Hot Ice (4 page)

There was a grunt, then a thud.

Amazed at herself, Whitney held up her shoe in triumph. “I got him!”

“Sweet Jesus,” Doug muttered as he dashed across the room, grabbing her hand and dragging her along with him.

“I knocked him cold,” she told Doug as he streaked toward the stairway. “With this.” She wiggled the shoe that was crushed between his hand and hers. “How did they find us?”

“Dimitri. Traced your plates,” he said, enraged with himself for not considering it before. Streaking down the next flight of stairs he started making new plans.

“That fast?” She gave a quick laugh. Adrenaline was pumping through her. “Is this Dimitri a man or a magician?”

“He’s a man who owns other men. He could pick up the phone and have your credit rating and your shoe size in a half hour.”

So could her father. That was business, and she understood business. “Look, I can’t run lopsided, give me a couple of seconds.” Whitney pulled her hand from his and put on her shoe. “What’re we going to do now?”

“We’ve got to get to the garage.”

“Down forty-two flights?”

“Elevators don’t have back doors.” With this he grabbed her hand and began to jog down the steps again. “I don’t want to come out near your car. He’s probably got somebody watching it just in case we get that far.”

“Then why’re we going to the garage?”

“We still need a car. I’ve got to get to the airport.”

Whitney slung the strap of her purse over her head so that she could grip the rail for support as they ran. “You’re going to steal one?”

“That’s the idea. I’ll drop you off at a hotel—register under some other name, then—”

“Oh no,” she interrupted, noting gratefully that they were passing the twentieth floor. “You’re not dumping me in any hotel. Windshield, three hundred, plate-glass window, twelve hundred, Dresden vase circa 1865, twenty-two seventy-five.” She retrieved her purse, dug a notebook out of it, and never missed a beat. The minute she caught her breath, she’d start an accounting. “I’m going to collect.”

“You’ll collect,” he said grimly. “Now, save your breath.” She did, and began to work out her own plan.

By the time they’d reached the garage level, she was winded enough to lean breathlessly against the wall while he peered through a crack in the door. “Okay, the closest one is a Porsche. I’ll go out first. Once I’m in the car, you follow. And keep down.”

He slipped the gun back out of his pocket. She caught the look in his eye, a look of—loathing? she wondered. Why should he look down at a gun as though it were something vile? She’d thought a gun would fit easily into his hand, the way a gun did for a man who hung out in dim bars and smoky hotel rooms. But it didn’t fit easily. It didn’t fit at all. Then he went through the door.

Who was Doug Lord really? Whitney asked herself. Was he a hood, a con, a victim? Because she sensed he was all three, she was fascinated and determined to find out why.

Crouched, Doug took out what looked like a penknife. Whitney watched as he fiddled with the lock for a moment, then quietly opened the passenger door. Whatever
he was, Whitney noted, he was good at breaking and entering. Leaving that for later, she crept through the door. He was already in the driver’s seat and working with wires under the dash when she climbed inside.

“Damn foreign cars,” he muttered. “Give me a Chevy any day.”

Wide-eyed with admiration, Whitney heard the engine spring to life. “Can you teach me how to do that?”

Doug shot her a look. “Just hold on. This time, I’m driving.” Throwing the Porsche into reverse, he peeled out of the space. By the time they reached the garage entrance, they were doing sixty. “Got a favorite hotel?”

“I’m not going to a hotel. You’re not getting out of my sight, Lord, until your account has a zero balance. Where you go, I go.”

“Look, I don’t know how much time I have.” He kept a careful eye on the rearview mirror as he drove.

“What you don’t have any of is money,” she reminded him. She had her book out now and began to write in neat columns. “And you’re currently in to me for a windshield, an antique porcelain vase, a Meissen tea set—eleven-fifty for that—and a plate-glass window—maybe more.”

“Then another thousand isn’t going to matter.”

“Another thousand always matters. Your credit’s only good as long as I can see you. If you want a plane ticket you’re taking on a partner.”

“Partner?” He turned to her, wondering why he didn’t just take her purse and shove her out the door. “I never take on partners.”

“You do this time. Fifty-fifty.”

“I’ve got the answers.” The truth was he had the questions, but he wasn’t going to worry about details.

“But you don’t have the stake.”

He swung onto FDR Drive. No, dammit, he didn’t have the stake, and he needed it. So, for now, he needed
her. Later, when he was several thousand miles from New York, they could negotiate terms. “Okay, just how much cash have you got on you?”

“A couple hundred.”

“Hundred? Shit.” He kept his speed to a steady fifty-five now. He couldn’t afford to get pulled over. “That won’t take us farther than New Jersey.”

“I don’t like to carry a lot of cash.”

“Terrific. I’ve got papers worth millions and you want to buy in for two hundred.”

“Two hundred, plus the five thousand you owe me. And—” She reached into her purse. “I’ve got the plastic.” Grinning, she held up a gold American Express card. “I never leave home without it.”

Doug stared at it, then threw back his head and laughed. Maybe she was more trouble than she was worth, but he was beginning to doubt it.

The hand that reached for the phone was plump and very white. At the wrist, white cuffs were studded with square sapphires. The nails were buffed to a dull sheen and neatly clipped. The receiver itself was white, pristine, cool. Fingers curled around it, three elegantly manicured ones and a scarred-over stub where the pinky should have been.

“Dimitri.” The voice was poetry. Hearing it, Remo began to sweat like a pig. He drew on his cigarette and spoke quickly, before exhaling.

“They gave us the slip.”

Dead silence. Dimitri knew it was more terrifying than a hundred threats. He used it five seconds, ten. “Three men against one and a young woman. How inefficient.”

Remo pulled the tie loose from his throat so he could breathe. “They stole a Porsche. We’re following them to the airport now. They won’t get far, Mr. Dimitri.”

“No, they won’t get far. I have a few calls to make, a few… buttons to push. I’ll meet you in a day or two.”

Remo rubbed his hand over his mouth as his relief began to spread. “Where?”

There was a laugh, soft, distant. The sense of relief evaporated like sweat. “Find Lord, Remo. I’ll find you.”

His arm was stiff. When Doug rolled over he gave a little grunt of annoyance at the discomfort and absently pushed at the bandage. His face was pressed into a soft feather pillow covered by a linen case that had no scent. Beneath him, the sheet was warm and smooth. Gingerly flexing his left arm, he shifted onto his back.

The room was dark, deceiving him into thinking it was still night until he looked at his watch. Nine-fifteen. Shit. He ran a hand over his face as he pushed himself up in bed.

He should be on a plane halfway to the Indian Ocean instead of lying around in a fancy hotel room in Washington. A dull, fancy hotel room, he remembered as he thought of the fussy, red-carpeted lobby. They’d arrived at one-ten and he hadn’t even been able to get a drink. The politicians could have Washington, he’d take New York.

The first problem was that Whitney held the purse strings, and she hadn’t given him a choice. The next problem was, she’d been right. He’d only been thinking of getting out of New York, she’d been thinking of details like passports.

So, she had connections in D.C., he thought. If connections could cut through paperwork, he was all for it. Doug glanced around the high-priced room that was hardly bigger than a broom closet. She’d charge him for the room, too, he realized, narrowing his eyes at the connecting door. Whitney MacAllister had a mind like a CPA. And a face like…

With a half grin he shook his head and lay back. He’d better keep his mind off her face, and her other attributes. It was her money he needed. Women had to wait. Once he had what he was going for, he could swim neck-deep in them if he wanted.

The image was pleasant enough to keep him smiling for another minute. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, plump, thin, short, and tall. There was no point in being too discriminating, and he intended to be very generous with his time. First, he had to get the damn passport and visa. He scowled. Damn bureaucratic bullshit. He had a treasure waiting for him, a professional bone breaker breathing down his neck, and a crazy woman in the room next door who wouldn’t even buy him a pack of cigarettes without marking it down in the little notebook she kept in her two-hundred-dollar snakeskin bag.

The thought prompted him to reach over to pluck a cigarette from the pack on the nightstand. He couldn’t understand her attitude. When he had money to spend, he was generous with it. Maybe too generous, he decided with a half laugh. He certainly never had it for long.

Generosity was part of his nature. Women were a weakness, especially small, pouty women with big eyes. No matter how many times he’d been taken by one, he invariably fell for the next. Six months before, a little waitress named Cindy had given him two memorable nights and a sob story about a sick mother in Columbus. In the end, he’d parted company with her—and with five grand. He’d always been a sucker for big eyes.

That was going to change, Doug promised himself. Once he had his hands on the pot of gold, he was going to hold on to it. This time he was going to buy that big splashy villa in Martinique and start living his life the way he’d always dreamed. And he’d be generous with his servants. He’d cleaned up after enough rich people to know how cold and careless they could be with servants. Of course, he’d only cleaned up after them until he could clean them out, but that didn’t change the bottom line.

Working for the wealthy hadn’t given him his taste for rich things. He’d been born with it. He just hadn’t been born with money. Then again, he felt he’d been better off being born with brains. With brains and certain talents you could take what you needed—or wanted—from people who barely noticed the sting. The job kept the adrenaline going. The result, the money, just let you relax until the next time.

He knew how to plan for it, how to plot, how to scheme. And he also knew the value of research. He’d been up half the night going over every scrap of information he could decipher in the envelope. It was a puzzle, but he had the pieces. All he needed to put them all together was time.

The neatly typed translations he’d read might have just been a pretty story to some, a history lesson to others— aristocrats struggling to smuggle their jewels and their precious selves out of revolution-torn France. He’d read words of fear, of confusion, and of despair. In the plastic-sealed originals, he’d seen hopelessness in the handwriting, in words he couldn’t read. But he’d also read of intrigue, of royalty, and of wealth. Marie Antoinette. Robespierre. Necklaces with exotic names hidden behind bricks or concealed in wagon-loads of potatoes. The guillotine, desperate flights across the English Channel. Pretty stories steeped in history and colored with blood. But the diamonds, the emeralds, the rubies the size of
hen’s eggs had been real too. Some of them had never been seen again. Some had been used to buy lives or a meal or silence. Others had traveled across oceans. Doug worked the kinks out of his arm and smiled. The Indian Ocean—trade route for merchants and pirates. And on the coast of Madagascar, hidden for centuries, guarded for a queen, was the answer to his dreams. He was going to find it, with the help of a young girl’s journal and a father’s despair. When he did, he’d never look back.

Poor kid, he thought, imagining the young French girl who’d written out her feelings two hundred years before. He wondered if the translation he’d read had really keyed in on what she’d gone through. If he could read the original French… He shrugged and reminded himself she was long dead and not his concern. But she’d just been a kid, scared and confused.

Why do they hate us?
she’d written.
Why do they look at us with such hate? Papa says we must leave Paris and I believe I will never see my home again.

And she never had, Doug mused, because war and politics go for the big view and trample all over the little guy. France during the Revolution or a steamy pit of a jungle in Nam. It never changed. He knew just what it felt like to be helpless. He wasn’t going to feel that way ever again.

He stretched and thought of Whitney.

For better or worse, he’d made a deal with her. He never turned his back on a deal unless he was sure he could get away with it. Still, it grated to have to depend on her for every dollar.

Dimitri had hired him to steal the papers because he was, Doug admitted honestly as he sucked in smoke, a very good thief. Unlike Dimitri’s standard crew, he’d never considered that a weapon made up for wit. He’d always preferred living by the latter. Doug knew it was his reputation for doing a smooth, quiet job that had earned
him the call from Dimitri to lift a fat envelope from a safe in an exclusive co-op off Park Avenue.

A job was a job, and if a man like Dimitri was willing to pay five thousand for a bunch of papers, a great many with faded and foreign writing, Doug wasn’t going to argue. Besides, he’d had some debts to pay.

He’d had to get by two sophisticated alarm systems and four security guards before he could crack the little gem of a wall safe where the envelope was stored. He had a way with locks and alarms. It was—well, a gift, Doug decided. A man shouldn’t waste his God-given talents.

The thing was, he’d played it straight. He’d taken nothing but the papers—though there’d been a very interesting-looking black case in the safe along with it. He never considered that taking them out to read them was any more than covering his bets. He hadn’t expected to be fascinated by the translations of letters or a journal or documents that stretched back two hundred years. Maybe it had been his love of a good story, or his respect for the written word that had touched off his imagination as he had skimmed over the papers. But fascinated or not, he would have turned them over. A deal was a deal.