC snapped, “Don’t you ever knock?” Taking a deep breath—only to steady her nerves, she told herself—she glanced at him. She took another deep breath to calm her galloping heart.
