Caught

by Kristin Hardy

  He sent her a revolted look. “You’re joking, right? Only tech-support dweebs at Computers R Us wear belt clips.”

  “Which you are not.”

  “Which I, most definitely, am not. My phone’ll be just fine here,” he said, setting it on the table. And then he stared beyond it. “What is that?” he asked warily.

  “Where?”

  “There. On the table.” He pointed to a long form lying on a wheeled table behind the sarcophagus and shrouded in translucent plastic.

  Enjoyment glimmered in her eyes. “That’s Felix.”

  “Felix?”

  “Our new mummy.”

  Alex pressed his lips together and walked over closer to it. “A mummy. You mean like a four-thousand-year-old dead-guy mummy?”

  “Thirty-five hundred in this case, we think, but yes. We just got him in a few days ago.”

  “Can I look at him?”

  “You might not want to,” she cautioned, but he’d already pulled up the plastic.

  “Jesus. You didn’t tell me he was unwrapped.”

  “Only partially. Felix has had some challenging times.”

  “So I smell.” It was faint but distinct. Now that he’d lifted the plastic, there was the sweet scent of decay. Still, curiosity overcame his initial surprise, prompting him to raise the sheet again. “Dressed for casual Friday, huh, Felix?” He dropped the sheet back down and focused on the problem at hand. “Okay. So let’s see…locked door, no windows, no phones, no one coming when we call, and a thirty-five-hundred-year-old mummy. This is beginning to get entertaining.”

  “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.” Julia tucked the plastic back in place. “Personally, I’ve got plans for this weekend. I can’t stay here.”

  “Not even to keep Felix company?”

  “No.”

  “Not even to keep me company?” He stepped up behind her to rest his hands on her hips, those deliciously slender, surprisingly flexible hips, and leaned in to nibble on her earlobe.

  “Alex.” She twisted away. “This is serious.”

  His mouth curved. “Don’t worry about it,” he said easily. “The only place people get locked in for days is the movies. Security will be by in a while to let us out.”

  “Let’s hope it’s soon.”

  “Anyway, there’s got to be another way out of here.” He began to prowl the room. “No extra doors in the book room, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What’s this room in here?” he asked, opening the door next to the repository.

  “The scientific lab.”

  He reached inside to flip on the lights and blinked. “Christ. What are all these gadgets?” The room was as modern as the rest of the lab was retro, with shining white walls and gleaming chrome-and-black equipment.

  “Oh, a scanning electron microscope, a laser, a Fourier—”

  “Okay, I get it.” He scanned the room and ducked back out. “If we’re bored later, you can teach me how to use them.”

  “We’re not going to be here later, remember?”

  “Exactly.”

  The main conservation lab was in the shape of a thick sideways L balanced on its short leg. To the right of the main door lay the inner wall that formed the library and the scientific lab; combined with the rest of the L, it formed a rectangle maybe fifty feet deep by a hundred feet long.

  “What’s down here?” Alex asked, skirting the outer wall of the scientific lab to follow the long arm of the L.

  “More workspace. The supply room. The chemical shower. The bathroom.”

  “Thank God for small favors. What’s behind this door?” He twisted the knob with no more success than the front door.

  “Oh, that’s the head conservator’s office. Paul Wingate. It’s just a nook, though. No way out.”

  “Let’s not rule anything out sight unseen.” He studied the modern lock on the door. “That one we might have a chance at.”

  “For all the good it will do you. And there aren’t any ways out of the supply room, either, so I guess that means we’re stuck.”

  “Not for long. I’m telling you, security will find us.”

  Julia paced across the lab. “What if they don’t?”

  He couldn’t help watching her. “We get out Monday morning when everybody comes to work.”

  “I can’t wait that long. I can’t miss this thing tomorrow night.”

  “What is it?”

  “The New York Performing Arts Institute gala. My mother’s pet project. She’s been working on it for four months and if I’m not there, I’ll be hearing about it for at least that long.” She moved restlessly across the lab, scanning the walls and ceiling, picking up the phone again, only to shake her head.

  “What about a computer?” Alex asked suddenly.

  “A computer?”

  “Sure. E-mail. The Internet. We ought to be able to get a message to someone, even just to ask them to call the cops for us.” He looked around. “Don’t they have one in here?”

  “I don’t know,” Julia said dubiously. “There’s a computer in the rare-book repository but it’s off-line, just for indices and electronic research.”

  “Nothing out here?”

  She shook her head helplessly. “Too much dust from all the stone. It’s not the greatest environment. Most of the staff have cubes upstairs. Paul’s the only one with an office down here.”

  “And his is locked.” Alex walked over to the workbench.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for some wire.”

  “And that would be because…?”

  “I’m going to try to pick that lock.”

  “Oh, of course. Got experience at it, do you?”

  “I’m a man of many talents.”

  She watched as he located some stiff wire and used pliers to bend the top quarter inch to a right angle. “Did you apprentice with a second-story man in your youth?”

  “Hey, I got my Boy Scout merit badge in B and E.”

  Julia snorted but watched with interest as Alex nudged his ersatz picks into the lock on Paul’s door. “I should object, you know. You’re violating the privacy of a staffer.”

  He flicked her a glance. “Duly noted. I’ll lock up again when I’m done, and if you want to stay in here as penance when they come to let me out, feel free.” He closed his eyes as he manipulated the tools, completely focused on the hidden workings of the lock.

  And somehow, she found herself completely focused on him. This was ridiculous. Quite aside from the fact that she’d already decided their…arrangement was history, she had far more important things to worry about than the length of his lashes and the way his five-o’clock shadow darkened his jaw.

  She made herself look away. “I don’t see what good it’ll do you if you get in, anyway. You don’t know his password.”

  “It might be scribbled down somewhere. It might be something common. Mine’s set to remember so that all I have to do is hit Enter.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “You’re not supposed to do that.”

  He flicked her an amused look. “Uh-oh, are you going to tell?”

  “Alex—”

  “Look, it’s a long shot, but we might get lucky.”

  “We’ll be lucky to even get through the door.”

  “When have I not been lucky?” Alex grunted. “Got it!” Rising, he stuck a hand inside to turn on the light, swinging the door wide and stepping into the familiar chaos that was Paul’s world.

  Alex stared, hands on his hips. “Man, how does he get any work done in here?” he asked in disgust.

  “People who break and enter don’t have a whole lot of room for complaint,” Julia pointed out, but she didn’t blame him.

  The eight-by-ten office was crammed with books, papers and tools, cast-off silicone molds of carvings and a host of other things Julia couldn’t identify. The desk nudged against the far wall was nearly covered with papers and books. The spare chair merely provided a resting place for s
till more. A chemical-stained lab coat hung from a hook on the door.

  Not for the first time Julia wondered how the irascible conservator ever managed to find anything. Brilliant, he might be, but neat was not his strong suit.

  “How does he rate a laptop?” Alex demanded in an injured tone. “I begged for six months and they wouldn’t give me one.”

  Julia bit her lip to cover a smile. “He travels to a lot of conservation conferences.”

  “I travel.”

  She drew up the extra chair. “I guess he’s cuter than you are.”

  “Hard to believe,” Alex muttered dusting the computer off. He reached beyond it to pick up a coffee mug stuffed with metal rods. “What is this stuff?”

  “Oh, scalpels, dental tools, glass stirrers…” Julia reached over to pull out a hollow brown rod that looked like a paintbrush without the brush. “And African porcupine quills.”

  “African porc—” Alex gave her a suspicious look. “You’re joking.”

  “Nope,” she said serenely. “They make great probing tools.”

  “And the bags of dirt?”

  “Excavation dirt. We save everything. You never know when you might need it.”

  “You’re all nuts,” he muttered, staring at a jumble of small stone and plaster blocks at the back of the desk. He stacked some books on one of the piles and reached for the laptop.

  “Oh, don’t put those there.” Adroitly, Julia shifted the books away from the wooden box Alex had set them on. “That’s an artifact box.”

  “And it’ll protect whatever’s inside. Isn’t that the point?”

  “The last thing we need is for it to fall over or something.” Julia glanced more closely at the box and made a noise of annoyance.

  “What’s wrong?” Alex asked.

  She blew out a breath. “Paul. He’s got this little problem with following procedure. This is still supposed to be in inventory storage. It’s still got the pull slip on it.” Julia cracked open the top to reveal a stone figure of Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the dead.

  “Maybe he’s trying to clean or do conservation stuff or whatever.”

  “He still should have done his paperwork. He didn’t even notify me.”

  “‘Your rules mean nothing to me’?”

  “More like ‘My work is too important for me to worry about your stupid bureaucracy.’”

  “Sounds like a charmer. So why don’t you lay down the law to him?”

  Julia sighed. “It’s not my place. He doesn’t report to me. And, anyway, he’s really, really talented. Last summer, we cleaned up our inventory. We get lots of bits and pieces of things in here from digs, stuff that we don’t know where it belongs. Paul found the nose of Xerxes.”

  Alex’s mouth twitched. “The nose of Xerxes?”

  “A marble bust we’ve had for forty years. For forty years, it’s been missing its nose and Paul recognized it at a glance. He’s got this amazing sense for the shape and form of things. When someone’s that good, you cut them a lot of slack.”

  “So he’s sloppy. Nobody’s good at everything,” he observed. “Except me, of course.”

  “Except you,” she said drily. “Although you might wait to congratulate yourself until you’ve gotten the job done.”

  He gave her a look that shivered into her bones. “I always get the job done, darlin’,” he drawled.

  “Big talk.”

  “It’s not just talk. You of all people should know that. Anyway, sloppy isn’t always a bad thing,” he said cheerfully. “Our boy slapped his computer shut a little too quickly, before it finished closing down.”

  “So?”

  He gestured at the e-mail application on the screen. “So everything’s still running. That means we’ll still be online.”

  Despite herself, she was impressed. “That’ll help. Good job.”

  “Feel free to shower me with all the affection you like,” he invited.

  Julia rolled her eyes. “Just send the e-mail, will you? We’ve got to get out of here and notify someone that the amulet is gone.”

  “Long gone, at this point. It’s not like the cops are going to find them.”

  “I hope they do. That amulet might be the White Star, stolen from Zoey Zander’s collection.”

  “The Stanhope heist?”

  “Yes.”

  Alex’s fingers flew over the keys. “What is it, Egyptian?”

  “I don’t think so. A neighboring kingdom. There’s some sort of a superstition about it, that it brings good luck to the pure of heart.”

  Alex made a noise of irritation at the computer. “It didn’t bring good luck to us.”

  “You’re hardly pure of heart.”

  “But I’m pure in other places.” He frowned and tapped some more keys. “So what happens with Marissa?”

  “Don’t remind me,” Julia groaned and dropped her head into her hands. “How am I going to tell her? She brings the amulet here to me, I tell her I’ll take care of it and it winds up stolen. It’s going to reflect terribly on the museum. And me.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ve got a bigger problem than that,” he said grimly.

  “What do you mean?”

  He pointed to the screen. “The network’s down.”

  5

  Friday, 7:45 p.m.

  “WHAT?” Julia stared at Alex.

  “The network’s down. Look.”

  Network not available. The black letters on the screen seemed to vibrate, taunting her. “How can it be down?” she demanded. “I don’t believe this. No phones, no cell phone, no Internet. What the hell’s going on?” Unable to sit still, she jumped up and began to pace. “What are we supposed to do?”

  Alex considered. “We could have sex.”

  “Will you be serious for once?” she snapped. “This is all your fault.”

  His mouth dropped open. “What did I have to do with it?”

  “If it wasn’t for having sex, we wouldn’t be locked up here in the first place.” She strode out of the lab. “If you’d just listened to what I said this morning. But no, you had to come down here and distract me and then start fooling around—”

  “Oh, I don’t know, I sort of got the impression you liked the fooling around. Or were those hummy noises you made a signal to go away?”

  She flushed. “That’s not the point.”

  “That’s exactly the point,” he countered. “I wasn’t in there alone and you weren’t exactly saying no. Who was it who unzipped my pants?”

  It mortified her that he was right, mortified her that she had zero self-control where he was concerned. “Fine. So I got into it.”

  “Hell yeah, you got into it and so did I. Why is that such a bad thing? Why don’t you just admit that you want me as much as I want you?”

  “I don’t want to want you,” she almost wailed. “Look at what’s happened here. It’s a perfect example of why you don’t belong in my life.”

  “Why, because someone got in here while we were busy and walked off with the goods? You know what they’ve said about the Stanhope job. It was pulled by a professional. You don’t think a pro would have found a way to get the amulet anyway?” He took a step closer to her. “More to the point, would you really have wanted to be down here alone when he came looking?”

  It stopped her for a moment, but then she recovered. “What makes you so sure it was a he?”

  “He, she, doesn’t matter. You saw Kill Bill, didn’t you?”

  “I sincerely doubt the amulet was stolen by a sword-wielding assassin in a yellow tracksuit.”

  “True, yellow is too garish. But you have to admit, another color is a possibility.”

  “Will you be serious for once?” And then she stared at him, suddenly appalled. “You don’t think he watched us, do you?”

  Alex’s mouth twitched. “I don’t think tracksuited assassins are into that sort of thing.”

  “I never did that sort of thing before I met you.” She began pacing again.
>
  “You never had sex?” He shook his head pityingly. “Think of all the years you squandered.”

  “I mean I never let myself get finagled into having sex in public places where people could watch.”

  “You call this public? After the hotel balcony and the jazz cruise and the taxicab? This is practically private.”

  “Except for our friend.”

  “Forget about him. Let’s go back to the finagling part.”

  “Easy for you to say. You weren’t the one who had your top unbuttoned.”

  “That’s right, you did,” he said softly, sliding his fingers down the nape of her neck.

  “Stop that.” She batted his hands away. “That’s how this whole thing got started. All we need is for the security guards to come in and find us next.” Abruptly she let out a despairing sigh. “If they ever do.”

  “WAKE UP, HARRY.”

  The stocky, gray-haired security guard sitting before the bank of television monitors jumped. “Jeez, Fletcher, you putz, you scared the hell outta me.”

  “Nice to have you awake.”

  “Funny guy. You’re a funny guy,” Harry muttered bad temperedly as Fletcher crossed the monitor room to flop down in one of the dilapidated chairs.

  “So, you been doing anything besides feeding your face while I been out patrolling?” Fletcher asked, picking up Harry’s empty can of barbecue Pringles.

  “Hey, it ain’t easy to watch eight monitors at once. It takes skill, which is why you’re not qualified. Just walk the floors until we get you trained and everything’ll be fine. Unless you want to go back to day shift.”

  “Hell no. Longest eight hours around, standing in one of those galleries watching people walk through. It’s enough to get you half-nutty, you know what I mean? You start making up stories about people.”

  “I don’t think that’s the job, Fletcher, I think you were half-nutty to begin with.”

  “Ha-ha. Like you’re not, sitting here all night staring at TVs that don’t change. Or are you focused on the one that does?” he asked, pointing at the portable television Harry had set up.

  “Hey, it’s the Yanks against the Mets. No way I’m gonna miss a chance to see Pedro kick Yankee butt.”

  “And of course you ain’t gonna miss anything on the other TVs while Jeter’s hitting a long ball off him.”