A Touch of Minx (21 page)

"Just motion-activated lights. That doesn't much matter during the day."

He was probably still angry, but at least he had the experience to know that everything had its place and that this was not the time to snipe or argue. Instead he stood silently at the corner of the house and kept watch while she hoisted up the nearest bathroom window in what would have been the servants' quarters nearly a century earlier.

Climbing into the small guest bathroom was easy, and it took her only a minute to creep down the short corridor and open the back door for him. On her own she probably could have been upstairs and in the room by now, locked or not, but since she had a second pair of eyes—and somebody to help lift the armor—she wasn't going to leave him standing outside in the open.

As soon as he stepped inside she closed and locked the door again. No sense in leaving any trail to follow. "Today," she whispered against his ear, "is one of the days the two housekeepers come in to clean. Keep your eyes and ears open."

He nodded.

"Let's get a move on. This way."

They went up the stairs, Rick two paces behind her. She stopped three steps from the top and sank down onto her hands and knees, creeping up to look down the long hallway in front of them. With the housekeepers there the door and window alarms were off, but she didn't want to stumble across anyone. And just because she knew of two employees didn't mean there weren't five or six others around. Rick had over a dozen just at Solano Dorado.

The hallway stood empty except for the glass-encased kimonos and Kabuki costumes. There were plenty of places to hide, but hopefully she and Rick were the only ones being stealthy today.

"These are nice," Rick breathed.

"Stop sightseeing." She'd known he would like the displays, though; if they decided on a costume exhibit for the Rawley Park gallery, she would recommend a similar method of presentation.

"Apologies."

A door opened halfway down the hallway. Moving fast, Samantha shoved Rick between two of the displays while she ducked behind one on the opposite side of the wide hall. A maid emerged, vacuum cleaner and dust cloths with her. She closed the door behind her, moved one room closer to where they hid, and went through that door.

With a half grin, her heart beating hard and fast in her chest, Samantha moved back to the middle of the hallway and padded forward toward the two turret rooms at the far end. So far the B and E had been simple, and it wouldn't have been that much more challenging at night, except for the additional task of circumventing the perimeter alarms. Maybe Mr. Samurai relied on his reputation to keep people out of the house. She couldn't come up with any other good reason why this house had never been hit.

Then again, from what Frank had said, maybe it had been hit, and Toombs had taken care of the intruder or intruders himself. Well, Toombs was out playing golf, and the only pointy swords she wanted to see were the ones belonging to Minamoto Yoritomo.

As they reached the turret rooms, she grabbed Rick's arm. "If that door opens," she said, indicating the one from which vacuuming sounds currently emanated, "get into the room behind us as fast as you can."

"And you?" he whispered.

"If I can't get this door in time, I'll be right behind you. Watch my back."

"Always." Rick positioned himself between her and the hallway—her knight in shining armor even when they were being the semi-bad guys. Just in case their luck was still holding, she tried the door latch. Locked.

Samantha freed a paper clip from her pocket and stuck the end into the lower of the two locks. Generally only one of a pair of locks ever got used, but these both seemed to be engaged. She could open a lock within ten or fifteen seconds. After twenty-five, though, she'd shifted only one of the cylinders into place.

"Sam?"

"Shh." Not only was this a double key lock, but it was a nice one. A very nice one. With a frown she pulled out her wallet of lock picks and unzipped it. "Hold this and keep it steady," she whispered, inserting a thin rod into the upper lock.

Rick half turned, holding the rod in place for her. At least he wasn't commenting that she'd lost her edge, though that would probably come later. But a tough lock was good, she reflected as she squatted down to twist the tiny internal cylinders. It meant there was something worth protecting behind it.

With the heavy-duty tools put to use, the lock cricked open in another twelve seconds. That was nothing to brag about, but she'd worry about buying one of the locks to practice on later. Taking a breath, she pushed down on the latch and squeezed through the door, Rick right behind her.

"What the f—"

"Shh," she warned him again, gingerly closing and locking the door before she turned around. And froze. "What the fuck?" she muttered.

Saturday, 12:13 p.m.

She was everywhere. A row of pedestals, four of them, stood in the middle of the room, each of them topped with a rare piece of Japanese antiquity. But all the rest was her. Samantha Jellicoe. Everywhere.

"Christ," she said, her voice unsteady and her face pale.

Richard looked from her to the half circle of wall joined to the outer semicircle of shuttered windows. A light switch was set into the wall just behind her, and he reached back and flipped it on.

Recessed lights illuminated the artifacts and softly lit the orderly framed photos, newspaper articles, website grabs, and magazine pages. He moved closer, still stunned first at seeing them, and second at seeing so many of them. Some of the magazine captions weren't even in English.

"There have to be a hundred of them," Samantha muttered, still not moving from where she'd stopped just inside the turret room door.

"More than that," he returned shortly, moving along the wall.

It made him feel ill, deep in the pit of his stomach. Gabriel Toombs was apparently quite a fan of Samantha. Some of the newspaper articles were about thefts, in Australia, Morocco, Vancouver, Tokyo, Paris, Munich…

"Are these all jobs you've pulled?" he asked.

"What?"

"These articles. Are they your work?"

"That's what caught your attention? What about the photo of us eating ice cream from last week? Or the one of me jogging? Or—"

"Are these just robberies," he interrupted sharply, "or are they your robberies? Because I'd like to know if he knows for certain who you are, and how long he's known and has been tracking your career."

Her green eyes widened. "God," she whispered. "He knows. He knew about me when we had lunch at the Sail-fish Club, and when he gave me a tour of this house." Visibly shaking, she joined him by the wall.

He wanted to hold her, but they needed answers. And they needed them now. "Take a look."

Inhaling deeply, she studied the glass-framed articles. "They're not all mine," she finally said, "but more than half of them are."

"He's a good guesser, then." Keeping his emotions shoved out of the way, Richard tore his gaze from the can-did photos to look at the items on the pedestals. An old, delicate-looking tea set, a stunning, intricate fan, a silver-decorated bridle… "What about these?" he asked, still trying bloody hard to keep his focus. Both of them falling apart would only serve Toombs. "Are these your work?"

Samantha cleared her throat. "Yes. All four of them are. When I took them, I didn't know they were for Toombs, except for the war br—"

"The war bridle," he finished, going back to the wall with the framed candid photographs. He was in some of them, at the periphery, cut off, clearly not the focus of the photographer.

"I don't get it, Rick," she said shakily. "The armor and the swords aren't here. But this… this is crazy."

He'd forgotten that they'd come for the Yoritomo items. As soon as he'd seen this, everything else had ceased to matter. "Some of these articles are nearly a decade old," he said quietly, trying to put the pieces together while his surprise began to spin into something else. "The photos are all since we met. The past year only."

"He could have suspected or realized something, some mistake I made, and backtracked me from there. Old papers aren't hard to get."

"The police haven't been able to track you backward or forward."

"The cops need proof. Some of these grabs aren't mine, so he doesn't know everything." She made a slow circle. "Nearly everything, sure. He knows I like peppermint ice cream."

Richard took a slow breath and held it. "The pictures are all from here in Palm Beach. He hasn't followed us around the world, the smug bastard."

"Rick?"

There were times when he was with Samantha that he didn't know how to describe his feelings. He just didn't have the words. Today, though, seeing this, he knew exactly what to call the emotion searing into his muscles and his bones. Rage. Simple, pure, red-tinted rage.

Toombs had violated her—her privacy, her past, her freedom that she held dearer than anything else. And Toombs had smiled and invited her into his home. They thought he'd stolen something, and he had. Just not what they'd expected.

"Rick?"

Samantha touched his arm, and he jumped. "When's he supposed to get back here?" he forced out, his jaw clenched so hard it ached.

"We came for the armor, and it's not here. Let's go."

"I'm not going anywhere." Except down to the Jaguar to get the Glock out of the glove box. However proficient Toombs claimed to be with a samurai sword, a bullet between the eyes was even more efficient.

"Rick, we have to go."

"No. I'm sorry, but this trumps your lost armor. I will not—"

"I want to leave," she said more loudly, her voice catching.

He blinked. "Sam—"

"I am freaked out, and I want to leave. Now."

It went against every baser instinct he had, but Richard nodded. "I'm taking all of this with me."

"You can't."

"Why the fuck not? I don't want him setting eyes on you ever again. Even in photos."

"Hell know I was here. If he doesn't have the armor, then the Picaults do. I won't tip them off."

"This is not about—"

"It's about what I say it is, dammit."

The vacuum cleaner down the hall shut off. Immediately Samantha went back to the door and shut off the lights.

"It's not just the armor," she said in a lower voice. "We can't get caught here."

At the tense worry on her face, he realized she was correct—they needed to go, and without leaving any sign that they'd ever been there. If the maid called the police, if the police came into this room looking for an intruder, they would see all of this. And proof or not, the police would connect the articles with the pictures, and they would start hounding her like never before. Hounding them. If the police actually found the two of them in the room…

"Okay." Richard took her hand, and she clenched his fingers hard. "Let's get out of here. I'll follow your lead."

Her expression calmed as she released his hand and leaned her ear against the door. Good. This was what she knew, what she was better at than anyone else he'd ever heard of. They both needed to calm down—at least until they were out of this bloody house.

The vacuum started again, closer. "She's in the other turret room," Samantha whispered. "When I say, you head down the hallway and stay to the far side. That'll make it harder for her to see you."

"And you?"

"This is dead bolted. I'll have to lock it again from the outside. Wait for me at the top of the stairs, under cover."

"Sam—"

She slowly pushed down the latch, then pulled the door open an inch. Peering through the narrow opening, she reached back with her free hand to touch his chest. "Ready?" she breathed. "Go."

Smoothly she stepped back and opened the door at the same time. Richard slipped through as quickly and quietly as he could and made for the nearest cover, between two of the glass-encased kimonos. As he looked back, she'd already closed the door again. She was in there with all that… shit, all by herself.

And all he could do was wait. And watch. Because he was looking for it, he saw the door inch open again. She slipped out, closed the door again, and squatted in front of it. She had her lock picks in her teeth, and a small compact-sized mirror strapped to her forearm with what looked like a rubber band.

Adjusting the mirror, she went to work on the lock. He'd wondered how she would keep track of the maid and relock the door at the same time. Christ. No wonder that no one had ever caught her. Except for him that one night, and more than ever he realized that that had been pure luck— good on his part, and bad on hers.

Abruptly she moved, keeping low and aiming directly for him. Shit. He was supposed to be waiting by the stairs. "Go," she mouthed, glaring at him, and he went.

Down the stairs, through the old servants' corridor, and out the back door. She pushed him back against the wall while she relocked that door, then led the way to the side wall. With a small, audible breath she hit the wall and scrambled up it like Jackie Chan, while he followed more like a slow, lumbering rhinoceros.

She grabbed his feet to guide him down, then let him go and changed her grip to his hand as they walked around the corner to where they'd left the cars. Her movements were spare and right, too abrupt to match the ease with which he was accustomed to seeing her move. He unlocked the Jag and pulled open the passenger door, sliding in from that side and tugging her in after him. Samantha sat there, still, for a moment while he leaned across her and closed the door again.

There behind the lightly tinted windows they were fairly well invisible unless someone walked right up to the car and pressed his head against the glass. Samantha continued to grip his hand tightly, and slowly he pulled her against him until he could bring his right arm around her shoulder and hold her.

"People aren't supposed to notice me," she said abruptly.

"He noticed you because of me," he commented, ready to accept all of the responsibility for this one if it would help restore her to her usual spirits.

"No, he didn't." She pulled free of him to slam both of her clenched fists into her thighs. "He might have seen me because I'm with you, but he already knew about me."

"What makes you—"

"I stole that fan in Paris nearly three years ago, the tea set three months after that, and the jade lion a year after that. And the bridle—"

"The bridle was a year and a half ago," he finished. "He's known about you for at least the last thirty-six months. But he didn't take a photo of you until after you and I met."

"Not that we saw, anyway. I didn't check his underwear drawer or his fucking night stand." She shuddered. "Why didn't I know about this?"

Her muscles shivered, and he took off her silly Marlins cap and pulled her into a tight, hard embrace. He'd made it his crusade, his most important thing in life, to protect her. Clearly he'd failed. Miserably. As her hands clutched into the back of his shirt she gave a single, gasping sob.

Why hadn't she known that someone had been trailing her every time they stayed in Palm Beach? The times they were together in public, she'd come to expect that someone would be snapping their picture. That could account for some of the photos. But the rest… She'd been stalked, was still being stalked, and hadn't known it.

"You know how to recognize undercover police, FBI, Interpol," he said slowly, speaking into her tousled hair. "They have certain patterns they follow. You can't expect to see something trackable in an insane person."

"Is he crazy?" She lifted her head to look up at him. "Because I've spent a couple of hours in his company on two different occasions, and I thought he was kind of weird, but otherwise pretty together. When he showed up for lunch, Aubrey hadn't told him that I was the female guest who'd be there, but he didn't start foaming at the mouth or anything when he saw me."

"He knows Aubrey works for you."

"Aubrey works for a lot of women."

"I don't know, Samantha, but I mean to find out. And I mean to stop it. If I don't hear the answers I want, I'll burn that house to the ground with him in it."

"Not if I beat you to it."

Slowly she relaxed in his arms, while he worked at shoving his fury into a corner where he could deal with it. Where he could smile and shake Gabriel Toombs's hand tonight at the Malloreys' dinner party and tomorrow at the house of the apparent real crooks. As far as he was concerned the Picaults could steal every piece ever shown at the Met—Toombs had tried to steal a piece of Samantha, and that would never be forgiven, or forgotten. Even without the ring he currently had stuffed La his pocket, no one got between him and Samantha. No one.