Always a Thief (16 page)

It was, of course, a deceptive appearance.

He came to the museum every day to pick her up—sometimes for lunch, but always by closing time—and they'd spend the remainder of the evening together, until he had to leave to become Quinn. He was always there when she woke in the morning, but he kept his suite at the Imperial and returned there at least once every day. He didn't suggest moving in with her, and Morgan didn't bring up the subject.

She teased him until he began teaching her how to pick a lock, though he claimed he was doing it only to impress her with the level of skill required. (She was impressed.) And, as always, they talked. Morgan didn't ask him too many questions, but she chose those she did ask carefully and timed them with even more caution. And it might have been because he was increasingly tense about the trap—or sting—but Quinn didn't seem to notice that she was gathering bits of information in a discreet but methodical way.

By Thursday, Morgan thought she had figured out at least part of what was happening—and why. If she was right, she also thought she had at last pinpointed the core motivation of Quinn/Alex Brandon, the inner force that propelled him through life and shaped so many of his choices and decisions.

Once she did that, he stopped being
either
Alex
or
Quinn to her; she no longer referred to him by name in the third person when they talked about either of his personas. She thought she understood the man he was now, and Alex had finally become as real to her as Quinn had always been.

She had also reached the conclusion that her beloved was in hot water up to his neck—and not only with Nightshade. He was carefully avoiding being alone with either Max or Wolfe, and when Jared appeared at the museum rather suddenly that afternoon just after Alex arrived, it was painfully obvious that there was a very real tension between the brothers.

Morgan stood in the lobby just outside the hallway of offices and watched thoughtfully as Alex spoke to Max near the guards' desk while, a few feet from them, Jared and Wolfe talked. All four men looked unusually serious—not to say grim—and Morgan had the oddest feeling. It was as if her mind was yelling at her that there was danger here, right in front of her, if she'd only
see
. . . .

Then her gaze tracked past them as a movement caught her eye, and she watched as Leo strolled down the stairs. He'd been up at the exhibit, she knew; he visited about every other day, as regular as clockwork. He called out something to Max, casually lifted a hand in farewell, and left the museum without, apparently, noticing her scrutiny.

“Morgan, have you— Sorry. Didn't mean to make you jump.”

She turned to find Ken Dugan standing in the hallway, and managed a smile. “It's all right, Ken. I've just got a lot on my mind. What did you want to ask me?”

As usual, the curator was faintly harassed. “Didn't you draw up a list of repair people we could safely call for work while the exhibit's in place? People you've cleared?”

“Yes,” she answered slowly. “Why?”

“The air-conditioning system. Morgan, haven't you noticed how damned
hot
it is in here?”

Since she usually felt feverish if Alex was anywhere near her, Morgan honestly hadn't noticed. But now that Ken mentioned it, she thought it was a bit stuffy, even in the vast, open lobby. “I guess it is, at that.”

“I think the thermostat must be stuck,” Ken told her. “And since the system's practically as old as the building, I think we'd better have it checked out pronto.”

Morgan glanced at her watch and frowned. “I'll go make some calls—but I doubt we'll be able to get anyone out here until tomorrow, Ken. We'll probably have to shut the air-conditioning system off until then.”

Ken nodded but didn't look happy. “Yes, I suppose that would be best. The weather outside is mild enough, and all the display cases have their own separate temperature-control systems, so we should be all right. Dammit—every museum in the area seems to be having electronic problems of one kind or another.”

“Gremlins,” Morgan suggested, about half serious.

He agreed with a sigh, then said, “I'll tell Max and Wolfe, just to be on the safe side.”

Morgan returned to her office and made the necessary calls, both surprised and pleased when the second repairman she called cheerfully agreed to come within the hour. It would be time-and-a-half, of course, but if the museum didn't mind that . . .

She ruthlessly committed the museum's resources and told the man to come, and after she'd hung up, she sat there looking down at her clipboard with a frown. The Lucite clipboard with its thick sheaf of papers was more or less Morgan's lifeline, containing virtually every bit of information she needed to oversee the exhibit. There was a floor plan of the exhibit wing; design specifications for the display cases holding the Bannister collection; a copy of the insurance inventory of the collection; a long list of people cleared to perform various repairs in the museum should those be needed—and other things.

She was usually careful to leave the clipboard locked in her desk
and
locked in her office whenever she didn't have it, though she hadn't really thought about what information it could provide to someone else.

As she gazed at it now, Morgan's uneasiness began to increase. The clipboard had been in Ken's office on Saturday, she remembered. It had been in Ken's office, where both he and Chloe had worked that day. Why had it been there? She'd forgotten to ask either Ken or Chloe, but now that she thought about it, she couldn't think of a reason why either of them would have needed any of this information. And . . . Ken had always been around whenever Alex was watching someone, she remembered.

It seemed ridiculous to even
consider
—but when Alex had said that Nightshade couldn't go after the Bannister collection alone, he'd also said that
one
reason was because of a lack of electronic skill. What if there was another reason? What if Nightshade dared not use his own inside knowledge, his own security key card and alarm codes, to get at the exhibit
in his own museum
?

God, how ironic that would be! To have such a prize underneath his very nose and know that if he touched it he risked the police being suspicious of it being an inside job. In that situation, Morgan could believe that the arrival of Quinn would be a godsend. To use that other skilled thief's knowledge, to let
him
find a way past the security—and take the blame for the resulting robbery.

And what would be the risk for Nightshade? Quinn might know his identity, but Nightshade also knew who Quinn really was—and that mutual knowledge kept them both relatively safe from each other, at least as far as public disclosure was concerned.

It was possible, Morgan thought. It was definitely possible. She couldn't imagine Ken gloating in secret over his cache of priceless objects, or holding a chloroform-soaked cloth over her face, or shooting Quinn as they both crept through the night—but then, she couldn't imagine it of Leo either. In fact, she couldn't imagine it of anyone she knew.

After a while, she locked the clipboard up in her desk and left her office, locking the door behind her. She glanced across the hall into Ken's open office, and for a moment she didn't move a muscle. Then, slowly, she headed toward the lobby, pulling on her mask of tranquillity as she prepared to tell Ken that the repairman was on his way.

She thought she'd be able to keep all her thoughts and speculations to herself. She hoped. But she couldn't help wondering if anyone else had noticed the drooping rose in a crystal bud vase on Ken's desk.

It was only a little after eleven that night when Alex began dressing to leave her, after explaining that he had to return to his hotel briefly. Morgan lay and watched him dress, admiring and unself-conscious. She thought he was beautiful. She also thought he was wired, even after he'd expended a considerable amount of energy in their bed.

“Is it tonight?” she asked quietly.

He sat on the side of the bed and looked at her steadily. “I don't know, Morgana. Perhaps.”

“If you knew, would you tell me?”

He leaned over to kiss her. “Probably not,” he admitted with a slight smile. “There's no reason for you to worry, sweet. No reason at all.”

Morgan eyed him. “I guess you heard me tell Ken that a repairman was coming for the air-conditioning system?”

“I heard.”

She was getting better at reading him, she decided; there had been a flicker of reaction in his green eyes. She was suddenly positive that
something
was going to happen tonight.

“Alex—”

He kissed her again, then rose quickly to his feet. “I'll be back by morning. Sleep well.”

Morgan didn't reach to turn off the lamp on the nightstand, even though she was physically weary. Instead, she gazed at the doorway, acutely conscious of his absence, and tried to get her thoughts organized.

Tonight. It was tonight. And, somehow, the air- conditioning system at the museum was important. Because it had malfunctioned? Because it had been repaired? She assumed it had, anyway; Ken and Wolfe had decided to remain at the museum until the repair work was finished. But if Ken was Nightshade . . .

Morgan had the awful, clenched-stomach feeling that she was missing something, something vitally important. It had nagged at her since this afternoon, and now it was getting stronger, getting unbearable. What
was
it? It had started, she remembered, when she'd stood at the head of the hallway gazing across the lobby, suddenly and inexplicably conscious of danger, as if her instincts or her subconscious had been trying to warn her.

What was it?

She closed her eyes, concentrating, trying to re-create what she had seen in her mind. The men standing in the lobby. The guards at their desk. Leo coming down the stairs. Ken approaching behind her—had she sensed him nearing?

She'd just been watching everybody, idly, not thinking about anything except how grim they looked. . . .

It was then that the final piece of the puzzle dropped quietly into place, and Morgan sat up with a gasp. Well, for Christ's sake.
Now
it made sense, all the vague little things that had bothered her all along. Now she understood.

But even as surprise and relief and annoyance chased one another through her mind, another and far more disquieting realization reared its head.

If
she
had seen the truth, then it was always possible someone else had as well. The wrong someone. Because either of them had her knowledge, she thought. At least her knowledge and maybe more. All either of her suspects had to do was put a couple of things together, as she had, and look at the sum.

One wrong trick of the light, and Nightshade would know without doubt that he was being lured into a trap.

Morgan glanced at the clock on her nightstand even as she was bolting out of bed and hurrying to dress. Not yet midnight. Could she make it?

She didn't have a cell-phone number for Alex, a belated realization that made her kick herself mentally. She tried calling Alex's hotel as she dressed, but there was no answer in his room, and when she got the desk clerk she was informed that Mr. Brandon had left for the evening.

Which told Morgan absolutely nothing. It was doubtful that Alex openly returned to his hotel after an evening out only to depart again dressed as a cat burglar. He probably had a quiet way in and out of the hotel and used that to come and go as Quinn.

Morgan grabbed her cell phone, but it wasn't until she was in her car that she realized the battery was dead. Great, that was just great. The universe really did hate her.

Where was Alex heading tonight? Which man was Nightshade?

Morgan sat in her car and closed her eyes, trying to relax and let that extra sense open up, to feel Alex as she had so often been able to feel him, to sense where he was. If he was entirely focused on what he had to do tonight, not consciously blocking her, then—

The certainty was abrupt, and so clear that it was almost an image in her mind.

Morgan didn't waste any time marveling at how much stronger this odd sense of hers had grown since she and Alex had become lovers. There would be time later, she hoped, for that. She started her car and headed north.

She had to make it. She had to.

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

T
he only reason she took the chance, Morgan
explained later, was because she was reasonably familiar with the place. She even knew the security code for the garden gate, because she had fairly recently helped organize an outdoor benefit and he had the best garden in town.

Of course, being Morgan, she didn't stop to think either that he might have changed the code (he hadn't) or that security for the house itself would doubtless be much tougher.

In any case, her newly established lock-picking skills were not put to the test. She managed to make her way through the fog-enshrouded garden all the way to the terrace, but two steps from the French door that she knew led into the study, a pair of strong arms grabbed her and pulled her somewhat roughly away from the door and up against a very hard body.

This is getting to be a habit,
she decided as relief made her legs suddenly weak. She turned in his arms and threw her own up around his neck.

Quinn held her for an instant, then yanked her arms down and softly, fiercely demanded, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“That's a fine greeting,” she whispered in return.

Unmasked but wearing the remainder of his cat-burglar costume, he scowled at her. “Morgana, dammit, you're supposed to be safely in bed.”

“I had to come,” she insisted, still whispering. “Alex, I just figured out—”

“Shhh!”

He was so still and silent that Morgan could hear the dripping of the fog-wet ivy climbing the wall beside them. She couldn't hear anything from the house, but he must have, because the tension she could feel in him increased. Then his gloved hands lifted quickly to frame her face, and he gazed at her with such intensity that his green eyes were like a cat's in the dark, alight and vibrant.

“Sweetheart, listen to me. There's no time—he'll be in the study in just a minute. I want you to stay here, right here, and don't move. Do you understand?”

“But—”

“Morgan,
promise
me. No matter what you see or hear, no matter what you think is happening in that room, you stay here and don't make a sound until you're absolutely sure he's gone. Promise.”

“All right, I promise. But, Alex—”

He kissed her, briefly but with such overwhelming hunger that she felt her knees buckle. “I love you,” he whispered against her lips.

Morgan found herself leaning back among wet ivy, shaken and momentarily confused, wondering if she had really heard him say that. She fought to clear her mind, suddenly more afraid than she'd ever been before, because she had the cold idea that he wouldn't have said it unless he thought he might not get another chance.

Her promise kept her silent, and by the time she could gather her thoughts, he had swiftly and skillfully opened the French doors and gone into the house. He'd left the door just barely ajar; she'd be able to hear what went on in the study. From her position she could see him as he moved draperies aside to the right of the door and reached up a gloved finger to punch numbers on a keypad.

The security system, she realized vaguely. He knew the codes? Well, of course he did. He was Quinn.

Then he moved away from the doors, and Morgan shifted around carefully until she could—just barely—see into the room. With the lamplight in there, and the darkness of the foggy terrace, she knew she was invisible to anyone in the room, but she was wary enough to keep her body back and just peer around the edge.

Quinn, his expression perfectly calm and that inner tension she had felt completely hidden, was standing by a fireplace where a dying fire crackled softly. He was still wearing his gloves, and the black ski mask was tucked into his belt. He looked across the room when the hall door opened and another man walked in, and he said with faint impatience, “You're late. If your man did his job, all the guards in the museum should be passing out in another hour.”

Morgan was a bit startled by his voice; it wasn't the one she was accustomed to hearing from him. Quicker, sharper, faintly accented, and subtly vicious, it was the voice of a man who could easily be a world-famous criminal.

Leo Cassady, also dressed all in black, walked to his desk and bent forward to study a set of plans laid out there. His handsome face was hard and expressionless. “We have plenty of time,” he said flatly. “The gas cartridges are set to fire at one-thirty, and we can be at the museum long before then.”

“I don't want to take any chances,” Quinn insisted. “We have to cut the power in case one of the guards realizes he's being gassed and gets to the alarm. Even though we've been tripping alarms and shorting out electrical systems all over the city for a week, that's no guarantee Ace will automatically assume there's another glitch in one of their systems.”

So that's why so many museums have been having problems,
Morgan realized.

“We have plenty of time,” Leo repeated. Then, head still bent over the plans, he said, “Tell me something, Alex.”

“If I can.”

“Why don't you carry a gun?”

Quinn laughed shortly. “For two very good reasons. Because
armed
robbery carries a stiffer penalty—and because I'm a lousy shot. Good enough?”

“It's a dangerous weakness.”

“Is it? Why?”

“Because you can't defend yourself. Suppose, for instance, that I decided your usefulness to me had ended. After all, I'd much rather keep the Talisman emerald myself—no need to break up the collection. And I hardly need your help now that I have the proper identity codes to placate Ace for an hour or so.”

Rather grimly, Quinn said, “I didn't give you those codes.”

“No, you very wisely kept them to yourself.” Leo looked at him with a faint, empty smile. “But you forget, my friend—I've been doing this a long time. Longer than you, if the truth be told. I took the precaution of cultivating my own source inside the museum—though I didn't sleep with him.”

“Who?”

“Ken Dugan. He's such an ambitious man. So eager to please. And I'm so eminently trustworthy, of course, so respectable. I'm sure he never thought twice about leaving me alone in his office once or twice for just a few minutes while he took care of a little problem out in the museum.”

“Let me guess. He has a lousy memory and had to write down the codes and passwords?”

“So many people do, you know. And
hide
those little slips of paper in such obvious places. The codes weren't hard to find. Not hard at all.”

Quinn took a step toward the desk but halted abruptly when Leo reached into his open desk drawer and produced a businesslike automatic.

Morgan felt her heart stop. The gun, a shiny black thing with a long snout—a silencer, she realized dimly—seemed to her enormous. She wanted to cry out, to do something. But the harshly whispered warning echoed hollowly in her mind.
No matter what you see or hear, no matter what you think is happening in that room
. . . She had promised him.

“This is not a good idea,” Quinn was saying evenly, his face expressionless.

Leo walked around his desk, the gun fixed unwaveringly on the other man. “I beg to differ,” he said in a polite tone. “I'm not wildly enthusiastic about killing you in my own house, you understand, but it seems the best way. I don't have the time tonight to take you somewhere else, and I won't make the stupid mistake of trying to keep you alive somewhere until I can make other arrangements.”

“I hate to sound trite, but you'll never get away with it.”

He knows what he's doing . . . please, God, he knows what he's doing.
. . .

“Alex, you disappoint me. Of course I'll get away with it. I have so often before. And this time, since I plan to make certain the authorities believe the mysterious Quinn pulled off the robbery of the century—and then fled the country—I'll make very sure your body is never found.”

“Oh, I couldn't possibly take the credit for something I didn't do.”

“The one flaw in my grand design; I'd much rather take the credit myself. But you see how it is. Living right here in San Francisco, well, I just can't take the chance that any of the bright boys and girls at Interpol will link me with this particular robbery. So you'll get the kudos, I'm afraid.”

“Leo, we can talk about this.”

“That's the mistake the villains always make in movies and on television,” Leo mused thoughtfully. “They let their victims talk too much. Good-bye, Alex.”

He shot Quinn three times full in the chest.

It wasn't her promise that froze Morgan on the terrace; it was soul-deep shock and a pain so great she was literally paralyzed by it. The three shots—so soft, almost apologetic as they issued in whistling pops from the silenced gun—slammed Quinn's powerful body backward with stunning force, out of her sight when he crashed heavily to the floor, and she could only stare numbly at the place where he'd stood.

Leo, sure of his marksmanship, didn't bother to check the fallen Quinn. Instead, he glanced at his watch, then got an extra clip for the automatic out of his desk drawer and left the room with a brisk step.

Again, it wasn't her promise that kept Morgan still until she heard the sound of his car leaving the house; it was simply that, until the sound jarred her loose, she'd been trapped in a dark and horrible place. With a moan like that of an animal in agony, she stumbled forward, wrenched the door open, and rushed into the study.

“
Damn,
that hurt.”

Dropping to her knees beside him, Morgan stared incredulously as he sat up, pulling his gloves off and probing his chest with a tender and cautious touch. He wasn't even pale.

“You're alive,” she said.

“Of course I'm alive, Morgana. I never make the same mistake twice.” He pulled the neckline of his black sweater down several inches, revealing the fine but exceptionally strong mesh of a bullet-proof vest. “I've been wearing this thing every night since the bastard shot me the first time. Had the devil of a time hiding it from you that first night at your apartment. Thank God you decided to take a shower before things got intense.”

“You're alive,” she said again.

“Like being kicked by a mule,” he grumbled, getting somewhat stiffly to his feet. Then he reached down, took her icy hands in his, and pulled her up into his arms.

She was crying, Morgan realized, clinging to him.

“I'm sorry, sweet,” he said huskily, holding her very tightly. “I thought he'd probably do that, but there wasn't time to warn you. I'm sorry. . . .”

She could feel where the bullets had struck him, the brutal indentations on the armor plating in the vest, and it was several minutes before she could even begin to stop shaking. He stroked her back gently, murmuring to her, and when she finally lifted a tearstained face from his chest, he rubbed at the wetness with his fingers and kissed her. As usual, when he did that, all she could feel or think about was how much she loved him and how much she wanted him.

Then, with a sigh, he said, “I hate to repeat myself, but what the
hell
were you doing here tonight?”

Morgan sniffed as she looked up at him. “I thought if I could figure it out, then Leo probably could—and then he'd
know
it was a trap.”

“Figure what out?”

“Who you really are.”

Quinn looked at her with a smile playing around his mouth, then shook his head a little as if in wonder. “You're a remarkable woman, Morgana.”

She sniffed again and rubbed her nose with the back of one hand. “Yeah, right.”

He gave her his handkerchief. “Use this.”

“Thank you.”

While she blew her nose and wiped away the last traces of tears, Quinn stepped to the desk and used Leo's phone to place a call. “He's on his way, Jared,” he reported. “No, he thinks he killed me. I'll be black and blue tomorrow, but that's all. Yeah. Okay, we'll be there shortly.”

Jared must have asked who “we” was, Morgan decided, because Quinn winced and murmured, “Well, Morgan's here.” Then he jerked the receiver away from his ear—and she could hear unidentifiable sputtering sounds.

Without putting the phone back to his ear, Quinn merely dropped it onto its cradle. “He's going to kill me,” he said with a sigh.

“If he hasn't by now,” Morgan told her beloved, “then he never will. But you'd try the patience of a saint, Alex.”

“
I
would? Shall we count up how many times
you've
gone charging into danger, sweet?”

Morgan dismissed that with a wave of his handkerchief. “What I want to know is—what happens next? Leo's on his way to the museum and . . .”

Quinn rested a hip on the corner of Leo's desk and answered obediently. “And—he'll find what he expects to find. That the gas canisters his so-called repairman slipped into the air-conditioning system have laid out all the guards.”

“Not really?”

“No, Wolfe got the canisters out after the guy left earlier tonight.”

“So the guards are just playing unconscious?”

“The regular guards are. The extra ones and all the cops are placed at strategic points throughout the museum. Seems they got a tip that someone was going to try to break in, and after finding gas canisters in the air system, they decided not to take any foolish chances.”

Morgan eyed him. “I see.”

“Yes. So Leo—Nightshade—will cut the museum's electricity, which seems easy enough. He will then call Ace Security and, using all the proper codes and identity numbers, tell them that the system's going to be off-line for about an hour. Which will give him plenty of time to steal everything except the fillings in the guards' teeth.”

“He thinks.”

“Right. In reality, he'll never get near anything of value, because of a number of very conscious guards and a rather clever little welcome mat Storm designed into an internal security system that Leo knows nothing about.”

“But, if he cuts the power—”

“The secondary system has its own power supply; it's ingeniously hidden in the subbasement, and he couldn't find it even with a map.”

Morgan drew a breath. “Then you've got him. But . . .”