by Cherry Adair
To hell with it.
Pushing off the rim with her palms, she withdrew her legs from inside the tube, then crouched on the outer edge, like a frog about to hop. She grinned. Damn, this was fun. Slowly, she rose to straddle the opening, arms extended for balance to stand eleven feet above the floor.
The victory smile slipped from her face as she heard a sound to her right. She froze. No, not a sound, more a feeling of that dark presence. Someone else was out there watching her.
The hair on the back of her neck prickled, and her heart leapt into her throat.
Her imagination.
No. God, no. She felt someone there.
Where? She looked around again, careful not to topple off her perch, trying to discern who, where, in the inky blackness.
Nothing but the thick darkness, and the approaching twin beams of the guards’ flashlights looming ever closer.
Time to get the hell out of Dodge.
Flexing her knees, arms raised above her head, palms held high and flat, she jumped. Her left palm struck the air-conditioning grid above her head with a soft click while she grabbed the edge of the exposed opening with her right hand and swung, not quite balanced, for precious seconds like a chimpanzee at the zoo. She managed to haul herself into the opening, slither her body into the duct, and press the grate back in place.
Not a moment too soon.
All hell broke loose. The alarm shrieked, the noise deafening in the confined metal shaft. “Shit!” Someone had activated the alarms. She wasn’t worried. They weren’t going to find her. But she was cutting it close, having them start to look for her when she was still on the premises. It had never been this close before.
Shouts. Running feet. Brilliant lights. The metallic crash of security doors slamming shut over the regular doors, and the shrill scream of the alarms reverberating throughout the building. All amplified in the narrow confines of the metal ducts.
Scrambling on all fours, Taylor almost went deaf from the sound of the alarms and sirens bouncing and echoing through the shaft. The black silk pouch secured to her thigh was a solid, happy weight despite the drama going on below.
Even with the clarion sound of the alarms reverberating in her ears and vibrating through her palms and knees, it never occurred to her that she could be caught red-handed. But the adrenaline rush of the close call made her blood sing and her heart thump arrhythmically as she crawled faster than she’d ever crawled in her life.
“Move, Taylor, move.” It would take nine minutes to traverse the labyrinth of ducts and emerge through an exterior side wall vent four stories above the ground. And every second, every nanosecond, she felt . . . it—him, breathing down her neck. Like a living Sword of Damocles. She crawled faster.
Ten
3:00 A.M.
OCTOBER 9
HOUSTON
Feeling considerably calmer several hours later, Taylor strolled across the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel in the wee hours of the morning. It was almost 2:00 A.M., but she wasn’t tired; she was invigorated by a job well done. She barely noticed the admiring glances of several men leaving the lobby bar as they passed her.
The red silk Betsey Johnson slip dress exposed a lot of skin. It was designed, and worn, to attract attention. Taylor wanted people to remember the blonde in the sexy red dress, both leaving and returning to the hotel.
She picked up speed, heading toward the elevator bank in a flash of bare leg and shimmering silk. She pushed aside the frilly cuff of the lace glove on her left wrist to check her watch. For the past five hours she’d been looking forward to a long shower, a glass of champagne, and a good piece of chocolate. She’d spent the rest of her evening mentally recapping the heist. She knew she almost made a false step earlier when she’d imagined a Boogeyman watching her as she worked. But it was no Boogeyman who had sounded the alarm. She hadn’t set it off. So who had?
“Work it out. Move on,” she murmured. In the morning after a good night’s sleep, she’d go over each step of tonight’s heist to analyze how anyone could possibly have known the museum was being robbed on that particular night. At that precise time.
The elevator doors pinged as they opened, and Taylor stepped inside just as a man dashing across the lobby yelled, “Hold it!”
She automatically put her hand out to keep the doors from closing. The guy, tousled haired and dressed in a dark suit, was tall and interesting-looking, with a lean, hunter’s face and penetrating eyes. He gave her short red dress and blond hair a glance of approval as he jogged the last few yards to the elevator bank. The corners of his eyes crinkled attractively as he stepped into the elevator and shot her a smile. “Thanks.”
He reminded Taylor a little of that guy from San Cristóbal. The memory of that night made her pulse leap. And not necessarily in a good way. She had no trouble remembering his name. Huntington St. John. She just didn’t want to jinx herself by thinking it.
The man turned around to face the door, glanced at the control panel, but didn’t make a selection. They must be on the same floor. Her floor.
Coincidence?
Oh, for— She shook her head at her paranoia. Get a grip. Taylor smiled back absently, then opened her small clutch for her key card.
“Good party?” he asked politely.
She glanced up and said wryly, “It had its moments.”
They stood side by side, watching the numbers above the door. Every one of Taylor’s senses was on red alert. She remembered the sensation of being watched, and tried to get a good look at the guy beside her from the corner of her eye.
After all, you weren’t paranoid if they really were after you.
The doors pinged open on the ninth floor and they both stepped out. “Good night,” the man said politely, turning left.
“ ’Night.” Taylor turned right, only realizing when she turned to see where he was going how tense she’d been. He opened a door way at the other end of the corridor and disappeared inside. The breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding released in a sigh.
She shook her head. “Okay, paranoia’s one thing. Psychotic is a whole other thing.” Lord. She needed a vacation.
She’d settle for sleeping in, and having the massage she’d booked for later that afternoon. In two days she was leaving for Hawaii, and the Yashitos’ annual beach party. And the fabulous tanzanite and diamond collection Yoko’s husband had “acquired” for her from Mrs. Jonathan Ling in New York.
A working holiday, then, she thought with a smile, as she pushed open the door to her room. She put a hand out for the light switch on the wall as she snapped the door closed, locking it automatically behind her.
Before her fingers found the main switch, the light beside the bed blazed on, illuminating both the room and the man sprawled on her bed, hands behind his head, looking at her with the feral eyes of a predator. Maybe not an animal. He was too . . . elegant for that. But certainly not a mortal either.
Oh, damn! Think of the devil . . .
Seeing Huntington St. John again, especially since she’d thought his name not two minutes ago, and therefore jinxed herself, made dread lurch in the pit of Taylor’s stomach. She’d underestimated his determination. And that mistake had come back to bite her in the ass. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was in big trouble. Ignoring the shiver that slithered up her spine, she opened her eyes wide.
Woman alone. Strange man in her room. She would be both startled and afraid. Neither was hard to fake. She sure as hell was startled to see him. And one look at the tundra in his eyes and she knew she had cause to be scared.
He gave her a look of undisguised hostility from pale, chilly eyes. His lean, muscled body looked poised for . . . attack? Poised to block her? Poised for—something. He had a dangerous stillness about him, lethal power ruthlessly harnessed. Despite his relaxed pose, she strongly suspected he was pissed off and ready to detonate.
She hadn’t been able to get a good look at him back in South America. But her vision was 20/20 no
w, and for a second Taylor’s pulse accelerated with a purely feminine response. He looked even better than he’d felt. And that was saying something. He wasn’t so much good-looking as he was arresting. His dark hair, combed straight back off his face, had grown a little too long out of an expensive cut, but still looked immaculate. His tanned face was lean, almost severe, with slashes of black brows over glittering storm-colored eyes. His tall, powerful body was clothed in dark pants and an open-necked, crisply ironed, pale blue dress shirt. He had the look of wealth; suave and elegant. He also had the look of a guy with a very long, very slow fuse. She had a sinking feeling she was about to see it blow.
He sure as hell is persistent, she thought as her elemental awareness of him gave way to anger mingled with a large dose of fear. What does he really want from me? Surely he’s not still after those stupid computer disks?
She’d considered returning to Switzerland to look in the box and see what the fuss was about. But she’d had better things to do. Now she was sorry she hadn’t taken the time. She was really curious. Curious, but getting more nervous by the second.
Any normal person would jump to fill in the thick silence. She didn’t dare until she knew just what his game was, and he didn’t seem to be bothered by it at all. He’d make a good chess player. Or an excellent cat waiting at a mouse hole.
What he was, she thought with an inward shiver, was a predator.
After what seemed like several days, his sensual mouth curved into a small smile. It was a benign smile, but the hair on the back of her nape rose. “Hello, darling,” he said with soft menace, the upper-crust British accent a little more pronounced than she remembered it. “Have a profitable evening?”
Wary, every sense alert, she felt behind her for the door handle. It refused to turn. Fine. She’d bullshit her way out of this. Play the affronted hotel guest. Lord. How had he found her again? Until two months ago, nobody had ever caught her. First that woman had come to her hotel in San Cristóbal. Then he’d shown up. And he’d done it twice. She pushed back panic and concentrated on righteous annoyance.
“Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my room?” she demanded, keeping her attention on him while her mind raced with options.
The door behind her clearly wasn’t going to open. He’d disabled the locking mechanism. She dropped her hand to her side. Given a few uninterrupted seconds, she could easily undo whatever he’d done to the lock. Unfortunately, she didn’t have that luxury.
The sliding door on the far wall opened no more than nine inches and led out to a narrow faux balcony. She already knew slipping through that opening was possible. Knowing she had a way out was reassuring.
“No. Never mind introducing yourself. Just get out,” she said furiously. It wasn’t acting. She was the indignant woman returning from a fun party to find a strange, threatening male in her room. She couldn’t explain it—she simply became someone else when she needed to be someone else.
She could huff and puff as much as she liked, apparently; he wasn’t going anywhere. The man looked like he’d taken root.
His mouth twitched as he followed her line of sight to the drape-covered doors and back again. He gave her a benign look from steel-gray eyes. Taylor wasn’t used to a man looking at her with such complete dispassion. And being the perverse creature that she was, she found herself intrigued. She shoved the ridiculous notion out of her head as he said gently, “The slider’s been disabled as well.”
She opened her eyes wide. “Good Lord. Surely you don’t think I’d climb out of a window nine stories above the street?” She’d rehearsed doing exactly that, three times, yesterday. She knew, to the second, how long it took.
Despite being on the ragged end of furious with her, Hunt could still admire her cojones for putting on such a bloody good show. “If it would save your ass, yes, I do,” he told her.
Her expression and tone would have done a Broadway actress proud. It was only the telltale hammering of her pulse at the base of her pale throat that gave her away.
She kept her back to the door, but he saw every taut muscle in her body ready to spring into action any second.
“What do you want?” Not a flicker of recognition in her eyes. Green contacts tonight, he noticed. The lady was one cool customer. There was a faint, almost imperceptible tightening at the corners of her eyes, but her expression showed only annoyance mixed with curiosity. She gave no indication that coming back to her hotel room in the early hours of the morning—alone—to find a large, pissed-off male sprawled on her bed was anything more than a mild annoyance.
Well, he’d give her annoyance.
Hunt took in the short, spiky, silvery blonde hair and clingy red dress—what there was of it—and hunger flickered dangerously to life in his body. With all that bare skin, the short black lace gloves covering her hands shot his lust level higher.
“You’re late,” he told her, not moving from his prone position as he did a lazy inspection of a body that he remembered only too well. The lady was built for speed, with sleek lines and elegant curves. She had a little more cleavage than he remembered, but he hadn’t forgotten her pale pink nipples, or the feel of her creamy skin beneath his hand.
They locked gazes, and the flicker inside him became a flame. Hunt tamped it down with ruthless control. She was everything he fancied. Sophisticated, sexy, available.
And God only knew, everything he bloody well despised. A liar. A thief. An outstanding con woman. She should have been completely forgettable. So why the hell, when he hadn’t had anything that passed for a relationship in the last—however many years—had he thought about this particular woman for two months and three days, 24/7?
Because she had something he wanted. That was why. She’d stalled an important op, leaving them precious little time. He’d forget about her the second she handed over those codes.
He dragged his mind firmly back to business.
The sapphires weren’t in that tiny purse she held, and she sure as hell didn’t have them anywhere on her. The red silk fit her body like a good paint job. “That was quite a chase you led us on tonight,” he observed. “I must say, I’m impressed by your ingenuity.”
She frowned, as though he were speaking Farsi.
“Scaling the outside wall of the museum like Spider-Man—no, that would be Spider-woman—impressive. Running behind that industrial park and emerging dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and a sweatshirt . . . You’re a regular little Girl Guide, aren’t you?
“Let’s see—next you took a cab across town to the Hyatt. Another change of clothes there. That was the brown business suit and mouse brown hair, right? The cab ride to the airport led us by the nose for a good ninety minutes. Yet another change of clothes, this change of clothes, and another cab ride back into town to the party on Franklin. Enjoyed the party, did you? You hung around for two hours, eight minutes, called yet another cab, and here you are.”
She’d led his people on a merry chase. He grudgingly admired her ingenuity and thoroughness. She’d almost lost them several times. And that was a hell of a thing to have to admit.
She stalked across the room, picked up the phone on the dresser, then punched a long red nail at the zero. “That’s a fascinating story.” She kept an eye on him as she waited for the hotel operator to come on the line. “But you clearly have me confused with someone who gives a damn.”
Hunt heard the dial tone from the bed. She glared at him, then glared at the phone. Punched Operator again. Same dial tone.
“Disabled,” he told her.
She put the phone down with admirable restraint, considering that her heart was beating fast enough for him to see the throb of it at the base of her long slender throat. Fear or anger? She tapped her fingernail on the back of the receiver, the delicate click, click, click sounding out in the room like another heartbeat.
She gave him a hot glare. “I’m too damn tired to play games.” Her hands curled into fists at her sides as she stood her ground. “Get out
of my room before I do something violent.”
“Like what?” Hunt asked politely. “Hit me over the head with a table lamp and handcuff me to the bed?”
“Some woman beat you up?” she asked, amused. “Poor baby. Did you forget to eat your Wheaties that morning?”
He swung his feet over the side of the mattress and stood. He gave her points. She didn’t back up. “Think you’re going to get another shot at me?” he asked, threading menace through the silk.
Big green eyes widened. “Who, me? Beat you up? Are you kidding? I’d break a nail.”
Oh, well done, he thought furiously. The angle of her head, the widened eyes, the mocking tone all indicated a woman not smart enough to fear him. She should be bloody terrified at this point. He was ready to—Bloody hell. “No violence.” Hunt let his tone convey that that card wasn’t completely off the table. “Give me the disks and no one will get hurt.”
“If you’ve been in here for more than five seconds,” she said, cool as a cucumber, “you know I don’t have a computer, let alone disks. I have nothing worth stealing.”
Her expression didn’t waver. She kept those expressive eyes fixed on his face as she surreptitiously opened the small clutch purse at her side with two fingers of her right hand. He remembered the feel of those dexterous fingers, and gritted his teeth with annoyance. Hunt grabbed her arm.
Her wrist felt slender and fragile in his grip as he jerked it up and plucked the small beaded job out of her nerveless fingers. “What have you got in here?” he demanded with lethal softness. “A gun?”
She shot him an incredulous look. “A lipstick you— Hey!”
He kept a firm lock on her wrist as he dumped the contents of her bag onto the rumpled spread. Several hundred dollars in tens and twenties unfurled, a credit card, driver’s license . . . “And what’s this?” He tsked. “Mace?”
She shrugged creamy shoulders. “A girl can’t be too careful.”
Hunt realized that she’d done something to the bones in her wrist. Compressed them, contorted them or something, because her entire arm felt thinner, less substantial. He tightened his fingers until she stopped whatever the hell it was she’d been doing. “We can make this easy,” he told her. “Or we can make it hard. I only want one thing from you. Hand it over and you can go back to your life of crime unimpeded.”
