Читать книгу Caught - Kristin Hardy, Kristin Hardy - Страница 10

4

Friday, 7:30 p.m.

ALEX STARED AS JULIA rushed over to the door.

“What are you doing?”

“Someone took it,” she said, practically vibrating with tension. “It was here and they took it. It wasn’t an accident, they had to know what it was. We’ve got to catch them.” She clutched at the knob.

“And what then? Say, ‘Give it back pretty please’? No way. We call the guards.” Alex spun around to grab the nearest phone.

Only to hear silence. “It’s dead,” he said just as she said, “It’s locked.”

“What do you mean?” They spoke at the same time, stopped at the same time.

And stared.

Alex answered first. “The phone line’s dead. Did you hear anything about them taking the phones down this weekend?”

“I don’t recall, but we’ve got a bigger problem than that.” Julia twisted the black knob in her hand. “The door won’t open.”

“Try it again. It’s an old door. It’s probably stuck.”

“It’s not stuck.”

Impatiently, he strode over to give it a careless tug. He was surprised to feel it solidly unmoving. His eyes narrowed and he took a better grip and pulled.

It made no difference. Okay, not humorous. Alex twisted the handle, listening. “The knob’s moving. Maybe something’s out of whack with the linkage.”

Julia shook her head. “There shouldn’t be. They take good care of it. It’s hard to get the key in the right spot, but once you do, it turns smooth as—” She broke off.

“What?” Alex asked, but she was already leaning in to stare at the lock.

“I always leave the key in the lock when I come down here because it’s so hard to get it in the right spot on the tumblers.” She put her eye to the keyhole. “And it’s still there.”

“So what’s the big deal?”

She didn’t answer and he saw the familiar air of abstraction on her face. She could say all she wanted to that he didn’t know her, but he could see when her mind was vaulting along one of its lightning chains of thought.

She just wasn’t always good about clueing anyone else in.

He watched her cross to the tool bench and search its surface. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Julia? Help me out here.”

“I just want to check and see if…aha!” She held up a piece of thin wire triumphantly. “Here.” She came back over and threaded the wire between the door and jamb, then slid it up and back down along the edge of the wood. “The crack’s too narrow to see into but—” The motion of the wire stopped. “See? Something’s blocking the wire. It’s the bolt, thrown over. This door is locked.”

“So we unlock it.” It seemed simple enough, until he realized there was no thumbscrew below the knob for unlocking it from the inside. “What kind of damn fool locksmith doesn’t put a manual latch on the inside?” he growled.

“One who wanted things to be really safe.”

“Well, I’m feeling a little too safe. Let’s figure out how to unlock it.”

“I’m not sure it’s that easy,” she said slowly. “The key’s still in it.”

He felt the first flickers of frustration. “So? It’s an antique. How hard can it be? We get some tools and we pick it.”

“You can’t pick it. The key’s in the way. You can’t reach the tumblers.”

Alex reached for her wire. “Then we push the key out.”

“You can’t,” she said faintly. “Once it’s locked, you’ve got to turn the key back a full revolution to get it out of the keyhole. The end of the key has these flanges….”

He eyed Julia. “You’re not being very helpful.”

“It’s an incredibly complex but an incredibly good lock. That’s why they left it in place during all the renovations. There’s a line of safes over in the UK that are based on this design.”

“Well, we’ve got to figure out a way to get out.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’re not going to get out through that door without help.” She swallowed. “We’re locked in.”

ALLARD WALKED DOWN the street in the gathering twilight, sleek and satisfied as a cat with a dish of cream. She was his again, his. The days and nights of frustration meant nothing. Now he had only to slide his hand into his pocket to feel her, warm and smooth against his fingers.

It had been laughably easy to stay in the museum undetected, to watch, to wait. He’d expected to break into the woman’s office once night had fallen and the guards retired to their control room. Who’d have guessed she would make it so easy for him, walking out of her office with a box that so obviously held something precious?

Instinct had told him to follow. And there, his impatience had nearly betrayed him, when he’d almost found himself stumbled upon by the lovesick fool on her heels. Idiot, he could hear his father’s sneer. Amateur. Only quick reactions had let Jean whisk out of sight in the stairwell to pursue the woman’s pursuer.

Ultimately, it had been to his advantage, for he’d seen the cameras as the young fool had opened the door to the basement. Of course, a clever man carried a small, telescoping steel rod for just such occasions, a rod that could nudge a camera a crucial fraction of an inch, enough to leave a small area unmonitored without making a change large enough to alert the guards.

Once he’d done that, it had been easy to move down the hall undetected, to find them. Of course, taking the amulet had been almost no challenge at all with the two so absorbed in one another. Bah. Only a weak man lost sight of the world because of a woman. And weak men made mistakes—mistakes that could help him.

He’d listened as their discussion had quieted, crept into the outer room as they’d touched one another among the books. And he’d watched a moment, as any man would, savoring the gleam of the woman’s bare breasts and feeling his body tighten as she moaned.

But he had not come there for pleasure. He’d come for the amulet, and when he’d opened the box to see the glowing ivory of the White Star, he’d nearly shouted aloud in triumph. He hadn’t, though. Instead, he’d tucked the box into his jacket and stolen to the door, turning the key behind him. He’d already taken a moment to provide them with a few…challenges.

And now, he was on the street in the growing darkness, the place he had always felt most strong. And he was strong. He’d recovered his prize. She would bring him pleasure, she would bring him respect.

And she would bring him rewards beyond measure.

JULIA’S FISTS ACHED from hammering the heavy oak door. Tired and hoarse from yelling, she tucked her little fingers in her mouth and blasted a shrill whistle.

Alex paused in what he was doing to give her a startled glance. “Where’d you learn that?”

“Summer camp.”

“Not just another nice society girl,” he observed.

She hammered at the door again, cursing a blue streak. Alex raised his eyebrows. “Definitely not another nice society girl.”

“I can’t believe no one’s coming.”

“It’s Friday night,” he said mildly. “Everyone’s long gone.”

“Did you try the other phones?” she asked.

“Dead,” he said.

“How can every single phone in the place be out?” she fumed, picking up a receiver only to slam it down.

He snapped his fingers. “Not every phone,” he said, spinning toward the book repository.

“Wait.” Julia scampered after him.

Alex snatched his jacket from the floor. “I am such an idiot. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.” Digging into the breast pocket, he pulled out a slim silver cell phone. “Ladies and gentlemen—” he flourished it “—we bring you rescue, courtesy of your local wireless network.”

“That’s not your regular phone.”

“I upgraded,” he said with relish. “I’ve got half of my CD collection loaded in this baby, plus it’s got a high- res camera and it’s Web-enabled.”

She gave him the same look his mother had given him in fourth grade when he’d listed the many attributes of a new Transformer he absolutely required. “Does it tie your shoes for you, also?”

“When I need it to.” A succession of images flowed across the screen as it booted up. “But the best part is that it gives me serious connectivity.” He punched up the number and held the phone to his ear.

“For a mover and shaker like yourself, a must.”

“Hey, you never know when Blaine Trump will be calling to donate a few hundred grand.” His brows drew together as he studied the screen.

“What?”

He walked out into the main lab, holding the phone in front of him and watching the display. “Just trying to get a signal.”

“Tell me you’re joking.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get it,” he said, trying different areas of the room.

“And security’s going to be by any minute.”

“They might,” he said reasonably. “Sometimes the signal comes and goes.”

“And right now it’s mostly going, right?”

They stared at each other.

“Maybe in a little while,” he said, setting it down on one of the tables.

“Don’t set that down and forget where you put it,” Julia said. “We might need it later. Why don’t you have a belt clip?”

He sent her a revolted look. “You’re joking, right? Only tech-support dweebs at Computers R Us wear belt clips.”

“Which you are not.”

“Which I, most definitely, am not. My phone’ll be just fine here,” he said, setting it on the table. And then he stared beyond it. “What is that?” he asked warily.

“Where?”

“There. On the table.” He pointed to a long form lying on a wheeled table behind the sarcophagus and shrouded in translucent plastic.

Enjoyment glimmered in her eyes. “That’s Felix.”

“Felix?”

“Our new mummy.”

Alex pressed his lips together and walked over closer to it. “A mummy. You mean like a four-thousand-year-old dead-guy mummy?”

“Thirty-five hundred in this case, we think, but yes. We just got him in a few days ago.”

“Can I look at him?”

“You might not want to,” she cautioned, but he’d already pulled up the plastic.

“Jesus. You didn’t tell me he was unwrapped.”

“Only partially. Felix has had some challenging times.”

“So I smell.” It was faint but distinct. Now that he’d lifted the plastic, there was the sweet scent of decay. Still, curiosity overcame his initial surprise, prompting him to raise the sheet again. “Dressed for casual Friday, huh, Felix?” He dropped the sheet back down and focused on the problem at hand. “Okay. So let’s see…locked door, no windows, no phones, no one coming when we call, and a thirty-five-hundred-year-old mummy. This is beginning to get entertaining.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.” Julia tucked the plastic back in place. “Personally, I’ve got plans for this weekend. I can’t stay here.”

“Not even to keep Felix company?”

“No.”

“Not even to keep me company?” He stepped up behind her to rest his hands on her hips, those deliciously slender, surprisingly flexible hips, and leaned in to nibble on her earlobe.

“Alex.” She twisted away. “This is serious.”

His mouth curved. “Don’t worry about it,” he said easily. “The only place people get locked in for days is the movies. Security will be by in a while to let us out.”

“Let’s hope it’s soon.”

“Anyway, there’s got to be another way out of here.” He began to prowl the room. “No extra doors in the book room, right?”

“Right.”

“What’s this room in here?” he asked, opening the door next to the repository.

“The scientific lab.”

He reached inside to flip on the lights and blinked. “Christ. What are all these gadgets?” The room was as modern as the rest of the lab was retro, with shining white walls and gleaming chrome-and-black equipment.

“Oh, a scanning electron microscope, a laser, a Fourier—”

“Okay, I get it.” He scanned the room and ducked back out. “If we’re bored later, you can teach me how to use them.”

“We’re not going to be here later, remember?”

“Exactly.”

The main conservation lab was in the shape of a thick sideways L balanced on its short leg. To the right of the main door lay the inner wall that formed the library and the scientific lab; combined with the rest of the L, it formed a rectangle maybe fifty feet deep by a hundred feet long.

“What’s down here?” Alex asked, skirting the outer wall of the scientific lab to follow the long arm of the L.

“More workspace. The supply room. The chemical shower. The bathroom.”

“Thank God for small favors. What’s behind this door?” He twisted the knob with no more success than the front door.

“Oh, that’s the head conservator’s office. Paul Wingate. It’s just a nook, though. No way out.”

“Let’s not rule anything out sight unseen.” He studied the modern lock on the door. “That one we might have a chance at.”

“For all the good it will do you. And there aren’t any ways out of the supply room, either, so I guess that means we’re stuck.”

“Not for long. I’m telling you, security will find us.”

Julia paced across the lab. “What if they don’t?”

He couldn’t help watching her. “We get out Monday morning when everybody comes to work.”

“I can’t wait that long. I can’t miss this thing tomorrow night.”

“What is it?”

“The New York Performing Arts Institute gala. My mother’s pet project. She’s been working on it for four months and if I’m not there, I’ll be hearing about it for at least that long.” She moved restlessly across the lab, scanning the walls and ceiling, picking up the phone again, only to shake her head.

“What about a computer?” Alex asked suddenly.

“A computer?”

“Sure. E-mail. The Internet. We ought to be able to get a message to someone, even just to ask them to call the cops for us.” He looked around. “Don’t they have one in here?”

“I don’t know,” Julia said dubiously. “There’s a computer in the rare-book repository but it’s off-line, just for indices and electronic research.”

“Nothing out here?”

She shook her head helplessly. “Too much dust from all the stone. It’s not the greatest environment. Most of the staff have cubes upstairs. Paul’s the only one with an office down here.”

“And his is locked.” Alex walked over to the workbench.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for some wire.”

“And that would be because…?”

“I’m going to try to pick that lock.”

“Oh, of course. Got experience at it, do you?”

“I’m a man of many talents.”

She watched as he located some stiff wire and used pliers to bend the top quarter inch to a right angle. “Did you apprentice with a second-story man in your youth?”

“Hey, I got my Boy Scout merit badge in B and E.”

Julia snorted but watched with interest as Alex nudged his ersatz picks into the lock on Paul’s door. “I should object, you know. You’re violating the privacy of a staffer.”

He flicked her a glance. “Duly noted. I’ll lock up again when I’m done, and if you want to stay in here as penance when they come to let me out, feel free.” He closed his eyes as he manipulated the tools, completely focused on the hidden workings of the lock.

And somehow, she found herself completely focused on him. This was ridiculous. Quite aside from the fact that she’d already decided their…arrangement was history, she had far more important things to worry about than the length of his lashes and the way his five- o’clock shadow darkened his jaw.

She made herself look away. “I don’t see what good it’ll do you if you get in, anyway. You don’t know his password.”

“It might be scribbled down somewhere. It might be something common. Mine’s set to remember so that all I have to do is hit Enter.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You’re not supposed to do that.”

He flicked her an amused look. “Uh-oh, are you going to tell?”

“Alex—”

“Look, it’s a long shot, but we might get lucky.”

“We’ll be lucky to even get through the door.”

“When have I not been lucky?” Alex grunted. “Got it!” Rising, he stuck a hand inside to turn on the light, swinging the door wide and stepping into the familiar chaos that was Paul’s world.

Alex stared, hands on his hips. “Man, how does he get any work done in here?” he asked in disgust.

“People who break and enter don’t have a whole lot of room for complaint,” Julia pointed out, but she didn’t blame him.

The eight-by-ten office was crammed with books, papers and tools, cast-off silicone molds of carvings and a host of other things Julia couldn’t identify. The desk nudged against the far wall was nearly covered with papers and books. The spare chair merely provided a resting place for still more. A chemical-stained lab coat hung from a hook on the door.

Not for the first time Julia wondered how the irascible conservator ever managed to find anything. Brilliant, he might be, but neat was not his strong suit.

“How does he rate a laptop?” Alex demanded in an injured tone. “I begged for six months and they wouldn’t give me one.”

Julia bit her lip to cover a smile. “He travels to a lot of conservation conferences.”

“I travel.”

She drew up the extra chair. “I guess he’s cuter than you are.”

“Hard to believe,” Alex muttered dusting the computer off. He reached beyond it to pick up a coffee mug stuffed with metal rods. “What is this stuff?”

“Oh, scalpels, dental tools, glass stirrers…” Julia reached over to pull out a hollow brown rod that looked like a paintbrush without the brush. “And African porcupine quills.”

“African porc—” Alex gave her a suspicious look. “You’re joking.”

“Nope,” she said serenely. “They make great probing tools.”

“And the bags of dirt?”

“Excavation dirt. We save everything. You never know when you might need it.”

“You’re all nuts,” he muttered, staring at a jumble of small stone and plaster blocks at the back of the desk. He stacked some books on one of the piles and reached for the laptop.

“Oh, don’t put those there.” Adroitly, Julia shifted the books away from the wooden box Alex had set them on. “That’s an artifact box.”

“And it’ll protect whatever’s inside. Isn’t that the point?”

“The last thing we need is for it to fall over or something.” Julia glanced more closely at the box and made a noise of annoyance.

“What’s wrong?” Alex asked.

She blew out a breath. “Paul. He’s got this little problem with following procedure. This is still supposed to be in inventory storage. It’s still got the pull slip on it.” Julia cracked open the top to reveal a stone figure of Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the dead.

“Maybe he’s trying to clean or do conservation stuff or whatever.”

“He still should have done his paperwork. He didn’t even notify me.”

“‘Your rules mean nothing to me’?”

“More like ‘My work is too important for me to worry about your stupid bureaucracy.’”

“Sounds like a charmer. So why don’t you lay down the law to him?”

Julia sighed. “It’s not my place. He doesn’t report to me. And, anyway, he’s really, really talented. Last summer, we cleaned up our inventory. We get lots of bits and pieces of things in here from digs, stuff that we don’t know where it belongs. Paul found the nose of Xerxes.”

Alex’s mouth twitched. “The nose of Xerxes?”

“A marble bust we’ve had for forty years. For forty years, it’s been missing its nose and Paul recognized it at a glance. He’s got this amazing sense for the shape and form of things. When someone’s that good, you cut them a lot of slack.”

“So he’s sloppy. Nobody’s good at everything,” he observed. “Except me, of course.”

“Except you,” she said drily. “Although you might wait to congratulate yourself until you’ve gotten the job done.”

He gave her a look that shivered into her bones. “I always get the job done, darlin’,” he drawled.

“Big talk.”

“It’s not just talk. You of all people should know that. Anyway, sloppy isn’t always a bad thing,” he said cheerfully. “Our boy slapped his computer shut a little too quickly, before it finished closing down.”

“So?”

He gestured at the e-mail application on the screen. “So everything’s still running. That means we’ll still be online.”

Despite herself, she was impressed. “That’ll help. Good job.”

“Feel free to shower me with all the affection you like,” he invited.

Julia rolled her eyes. “Just send the e-mail, will you? We’ve got to get out of here and notify someone that the amulet is gone.”

“Long gone, at this point. It’s not like the cops are going to find them.”

“I hope they do. That amulet might be the White Star, stolen from Zoey Zander’s collection.”

“The Stanhope heist?”

“Yes.”

Alex’s fingers flew over the keys. “What is it, Egyptian?”

“I don’t think so. A neighboring kingdom. There’s some sort of a superstition about it, that it brings good luck to the pure of heart.”

Alex made a noise of irritation at the computer. “It didn’t bring good luck to us.”

“You’re hardly pure of heart.”

“But I’m pure in other places.” He frowned and tapped some more keys. “So what happens with Marissa?”

“Don’t remind me,” Julia groaned and dropped her head into her hands. “How am I going to tell her? She brings the amulet here to me, I tell her I’ll take care of it and it winds up stolen. It’s going to reflect terribly on the museum. And me.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve got a bigger problem than that,” he said grimly.

“What do you mean?”

He pointed to the screen. “The network’s down.”