Authors: Sandra Brown
Bad men, remember? Steer away.
She almost turned around right there and headed—anywhere—to the beach, back to her room, even the ferry to Nassau, just
away
.
Almost.
But then she had a thought, a dangerous thought.
What difference does it make?
My life is over. Why not look for trouble? Who cares anyway?
The idea was exhilarating, strangely liberating.
As she watched him, he stopped in front of the case that held the shell.
Her
shell. And he stood looking in on it for the longest moment—not just a moment, but long minutes, circling the case, seeming as mesmerized as she had been. He was so absorbed he didn’t see her in the arch of the doorway.
She was fascinated—and angry. She felt violated, that a stranger was taking that kind of interest in something that was so deeply personal to her. She felt he was looking at
her,
into her. It was too intimate.
All right, now, that’s just crazy.
Besides, what would a man, a gambler no less, find so fascinating about a jewel box? All this intense attention to the piece…and the way he was standing…
Like someone thinking about stealing it.
She felt a jolt.
He’s not looking at the box. He’s looking at the jewels.
Immediately she dismissed the thought.
The other night he was a roulette hustler and today he’s a jewel thief.
But as she looked harder, it became completely obvious. His rapt attention to the art pieces inside was just a cover for his scrutiny of the case itself—the locks, the infrared light that indicated an alarm, the cameras mounted at the corners of the gallery.
He’s casing the exhibit. He is thinking of stealing it.
It was brilliant, really—if the security in the gallery was anywhere near as laid-back as the rest of the Bahamas, it was an ideal place to pull off a heist. She’d noticed the lack of security yesterday, in an offhand way, an occupational hazard of the business.
But I never thought I’d see it—almost in progress.
She ducked out of sight, then, back into the dim and endless corridor. Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely walk, but she forced herself to move into the gift shop next door, browsing the racks just inside so he wouldn’t notice her when he came out.
This is crazy.
What are the chances that you would just happen to catch him casing the place?
On the other hand she was probably the one person in the whole resort most likely to be able to recognize if someone were casing the gallery. Was it really so outlandish?
It would be so easy to do,
she thought, her heart racing as she feigned interest in mermaid glitter-globes. She’d had her hours, days, weeks, of worrying about the angles of possible theft every time she had a new exhibit in her own museum. The gallery was so accessible, off a main corridor of the hotel, elevators within a few steps of the gallery doors. If there were some kind of event that made the corridors more crowded than usual, a noisy distraction, a thief could simply slip into the crowd and be…anywhere.
A bribe to the security guard to take care of the alarms, a good glass cutter—it wouldn’t be hard at all.
She saw movement in the corner of her eye and her pulse spiked as she saw him step out of the gallery.
She hesitated…then followed.
He moved at a leisurely pace until he was out of the corridor, then sped up with a purposeful stride, pushing out through the glass-and-metal-scrollwork doors onto the terrace.
Melissa ran quickly, silently behind, and slipped through the door.
The sun was blinding and the tropical warmth startling after the air-conditioned chill of the hotel; it took her eyes a moment to focus.
The terrace overlooked a lagoon of that exquisite water, with a crescent-shaped beach. Melissa stared out, trying to spot the man. A flotilla of deck chairs was arranged in perfect lines on the pristine sand; families played in the water on inner tubes and giant bicycle-like water toys. Beyond the walls of the resort the ocean stretched, more turquoise glory.
It seemed she’d lost him…then she spotted the dark curly head moving down a sloping path of painted concrete, toward a giant domed pavilion next to the lagoon.
She followed, forcing herself to move casually.
The pavilion housed a massive round bar, with a mosaic seascape on the arched ceiling two stories above. The sound of rushing water echoed off the dome, drifting up from somewhere below the floor.
The man was already seated at the bar, long legs slanted against the bar stool legs, sea breeze playing with that curly hair. He was writing in a little notebook…no, sketching…and totally engrossed in his drawing.
She was suddenly rabid to see.
She made her way up to the bar, stopping not too close to him, and the bartender stepped toward her. She gestured to the drink board advertising piña coladas; the bartender smiled and poured.
The man didn’t look up from his drawing.
She picked up her drink and turned away from the bar, toward him, glancing down for the briefest second.
Then she moved across the glittering tiles of the floor to a table overlooking the lagoon. She sat and sipped the icy drink, her heart racing out of control.
In that one brief glimpse she’d seen he had sketched the piece,
her
piece, the jewel-encrusted shell box.
It was a scale drawing—remarkable, really, how precise the measurements were.
And measurements of the display cases and gallery, and the cameras mounted above.
Her fantasy hadn’t been a fantasy at all.
He’s going to steal it.
She sat and gazed over the ocean without looking at him and when he rose from the bar stool she watched him in her peripheral vision. She took her drink off its napkin and let the breeze blow it off the table so she would have to turn.
He was gone.
Then she spotted his dark curly head disappearing down a tiled stairwell leading below the floor that she hadn’t noticed until just then.
She drained her drink—she was feeling quite light-headed now—and followed. The marble stairs descended into a dim cavern with an ethereal blue glow. Melissa stopped in the middle of the floor. The water fountain she had been hearing was at the base of the stairs—and across the grotto a glass wall looked out onto the blue water of an enormous aquarium. Groupers the size of large dogs drifted through the underwater reefs; a school of barracudas skimmed past slowly circling seven-foot sharks.
Melissa tore her eyes away and turned, moving after the man. She hurried through cavern after cavern…the place was endless, but deserted—no sign of him. She stopped, looking through the glass at a puffer fish floating blimplike in front of her.
“The art lover,” a voice said behind her.
She whirled. And he was there, a dark silhouette in the blue-green light of the grotto.
“I’m sorry,” he said, a low, elegant voice. “I hadn’t meant to startle you.”
On top of everything else, an English accent.
Her mind was racing. Had
he
been following
her?
“Not at all,” she answered. “I thought you were a shark.”
He laughed, a warm echo in the cavern. “We keep meeting,” he said, although they had not met at all. “The casino, the gallery.” He cocked his head, looked at her speculatively. “You seemed especially fond of the Chihulys. Thinking of stealing one?”
Although startled to hear her own suspicion voiced, she had to laugh out loud—any one of the pieces weighed at least a half a ton.
“In a good storm, I might be able to float one out.”
“Brilliant. You’re a professional, then.”
A professional what?
He smiled slightly. “I meant—your interest in the Chihulys, in antiquities. Is art a business interest of yours, or personal?”
“A little of both,” she said blithely, surprising herself. She could be as ambiguous as he was being. “And yours?”
“The same,” he agreed. “I must say it’s a pleasure to see at least someone enjoying the gallery. A shame to see all that beauty go to waste.”
She felt herself flush; she was suddenly sure that he was talking about her.
“It’s a more subtle pleasure than this.” She gestured to the glass walls of the aquarium.
“In a way,” he said, with what seemed like a secret amusement. “You haven’t even seen the best part.” He touched her back—lightly, nothing more than that—guiding her into the next grotto.
As they stepped through the archway, Melissa drew in a breath.
They were entirely underwater now, in a long tunnel made completely of glass, arching over their heads. The tunnel allowed them to walk through the aquarium with sea creatures all around them—beside them, above them, as if they were diving through schools of constantly changing fish: the large colorful tropical ones and the schools of barracudas and the sharks, of course, always the sharks.
She looked up through the glass and saw daylight slanting through the surface of the water, fifteen feet above.
He was watching her, or had never stopped watching her.
Why not?
she thought.
A shadow passed over the sun, as above a shark slowly circled.
* * *
They had planned to meet in the lobby. On a hunch
she went down early and drifted by the gallery. He was there again, in front of that case, as intent on the jeweled shell as ever. And she moved quickly back into the elevator and went up again and down another way, afraid that he had seen her.
He took her to a hotel down the beach, on the other side of the island, overlooking the ocean. Far more rustic and natural than anything at the resort—and more private.
The pompano was creamy, the wine mouthwatering, and the gentle rolling of the waves lulled her, lowering all defenses.
His name was Nick, or so he said, and his business was some kind of finance, or so he said. But from the beginning, his interest was clearly in art.
He was surprised to learn, or feigned it, that she was a gallery director.
“You
are
a professional, then.”
“Professional enough to know the gallery director here might be in for more than he bargained for,” she said.
“How do you mean?” He sounded innocently intrigued.
“If I were a thief, I couldn’t ask for a more enticing collection—or security system.”
He looked at her over his wineglass. “You think the collection is vulnerable.”
She shrugged a bare shoulder, and shocked herself with her own daring. “I can see how it might be tempting to someone who was paying attention.”
He sipped the wine, his face betraying nothing. “It would be difficult to fence such high-profile pieces.”
“The pieces, yes. But not if the thief were planning to take a particular piece apart and sell the individual gems.”
He looked startled. “That would be a shame, wouldn’t you think?” He asked gravely. “A treasure like that.”
Suddenly she felt they were talking about something other than the jewels. She met his gaze. “I would think that, yes. I wouldn’t say the same of a thief.”
His face tightened. “Not everyone can recognize the exquisite. Not everyone is worthy of it.” His voice softened. “Myself, I dislike seeing any sort of treasure in the hands of the wrong people. That’s the true crime.”
She looked into his eyes, wondering. He smiled enigmatically. “It’s a lovely night. Let’s walk.”
They walked along the shoreline while clouds raced across the moon. The wind was strong, and the waves equally stirred up, swelling and crashing onto the shore in an insistent rhythm. Melissa’s dress whipped around her thighs, her hair around her head. And finally he spoke.
“Forgive the cliché, but I can’t for the life of me understand…” He paused. “Why a woman like you would be at a place like this alone.”
It was not only the wine, but the sea and the wind and that nothing-to-lose recklessness that made her say it.
“Honestly—all those things a person would normally ask? It’s pointless. All that is over for me now.”
He immediately, tactfully backed off. “So you’re starting over,” he said lightly, and the way he said it made it sound like an adventure, not an end. “You’ve come to the right place. The islands have always been a place for reinvention. Their pirate history, you know.”
“I don’t, actually, not much.” It was her first trip to the Bahamas.
“It’s the location. Seven hundred islands and cays, with all those complex shoals and channels…right off well-traveled shipping lanes like the Windward Passage. It was easy for pirate ships to lie in wait for cargo ships to plunder, and to hide once the plundering had been done.”
They had reached a sea break of piled boulders, no way around but to climb. He mounted the rocks barefoot, clambering up with swift, sure steps, then anchored himself and reached down to her. His hand enclosed hers, warm and strong, and he lifted her as if she weighed nothing, releasing her just a beat slowly as she tested her footing, and he spoke again as they continued over the rocks.
“The islands became a hideout for blockade-runners during the Civil War, and rumrunners during Prohibition.”
Funny how danger can sound enticing…especially with a British accent.
“That’s quite a criminal history,”
she said aloud.
Emphasis on “criminal.”
He smiled. “And that history translated to modern banking practices, too. Hidden treasure turned into offshore bank accounts. You can live on a boat, always keep moving—no one asks too many questions. It’s easy to disappear, here.”
He glanced at her and she felt a frisson of unease. It was late, and there were few people on the beach; the shore on this side of the island was rocky and rough and she suddenly felt very alone. It would take only a second for her to “slip,” to hit her head on a rock. No one knew where she had gone and who with.
Yes…so very easy to disappear.
But something made her press on. “So you’re advocating the life.”