In preparation for their little field trip, Kat changed into a pair of black stretch leggings and a black turtleneck. She almost took a minute to put on a little makeup and brush her hair, until it occurred to her what she was contemplating. Disgusted with herself, she grabbed her utility belt and stuffed it into an oversize purse. Regardless of her determination not to regard this scouting mission as a date, she failed entirely to banish the thought from her mind.
They drove south from Bridgetown to the exclusive, beachfront area where the Valliard estate was located. The mansion was not visible from the road, but shielded by a thick stand of bearded ficus trees and tropical foliage. Jeff parked the car well off the road. They did a quick radio check of their headsets and mouthpieces, and then climbed out.
“I’ll take point,” he murmured.
They made their way swiftly through the trees. Quick electromagnetic emission scans revealed no motion sensors or cameras. The estate’s security must all be concentrated up around the house. Jeff flashed her a hand signal to follow him as he made his way to the edge of the broad lawn surrounding a tall, ultramodern structure of glass and steel. Frankly, it looked like a giant, white shoebox-and was about as ugly as one.
Jeff donned a nifty set of night-vision goggles that allowed him to see infrared light, heat and even look through the home’s walls. He commenced studying the estate.
“What have you got?” Kat murmured.
“Motion-sensing grid all over the lawn. A mouse couldn’t get through there. I’d lay odds there are pressure sensors to match.”
She gazed at the concrete walk leading up to the wide porch and its three-story-high overhang. “Is the sidewalk clean?”
Jeff studied it. “Yup. Just a sec.” He adjusted his lenses. “Rotating cameras are spaced at even intervals covering the walk.”
Kat looked where he pointed, and was able to pick out the small, rotating cameras. “With the right timing, those should be easy enough to slip past.”
“Agreed.”
“What about the house itself?”
Jeff studied the structure at some length. “I see all kinds of mechanical locks and energy sources inside the doors and windows. We’re talking museum-quality security.”
Her gut said the Ghost had approached the house on the sidewalk. It was certainly what she would have done. No need to take the hard way in if the easy path was wide open. As for entrance to the house itself, if the windows and doors were impenetrable, what other means could the Ghost have used to get in? She eyed the industrial-homage building. It even boasted ugly commercial air-conditioning units on the roof.
The roof. If she could get up there, she might find a way in from above. She eyed the trees on either side of the house. Too far away to jump from one to the roof. She eyed the house itself. The Ghost might have used suction cups to scale the walls, but the rough, stucco exterior would have made using them difficult and likely would have left circular scars on the stucco. Surely Detective D’Abeau was competent enough to have spotted something that obvious.
Maybe the Ghost could’ve gone up one of the tall windows with the cups, but not all glass would hold an adult’s weight. It would be a big risk to scale those three-story-high glass panels. How, then?
“I’ve got it,” she announced. “I think I can get in.”
“How?”
“Up the sidewalk, then up one of those porch columns. Across the roof to an air-conditioner vent and inside.”
Jeff eyed the smooth concrete columns flanking the front of the house. “You couldn’t climb those without damaging them. They’ve got no hand- or footholds. And I don’t see anything at the edge of the roof that would catch and hold a grappling hook.”
“I could climb one.”
“Hey, I know you’re a monkey, but come on. Those things are six feet across. You’d get no purchase on it. Even with a lumberjack’s rig, you couldn’t get enough traction with your feet to do it.”
“Oh, ye of little faith. I’m telling you, I can do it.”
“This I have to see.”
He actually wanted her to try it? “You gonna come up on the roof with me and take a look around?”
He murmured, “I’d never ditch a lady on a date.”
While she gaped at him in surprise, he added, “If you can get up there without setting off the alarms, send a rope down. I’ll come up and play with you.”
“Hold my gear.” She stripped down to only her basic climbing equipment to reduce weight, slung a rope and carabiners across her chest, then pulled out a small spray can.
“What’s that?”
“Stickum. Athletes use it-illegally, in most cases, I might add-to make their gloves or hands sticky. Helps them make the crucial catch in the big game. Since cricket’s a national obsession in Barbados and it involves catching balls, I assume this stuff’s available on the island.”
“Wouldn’t it leave a residue on the column that the police could find?” Jeff asked.
“The good stuff that the pros sneak onto their gear evaporates quickly. Leaves practically no residue. That’s how they get away with it.”
Ready to leave, she paused and asked impishly, “Care to place a small wager? I say I can do it.”
He grinned. “Winner gets to kiss the loser.”
She laughed under her breath. No matter who won or lost, they’d get to kiss again. “You know we can’t do that. Once we start, we’ll never stop. How about loser pays for dinner?”
“You’re on.” A pause, then he added, “Chicken.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “I assume you’re announcing what you plan to eat, for surely you wouldn’t call me that.”
He grinned mischievously at her and said deliberately, “You’re a chicken. Coward. Yellow belly. You’re scared to kiss me again.”
“And you’re not scared to kiss me?”
He shrugged. “I’m willing to take my chances. I think we can be lovers and still pull off the mission. But you-you’re scared of letting go. Of losing control. At the end of the day, you’re more scared than I am.”
Her knee-jerk reaction was to retort that she wasn’t, but honesty stopped her. Was she that afraid to kiss him? What if she couldn’t stop the next time? Then what would she do? Then she’d be in a hell of pickle, that’s what. A pickle she had no intention of allowing herself to fall into, thank you very much.
Without replying to his oh-so-accurate assessment, she took off running, skirting the edge of the lawn until she reached the sidewalk, where she crouched down. Spotting the cameras, she timed their rotation cycles and then did some quick math. In two minutes and ten seconds, they would align perfectly.
She counted down on her watch, and as the first camera swung past her, she walked quickly along behind its arc. A quick dive onto her belly as the next camera swung her way, then she was up and walking again, behind its arc. She repeated the maneuver until she stood behind one of the massive porch columns.
She pulled out a long rubber strap and passed it around the column. A quick spray of her shoes with the stickum, and she was on her way up the column. It was awkward clinging to the curving surface like a fly, but it was definitely doable. Pausing about halfway up to re-spray her shoes was tricky, but she managed.
She lunged upward with one hand to grab the edge of the roof. In the other hand, she maintained her grip on the climbing strap. For a hazardous moment, she hung precariously by her right hand, three stories above the concrete porch below. But then she flung the climbing strap around her neck and reached up with her second hand. From there, it was a piece of cake. She threw a leg up and scrambled onto the flat roof.
She ran lightly to the big air-conditioning unit, found a sturdy structural post, and attached her rope to it. Then it was back to the edge of the roof and lowering the rope until it hung a few feet above the ground. Jeff mimicked her progress up the sidewalk, then climbed the rope hand over hand quickly to join her. Dang, he’d made that look easy. Sometimes she envied the men their incredible upper-body strength.
“Now what, Spider-Woman?”
“Over here.” She led him to a flat vent on the roof. “Does that caulk look fresh to you?”
Jeff knelt down beside the grate, fingering the white gel oozing out around its cracks. “Yeah. It’s not entirely dry. Smells like a liquid adhesive.” He grinned up at her. “Shall we pry it up and see where it goes?”
She grinned back. Who’d have guessed breaking and entering with him would be this much fun? “After you.”
“I hate to say it, but you probably ought to go first. You’re so much smaller than I am; if you get stuck, we know I can’t make it through. And if you do get stuck, I’ll still be up here to haul you out.”
“Your call, boss.”
He pulled out a small crowbar and pried up the grate. The glue gave way with a moist, sucking sound. She lowered herself into the rectangular hole. After about four feet, the vertical ventilation shaft connected to a horizontal one of similar size. She eased along the low aluminum tunnel to another grate like the one above. This one showed fresh scratches in the galvanized aluminum around its screws. Yup. They’d found the Ghost’s entry point.
She whispered into her microphone. “Come on down.”
In a few seconds, Jeff touched her foot. “Is there room for me to slide up beside you and take a look below with my goggles before we go in?”
Kat murmured an affirmative. It was only after he’d joined her in the now very tight space, their bodies pressed against each other, rib to rib, hip to hip, with breathtaking intimacy, that it occurred to her he could’ve just passed the goggles forward and let her take a look around. She ought to be annoyed at him, but strangely enough, she wasn’t. Such was the desperation of her craving to be near him like this. Oh, man, was she in trouble.
As they banged elbows yet again, trying to maneuver in the close confines, he whispered, “Roll on your right side.”
She complied, and was stunned when he rolled onto his left side, bringing them belly to belly, chest to chest. An errant urge to ravage him right there made her freeze in shock.
“What?” he demanded. “Did you hear something?”
Yeah. Her heart about pounding out of her chest. “No, it’s all clear,” she replied.
“I’m going to lift the grate off and then stick my head out for a look around,” he murmured.
Her nod turned into a gulp as his hard, vibrant body slid upward against hers and her nose rested somewhere in the vicinity of his zipper. Kowabunga. He made some sort of physical exertion above her head, and his body flexed unexpectedly, lurching toward the hole. She grabbed him fast, wrapping her arms around his upper thighs in case something had caused him to momentarily lose his balance.
“Give me a sec if you want more of that,” he murmured. “I’ll be right there.”
“Are you okay?” she muttered, chagrined. “It felt like you were falling.”
“I already fell for you, darlin’.”
She rolled her eyes and turned his hips loose. But it wasn’t like there was anywhere to retreat to. Her eyes squeezed shut in mortification, she tried to ignore the obvious view and asked in desperation, “What do you see?”
“Doesn’t look like there’s a stitch of security in here. Apparently, the owners relied entirely on the perimeter system.”
“An expensive mistake,” she replied.
“Wanna take a look around?” he asked.
“Sure. We might learn something about the Ghost.”
Thankfully, his crotch finally slid past her face as he slithered through the opening and landed lightly below. She pulled herself forward with her elbows until her shoulders projected out of the opening.
“Need me to catch you?” he murmured.
By way of an answer she dived face-first through the opening, performing a neat flip in midair and landing catlike on her feet beside him. Faint moonlight from down the hall lit the startled look on his face.
She moved out silently on the balls of her feet. This was when her traditional, soft-soled, Japanese slipper-shoes really earned their stripes. She paused before the first doorway, waiting for Jeff to join her. They fell automatically into the usual patterns of spinning low and fast past openings and leapfrogging past one another as they advanced toward the front of the house. The place was empty.
She couldn’t resist showing off when they reached the stairs. A three-inch-wide stainless steel ribbon served as the handrail for the curving staircase. She leaped up onto it and ran down it, pausing only when she reached the bottom of the staircase. She stopped just short of the main floor. If the owners had any sense at all, they had pressure sensors or some sort of motion detectors down here.
Jeff looked appropriately shell-shocked when he joined her a few seconds later.
“Damn, woman. If you ever get tired of this gig, you should consider a career in the circus.” He added sourly, “Please don’t do that again. My heart couldn’t take it.”
She grinned unrepentantly at him.
Standing on the first step, he took a long look around the ground floor through the various modes of the goggles. Finally, he declared, “I can’t believe it, but the ground floor’s clear.”
She shook her head. These people had been asking to be robbed. Kat looked around the expansive space. The place looked like an art gallery, with an eclectic collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art occupying every wall. She was no expert, but some of it looked familiar and really expensive.
“Why’d the Ghost leave all this behind?” she asked. “Why only the one painting? Once he got in here, he could’ve taken every last one of these works at his leisure.”
Jeff frowned and moved off toward the far wall and a blue, cubist painting. Even she recognized it as a Picasso. “That’s an excellent question. Particularly since I’d estimate we’re looking at easily two hundred million dollars’ worth of art.”
She was staggered. “Really?”
Jeff nodded grimly as he examined a painting closely. “This Picasso is probably more valuable than the Monet that the Ghost took.”
“Sounds like our guy’s stealing on commission then. He’s not going after random art to pawn. He’s stealing specific pieces for a collector.”
Jeff moved away from the Picasso and stood back to look at a large Impressionist scene of water and boats. “No doubt about it.”
She commented lightly, “Good thing we’re on the right side of the law. Between the two of us, we could make a fortune nicking this stuff.”
He grunted. “This one job would set us up for life.”
They traded knowing looks. Temptations like this weren’t uncommon in their line of work. However, it was the rare operator who crossed the line, and neither of them were of that weak-willed ilk.
She asked, “Now what? You wanna climb back out of here, or should we make a phone call to Detective D’Abeau and give him heart failure?”
Jeff grinned. “The guy could use a good heart attack. Serve him right for flirting with you the way he did.”
“He wouldn’t be amused,” she warned.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Jeff replied reluctantly.
She followed him back upstairs, using the actual steps this time. They reached the air vent and she looked up at it. “If I were the Ghost, I’d have left a rope hanging here to climb out on,” she remarked as she hoisted herself back into the vent.
“Now that you mention it, there’s a rounded dent in that far corner of the vent opening,” Jeff commented. “Like a rope would make if a lot of weight were put on it.”
“Good eye,” she replied. Jeff nodded, acknowledging the compliment as she asked, “Need a hand up?”
“Nah.”
He showed off a bit himself by jumping and grabbing the lip of the opening. While hanging there, he curled up in a ball and then shot his feet up and forward through the opening. As intellectually advanced as she might consider herself, a primitive part of her still thrilled at the masculine display of strength. Yup, she was officially a mess.
They crawled back out onto the roof and re-secured the vent cover before easing over to the edge of the roof. From there it was an easy matter to retrace their route down to the porch, down the sidewalk between the cameras, and back out to their car.
They reached their hotel room slightly before dawn and retired to their respective beds quickly. It felt exceedingly strange, knowing that Jeff was sleeping so nearby, enjoying the hotel’s six-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets against his skin the same way she was. Eventually, she resorted to a self-hypnosis exercise and managed to put herself to sleep, but it wasn’t an easy thing. Memories of sapphire eyes and a vibrant male body pressing intimately against hers kept interrupting her best efforts to clear her mind.
A delicious smell of freshly fried bacon woke her up the next morning. She opened her eyes and jolted to see Jeff standing beside her bed, smiling down at her.
“Good morning, beautiful.”
Oh, crap. Pajama check. Thank God she’d pulled on a sloppy cotton T-shirt last night and not the whisper-thin silk nightshirt she usually favored. “Uh, hi.” She pushed her hair out of her face and rubbed her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“I brought my favorite cat burglar breakfast in bed.”
She sat up, propping several pillows behind her back. He set a lap tray across her legs, and she stared down at steak, fried eggs, stewed tomatoes, bacon, a stack of pancakes, and half a red grapefruit. “I couldn’t eat all of this in a week of breakfasts!”
He shrugged. “I didn’t know what you’d like, so I ordered a variety.”
“Have you eaten yet?” She picked up a spoon and dug into the juicy grapefruit.
“Heavens, no. My grandmère taught me that a gentleman always feeds his lady first.”
“You know, I think I’m starting to like your grandmère.”
His eyes clouded over. “Too bad you can’t meet her. She passed away a few years back. Cancer.”
Quick sympathy speared through her. She knew how bad it hurt to lose a beloved anchor in one’s life. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged, but there was old pain in the gesture. He changed subjects abruptly, and she went with the flow in total understanding. “Here’s the morning newspaper. You and I managed to stay out of it.”
“Thank goodness. That’s the last thing we need.” She dug into the fried eggs and pushed him the stack of pancakes.
She watched, appalled, while he drowned the flapjacks in syrup.
As he cut into them, he asked, “So where’d the Ghost get the stickum he used to climb the column? Yours came in an aerosol can. If he flew to Barbados, he couldn’t have brought it with him. So where on the island did he pick it up?”
She shrugged. “A sporting goods store, probably.”
“Can’t be too many of those on this island. Think it’s worth tracking down?”
“Our particular talents are probably better used elsewhere. Why don’t I mention it to Detective D’Abeau? He’s got plenty of manpower to check it out, and he’d love to hear from me again,” she said lightly.
A black look flitted across Jeff’s gaze, but to his credit, he made no comment.
Feeling a little guilty for the poke, she said quickly, “What are the odds that we can guess where the Ghost will strike next? I’m not fond of always being one step behind the guy like this. I’d rather be waiting for him at his next hit.”
Jeff opened his mouth to reply, but a knock on the hallway door startled them just then, and he was out of the room before she could blink. She leaped out of bed and threw on pants, grabbing a pistol and sliding toward her bedroom door on bare feet.
“You can come out,” Jeff called. “The hotel had some faxes to deliver.”
She didn’t question the fact that he knew to tell her to stand down. He’d assumed she would cover his back, and he’d assumed correctly. She stowed the pistol in the holster sewn in the back waistband of her slacks and stepped out into the sunny living room. “Who’re the faxes from?”
“Lloyd’s of London sent you a pile of stuff. And there’s one here from Viper-unless you know anyone else who signs their notes, V.”
She scanned Viper’s fax quickly. “The supercomputer came up with a catalog called ‘Undiscovered Masterpieces of the Great Artists,’ published last year. All the paintings stolen so far have been in it.”
Jeff gaped. “No kidding?”
She passed him the paper. “Vanessa says she’s contacted someone who’s going to send a copy of the catalog to her. She’ll scan it and send us the file as soon as she gets it.”
He nodded slowly. “The Ghost’s employer isn’t an art connoisseur if he’s using a catalog to identify what constitutes great art. Which means any rich bastard in the world could be our guy. I was really hoping a sophisticated trend would emerge in the collector’s taste. It would narrow the suspect list considerably.”
His logic sounded on target. Which meant they couldn’t go through the Ghost’s client to get at the thief. They’d have to catch the guy directly.
Jeff was flipping through the second sheaf of papers, the ones from Lloyd’s. “If we can get a hold of that catalog, we can check it against this list of insured art on the island and see if any more of the paintings in it are here in Barbados. Your friend Michael didn’t only send us Lloyd’s list of insured art, here. It looks like his buddies at Lloyd’s called all the other major insurers of art worldwide and compiled their lists of insured pieces in Barbados, too.”
“Gotta love that British efficiency.”
He grinned. “Yeah. And friends in high places.”
“Amen. So. With that list in hand, do you think we can predict the next piece the Ghost might go after?”
“It’s worth a shot.”
Kat’s PDA beeped distinctively on her nightstand. “That’s the incoming e-mail signal. Maybe that’s the catalog now.” She dashed into the bedroom to check. “Yup, it’s the file.” Jeff hurried after her, and they huddled over the handheld device as the pages of the catalog scrolled across its tiny screen.
She was not paying attention to the fact that she and Jeff were sitting on the side of the same bed. She was not imagining falling backward across it, their limbs tangled in naked abandon while they made passionate love with each other. She hardly saw the paintings go scrolling by, so vividly aware was she of Jeff only inches away from her, smelling like expensive shampoo and subtle aftershave. He smelled good enough to eat. She probably smelled like the sour sweat of last night’s exertions, and her hair was no doubt sticking up all over her head like broom straw.
She mumbled, “Mind if I jump in the shower while you compare this catalog to the list of pieces here on the island?”
Such was Jeff’s concentration on the incoming file that he barely acknowledged her as she slipped out of the room. Or maybe he was just covering up being as flustered as she was. She hoped the latter was the case.
When she stepped out of the bathroom a half hour later, wearing form-fitting white yoga pants and a matching tank top, lotioned, powdered, perfumed and primped within an inch of her life, Jeff looked up from the papers…and stopped cold.
“Wow. You look fantastic.”
She smiled even as she mentally shook her head at her absurdly pleased reaction to the compliment. She had to admit, having him around did wonders for her ego. “Any matches?”
“Yes. Several. What say for our third date we stake out a ghost? I’ll even throw in a picnic.”
Another date. Complete with the close quarters and adrenaline rush of a stakeout? And food, no less? How could a girl say no to that? Her mouth curved up into a smile. “I had no idea that running a Special Ops mission could be so civilized. We Medusas have obviously been doing it all wrong.”
“Obviously.” His dimples flashed and her knees went weak on cue. “Stick with me, babe. I’ll show you the ropes.”
“Or maybe I’ll show you how it’s done, big guy.”
His dancing gaze met hers. “We haven’t even begun to have fun yet, darlin’.”