Medusa’s Master

by Cindy Dees

“What?” he demanded. “Did you hear something?”

  Yeah. Her heart about pounding out of her chest. “No, it’s all clear,” she replied.

  “I’m going to lift the grate off and then stick my head out for a look around,” he murmured.

  Her nod turned into a gulp as his hard, vibrant body slid upward against hers and her nose rested somewhere in the vicinity of his zipper. Kowabunga. He made some sort of physical exertion above her head, and his body flexed unexpectedly, lurching toward the hole. She grabbed him fast, wrapping her arms around his upper thighs in case something had caused him to momentarily lose his balance.

  “Give me a sec if you want more of that,” he murmured. “I’ll be right there.”

  “Are you okay?” she muttered, chagrined. “It felt like you were falling.”

  “I already fell for you, darlin’.”

  She rolled her eyes and turned his hips loose. But it wasn’t like there was anywhere to retreat to. Her eyes squeezed shut in mortification, she tried to ignore the obvious view and asked in desperation, “What do you see?”

  “Doesn’t look like there’s a stitch of security in here. Apparently, the owners relied entirely on the perimeter system.”

  “An expensive mistake,” she replied.

  “Wanna take a look around?” he asked.

  “Sure. We might learn something about the Ghost.”

  Thankfully, his crotch finally slid past her face as he slithered through the opening and landed lightly below. She pulled herself forward with her elbows until her shoulders projected out of the opening.

  “Need me to catch you?” he murmured.

  By way of an answer she dived face-first through the opening, performing a neat flip in midair and landing catlike on her feet beside him. Faint moonlight from down the hall lit the startled look on his face.

  She moved out silently on the balls of her feet. This was when her traditional, soft-soled, Japanese slipper-shoes really earned their stripes. She paused before the first doorway, waiting for Jeff to join her. They fell automatically into the usual patterns of spinning low and fast past openings and leapfrogging past one another as they advanced toward the front of the house. The place was empty.

  She couldn’t resist showing off when they reached the stairs. A three-inch-wide stainless steel ribbon served as the handrail for the curving staircase. She leaped up onto it and ran down it, pausing only when she reached the bottom of the staircase. She stopped just short of the main floor. If the owners had any sense at all, they had pressure sensors or some sort of motion detectors down here.

  Jeff looked appropriately shell-shocked when he joined her a few seconds later.

  “Damn, woman. If you ever get tired of this gig, you should consider a career in the circus.” He added sourly, “Please don’t do that again. My heart couldn’t take it.”

  She grinned unrepentantly at him.

  Standing on the first step, he took a long look around the ground floor through the various modes of the goggles. Finally, he declared, “I can’t believe it, but the ground floor’s clear.”

  She shook her head. These people had been asking to be robbed. Kat looked around the expansive space. The place looked like an art gallery, with an eclectic collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art occupying every wall. She was no expert, but some of it looked familiar and really expensive.

  “Why’d the Ghost leave all this behind?” she asked. “Why only the one painting? Once he got in here, he could’ve taken every last one of these works at his leisure.”

  Jeff frowned and moved off toward the far wall and a blue, cubist painting. Even she recognized it as a Picasso. “That’s an excellent question. Particularly since I’d estimate we’re looking at easily two hundred million dollars’ worth of art.”

  She was staggered. “Really?”

  Jeff nodded grimly as he examined a painting closely. “This Picasso is probably more valuable than the Monet that the Ghost took.”

  “Sounds like our guy’s stealing on commission then. He’s not going after random art to pawn. He’s stealing specific pieces for a collector.”

  Jeff moved away from the Picasso and stood back to look at a large Impressionist scene of water and boats. “No doubt about it.”

  She commented lightly, “Good thing we’re on the right side of the law. Between the two of us, we could make a fortune nicking this stuff.”

  He grunted. “This one job would set us up for life.”

  They traded knowing looks. Temptations like this weren’t uncommon in their line of work. However, it was the rare operator who crossed the line, and neither of them were of that weak-willed ilk.

  She asked, “Now what? You wanna climb back out of here, or should we make a phone call to Detective D’Abeau and give him heart failure?”

  Jeff grinned. “The guy could use a good heart attack. Serve him right for flirting with you the way he did.”

  “He wouldn’t be amused,” she warned.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Jeff replied reluctantly.

  She followed him back upstairs, using the actual steps this time. They reached the air vent and she looked up at it. “If I were the Ghost, I’d have left a rope hanging here to climb out on,” she remarked as she hoisted herself back into the vent.

  “Now that you mention it, there’s a rounded dent in that far corner of the vent opening,” Jeff commented. “Like a rope would make if a lot of weight were put on it.”

  “Good eye,” she replied. Jeff nodded, acknowledging the compliment as she asked, “Need a hand up?”

  “Nah.”

  He showed off a bit himself by jumping and grabbing the lip of the opening. While hanging there, he curled up in a ball and then shot his feet up and forward through the opening. As intellectually advanced as she might consider herself, a primitive part of her still thrilled at the masculine display of strength. Yup, she was officially a mess.

  They crawled back out onto the roof and re-secured the vent cover before easing over to the edge of the roof. From there it was an easy matter to retrace their route down to the porch, down the sidewalk between the cameras, and back out to their car.

  They reached their hotel room slightly before dawn and retired to their respective beds quickly. It felt exceedingly strange, knowing that Jeff was sleeping so nearby, enjoying the hotel’s six-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets against his skin the same way she was. Eventually, she resorted to a self-hypnosis exercise and managed to put herself to sleep, but it wasn’t an easy thing. Memories of sapphire eyes and a vibrant male body pressing intimately against hers kept interrupting her best efforts to clear her mind.

  A delicious smell of freshly fried bacon woke her up the next morning. She opened her eyes and jolted to see Jeff standing beside her bed, smiling down at her.

  “Good morning, beautiful.”

  Oh, crap. Pajama check. Thank God she’d pulled on a sloppy cotton T-shirt last night and not the whisper-thin silk nightshirt she usually favored. “Uh, hi.” She pushed her hair out of her face and rubbed her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

  “I brought my favorite cat burglar breakfast in bed.”

  She sat up, propping several pillows behind her back. He set a lap tray across her legs, and she stared down at steak, fried eggs, stewed tomatoes, bacon, a stack of pancakes, and half a red grapefruit. “I couldn’t eat all of this in a week of breakfasts!”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t know what you’d like, so I ordered a variety.”

  “Have you eaten yet?” She picked up a spoon and dug into the juicy grapefruit.

  “Heavens, no. My grandmère taught me that a gentleman always feeds his lady first.”

  “You know, I think I’m starting to like your grandmère.”

  His eyes clouded over. “Too bad you can’t meet her. She passed away a few years back. Cancer.”

  Quick sympathy speared through her. She knew how bad it hurt to lose a beloved anchor in one’s life. “I’m sorry.
”

  He shrugged, but there was old pain in the gesture. He changed subjects abruptly, and she went with the flow in total understanding. “Here’s the morning newspaper. You and I managed to stay out of it.”

  “Thank goodness. That’s the last thing we need.” She dug into the fried eggs and pushed him the stack of pancakes.

  She watched, appalled, while he drowned the flapjacks in syrup.

  As he cut into them, he asked, “So where’d the Ghost get the stickum he used to climb the column? Yours came in an aerosol can. If he flew to Barbados, he couldn’t have brought it with him. So where on the island did he pick it up?”

  She shrugged. “A sporting goods store, probably.”

  “Can’t be too many of those on this island. Think it’s worth tracking down?”

  “Our particular talents are probably better used elsewhere. Why don’t I mention it to Detective D’Abeau? He’s got plenty of manpower to check it out, and he’d love to hear from me again,” she said lightly.

  A black look flitted across Jeff’s gaze, but to his credit, he made no comment.

  Feeling a little guilty for the poke, she said quickly, “What are the odds that we can guess where the Ghost will strike next? I’m not fond of always being one step behind the guy like this. I’d rather be waiting for him at his next hit.”

  Jeff opened his mouth to reply, but a knock on the hallway door startled them just then, and he was out of the room before she could blink. She leaped out of bed and threw on pants, grabbing a pistol and sliding toward her bedroom door on bare feet.

  “You can come out,” Jeff called. “The hotel had some faxes to deliver.”

  She didn’t question the fact that he knew to tell her to stand down. He’d assumed she would cover his back, and he’d assumed correctly. She stowed the pistol in the holster sewn in the back waistband of her slacks and stepped out into the sunny living room. “Who’re the faxes from?”

  “Lloyd’s of London sent you a pile of stuff. And there’s one here from Viper—unless you know anyone else who signs their notes, V.”

  She scanned Viper’s fax quickly. “The supercomputer came up with a catalog called ‘Undiscovered Masterpieces of the Great Artists,’ published last year. All the paintings stolen so far have been in it.”

  Jeff gaped. “No kidding?”

  She passed him the paper. “Vanessa says she’s contacted someone who’s going to send a copy of the catalog to her. She’ll scan it and send us the file as soon as she gets it.”

  He nodded slowly. “The Ghost’s employer isn’t an art connoisseur if he’s using a catalog to identify what constitutes great art. Which means any rich bastard in the world could be our guy. I was really hoping a sophisticated trend would emerge in the collector’s taste. It would narrow the suspect list considerably.”

  His logic sounded on target. Which meant they couldn’t go through the Ghost’s client to get at the thief. They’d have to catch the guy directly.

  Jeff was flipping through the second sheaf of papers, the ones from Lloyd’s. “If we can get a hold of that catalog, we can check it against this list of insured art on the island and see if any more of the paintings in it are here in Barbados. Your friend Michael didn’t only send us Lloyd’s list of insured art, here. It looks like his buddies at Lloyd’s called all the other major insurers of art worldwide and compiled their lists of insured pieces in Barbados, too.”

  “Gotta love that British efficiency.”

  He grinned. “Yeah. And friends in high places.”

  “Amen. So. With that list in hand, do you think we can predict the next piece the Ghost might go after?”

  “It’s worth a shot.”

  Kat’s PDA beeped distinctively on her nightstand. “That’s the incoming e-mail signal. Maybe that’s the catalog now.” She dashed into the bedroom to check. “Yup, it’s the file.” Jeff hurried after her, and they huddled over the handheld device as the pages of the catalog scrolled across its tiny screen.

  She was not paying attention to the fact that she and Jeff were sitting on the side of the same bed. She was not imagining falling backward across it, their limbs tangled in naked abandon while they made passionate love with each other. She hardly saw the paintings go scrolling by, so vividly aware was she of Jeff only inches away from her, smelling like expensive shampoo and subtle aftershave. He smelled good enough to eat. She probably smelled like the sour sweat of last night’s exertions, and her hair was no doubt sticking up all over her head like broom straw.

  She mumbled, “Mind if I jump in the shower while you compare this catalog to the list of pieces here on the island?”

  Such was Jeff’s concentration on the incoming file that he barely acknowledged her as she slipped out of the room. Or maybe he was just covering up being as flustered as she was. She hoped the latter was the case.

  When she stepped out of the bathroom a half hour later, wearing form-fitting white yoga pants and a matching tank top, lotioned, powdered, perfumed and primped within an inch of her life, Jeff looked up from the papers…and stopped cold.

  “Wow. You look fantastic.”

  She smiled even as she mentally shook her head at her absurdly pleased reaction to the compliment. She had to admit, having him around did wonders for her ego. “Any matches?”

  “Yes. Several. What say for our third date we stake out a ghost? I’ll even throw in a picnic.”

  Another date. Complete with the close quarters and adrenaline rush of a stakeout? And food, no less? How could a girl say no to that? Her mouth curved up into a smile. “I had no idea that running a Special Ops mission could be so civilized. We Medusas have obviously been doing it all wrong.”

  “Obviously.” His dimples flashed and her knees went weak on cue. “Stick with me, babe. I’ll show you the ropes.”

  “Or maybe I’ll show you how it’s done, big guy.”

  His dancing gaze met hers. “We haven’t even begun to have fun yet, darlin’.”

  Chapter 9

  From the catalog, Jeff picked out the likeliest painting of the three that were still left to steal here in Barbados, and he and Kat obtained grudging permission from Detective D’Abeau to stake it out. But after Kat had advanced a plausible “theory” of how the Ghost had gained entrance to the Valliard estate, the cop had owed her one. Not to mention that she’d flirted with him some more. The memory of her casting come-hither looks at that cop continued to set Jeff’s teeth on edge. It might be just business, but he still didn’t like it.

  Kat’s buddy in London had sent them the house layouts and security plans of the likely target, along with a note that of the three properties they’d identified as being probable targets, this one had the least extensive security system. If the Ghost was going to strike again, Jeff was betting they’d pegged his next mark correctly.

  He and Kat spent all afternoon poring over the house plans and wiring diagrams, planning how they’d rob the place if they were the Ghost. Anticipation at the idea of nabbing the bastard made Jeff edgy. His tension had nothing to do with the mesmerizing woman leaning over the drawings across from him, giving him tantalizingly incomplete glimpses down her shirt of small but perfect breasts that his hands itched to touch and his mouth itched to taste. He was a cad to look, but his gaze broke completely out of his control every time she leaned across the table just so.

  This mansion, a sprawling one-story affair unoriginally called Shangri-La, had copious security measures inside the house as well as out. Kat suggested several outrageous methods of bypassing the system…things even an acrobat of her caliber would surely not be able to pull off.

  But when he challenged her on it, she casually claimed she could do everything she was suggesting. And somehow, he believed her. He’d about passed out when she took off down that railing last night. She’d looked like a circus performer running along a tightrope. He’d never met another operator who could do some of the things she could. And damn if his imagination didn’t keep straying to adventurou
s things he’d love to try with her in bed that took advantage of her athleticism and flexibility.

  After hours of brainstorming together, they arrived at the conclusion that the Ghost would have to disable the entire security system, or simply set it off and move in fast to make the hit and leave before the police arrived. And, frankly, if there was a way to turn off the security system and not have the police know about it instantly, the two of them couldn’t find it.

  Which was outstanding news for them. If the Ghost were operating in a two- or three-minute window to get in and get out, they reasoned he’d have to eschew fancy circus maneuvers and just make a fast grab at the painting in question. Which also meant they stood a decent chance of nabbing the guy.

  Jeff was exultant. Finally, the setup he’d been waiting for to move in and catch this bastard.

  Ideally, they’d be inside the mansion for this stakeout, but the Bajan police didn’t trust them that much, flirting or no. And frankly, neither he nor Kat wanted the exposure to suspicion if something went wrong and the Ghost got away. In that event, they’d be left as the only people known to have been inside the house when the painting went missing.

  The painting was one of Turner’s smaller landscapes, a brilliant piece. If Jeff were an art collector with ten million bucks burning a hole in his pocket, he’d snap it up in a heartbeat. The art catalog Viper had sent them raved about the piece, claiming it was one of the finest privately owned landscapes in the world. Oh yeah. Their greedy collector wouldn’t be able to resist this tasty morsel.

  Jeff retired to take a nap before the night’s festivities began. He slept restlessly, dreaming of dark eyes and ivory skin and silky black hair falling down around him. That girl was a fever in his blood. He thought about her constantly, and none of his thoughts were platonic in nature. How in hell he was going to keep his hands off her for days or weeks to come, he hadn’t the faintest idea. And he suspected this torturous itch would get a whole lot worse before it got better. He wanted her worse than any woman he’d ever laid eyes on.

  When he finally got up and went out into the living room, he was startled by the sight that greeted him. Kat had pushed all the furniture back to the walls, and was in the midst of performing a complex and insanely difficult martial arts routine. Oh, Lord. And now he had these images to add to his fantasies of her. The thought of what they could do with a few of her contortions plumb stole his breath away.