Always a Thief Part 5

When she woke up Tuesday morning, Quinn was gone.

It was just after nine when Max met Morgan in the lobby of the museum as she came in.

"Keane's due here in about an hour to talk to you," Max said after greeting her. "How's your houseguest?"

"Gone," Morgan replied succinctly, proud of her matter-of-fact tone. "He was up and dressed most of yesterday, and gone when I got up this morning." She paused, then added dryly, "While I was getting ready to leave, a florist delivered a lovely vase of flowers. No card."

"Well, at least he said thank you."

"He did say it once or twice while he was healing," she admitted. "But the flowers were a nice touch."

Max smiled slightly, but his eyes were grave. "Don't be too hard on yourself for . . . feeling the effects of his charm."

"I think I should be appalled," she muttered.

"Do you? Morgan, have you realized that, even six months ago, you were so fixated on work and so closed off from other people that you would have seen Quinn as pure evil, a completely negative force?"

"You're trying to tell me that would have been a bad thing?"

"Of course it would have. People are far more complex than that; their desires and motives tangled and contradictory. Alex is no more a purely evil man than he is a purely good man-he's just a man. And you've opened up enough, learned to trust your instincts enough, to be able to see that."

"And just complicate the h.e.l.l out of my life. Oh, goodie."

"You have to admit you're enjoying this complicated new life a lot more than you were your old one."

Morgan did admit that, but silently. What she said was, "He's a thief, Max. Whatever he's doing now with Interpol is because he had to, not because he wanted to."

"Granted. But even good men can make bad choices, Morgan. Keep it in mind."

"You like him," she realized, surprised.

"I like him. I don't harbor any illusions about him, though. He's three parts chameleon, and he'll always find a way to fit himself into whatever role he's playing. So it is a bit difficult to see the man behind the gifted actor."

Morgan thought about that for a moment, absently watching visitors wandering through the lobby. "Didn't you just contradict yourself? He can't be a good man who made a bad choice and and a chameleon always playing a part and hiding his true self. Can he?" a chameleon always playing a part and hiding his true self. Can he?"

"Can't he?" Without waiting for her to respond to that, Max added, "I have a meeting with Ken and the board, but Storm, Wolfe, and Jared are waiting for you in your office. You should all get up to speed on the latest . . . developments."

"Gotcha." Morgan made her way across the lobby and into the administrative area of the museum. She found her relatively small office occupied by two large men and one very small blonde and had to squeeze past Wolfe to get to the chair behind her desk.

"Hi, all."

"We were just discussing your houseguest," Storm offered in her customary drawl. She was in one of the visitor's chairs and Jared was in the other, with Wolfe wedged between the desk and a filing cabinet.

"Yeah? What about him?"

"Well, for one thing, what was he doing to end up getting shot? I mean, the collection isn't in place here yet. The trap isn't set."

Morgan found it perfectly reasonable that Storm knew about Quinn and the trap being set; aside from being Wolfe's fiancee, she was also their computer expert and had written the security program that would protect the Bannister collection. She had had to know. to know.

"I didn't ask, and he didn't offer any explanations." Morgan looked at Jared, brows lifting. "Shouldn't you know? And should Interpol be such a . . . visible presence in the museum?"

"I'm not known as an agent on this side of the Atlantic; as far as onlookers are concerned, I'm an independent security consultant called in to work with Wolfe."

Morgan found that a bit ironic but repeated her other question. "Shouldn't you know why Quinn was shot?"

The Interpol agent answered readily. "Quinn's convinced that Nightshade is already in the city. That he might even live here. So he's been . . . looking around."

"Breaking into private homes?"

Wincing slightly, Jared said, "I told him not to tell me about it if he did. He claims he's mostly kept an eye on the nightly activities in the city, just to identify the players more than anything else. But, since we're convinced Nightshade is a collector, searching for a secret cache in a private home is probably not a bad idea."

"Was that what he was doing Thursday night?"

"No, he says he was near this museum-and spotted someone apparently casing the building, for at least the third night in a row. On both previous nights, this person slipped away from him in the fog, so Quinn was, naturally, determined not to lose him. What he wanted was to follow him or her back to, presumably, a house, apartment, or hotel. Unfortunately, somewhere near the waterfront, his quarry doubled back and caught him. Shot him with a silenced automatic."

Morgan blocked from her mind the memory of that terrifying night and Quinn bleeding in her living room to say calmly, "Max said the bullet went in at an angle, otherwise it probably would have killed Quinn. But he heals fast."

"Already up and gone, is he?" Jared said.

"This morning." Morgan offered nothing more.

It was Storm who asked, "Couldn't that bullet be used as evidence? I mean-"

Jared said, "I know what you mean. Yeah, if we ever do get our hands on this guy, if he has a gun, and if a ballistics expert can match it to the bullet the doctor dug out of Quinn's shoulder, we could at least hang an attempted-murder charge on him. We're waiting for a ballistics report now. What I'm interested to see is whether that bullet matches the ones taken from four of Nightshade's previous victims."

Wolfe spoke up for the first time to say, "If it does, you'll know that Nightshade is in the city and that Quinn came very close to him that night."

"Too close," Morgan said.

"Too close in more ways than one," Jared said. "If it was Nightshade, it's at least possible that he now knows someone has been shadowing him, following him across rooftops. And the police don't usually work that way."

"But another thief might." Morgan didn't like the hollow sound of her own voice.

"Another thief might," Jared agreed. "So Nightshade has to be wondering who's following him. And why."

"Then there's this new wrinkle," Storm said. "A murdered woman possibly connected to the museum. Inspector Tyler and his people are being awfully cagey about the connection, but just from their manner I'd say they're pretty d.a.m.ned sure there is one."

"So we have to a.s.sume the same thing," Wolfe said. "First the Ace employee being blackmailed and then murdered and now this." He was gazing steadily at Jared. "There's two lives that might have been saved if n.o.body had planned to display the Bannister collection."

Jared didn't flinch away from that hard stare. "And G.o.d knows how many Nightshade will kill if we don't stop him here and now. Just for the record, I'm betting the police will rule out Nightshade in the Jane Doe murder."

"Why?" Morgan asked.

"Because in virtually every case, Nightshade has left his victims where they fell, and they've tended to fall at the scene of one of his robberies. This woman was found near nothing of value to a thief, and no break-in or theft was reported. Plus, according to my sources she was stabbed; Nightshade always uses a gun. And as far as we know, he's always taken credit for his crimes. That dead-rose calling card."

"Which means," Storm said, "we could have yet another player in the game. And this one has his own set of rules. Very nasty rules."

CHAPTER FOUR.

"Any luck?" Keane asked Gillian as they met up near the museum's lobby. near the museum's lobby.

"Not so you'd notice." She sighed, pus.h.i.+ng an errant strand of brown hair back off her face. "I just talked to the last of the cleaning crew, and none of them recognizes our Jane Doe."

"And I just talked to the last guard on the list. Same deal. Doesn't know her, never noticed her here."

"It's Wednesday," Gillian pointed out. "We've talked to every soul who's worked for or in the museum during the last six months. Nada. Unless our next step is to start tracking and questioning visitors, I'd say we've hit a dead end."

He scowled. "No luck searching the bas.e.m.e.nt?"

"Have you been been in the bas.e.m.e.nt?" she asked politely. "Our people can't effectively search down there. A trained archaeologist or historian might spot something out of place-given a few years and a little luck. Seriously, it's like the bargain bas.e.m.e.nt from h.e.l.l." in the bas.e.m.e.nt?" she asked politely. "Our people can't effectively search down there. A trained archaeologist or historian might spot something out of place-given a few years and a little luck. Seriously, it's like the bargain bas.e.m.e.nt from h.e.l.l."

"But they looked around down there?"

"Oh, yeah. Checked windows and doors, peered around with flashlights, scared themselves silly turning corners to find Bronze Age warriors staring back at them. One of our rookies nearly shot a marble Greek woman holding an urn."

"s.h.i.+t."

"Uh-huh. Getting the creeps aside, it's sort of hard to search a place like that, especially when you don't know what you're looking for. And after Pete was lost for nearly half an hour, somebody suggested we leave trails of bread crumbs."

"So we have no connection between Jane Doe and this museum except for the sc.r.a.p of paper deliberately left on the body."

"Looks that way."

Keane scowled again. "I don't like being pointed in a specific direction. I like it even less when it begins to look like somebody might be leading me around by the nose."

"And in the opposite direction from where you really should be looking?"

"Exactly."

Gillian eyed him, then smiled wryly. "So we keep poking around in the museum, huh?"

"What other choice do we have? G.o.ddammit."

It was the following Friday evening when Morgan came out of her kitchen to find a visitor had arrived. Via the window.

Oddly enough, she wasn't at all surprised to see him standing there, much as he had the night he'd been wounded. Except that he wasn't wounded now, or masked. And his lean, handsome face was, she thought, uncharacteristically strained.

"Good evening," she said politely. "I really do have to do something about that lock, don't I?"

"It might be a good idea."

"On the other hand, I could just hang garlic in the window."

"That only works on vampires, I hear."

"Let's see . . . Vampires appear only at night, they move so fast you'd think they could fly, they're creatures of legend and myth, they can cling to the side of a building like a bat . . . I'm sure I can think of something that doesn't apply to you, but so far-"

"They sleep in coffins and drink the blood of the living."

Morgan raised her eyebrows silently.

"Oh, come on," he said.

Noting that he at least wasn't standing so stiffly now, Morgan shrugged and said, "Okay, points for that. But I may hang a cross in the window anyway, just-you should pardon the expression-for the h.e.l.l of it."

He waited until she crossed the room to stand before him, and when he spoke it was quickly. "I never really thanked you for taking care of me, Morgana."

"You thanked me. And you sent flowers. Points for that, too, by the way. Is that why you're here, to thank me more?"

"I thought I would."

"You're welcome."

"You went out on a limb for me. I know that."

"My pleasure."

"I'm serious, Morgana. You could have called the police. Should have. And I'm . . . grateful that you didn't do that."

It was a bit amusing to watch the usually unflappable Quinn grope for words, but Morgan didn't allow herself to smile. "Noted. I appreciate your grat.i.tude."

Quinn eyed her with faint exasperation. "You don't make it easy for me," he told her.

She did smile then. "Oh, I see-you want me to make it easy easy for you. Why should I?" for you. Why should I?"

He cleared his throat. "Do both of us know what we're talking about?"

"Yes. We're talking about the fact that I more or less offered myself to you Monday night-and you bolted so fast you practically left your boots behind."

A little smile curved his mouth. "The image that conjures, Morgana, is hardly flattering. To either of us."

"I agree. Is that why you really came back here? Because you had second thoughts?"

Quinn hesitated, then shook his head. "No, you were obviously not in your right mind at the time."

"I wasn't?" She put her hands on her hips and stared up at him. "Are you trying to save me from myself, Alex?"

"Something like that," he murmured.