Authors: Nora Roberts
It was tempting. Too tempting. “Not really worthwhile in this case.” With something like regret he replaced them and got down to business. “We’ll need a flashlight, extra gloves, and the key, of course.”
Adrianne gathered up gear. “This isn’t the way I intended to spend the night.”
“Think of it as a Christmas present to the St. Johns.”
“They don’t deserve it. He’s a fool and she’s a mercenary opportunist.”
Philip slipped the key into the deep pocket of his slacks. “People who live in glass houses.”
Taking her arm, he led her out.
There was a doorway at the side of the El Grande. Down a short flight of concrete steps, it was built into the wall more for serviceability than for style. Paying guests would have no use for it. In this way, the housekeeping and maintenance crews could enter the hotel without passing through the elegant lobby.
The Dumpster for garbage was a few feet away. The lid was closed, but couldn’t contain the smell the heat had intensified. It carried on the breeze strongly enough to make the eyes water.
“Almost as seductive as Rose’s perfume,” Philip commented. “You have a room here. Why not follow the vents from there?”
“I chose this time because there are a lot of pockets to be picked at the El Grande. It’s entirely possible there’ll be more thefts. If and when there’s an investigation, I’d rather they start from here than from inside.”
“An ounce of prevention?” he asked, then examined Adrianne’s tools when she drew them out. “Very nice. Surgical steel?”
“Of course.”
“Allow me.”
He chose a pick and dealt handily with the lock. Adrianne saw just how handily from her view over his shoulder. He all but felt the lock open, ear tilted toward it, fingers moving as delicately as a virtuoso’s on a violin. She’d always considered herself an excellent locksmith, but had to admit, at least to herself, that he was better.
“How long have you been out of the business?”
“Five years. Nearly.” He replaced her pick before pushing the door open.
“You haven’t lost your touch.”
“Thanks.”
Together they entered the bowels of the hotel. It was damp and smelted it, but it was a reprieve from the garbage. Adrianne played her light along the plain concrete floor and walls. Someone had tacked up a poster of what she assumed was a Mexican pop star. There were a few chairs scattered here and there, but they didn’t look as though they offered much comfort. The overhead bulbs were bare.
“You’d think he could funnel a bit of his profits into dragging the working conditions into the twentieth century.” She watched a lizard sidle up the wall and blink.
“We’ll discuss the St. Johns’ debt to society later. Which way?” When she gestured, he moved through the room into an alcove that opened up into a large utility area. Here the water heater hummed along, doing its job. The huge air conditioner whirled, making him think of the frost on the windowpanes in his home in Oxfordshire, where Christmas would feel like Christmas. Frowning, he studied the ductwork. She’d been right when she’d spoken of a tight squeeze.
“All right, give me a boost up, then I’ll pull you along.” He held out his hand for the light.
Adrianne was thinking about the less than grand conditions in the room beyond. The Mexican economy was a mess, and its people were struggling. She could resell the St. John jewels and funnel the profits through Catholic Charities.
“I don’t suppose you’d reconsider. I could put those stones to much better use than adorning Lauren’s neck. We’d split sixty-forty.”
“Sixty-forty?”
“I’ve done all the work,” she pointed out. “It’s a more than fair split.”
He wished she hadn’t suggested it—he really did. It made it even more difficult for a man who’d been born to take to give back. It wasn’t the money, but the principle. Unfortunately, he’d developed other principles over the last few years. A lowering admission. He thought of Spencer sitting behind his desk puffing on his pipe.
“The light,” he repeated.
With a shrug she passed it to him. “It’s a much better deal than this one, but have it your way.”
“You said the top floor, which room?”
“It’s the last on the west side; it takes the corner of the building.”
“You have a compass?”
“No.” She grinned. “Don’t you know which way west is?”
There was something to be said for British dignity. “I always used a compass.”
Still grinning, she made a basket out of her hands. “Alley-oop, darling. I’ll get you there.”
He ignored the taunt and put his foot in her hands. Almost before she felt the weight, he was up, wriggling agilely into the vent. After a few oaths he was able to shift and hold down his hands for her. She gripped them. Their fingers curled and held fast. For a moment their eyes locked just as truly. Then her feet were off the ground.
On his hands and knees, Philip swung the light back and forth. It was like being inside a metal coffin. “From the looks of it, it’s fortunate I missed my Christmas pie.”
“It’s narrow on the turns,” she told him with some pleasure. “Perhaps we should have brought some lard for you.”
There wasn’t room to turn and scowl at her. “With a little time, I could come up with a much more sophisticated plan.”
“I’ve all the time in the world.”
Philip merely sucked in his breath. “Stay close, we’ve a long way to go.”
It was a long trip, and an uncomfortable one. More than once the sheet-metal tunnel narrowed so that Philip had to wiggle and squirm his way through like a snake burrowing under a rock. Foot by foot they slid, belly down, distributing weight. The journey had to be made in near silence. When
they passed over openings, they heard voices, laughter, or occasionally water running out of a tap or shower.
Once Adrianne had no choice but to lay prone as the guest on the fourth floor came into the bathroom to gargle. If Number 422 had opened his eyes when he’d tilted his head back and swished peppermint mouthwash, he’d have gotten quite a surprise.
She stifled giggles as they bellied their way to the next floor. Whenever the ducts forked or spread out, she tugged on Philip’s foot to give him direction. In her mind she’d made the trip a dozen times. Thirty exhausting minutes later they were over the vent, looking down at the St. Johns’ pastel pink john.
“You’re sure?” Philip hissed.
“Of course I’m sure.”
“It would be very unprofessional to put the jewelry into someone else’s safe.”
“I said I’m sure,” she whispered back. “Do you see that hideous peacock print robe on the back of the door?”
He had to bend his knees into his chest to get a look. “So?”
“I gave it to Lauren for her birthday.”
Philip studied the robe. “You don’t like her at all, do you?”
“She browbeats her servants, fires them whenever the whim strikes, and in the three years I’ve known her, she’s never left a tip in a restaurant.” She passed him a small screwdriver. “Do you want to do this?”
For a moment he simply sat. Then, as if in afterthought, he brushed some of the dust they’d accumulated on the trip off her cheek. “Why don’t you go ahead?”
With a shrug she dealt quickly and quietly with the screws. Once they and the tool were safely in her pocket, he lifted off the grate. He was still mulling over her words. What difference could it make to Adrianne how Lauren St. John treated her servants? Now wasn’t the time to think of it, he decided as he set the grate aside.
“Wait here,” he said.
“Oh, no, I’m coming with you.”
“There’s no need.”
Adrianne put a hand on his arm. “How do I know you’re really going to put the stuff back?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Disgusted, he slid through the opening. Seconds later Adrianne followed, just as silently. He’d reached up automatically to nip her at the waist for the final drop. As his hands closed over her, he had a moment to think that there were other ways he’d have preferred spending the evening.
They’d both taken a step forward when a sound had them jerking back. It took a minute for it to register. All Adrianne could do was cover her face with her hands and pray she wouldn’t laugh.
Apparently, the St. Johns were spending the first hours of Christmas morning in passion. The bedsprings creaked. Lauren groaned. Charlie panted.
“Let’s not disturb them,” Philip mumbled as he melted like a shadow into the hallway.
The sounds in the adjoining room rose and fell as they crouched beside the safe. From the intensity of it, Philip thought they could have stormed into the suite like marines, blown the safe with plastique, and stormed out again without breaking the St. Johns’ rhythm. It was difficult not to admire Charlie’s stamina as he heard some of Lauren’s keening demands.
Inside thin surgical gloves, Philip’s palms began to sweat, not from nerves, but from envy as Lauren cried out and the moaning and thrashing continued. He snatched the flashlight away as the beam bobbed and jerked from Adrianne’s shaking laughter.
“Get a grip on yourself,” he grated out.
“Sorry. I was just imagining Charlie naked.”
“Please, not on an empty stomach.” He found the jewel case Adrianne had left behind and laid the glitter of rubies and diamonds inside. It hurt, he realized, more than just a little to give them back. Then it was all he could do not to groan himself as Lauren’s moan lifted to a wail and Adrianne’s thigh pressed snugly to his.
Rising, he pulled her through the hall and into the bath. “Up.” His voice was curt enough to make her chin rise.
“You certainly know how to take the fun out of it.” She stood on the seat of the commode and hauled herself through.
Philip was half in and half out of the hole when footsteps padded outside the door. Jackknifing, he dove through just as the door opened.
“Good God.” It was Charlie’s voice, exhausted, as he leaned against the sink and dragged his thinning hair from his eyes. From their perch above, Adrianne and Philip could do no more than sit like stones. He poured water, then gulped it down like a dying man. Philip watched as he braced one hand on the wall and emptied his bladder. The scents of sex and urine rose up through the vents. From the bedroom, Lauren’s voice came plaintively.
“Charlie, come back to bed. I’ve got another present for you.”
Naked, paunchy, past his prime, he shook his head. “Name of God, woman. I’m not a rabbit.” But he said it quietly, before he turned off the light and went back to do his best.
With her arms wrapped tight around her waist, Adrianne rocked back and forth. It was worth the loss of the jewels … almost.
“Try for some dignity, Your Highness,” Philip told her as he replaced the grate. “Lets get out of here.”
It wasn’t the same exhilaration that came from taking something out of a safe, but it was close. For the first time, she’d used the moves, the thoughts, and the skills with a partner. The laughter she’d been forced to bottle up during their long trip back through the ducts bubbled out during the drive to the El Presidente. It hadn’t stopped even when Philip followed her into her suite.
“Incredible, simply incredible.” She dropped into a chair, sprawled out, relaxed, her face glowing. This was a side of her Philip hadn’t seen. After toeing off her shoes, she smiled at him. “It was so incredible that I’m almost not mad at you anymore.”
“Well then, I can sleep tonight.”
“Are you always cranky after a job?”
What he was, was wired. It had been a mistake to let her lead the way out of the ducts. He’d had to crawl along, tantalized and teased by the view of her pretty, tightly clad bottom. Unable to sit, he paced to the window and back.
“I missed dinner waiting for you to move.”
“Aw.” There was little sympathy in the sound. “No room service at this hour, I’m afraid. I do have a chocolate bar.”
“Hand it over.”
Because she was feeling too good to be ungracious, Adrianne routed it out from the depths of one of her bags, then tossed it to him. “There’s some wine left.”
Philip ripped at the wrapper of the plain, inadequately thin Hershey bar. “No almonds.”
“I don’t care for nuts.”
“You proved that when you slammed your foot between the legs of your friend this evening.”
“Crude.” She poured wine into two glasses and took one to him. “I suppose I shouldn’t really be angry. I do still have the money.”
He took her wrist before she could go back to her seat. “Is the money so important?”
She thought of the abuse center she’d earmarked. “Yes, it is.”
He let her go to resume his pacing. “What do you get out of this, Addy? Does he toss you a few thousand now and again? Are you indebted to him, in love with him? Either the debt or the love must go a long way, because as far as I’ve been able to see, he takes none of the risks and you put yourself on the line over and over again.”
She sipped the warm wine as she watched Philip move around the room. Like a panther, she thought. Restlessly pacing off the length and breadth of his cage. “Who,” she asked slowly, “is he?”
“You tell me.” He whirled back to her. Neither of them had realized how close both his patience and control had been to snapping. Jealousy, bare and ugly, was too easy to recognize in himself. And he’d be damned if he waited another hour to learn whom he was jealous of. “I want to know who he is, why you fell in with him, why you help him steal.”
She watched him intently as he found his cigarettes and pulled one out before he tossed the pack on a table, then said softly, “I don’t help anyone steal.”
“I’ve had enough games for one evening.”
“I told you before, I do what I do of my own choice.”
“You also told me you do it because of a man.”
“Yes, but not in the way you seem to think. There is no man blackmailing me, paying me, or sleeping with me.” She sat again, lounging back. “I work alone, for myself. I have no partner and no debt to pay.”
Slowly, he blew out smoke. He seemed to shrug impatience off like an annoying hand on his shoulder. In its place came interest and intensity. “Are you trying to make me believe that you and you alone are responsible for the theft of millions of pounds in gems over the last nine to ten years?”