The Lady Is a Thief (10 page)

 
   
“He took down Louis
duMonde
with a thumb lock in under ten seconds. I didn't even see him move. He also
managed to smuggle himself aboard my private jet.”

 
   
Silence, then, “Is he threatening you?”

 
   
“No.
The opposite,
actually.
But I don't know him and I don't think he's being honest.”

 
   
More silence.

 
   
“I will find out what you need to know. Stay
away until I have confirmation,
querida
.”

 
   
“Already done.
Don't call this back, I'm going to kill the phone and dump it. I'll call you
tomorrow from a burner phone.” She had six of them in a locker and they were
easily purchased.

 
   
“
Adios,
cuidate
.”

 
   
“
Adios
.”
They rang off and she merged into traffic on the boulevard. It took her fifteen
minutes of cruising to find the right woman with the right height. She slowed
down and rolled down the passenger window.

 
   
The redhead leaned down to glance inside and
gave her a dubious look.
“Sorry, Prada.
I like men.”

 
   
“Perfect. I have a thousand dollars in cash
and it's all yours if you don't mind swapping clothes, driving my car until
6:00 p.m. tonight, and giving someone a message for me.”

 
   
“I'm sorry, what?” The woman blinked.

 
   
T
hirty
minutes later, Kit waved to Georgia, the woman whose clothes she purchased as
she drove off in the sedan. She had nothing on her save for one key and a
paperback book. She didn't know if he'd done something to keep track of her,
but his actions coupled with Louis' sudden appearance and she didn't want to
take any chances.

 
   
She walked down to the bus station and
straight to a locker. Opening a locker, she pulled out a duffel bag and checked
that the lock on the bag remained in place. Slinging it over her shoulder, she
walked down the concourse to the ticket window where a sleepy man flipped
through a magazine.

 
   
“Do you have any coaches leaving for Half
Moon Bay today?” She chewed gum, which distracted from her accent and kept the
black hat low over her eyes. She had tucked all of her red hair underneath it.
The tank top and skinny jeans were thankfully nondescript and she could buy
some comfortable shoes. She'd miss the Jimmy
Choo's
she gave to Georgia.

 
   
 
The
man sat forward and tapped some info into his computer. “Coach leaves at seven.
Sixty-eight seventy-five, round trip.”

 
   
“Perfect.” She counted out the cash, mostly
in tens, fives, and singles. Never be without cash, Enrique told her. She could
leave cash stores in various places if she needed to slip away unnoticed, she
wouldn't leave a trace with her credit cards or private security. Secondly,
keep the cash in low denominations. It made most people impatient to wait for
someone to count it out, and then they paid attention to other things. Nothing
zeroed a retail or transportation clerk in more than crisp fifty and one
hundred-dollar bills.

 
   
She made sure to wash and dry any new money
she took out of the bank to give it a rumpled, ill-used appearance. She handed
him sixty-nine dollars and got a quarter and her ticket back.

 
   
“Have a nice trip.” But the clerk had
already returned to his magazine.

 
   
She checked the bus number and her watch,
after four-thirty. She left the terminal and walked around the corner to a
coffee shop. Sliding into a seat in the back, she wedged the duffel bag between
her and the wall. Propping her feet on the opposite bench, she pulled out the
book.

 
   
“What can I get
ya
?”
A woman on the sad side of her forties with a tired smile and even worse dye
job asked.

 
   
“Coffee, please.”
She resisted the urge to spit out her gum. Soon enough for that when she didn't
have to talk and could drink her coffee instead. “And bacon and eggs—eggs over
hard, bacon crisp and, if you have them, hash browns extra crispy.”

 
   
“Toast?”
The
waitress wrote it down.

 
   
“Hmm—whole wheat with some jam as well.”

 
   
“You got it.”

 
   
Kit didn't have to worry about the waitress
paying attention to her, the woman's gaze skipped twice to her watch in the
time she wrote down the order. She just wanted to go home, which meant she'd
deliver the food and coffee and leave her be.

 
   
Glancing at her watch, Kit flipped the book
open to the dog-eared page and settled in to wait for her bus.

 
   
But the words blurred against the page.
Jarod isn't a banker.
She'd never seen
him before that meeting and he was right about one thing—she did notice people.
She knew every employee she'd ever met, on sight if not by name. She could
always tell when she'd met someone before and didn't recognize them—that spark
in their eyes, that friendly surprise and ease in their expressions. She knew
and reacted accordingly.

 
   
He demonstrated none of those qualities.

 
   
But he
knew me. I wasn't that great a mystery to him…and he appeared really worried
about what Miles told me on the phone.

 
   
So either he ran a con on Miles…

 
   
…or he found out about the Raphael. The
Raphael she'd seen in Miles' collection six months before and knew didn't
belong there. At the time, she said nothing. After all, it took a thief to know
a thief.

 
   
And she was an exceptionally talented thief.

 
   
This
is all supposition. Maybe he just saw me as a potential bankroll for his
business efforts.
That thought didn't live very long, because he sure as
hell didn't kiss like he wanted her money.

 
   
He wanted her.

 
   
The waitress returned with the coffee and
the breakfast. She added some sugar and cream and stirred it up. Maybe she owed
Jarod the benefit of the doubt. He could just like her. She wasn't that
unattractive a woman. His reasons for following the plane, for getting on
board—hell, even his actions at the airport could all have a plausible
explanation.

 
   
Or he
could just want the Buddha—like everyone else.

 
   
A shiver raced up her spine, and she wasn't
afraid to admit, a wave of disappointment followed. If all Jarod wanted was the
artifact, he would be sorely disappointed. Her appetite waned at the thought.
The door opened at the front of the diner. She watched a couple of construction
workers padding in, yawning. They took seats at the front counter.

 
   
She cut into her eggs and ignored the doubts
niggling in the back of her mind. She had forty-eight hours to finish this and
then it would be over and done with. Three years of hunting, globe hopping and
flirting with danger and she could finally put the entire matter of
The
Fortunate
Buddha
to rest.

 
   
Focusing on that, and not
the fact that she already missed Jarod's company, helped her finish her
breakfast.
She watched the door every time it opened. She didn't need
Jarod or Louis finding her right now. Once she got on that bus, she'd
disappear.

 
   
This is what she wanted. Unfortunately,
every time the door did open and it wasn't Jarod, her stomach sank.

 
   
Stop
it.
She picked up the book and forced herself to read. At least the
seventeenth century spy novel's heroine got to sleep with the man she stole her
information from—all well and good until he found out what she was up to and then
the chase ensued.

 
   
He'd just caught up to the dangerous Duchess
and it didn't take much to imagine these two in the throes of angry sex.
I wonder if Jarod thinks that's what he'll
get when he catches up to
Georgia?

 
   
That made her smile.

 
   
T
he
moment the redhead exited the sedan and sashayed into the coffee shop, he knew
it wasn't Kit. Biting back a curse, Jarod backed his car into a parking space,
locked it up and followed the woman inside. She stood at the counter, ordering
a triple foam nightmare creation. From a distance, the color of her hair seemed
similar, but up close looked too brassy. The way she moved, hard and jerky,
appearing too defensive. She stalked forward as though hoping to intimidate
others into leaving her alone; all brash and flash without the natural
sensuality or smooth seduction.

 
   
He traced the wrong woman. Slipping back
outside he checked the car, Kit's. Her bag and purse sat on the passenger seat
in bold statement. Checking his phone, the GPS tracker told him he was right on
top of the tracker. Thumbing it off, he slid the phone into his pocket and
leaned back against the car to wait.

 
   
The redhead emerged with a tall cup in her
hand. She saw him immediately. Her relaxed expression stiffened, becoming
almost predatory. He stared at her as she strode toward him. “You must be
Jarod.”

 
   
Surprise flared in his gut, like a match
being struck against wood, burning away doubt. “And you are?”

 
   
“I'm Georgia.” She grinned. The faint
yellowing of her teeth didn't detract from the warmth the expression added to
her face.

 
   
“Good evening, Georgia.” He infused the
words with a patience he didn't really feel. “This isn't your car, is it?”

 
   
“Well, not exactly. But, I do have a slip
that's been signed over to me and legal permission to drive it for as long as I
wish.” She took a long swallow of coffee. The lines around her eyes were tight
with worry and despite her
smile,
the corners of her
mouth seemed strained.

 
   
“Well, if I were to call the police…”

 
   
“Look, I don't want any trouble. You're
Jarod, so I can answer your questions. If you were the other guy, I wouldn't
have even come back out of the coffee shop.”

 
   
The other guy.
duMonde
?
His eyes narrowed as
she juggled her coffee cup and reached into her purse to pull out—Kit's cell
phone. He recognized the case. Hell, he recognized her whole ensemble. Georgia
wore a two thousand dollar pantsuit and four thousand dollar shoes. She thumbed
the screen on and flipped from text messages to photos and held it up.

 
   
“See, this is you.”
Clearly
a photo of him sitting across from Kit on the plane.
When did the little
vixen snap that shot? “And this is the other guy.”

 
   
The other, indeed
duMonde
,
but the photo came from a distance and looked saved from the Internet.

 
   
“All right, so you can talk to me.
Talk.”

 
   
“First let me say that I am just the
messenger. She promised me you wouldn't shoot me for saying this.”

 
   
The corner of his mouth turned up. “She's
right. I won't.”

 
   
“She said to tell you, 'make that three to
three, now we're tied.'“ Georgia punctuated the sentence with a pair of kissing
sounds.

 
   
His eyebrows climbed.