Flirting With Danger (11 page)

“Miss Jellicoe,” Partino returned, “not to doubt your expertise, but I assure you that a preeminent collector would recognize the value of every item in this collection.”

“Tell that to the guy who only stole one thing and didn’t care about blowing up everything else.”

Partino twitched. “I do not recommend poor-quality artworks for purchase. Everything here is of the highest quality.”

“You tick off everybody, don’t you?” Donner asked her, with a low chuckle.

That was enough of that. “Well, here’s Harvard, a guy who wouldn’t know a Rembrandt from a Degas,” she shot back. “Let’s take a look at him.”

Donner narrowed his eyes. “Whatever you’re implying, I don’t appr—”

“I was invited to this show,” she snapped, standing. “Play with yourselves for the encore.”

Half-expecting Addison to call her back, she slipped out the door and back down the hallway to her bedroom suite. Somebody, probably Reinaldo, had put a bowl of fresh fruit on the coffee table, and she snatched up an apple, tossing and catching it while she tracked down the remote for the theater-sized television and turned it on.

A moment of searching found WNBT, the station Addison was after. Godzilla again trampled Tokyo, this time in the company of Monster X and Rodan. It figured.

Twenty minutes later the doorknob behind her rattled and turned. Though she was certain who it was, habit and a strong sense of self-preservation made her glance up over her shoulder. “When you buy a television station, do you change the format?”

Addison closed and locked the door, then dropped into the chair beside her and set two cans of soda on the coffee table. “Not always. Why?”

“First of all, don’t you use coasters?” she asked, leaning forward and slipping two Victorian flower-patterned coasters beneath the drinks. “This is a Georgian table, you know. Two hundred and fifty years old.”

“Two hundred and thirty-one years old,” he corrected.

“Secondly, this is the only station around here that shows the classics.” She gestured at the huge screen with the remains of her apple. “This is Godzilla Week, for example.”

“I see.” Helping himself to a peach, he bit into it. Juice ran down his chin, and he wiped at it with his thumb, absently licking the sweet liquid off. “Godzilla being one of the classics, of course.”

Oh, yum
. “Most of ’em. A few of the ones from the late seventies turned Godzilla into an environmental avenger, which is just silly. After all, he’s a by-product of nuclear testing. He’s supposed to be bad.”

“Why do you steal things?” he asked abruptly, his gaze still on the rampaging monsters.

He seemed genuinely curious, but the more he knew about her, the more dangerous he was. “Why did you marry your ex?” she countered.

Addison shifted in his chair. “Sooner or later you’re going to trust me enough to tell me,” he said without heat.

“Sooner or later you’ll do what you promised, and I’ll be out of here,” she returned, tossing the apple core into the wastebasket by the door.
Two points
.

“Do you want to leave?”

“Now?”

“Yes, right now. Today. This minute. Do you want to go?”

No
. “What I want to do,” she said slowly, finding it difficult for the first time to meet that deep gray gaze of his, “is to go to Butterfly World.”

He pushed to his feet, reaching over and taking her hand to pull her up beside him. “Fine. Let’s go now, and we’ll have time to sightsee a little.”

“You’re weird.” She couldn’t help grinning at his chuckle.

“I’m mysterious,” he corrected. “You should appreciate me more.”

If she appreciated him any more than she was beginning to, they’d be naked on her borrowed bed right now, and screw the consequences.

Saturday, 1:18 p.m.

“We are not taking your limousine.” Samantha folded her arms across her chest.

Trying not to smile, Richard stood on the front steps beside her and decided not to ask why she had such a prejudice against his limousine. “I didn’t say we were, love.”

“You told Ben to bring the car around.”

A yellow Mercedes-Benz SLK rounded the house and cruised to a halt in front of them. “Yes, but I didn’t say which car.”

“Doesn’t James Bond drive a BMW or something?” she asked, heading for the passenger side as Ben exited the driver’s seat. “Banana yellow. Very inconspicuous.”

“I’m not James Bond. Shut up and get in.”

She liked the car; he could see it in her tease of a smile as she sat. Samantha ran her hand across the dash, which was another good sign. She seemed to learn by tactile sensation. It would be interesting to see if that continued into the bedroom. He shifted, abruptly uncomfortable.
Cold shower. Think cold shower
.

Finally, she buckled in and grinned at him. “Can we put the banana’s top down?”

Obligingly he pushed a button on the dash. The trunk lid popped open, and the roof lifted and swung backward into the trunk with one fluid motion. “Better?”

“Cool,” was all she said, as they rolled down the drive.

The police still stood at the outside gate, but they were beginning to look more bored than hopeful of catching a bomber. Of course they’d already found the bomber washed up on the beach, whether they’d realized it or not. He glanced at Samantha, leaning one arm on the window frame, her chin tucked along it.

“The police identified DeVore and consider him a suspect,” he said, “but since I described a woman inside my house, they haven’t given up looking.”

“They probably figure he had a partner. Tracking him won’t lead them any closer to me, but I’m definitely not in the clear.” She shot him a look. “Yet.”

“Has he ever used explosives before?”

“I don’t know all the jobs he’s pulled, but I wouldn’t be surprised. He wouldn’t have called to warn me away if we’d just been competing for a simple grab.” She shrugged. “He’s done hits before, but he always said it wasn’t as much of a challenge. People move around and make themselves vulnerable. Objects stay put, and you have to go to them.”

“Were you and DeVore ever …partners?”

She sat back and punched on the stereo. “Oh, that figures,” she scowled, as Mozart drifted into the car. “Partners. I assume you mean in bed as well as in crime. In crime, no.”

Gripping the steering wheel, his stomach clenching in a jealousy that was as unexpected as it was ridiculous, Richard nodded. “Then I’m sorry again.”

“Quit apologizing. It wasn’t your fault. People drop in and out of my life all the time. I’m used to it.”

“Cynical, aren’t we?”

“I try to stick to what I’m good at. Besides, you shouldn’t be complaining. You’re ‘in’ at the moment.”

For how long?
he wondered. “It was a comment. Not a complaint.”

Samantha flashed her quicksilver grin. “Good. Anyway, I’m just hoping Stoney will know who Etienne was contracted with. If not, we’ll be stuck at about the same place the police are.” Auburn hair whipped across her face, and she pulled a rubber band from her Gucci bag to pull the wavy mass back into a pert tail.

“I thought we were trying to blend,” he commented. “So why the expensive handbag?”

“It’s all I had with me. Besides, it’ll help me look like a tourist. I hope you brought a corny baseball cap or something.”

“Sorry, I didn’t dig into the corny section of my wardrobe this morning.”

She studied his profile for a moment, while he pretended to keep his attention on the highway. Thank God the traffic was light.

“Just keep your sunglasses on. You’re not wearing a suit, so that should help. We’ll get you a Gilligan hat or something.”

“No, we won’t.”

Samantha was silent for a moment, though she eyed the stereo with such keen disappointment that it was almost comical. “You told watchdog Donner where we were going, didn’t you?”

“I trust him, Samantha. And—”

“I don’t. Never trust somebody who knows how much you’re worth.”

“Everybody knows how much I’m worth.”

“Yeah, but everybody doesn’t have the kind of access he does.” She drummed her fingers on the window frame. “Your death’s gotta have a huge profit built into it for him.”

Richard frowned, already putting the notion out of his head. Tom Donner was his closest friend. The idea was ridiculous. And he was careful about whom he let into his life, these days—with one glaring exception. “I trust him,” he repeated. “Drop it.”

“Okay. If it makes you feel any better, if I were you, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere with me unless I told somebody I trust, either. I just wouldn’t have picked Donner.”

The compliment, double-edged as it was, pleased him. “You can change the CD if you want,” he said, “but—”

She leapt at the stereo. Mozart cut off, to be replaced by Beethoven, then Haydn. Sitting back, she folded her arms. “Are there only dead people in your CD changer?”

“You like antiques. I thought you’d appreciate classical music.”

“I do—but not in a James Bond car with the top down.”

“I am not bloody Ja—”

With a quick flick she switched off the CD and started punching radio stations until something with heavy drums and electric guitars and vaguely in-tune screeching lit up the equalizer. She hit the volume and sat back again while he laughed.

“What the devil is that?”

“Who cares? It’s got a beat.”

Leaning her chin along her arm again, Sam squinted against the warm breeze whipping into the car. She loved Florida. Europe owned the prize for picturesque villages tucked into old pine-and-oak forests, but the dichotomy here fascinated her. They flew past long expanses of marshy grass, broken by tiny houses set back from the highway on dirt roads with rusted-out cars decorating the front lawns. More scattered groves of two-hundred-year-old elms and hanging willows spread along creek banks, their giant hurricane-bowed forms dwarfed by needles of glass and steel in the business areas.

And Palm Beach, even without the allure of the country’s wealthiest residents cramped into a few square miles of paradise, fascinated her even more. Insulated beauty and antiquity and modern corruption—the perfect place for a high-class cat burglar. She slid a glance at Addison again. In her line of work she wasn’t supposed to like surprises. Surprise again.

On the other hand, surprise did have its drawbacks. Sam angled her head a little more to see the reflection of the side view mirror. “Change lanes,” she said.

“What for?”

Reminding herself that Addison was a businessman and not a thief, she kept her relaxed pose. “Because I want to see if the car behind us changes lanes, too.”

He kept his gaze on the road. “That beige sedan?”

“You noticed?” she asked, surprised enough that she straightened.

Addison nodded. “It’s been behind us since before we got on the highway, but this
is
a main thoroughfare, love.”

“Okay, so you’re observant, but you need to practice paranoia. Change lanes. Head toward the exit.”

“Does this happen to you often?”

She flashed a grin. “Only in the past week or so. Usually the idea is that nobody knows who I am.”

“Too late for that.” He slid his gaze to the rearview mirror. Half a minute later, the sedan changed lanes to match them.

“It could still be a coincidence,” he muttered, but kept his attention on the mirror as he moved to the outside lane. The sedan followed. “Or not.”

“See, paranoia can save your life. Floor it.”

“Don’t you want to know who it is?”

“Jesus. Curiosity killed the cat, Addison, and I’m a cat.”

“I’m a wolf,” he returned, and slammed his foot on the brake.

High-tech antilock braking system or not, the SLK’s tires smoked as they jolted to a halt. Traffic was fairly light, but Sam couldn’t help a gasp as a big rig veered around them, the driver giving them the one-fingered salute and yanking on the air horn. “Christ.”

The sedan didn’t have antilock brakes. Brakes squealing, it fishtailed wildly, missing them by only a few inches as it skidded onto the mud beyond the narrow service lane. The driver yanked it back under control before it rolled into the swamp grass. The guy knew how to drive, and that answered
a few questions right there. It ground to a halt a dozen yards past them along the side of the road.

“Voilà,” Addison said, accelerating again and pulling over in front of the sedan.

“Right, unless they’re armed.”

Addison shifted, removing his seat belt and in the same motion pulling what looked like a Glock .30 from the glove box. “I like to be prepared.”

“No guns,” she grated, undoing her own seat belt and vaulting out of the car. “Besides, you’d only get arrested.” The sedan’s passenger door creaked open. “Good afternoon, Detective Castillo,” she called, approaching as he emerged.
Be friendly
, she told herself.

“What the hell was that all about?” the detective growled.

“That was my fault,” Sam returned, feeling Addison coming up behind her. “I noticed we were being followed, and I suggested that Mr. Addison pull over.” She mustered a pained grin. “I’m afraid he panicked.”

“Like hell I did,” Addison broke in. “Why are you tailing me?”

“They’re not tailing you; they’re tailing me,” Sam countered. “But I told you, Detective, I’m a good girl. I’m afraid to say, though, that you might have tipped off anybody who
was
tailing Mr. Addison.” She gestured at the sedan, not having to conceal her contempt. “Nobody rents ’91 Buicks to tourists, and no self-respecting cat burglar or assassin would drive an old beige car. You drive better than reporters, so you had to be cops.”

“Ah. Then why’d you try to kill us like that?”

Addison pushed past her. “She didn’t. I panicked, remember? Is there something you wanted, Detective?”

“No. Nothing in particular. But just remember, Mr. Addison, if you get killed, then I get fired. You shouldn’t be out here.”

“I’ll be careful.” Addison slipped his hand around her upper arm. “Shall we, Samantha? We’ll be late.”

“Sure. And don’t worry, Castillo. It’s my job to keep him
safe.” She shot him a grin. “However much a pain in the ass
that
is.”

The cop’s moustache twitched. “I almost believe you, Jellicoe.”

“I’ll have to work a little harder, then.”

They slipped back into the SLK, and Addison put it in gear. “Do you think they’ll give up?” he asked, his attention on the rearview mirror again.

“Probably. But just in case somebody else had the same idea as Castillo, how fast can this thing go?”

Richard eased back out onto the highway, turned up her hellish rock station, and floored the accelerator. “Let’s find out.”

Castillo watched the bright yellow car as it headed south and went into the road version of hyperdrive. “Shit.”

As he returned to the passenger’s seat, Officer James Kennedy beside him started the Buick. “Do we keep following ’em?”

“Nope.”

“I could call Highway Patrol and have ’em pulled over for speeding.”

“Nope.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Head back to the station and pull up the insurance claims for Addison’s stuff. Just because he’s rich doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to conduct this damned investigation.”

“You think he’s in on it?”

The detective looked at the eager face of his driver. “I think
she
is, and I think he’s with her of his own free will. There’s more to this than a theft and a bomb. But thinking doesn’t get me dick, and sitting here is wasting my time.”

Kennedy turned under the highway for the northbound on-ramp. “Ha. I told his attorney he should’ve hired me for his security. He’s gotta be hiding something, hiring that bimbo instead.”

Castillo freed a stick of gum from his pocket and opened
the wrapper. “Considering who we pulled out of the water this morning, that bimbo may now be the best cat burglar in the world. Show some respect.”

As the police turned north on Highway 95, a black BMW with dark-tinted windows left the gas station on the opposite side of the road and headed south at high speed.

The Butterfly World parking lot was fairly crowded for a Thursday afternoon, but as far as Sam was concerned, that was a good thing. Being inconspicuous with Addison beside her was a difficult enough prospect without a deserted tourist attraction to add into the mix. “Over there’s fine,” she said, pointing.

Addison pulled them into the spot. “Is everywhere a potential trap?” he asked, unlatching his seat belt and sliding from the car. “I presume that’s why we’re three feet from the exit and a quarter mile from the entrance.”

“Today everywhere is a potential trap,” she answered, slinging her purse over her shoulder and closing the banana car’s door behind her. “We’re just lucky that was the cops back there.”

“But you knew that before we stopped, didn’t you?”

His tone accused her of something underhanded, but she refused to let it get to her. She shrugged. “Like I said, whoever belonged to an old beige car wasn’t one of your friends—or enemies, and the people I know have more self-respect. Which left cops, or press. And I’m glad it wasn’t the press.”

A smile touched his sensuous mouth. “I do believe, my dear, that you’re even more camera shy than I am.”

Sam nodded. “Hence the blending.”

“Blending. Right.” He held his hand out, and she hesitated. “Happy tourists, remember?” he teased, flexing his fingers to beckon her closer. “Maybe we’re newlyweds on our honeymoon.”

“You’re putting way too much thought into this, Addison,”
she said, taking his hand and pretending that her own imagination wasn’t on overdrive.

His warm fingers curled around hers. “Rick.”

Sam nodded, not ready to say it yet. “Let’s go. They stop letting people in at four o’clock, and kick everybody out at five.”

“So no one gets in after we do.”

“That’s the idea.”

He seemed to be catching on to her little tricks and idiosyncrasies with alarming speed, but she’d already noticed that he wasn’t a slouch by any stretch of the imagination. She and Stoney would have to change all their passwords and signals, but they’d done that before, when her father had been arrested. It was a pain in the ass, but necessary to their continued safety.