Thieves In The Night Read online

  As he hung over the new edge his mood brightened. French doors, a small balcony, and the windows were dark. He only hoped it was still the library. In one fluid motion he slipped over the side and dropped to the balcony, landing with a soft thud.

  He reached inside the pocket of his jean jacket and had a lockpick half out of its case before something incredibly strange registered in his brain—the French doors were already open. His gaze followed the gap up, and he caught the faint gleam of metal at the top.

  * * *

  Photoelectric beams are single-minded things. They only ask one question: Am I seeing the light? Chantal checked the angle between the mirror and the transmitter, knew the answer was yes, and carefully moved her hand away.

  Releasing her pent-up breath, she swung the picture frame out from the wall. Every nerve was on red-line alert. If she’d made a mistake, her feet were ready to fly. One thousand one, one thousand two . . . She counted off the five-second lag time between a communication break and the alarm system. Nothing happened. Ten minutes down.

  Jaz flattened his body against the gallery wall and peeked around the arch. A quick search of the moonlit room revealed his cointruder well into the business of getting into the safe. After a few moments he shook his head in pure admiration. There was nothing like watching a master at work. Figuring out how to sabotage a sophisticated security system was one thing, but being able to pull it off took a rare breed. And this lady was rare, not only in her skill and grace, but, he noted with an appreciative gleam, in every perfectly proportioned curve. There was no doubting the gender of this particular burglar.

  Jumping into the middle of the delicate scene, he decided, was not the smartest course of action. He had some serious doubts about the jerry-rigged mirror bit. Everybody had his own style, and some were equipment freaks and some weren’t. He wasn’t. Maybe it was better if he stayed close to the door.

  With that problem neatly pigeonholed for the moment, Jaz settled in to watch the show. He leaned his shoulder against the arch and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his dark slacks. A grin twitched the corner of his mouth. She was doing all the hard work for him. Another thought wiped the grin completely off his face. If she went for the stolen documents, he’d have to take her out. Gently, if possible, but he’d have to do it. One consolation, though, was that she didn’t look big enough to give him any trouble.

  Chantal squeezed a dab of gel onto the door of the safe, next to the combination lock, and stuck the stethoscope to it. That left both hands free and lessened the chance of her own heartbeats interfering. She opened her mouth the slightest bit to heighten her aural senses.

  A good safecracker needed a number of things: good hearing, reliable instincts, and steady hands. A great safecracker added one more—a soft touch. Chantal had a very soft touch. She had inherited it from her father, Guy Cochard, and he from his father before him, and so on down through the generations. She had been born into a family of thieves, proud thieves, who lived by their own defiant code: The world is full of thieves. The Cochards are just honest about it, and they are the best.

  As a child Chantal had believed every word of that code, and only a disastrous twist of fate had changed the course of her life and shown her another world. A world where her family members were revealed for what they were—thieves, plain and simple. The lesson had been hard learned, the guilt a heavy burden, and her love for them a heavier burden still.

  Being honest and being the best were values Chantal continued to hold dear, but she’d given up the thief part a long time ago, on a sad and rainy night in Monaco.

  Or she’d believed she’d given it up, she thought, sighing heavily. The tumblers rolled and fell into place—left, right, left. Victory was at hand. She pulled down the handle and the door swung open.

  “Excuse me,” Jaz said.

  Excuse me? What in the hell! Chantal’s mental clock went haywire, the minute hand whirled, the springs twanged, and her whole world fell down around her ears. But she didn’t move a muscle; she didn’t even twitch.

  “Don’t panic,” Jaz continued, “but as long as you’re in there, could I get a few things?”

  Things? He wants to get a few things? The bizarre question raced around her mind on wings of panic. She forced a breath from her lungs and slowly twisted her torso around, every nerve pulsing danger from one end of her body to the other. She spotted him instantly, a lanky figure in black lounging against the gallery arch.

  Her tongue twisted in acrobatic flips. She had to say something, do something, “Who are you?” she finally croaked out.

  “Jaz Peterson.”

  Good Lord! The man had given her his name! Was he crazy? She certainly wasn’t going to return the favor. “What are you doing here?” She knew that was a pretty high-handed question for someone in her position, but she didn’t know what else to say.

  “I’m here to break the safe, but you seem to have everything under control. Please continue.” When she didn’t move, he added, “I’m not the cops, really. As long as we’re not after the same thing, we should get along just fine.”

  “And exactly what are you after?” For the love of God! Was this conversation really taking place?

  “Stolen government documents. How about you?” His voice was deep and soothing, his tone ridiculously casual, considering the situation, but his steady calm seeped through her fear, and she felt her heart slow down a half a beat from sheer panic.

  “I’m—I’m only after what is mine,” she stammered.

  “Well, I know my papers don’t belong to you, so we shouldn’t have any problems. Seems like Sandhurst likes to acquire a lot of things that don’t belong to him.”

  “He’s in that business,” she agreed carefully, her eyes straining across the dim interior to keep him in view.

  “Do you need some help?” Jaz pushed himself off the arch and began a slow walk toward her. He didn’t want to frighten her; the mirror getup was mere inches from her shoulder. But neither did he want her closing up shop before he got what he’d come for.

  “No, I . . . uh, work better alone,” Chantal said. She had been stretching her intuition and instincts to the maximum, searching for a source of danger in the stranger. Surprisingly, she found none. Time was tight. If he wasn’t going to blow the whistle or attack her, she had to dismiss him and get on with her business.

  She expelled another long breath before turning back to the safe, not wanting her nerves to make her careless. This was still a very delicate business. Her hand reached for the velvet jewelry case and eased it out of the safe. She snapped open the lid, checked the contents, and slipped it into her pack. Before she could swing the door shut, though, his hand slid up her arm.

  “Honest,” he whispered, “this will only take a second.” He stuck a glowing penlight in his mouth, then pulled a sheaf of papers out of the safe and thumbed through them. Every action was efficient, no move wasted, and in less than a minute he had found what he wanted and put the remaining papers back inside. The light disappeared in his pocket. “Thanks.”

  There was a smile in his voice, one she saw reflected in the moonlight as his mouth widened in a sheepish grin. He pulled his sweater up and tucked the documents inside the waistband of his pants. “I really appreciate your help. . . .”

  Was he crazy?

  “. . . I’m not sure I could have handled the system all the way. I was ready for the safe, but the high-tech business was more than I’d counted on.”

  The knot in her stomach grew to an unmanageable size, having as much to do with guilt as fear that they’d both get caught. She had to get out of there.

  “You’re really good,” he continued. “I got here in time for the show, and I’m—”

  “Will you shut up?” she hissed. Her mind was going eight beats to the measure, and Mr. Run-on Mouth wasn’t helping. She went into action, undoing the tracks of her entry, pushing the safe shut and spinning the lock. In thirty seconds it would be time to put the transmitter
back in connection with its original receiver, and she sent up another prayer.

  “Back off,” she commanded the stranger, sending him a quelling look. “This is tricky, and I don’t want you—”

  “—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 rop
e 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