Читать книгу The Dare - Cara Summers - Страница 7

Summer 1999

IF HE FAILED, the drop to the alley below would kill him. Harry Gibbs stood on the roof of the Hotel L’Adour Paris and glanced at the gap between the two buildings. He felt the familiar rush of adrenaline and grinned.

He didn’t allow himself to look down, or to take in the picture-postcard view that the roof of the hotel offered. At 3:00 a.m., the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame were still bathed in light, but Harry focused all his concentration on that dark narrow space—ten feet at the most. He’d paced off the distance in the alley that morning. Just in case the robbery didn’t go quite as planned.

And it hadn’t. He’d gotten the necklace out of the safe, but he hadn’t had time to close it and replace the tapestry before Madame Cuvelier had awakened in the next room and rung for her maid. There was only one route from the maid’s quarters to Madame’s bedroom, and that was through the salon he’d been standing in.

Madame Cuvelier, a resident of the small hotel for the past ten years, was a restless sleeper. That information was in the dossier he’d compiled on her. That made the theft riskier.

And more fun. Instead of exiting through the door, the way he’d come in, he’d had to hurry out onto a balcony and climb to the roof.

When the sound of sirens pierced the night air, Harry turned and strode to the far end of the roof. Then, he did what he always did when the stakes were high. He dared himself to make the leap. As he crouched down into the position of a sprinter, he thought of his daughter, Rory. He’d been thinking a lot about her lately. Tonight, he promised himself. He’d write to her.

Clearing his mind, he murmured, “You can do it, Harry. Dare you!” Then he ran, lengthening his stride as he raced across the roof. Fifty yards became forty, thirty, twenty, ten. He prepared for the jump, felt his right foot hit the parapet. Then he leapt.

For a prolonged second, he was arcing over the alley, his body slicing through the air. If something happened to him…

Before he could complete the thought, his foot came down hard and he tucked and rolled across the roof. Lungs burning, blood singing, Harry got to his feet and ran toward the door. It took him less than three minutes to finesse the lock. The sirens were still blocks away.

He was whistling as he stepped into the stairwell.

AN HOUR LATER, Harry stood on the balcony of his apartment in Montmartre and swirled cognac in a glass. Now that the excitement of the heist was over, his mood had turned melancholy again as he once more thought of Rory. Dammit, he missed her. He had three girls, triplets, and lately, he’d been missing all of them.

More than that, he’d been feeling an urgent need to talk to them. That was impossible, of course. They’d been ten years old when he and his wife, Amanda, had forged their agreement. She’d wanted a normal life for the girls, and so had he.

For the first ten years of their lives, he’d done his best to give them one. But he’d become bored with their “normal” life in the suburbs of D.C. He’d missed the adventure, the risk taking, the thrill of pulling off a perfect heist.

Amanda had been firm. At ten, the girls idolized him, and she didn’t want them idolizing his profession. Therefore, he could leave and resume his former profession as a master jewel thief on the condition that he didn’t see his girls or communicate with them until their twenty-sixth birthday.

Harry took a sip of his cognac. He’d made a mistake—the biggest one of his life—by agreeing to those terms. He and Amanda should have found another way. Two weeks ago, the girls had celebrated their twentieth birthday, and six more years had begun to seem far too long. Time could easily run out for him before that. It nearly had tonight.

Turning, he strode toward the desk in his study. On the night of their birthdays, he’d written a letter to his oldest daughter, Natalie.

But it was Rory, the second born, he’d thought of on that roof tonight. Each of his daughters had inherited something from him. Natalie had inherited his gift for picking locks and his talent for disguise. Sierra, the youngest, had inherited his curiosity and his analytical brain.

But it was Rory who’d inherited his love of taking risks and his inability to refuse a dare. Even as a toddler, she’d been the most impetuous of the three, and he’d always thought of her as his little daredevil. Natalie had worked hard to suppress any reckless streaks in her nature. And Sierra had naturally preferred to think things out, to plan. Rory had always chosen to throw herself into situations, making things up as she went along.

Earlier he’d opened an album to his three favorite photos of his middle daughter. In one, she was running over the finish line in a race. Harry smiled. Of the three girls, she was the one who always rushed headlong through life.

In the second, she was at her senior prom. And she was beautiful. When she was a little girl, she hadn’t believed that. She’d always felt that her sisters had inherited the “beauty” genes, as she’d called them. He couldn’t help but wonder if the years had brought her more confidence.

In the last picture, his favorite, she was on horseback, leaping over a fence. She’d been nineteen, and no doubt she’d dared herself to do it. That was what she’d always done when she was little. Rory had always been an excellent horsewoman. He recalled the times they’d ridden together, just the two of them, and rubbed the heel of his hand against the tight little band that squeezed his heart.

He had taken those photos himself. He might have promised Amanda that he wouldn’t contact them, but that hadn’t kept him from being there at important events over the years.

Harry set down his glass of cognac. He might have a pictorial history of his girls’ lives, but he didn’t have them. Reaching for a paper and pen, he shook off the nagging feeling that his time was running out. He might have to wait six years to deliver the letter in person, but he could write to her tonight.

To Rory, my darling daredevil…