Thieves In The Night (3 page)

“—screwing it up,” he finished for her. “Be my guest.”

Criminy, he’s polite for a cat burglar! she thought. Flexing her fingers, she took another deep breath and tried, unsuccessfully, to block him from her mind. She reached for the mirror. A tremor vibrated the delicate instrument.

Letting out a heavy sigh, she removed her hands and shook them. Her palms were sweating, a bad sign. Another deep inhale and she reached again, holding her breath as she bent her fingers into a cradle.

With great care she began easing the mirror from beneath the transmitter. Her mind counted off each second of success. Seven . . . eight . . . nine . . . Nerves of steel snapped at nine. The mirror slipped in her sweat-dampened glove, flashing black, then silver, and black again as it twisted into disaster.

“Damn.” The curse was a plaintive whisper.

She grabbed the mirror, ripped it off the wall, and hit the floor at a dead run, shoving her tools in her bag as she flew toward the French doors. Three . . . four . . . five. She tore through the doors and the alarm went off.

One hand pulled the magnets free, and she used the other one to loft herself onto the balcony rail.

Two large hands grabbed her thighs and boosted her to the roof as lights snapped on all around the mansion, flooding the darkness into day. The raucous clanging of the alarm system screamed through her ears and ricocheted around her brain.

They raced across the roof, but when Chantal would have gone one way and Jaz another, he grabbed the waistband of her slacks and jerked her toward the cliff side of the house. She wasn’t going to waste time arguing.

Halfway over the last peak a shotgun blast froze them both in their tracks. An instant later Jaz bodily threw himself over her and rolled them both into a valley of the roof.

Short breaths mixed in a cloud of vapor. Hearts pounded together beneath their black sweaters.

“Damn,” she whispered, trying to control the wave of déjà vu threatening to paralyze her. The die for disaster had been cast ten years ago. She should have known better than to try to right a wrong with a wrong.

“You got that right,” Jaz muttered. If he hadn’t been a gentleman he would have added a few more descriptive phrases. He wasn’t cut out for this. What in the world had General Moore been thinking? And why in the hell had he allowed himself to be shanghaied into this disaster? Piece of cake, the general had said. That should have been a clue, Jaz, old boy, he told himself. The azure waters and warm sandy beaches of the Caribbean were looking mighty faraway right now. All he had was a frozen roof, a group of trigger-happy vigilantes lying in wait, and one very intriguing woman cushioning his body.

Maybe things weren’t as bad as he thought.

He raised his head to get a better look at her. Heavy flakes of snow had landed on her grime-streaked face and rested lightly on her eyelashes. The blackface smudged her features, outlining a pair of wild eyes, the pupils blocking out all but a rim of pale luminosity. Her small breasts rose and fell in a staccato rhythm, pressing against his chest on every other beat.

Fear was a contagious beast, and it was rolling off this lady. Jaz decided a distraction was in order. “You never told me your name,” he said close to her ear.

Chantal’s eyes widened even more, and her body stiffened. “You got that right.” She threw his words back at him, amazement blocking her panic. Who was this guy? she wondered, but she didn’t ask. She had a sneaky suspicion he would probably tell her, and she didn’t want to know. The less she knew the better.

Three more shotgun blasts came in quick succession, and with each one Jaz wrapped her more tightly in his arms, throwing his leg over hers, and burying his head in the crook of her neck. She flinched with each explosion, her hands digging deeper into the sweater underneath his jacket. She didn’t know how her hands had gotten that close to him, but she wasn’t about to let go. His muscles were like whipcord beneath her fingers. Even through her fear she felt the strength of his arms protecting her, the warmth of his breath on her skin, and she wondered at the strangeness of her thoughts.

The last shot faded into the more powerful sound of the alarm, and she felt his mouth move over her ear again.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked, not believing what she’d heard.

“You smell good.” That got her attention, he thought, and she
did
smell good, soft and womanly. The scent and feel of her teased his mind with a memory he couldn’t quite place.

“At a hundred and fifty an ounce, I should smell good,” she snapped. Her aunt Elise always bought the most extravagant gifts. Oh, brother, why did she have to think of her aunt now? Elise would be mortified if she knew what her one and only niece was doing. Not worried, because she was well aware of the depth of the Cochard skill, but just mortified, because she’d never expected those skills to be used on her side of the world.

Lord, Chantal thought, she wished he would quit breathing in her ear. It was very distracting. Distracting and warm, and she wondered if she was on the verge of hysterics. She couldn’t think of any other reason for her mind to be so bent on straying when she needed every atom of her body to survive. She’d never had this problem before. Concentration was her forte.

“Real good,” Jaz went on. His leg tightened around hers, drawing her closer. “Too good to pass up,” he drawled huskily, moving his mouth over hers.

What was he doing now?
Her mouth opened in protest, but the words died on her lips, taken away with her breath when he deepened the kiss. His tongue delved into her mouth, and a frisson of pure electricity froze her motionless beneath him. Sometime in the next two minutes Chantal learned two things: Kissing a stranger had an incredible effect on her, and a kiss could block out reality. It wasn’t the silence that warned her the alarm had been turned off; it was the sound of agitated voices coming from the lawn.

Jaz lifted his head and gently brushed his thumb over her cheek, tracing the curve to her brow. Chantal focused on the shadowed depths of the eyes so close to hers and slowly surfaced from a cloud of confusion. Unconsciously she ran her tongue over her lips, still warm from his kiss. Who was this guy? The thought was persistent, but she refused to give it priority. She didn’t want to dwell on the powerful effect of his kiss. It didn’t make sense.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” she whispered, barely gathering the energy to shove him away.

“Me too,” he said, and she would have sworn she saw the flash of a smile behind his blackface.

Shaking herself free from his mesmerizing gaze, she rolled onto her feet and hazarded a glance over the peak. The first thing she realized was that she couldn’t go down the way she had come up. The second was that she could very well be trapped on the roof. Voices were coming from three sides of the house and she knew the fourth side was a seventy-foot drop over a cliff. Anger tightened her small hands into fists. She was going to kill this jerk for messing her up, no matter how well he kissed. She should hit him for that anyway.

“You low-down . . .” She didn’t get any further before he grabbed her hand and hauled her over the peak. “Let go of me, you . . .”

He only moved faster, his grip tightening. Was she never going to get a word in? she wondered, taking two steps for each of his, all of them against her will. The strength that had protected her was now dragging her toward her doom. She was sure of it.

He stopped a few feet from the expansive library window and dropped to his knees. She followed suit and was gearing up to light into him again when she saw the fluid action of a rope snake out of his hands over the edge. A man with a plan.

Hope flickered back to life, and she shot him a quick glance. She had done some rappelling before, and although she was by no means an expert, she knew enough. The principle, at least, was simple. The rappeller, safe in a harness, held onto the rope with two hands, one in front of him, the other at his hip. The rope was threaded through a metal figure eight, which provided the necessary friction. Slackening off on the rope allowed it to slide; tightening on it kept it from running.

He threw her the harness and she stepped into the webbed loops, jerking on the rope to double-check the anchor. A clip of the carabiner into the figure eight and she was ready.

Before the word
go
was out of his mouth, she was over the edge and rappelling herself with world-record speed into the safety of darkness. Her feet tapped the window and she pushed off again, letting the rope zing through her hands. She landed in a tangle at the bottom of the cliff. Her mind was beyond fear, and with methodical speed she relieved herself of the harness and tugged on the rope. He was on his own now.

She spun around and started her dash for freedom, but didn’t get five yards before a large square of light brightened the shadows at her feet. She whirled back, dropping to a crouch as her eyes quickly scanned the awful scene behind her. The library light had flashed on, creating an obscenely large backdrop for the lone figure coming down the back of the house. Even though Chantal knew she should keep running, her body didn’t budge.

“Let it out,” she muttered. “Come on, go for it.” Her eyes were glued to the lanky silhouette. She wasn’t even aware of her whispered encouragement, or of the cold creeping up around her ankles into her legs, or of the blood oozing from the rope burns across her palms.

One jump and two or three more feet and he would be past the window. She held her breath, unconsciously rising and stepping toward the cliff. As soon as he was clear she’d run like hell. Then the nightmare of her memories unfolded.

Both barrels of a shotgun exploded, shattering glass into confetti. Chantal instinctively dove for the rope and buried her head between her shoulders—but not before seeing Jaz slump against the wall.

Two

Glass fell in a brittle shower from the winter sky, and Chantal hid farther under her arm, praying for the cruel rain to stop.
Paul, Paul
. The name flooded her mind with images, dragging a sob from deep in her chest.

In seconds it was over and reality took hold. There had been no rope in Monaco, no cliff, no bite of cold numbing her fingers. Slowly she raised her head, and found Jaz halfway up the cliff, twisting and turning in the rope, his body dangling at a dangerous angle.
Get out of here!
The warning flashed across her brain. But there was another message, a stronger message battling in her heaving breast:
Help him.
Without her belay, the rope would flow like water through his harness connection and he’d drop like a stone. Once she had run. She couldn’t do it again.

Using her weight, she tightened the friction on the figure eight to give him a chance, his only chance. “I’ve got you! Rap down!” Her voice echoed hollow and high off the cliff wall. He twisted again, and the rope jerked her off the ground. Chantal gasped for breath and squeezed her eyes shut, pulling for his life, her muscles wrapping around each other until they hurt.

She touched earth and spread and braced her feet against a fallen tree, hanging like a hundred pounds of deadweight on the end. “Move! Jaz!” Her scream teetered on the edge of panic.

Jaz was in trouble. He knew it as sure as he was hanging there. He had lost the rope out of one hand and his ears were ringing in two octaves. Cold, rough stone bit into his cheek. At least he’d had enough sense to slide past the window, but where was the rope? Like an answer to his prayers, the rope tightened with a jerk and he swung upright.

A voice cut through the buzzing in his head.
Move
, it commanded, and Jaz did his damnedest to obey. He reached out for the rope, but a sharp pain lanced him from his shoulder to his neck and down his arm, cramping his fingers into an ineffectual fist. The ringing in his ears increased, and somewhere, way in the back of his mind, he wondered if this was the end of the line.

“Move! Move, you crazy sonofa—Move, Jaz!” The harsh cry came again from below, lighting a fire under his survival instincts.

Ignoring the pain, he clenched the rope with a white-knuckled grip and immediately felt her slack off.
No place to go now but down, Jaz, old boy, and fast.
The thought and action were simultaneous as he slipped down the rope, yards at a time, his body burning. At the bottom, a pair of strong, supple arms came around his waist, pulling him off the rope and supporting his weight.

“Thanks. Ah . . .” He winced when she tucked her shoulder under his arm, but just feeling the ground beneath his feet sent a fresh wave of strength through him.

“You’re hurt,” she said with a gasp, and he lightened his weight on her body. She was so small, he wondered if he’d been kissing jailbait. He hoped not, because he wanted to kiss her again. Planned on it, actually.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” he said bravely. Lord, he hoped it was just a flesh wound, but what he knew about wounds would fit on the head of a pin. It hurt like hell. That he knew for sure.

“We’ve got to get out of here.”

“I’m game. What’s the plan?”

“Don’t
you
have a plan?” What had she gotten herself into?

“I’ve got a snowmobile.”

“Where?”

“Half a mile to the north.”

“Can you walk?”

“Yes.” Jaz tested his knees to see if the fear-induced jelly had hardened up yet.

Her eyes met his for an instant, sharp and intense. “Then run.”

Chantal took her own advice, racing over the forest rubble to the end of the ravine. He either made it now or he was on his own, she told herself. But he stuck to her like glue, his hands grabbing for branches she had barely cleared. When they scrambled to the top of the gulch, it was his hand stopping her backslide, his hand on her instep giving her the final boost over the top.

Chantal scrambled to her feet and steadied herself in the drifting snow; then she reached down for his hand. He was already halfway up, and her added tug sent him flying over the edge. A tangle of arms, legs, and bodies ensued, with Jaz gaining the high ground. The breath whooshed out of her lungs.