ItTakesaThief (13 page)

“Come to Paris with me,” he whispered.

Pulling free, she left him without a word or a backward
glance. And if her entire body screamed at her to return to him, to go with
him…that was the price it would pay for betraying her.

He’d made love—
had sex
—to seduce her into accepting
to his demands. But she knew Paris was the last place she should go. In Paris
he could have her arrested, the final nail in the coffin of his perfidy.

* * * * *

Something about the anonymously sent evidence to clear
Tiffany rang bells in Damian’s mind. But as he dressed in his own room, he found
himself blaming her for what had just happened between them.

Tiffany was lying, her sudden sadness and vulnerability
merely a performance to arouse his sympathy and protectiveness. He would not be
the first man who fell victim to such a ploy. From Eve to Yulie Cardoza, women
had employed such wiles upon unsuspecting, gullible men. Like his brother. Men
like Damian himself, who let Tiffany lead him around by his prick.

If Tiffany were innocent, why was she so adamantly opposed
to returning to Paris? An innocent woman would risk arrest if ultimately it
meant vindication. So what was Tiffany afraid of? That the evidence would prove
her guilt?

* * * * *

In the morning, Damian argued with Tiffany for over an hour,
but she still refused to leave Colombia. They were doing a masterful job of
ignoring making love yesterday, resuming their argument about her returning to
Paris. At last, realizing if he did not get out of her room he would wring her
lovely, stubborn neck, he threw up his hands and strode toward the door. The
uncharacteristic terror in her voice stopped him.

“Where are you going?”

“I have some business in Bogotá. I—”

“What kind of business?”

Returning to her, looking down into her anxious, drawn face
and unable to stop himself, he took her hands and brought them to his lips. “I
need to see a friend,” he said with as much patience as he could muster. He was
not certain he could trust his friend Nick Troy, but knew he no longer trusted
George “Reynard” Fox at all. Reynard had committed the unpardonable sin. By
withholding Tiffany’s real last name, he had withheld information about a
suspect.

“Can’t you call him?”

“I could,” he said slowly, unwilling to admit he suspected
his godfather might have tapped his own telephones, “but I need to pick up a
few things as well.” Under other circumstances, when he did not feel as if time
was their greatest enemy, he would have found Tiffany’s slight pout adorable.
He let her distract him momentarily, kissed her, then strode to the door. “I
shall be back tomorrow night.”

“What should I do?”

“I shall tell Madrina—Esmeralda—that you are exhausted and
intend to rest until I return. She will see that no one disturbs you.”

“So, you intend to starve me while you’re gone.”

Laughing, relieved to see her courage and sense of humor reasserting
themselves, he crossed the room and kissed her again.

“If you don’t trust the phones, you could email,” she
pleaded, again surprising him with her sharp mind.

“Tiffany darling, the sooner I leave the sooner I shall come
back.”

While he continued to hold her in a loose embrace, she
disengaged her arms from his neck, then stepped away from him. “You’re right.
I’m just a little,” she grinned, a wobbly, little smile that gradually firmed,
“gun shy.”

“That is my girl.”

Her eyebrows quirked at the patronizing words, but she said,
“When you get back, we’re going to talk.”

“That, my love, you can count on.”

When Ian closed the door behind him, TC stuck out her
tongue. “‘That is my girl.’ As if yesterday had never… As if he didn’t have his
tongue so far down my throat he could have licked his own cock. As if I tied
him up and forced him—raped him.

“When he comes back—ha! If he comes back, I’ll drive him
crazy. He’ll want me so badly his balls will burst. But I won’t give in to him…
Not until he shares everything he knows about the Paris murders. Not until I
know every single detail.”

Racing to her French doors, she rushed outside and stared
after him until the taillights on his car disappeared from sight. She was still
frightened, but something Ian had said, when he was still acting patient and
wasn’t railing at her, had started to sink in.

Ian thought the fall in London and the sniper incident here
at the Santana estate were serious assaults on her life. She snorted her
agreement with that, went inside and dragged a heavy chair in front of the
French doors. Nobody would sneak in on her like Ian had the other night, she
decided as she balanced her comb and brush on the arms of the chair. Satisfied
with her jerry-rigged intruder alarm, she dusted her hands.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, she stared at the bathroom
door and considered what else Ian had said. If someone—the same someone who had
rigged the star cover in London and had shot at her—had wanted to kill her, he
or she would have used acid or something equally deadly in the shower. That
attack, so Ian thought, was intended to frighten her. Well, her attacker had
succeeded. She was scared all right. Spitless. And she was madder than hell.

Somebody—and she still wasn’t completely convinced it wasn’t
Ian—wanted her dead. Why? She hadn’t gotten any information out of her London
snitch, so why try to kill her there? Was the accident meant to scare her out
of town before she heard something that led her to Isabella’s Belt? If so, her
assailant had succeeded. In spades.

And the attempts here?

Restless, she stood and paced the generous confines of her
room. As she paced, her certainty grew. The attempts here were because she was
getting close to finding the answers, to finding out who had stolen Isabella’s
Belt and had murdered those people in the bank.

The shower was rigged to scare her away from Emilio Santana
because somebody didn’t want her to find the thief. But that same somebody
didn’t want her to get killed either.

Stopping in front of the full-length cheval mirror, she
applauded herself. Her satisfied grin inverted into a frown. So now she knew
why. She still didn’t know who. Or where Ian Soria fit into things.

His departure gave her the opportunity to run. To hide until
she could find whoever was trying to frame her for murder. Only her certainty
that the answers were here, in Colombia, kept her at the Santanas’.

Her yawn caught her off-guard, but her growling stomach took
precedence. Picking up the house phone, she dialed the kitchen. Deciding
against overloading on cholesterol, she asked for an herb omelet and fruit.

When she had finished eating and had put the tray outside
her door, she settled on the bed and leaned against her pillows. Stretching
languorously, she decided she could get used to siestas.

She fell asleep and into a dream.

The house—she didn’t know whose or where it was—was
eerily silent. The only illumination came from an unseen source and
felt…shadowy and insubstantial. The light came from below and behind her at the
same time, its coldness making her feel small and very frightened.

A shout—a curse?—shattered the silence. Light seemed to
explode from an abruptly opened door. A woman ran out. A hand, seeming
unattached to a body, caught the woman’s long, dark hair and jerked her
backward. She turned to fight off the disembodied hand entangled in her hair.

Another voice, deep and filled with an emotion TC did not
understand, cried out. Free, the woman backed away. The hand lashed out. The
woman screamed, a long howl that ended with a squishy sound and that same
oppressive silence.

Harsh breathing, like that of the fire-breathing dragons
in the fairy tales her mother sometimes read to her, made TC cringe back into
the shadows. Something dark brushed her, trailed over her bare feet. She wanted
to cry out, but bit her lip to hold back her sobs. The insubstantial,
raspy-breath monster went on its way, down into the blackness where the
strange, cold light bathed an immobile figure in its glow.

The darkness-beast bent over the unmoving body that was
bathed in this icy glimmer. As the beast lifted the woman TC had seen running
from it, the icy glimmer fell on the woman’s face.

TC felt moisture flow between her legs and sobbed. She’d
wet her pants and Charles would be so angry when he found out. TC inched back
from the banister and prayed she could reach her room before the
darkness-monster found her, prayed that the evidence of her accident would dry
before he discovered the telltale spot, that the stink would go away.

Realizing the eerie light came through the window behind
her, TC crawled toward it. She didn’t know why she wanted to hide from Charles,
but she did. In her childish mind, the monster-beast and Charles were one and
the same. She had to hide, but she had to open the window so he and the monster
would not smell her pee when they came upstairs.

But when she reached the window, she couldn’t resist the
terrifying temptation to peer out. The monster was still carrying Mommy. With
staggering monster steps, he continued toward the old abandoned well, the well
TC had been told over and over to avoid.

When the monster straightened, Mommy had disappeared
completely. TC ducked away from the window, again not knowing why, but
convinced she should not let the monster find her looking out. She had to go to
the bathroom again. Bad. Already she could feel the wetness pooling.

Sobbing quietly, her fist clenched between her teeth, she
risked being seen and raced for her own bedroom.

In the morning Charles didn’t even scold her for wetting
her bed. Instead, he took her hand and led her into Mommy’s room. There, he
opened all of Mommy’s closets and dresser drawers, showing TC that all Mommy’s
clothes were gone.

“Gone,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically quiet,
“forever.” He released TC’s hand as if her fingers were soiled, then motioned
her to follow him downstairs. He made her face the portrait of her mother that
hung in the library.

“You look like her, TC. I intend to see that you don’t
become what she became.”

* * * * *

In Nick Troy’s hotel room in Bogotá, Damian removed a pair
of wire-rimmed glasses and rubbed his stinging eyes. He had been reading
nonstop for over an hour and felt as if he was back at Oxford, cramming for
exams.

“You have been busy,” he remarked to his companion who, in
true Nick fashion, looked calm, composed and carefree. “These files are even
more complete than the first ones you uncovered.”

“Now we have enough evidence to have Colonel Mendez arrest
her. Reynard sent the Red Notice yesterday and is working on the extradition
papers.”

“No, Nick, we do not have enough evidence. Everything in
this file is not only circumstantial, it is more than ten years old.”

“So? All we have to do, which we already can, is link Ms.
Cartierri to the Banque de Medellin in Paris. This file is just corroborating
evidence.”

“Inadmissible, I think. We may have a problem with the
statute of limitations and the fact that Ms. Cartierri was only sixteen when
the last theft occurred.”

Nick swore. “A minor.”

Damian’s eyebrows quirked. “Precisely, my dear Nicholas, to
paraphrase.”

“B-but—” Nick sputtered.

“Have you received the evidence from the Lyons office, Nick?
I thought not,” Damian said when Nick shook his head and slumped onto the
couch. “So, until we do, we can only assume that Tiff—Ms. Cartierri—retired
from her lucrative profession as a jewel thief for reasons unknown and
unprovable. Or—”

“Or what?”

“Damned if I know. Ran away maybe?”

“Like Oliver Twist, you mean?” Nick’s frown faded, replaced
by a quick grin.

“Excuse me?”

“Oliver Twist got himself a benefactor and retired from his
life of petty crime.”

“Sir James Foster,” Damian muttered, remembering the oddly
protective attitude the man had exhibited toward his daughter-in-law.

“Until Oliver was forced back into it. I don’t remember how
Fagin, or maybe it was Bill Sikes, did it, but Oliver returned to his old life
and took up thieving again. Maybe that’s what Ms. Cartierri has done.”

Damian tapped his glasses against the file on his knee. “If
I recall, Bill Sikes and Fagin aside, Dickens always rooted human frailty in
noble sentiment.”

“So your lady friend stole Isabella’s Belt and murdered two
people to protect someone else? Bullshit, Hunter. Nobility exists only in
stories. In today’s world it’s nothing more than a platitude.”

Damian met Nick Troy’s cynical gaze, then grinned. “I
believe you have not yet met Ms. Tiffany Cartierri.”

“You know I haven’t met her. So what?”

“Get your evidence kit, Nick. You are about to meet Oliver
Twist in skirts.”

* * * * *

Two nights later, TC eyed Ian and wondered what he had behind
his back. She leaned back against her pillows and tried to slow her galloping
heart. To no avail. Ian looked darkly dangerous, his winsome smile absent, his
beard-stubbled jaw tight, his magnificent body rigid under a black T-shirt and
groin-hugging black denim jeans.

“You’ve brought me a present,” she said in a greedy,
little-girl voice.

“In a manner of speaking,” he said as he prowled from
doorway to bed and tossed a mailing tube into her lap. “You were right not to
go back to Paris.”

TC glanced at the address on the mailing tube and felt her
heart surge into her throat. “I sent Sir James a poster of the Eiffel Tower. So
what?”

Disgust evident in every feature of his face, Ian flung the
damning evidence at her. “You sent a telegram. ‘Have item. Arrive London Friday
next. Love, Emerald.’” Then, starting from the foot of her bed, he crawled up
her body until he straddled her hips and glared down at her.