Once a Thief by Kay Hooper Read Free Book Online Page A

misty night. Fold up your tent and beat it. Hit the road. The next time I see a black ski mask, I’ll kick it in the shin. I hope the next place you burgle has a pack of wild dogs in it. Dobermans.
Big
Dobermans. Big
hungry
Dobermans—who missed their breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
    She eyed him resentfully as he leaned somewhat weakly against the display case and continued to laugh at her.
    “On the whole,” Quinn said unsteadily, “I think I’d prefer the flames of perdition.”
    “You can count on that. If Interpol doesn’t get you, I will.”
    A last chuckle escaped him as Quinn straightened. “I find myself almost looking forward to that. Good night, sweet—and thank you for enlivening a boring evening.”
    She held out until he reached a distant, shadowy doorway, then said, “Quinn?”
    He hesitated, then turned. She caught the flash of his green eyes.
    “You—you will call the police?”
    “I give you my word, Morgana,” he said steadily. “They’ll be here within an hour.”
    She nodded, and in a moment the shadows were only shadows. It was very quiet and felt curiously desolate. She sat there, bound to the leg of a display case, her stockinged feet growing cold—why hadn’t she asked Quinn to find her shoes?—and a thick pillow cushioning against the hard floor.
    It occurred to her that she should start weaving a reasonable story for the police. Knit one, purl two. No, that wasn’t weaving. Weaving was Penelope picking out the threads of her tapestry by night because she didn’t want to marry anyone else even if Ulysses
had
been gone an awfully long time.
    What were the odds against running into an infamous cat burglar twice in one lifetime? Remote. Unless, of course, one was the director of a fabulously valuable exhibit. . . .
    “Well, officer,” she said aloud in the cavernous room, “it happened like this . . .”
    By the luminous hands of her watch, the police arrived forty-five minutes later. And Quinn had been right, damn him. They took one look at her and accepted without a blink the notion that a busy thief would take the time to find her a pillow because she’d told him the floor was too hard and cold.
    There were benefits to looking like a dumb sex kitten.
    Sometimes.
    Once in a blue moon.
     
    “I don’t like it,” Wolfe said, slouching in his chair as he stared broodingly at a police report lying before him. “That makes two museums robbed within two weeks. This new gang is obviously greedy as hell, and I doubt they’ll stop now.”
    “Did you really think they would?” Morgan asked.
    “No. No, I didn’t.”
    It was very early, and they were in Morgan’s office, since it was the larger of the two.
    After a moment, Morgan said, “Neither of those museums has the kind of security being installed here; their systems aren’t even as good as the existing system here. They relied on guards and simple door alarms. No lasers or sensors and no backup system in case of electrical failure.”
    Wolfe shook his head. “That isn’t what’s bothering me; I’ll grant the museums’ security was outdated. What I don’t like is the
scale.
That gang of thieves came in like an army and stole everything they could carry. According to both your observations and police reports, they were unhurried, methodical, and very businesslike. They didn’t leave a fingerprint or a clue, and I can’t see they made a single mistake.
    “All we have is basic information, and most of that was supplied by you: ten to twelve men, one of them named Ed, who very efficiently stole items no self-respecting fence would touch. That points to a major collector, or cartel of them, being supplied by these thieves. And
that
means nothing stolen is likely to surface again; the police haven’t got a hope in hell of finding that stuff.”
    “The dagger might surface,” Morgan murmured.
    “What dagger?”
    Morgan cleared her throat and met his eyes. “The Kellerman dagger. The thieves—the
group
of