was not his business acumen and his outgoing personality that allowed him to gain people’s confidence easily. It was his ability to recognize trouble when he saw it.
And gorgeous though she was, something told him that this woman was trouble.
With a capital T.
Chapter 3
Elizabeth left her car parked more than a block away. A trickle of perspiration zigzagged down her spine as she made her way through the night toward the gallery.
The sound of her footsteps echoed in her head, resounding far more loudly there than they actually did on the street. She knew how to walk softly, how to move without disturbing anything.
She’d been carefully taught.
Okay, so this was crazy, Elizabeth readily admitted. And there was no real reason for it.
None except to satisfy her own curiosity. And because she’d challenged herself.
Just to see if she could do it.
Adrenaline raced through her veins, making her high with excitement, with anticipation. When the end was in doubt—and there was always a doubt—the rush was that much more intense. Her pulse throbbed. Essentially, this was her first non-Anthony job. And the first that hadn’t been handed to them by Jeremy. There was no tangible reward in sight, no monetary gain at the end.
It didn’t matter.
The danger was just as great, and the reward—well, independence was a heady condition and this would let her know whether she could go it alone if she so chose. If she had the nerve to go in without backup.
She knew she did.
She was going to break into the art gallery.
She’d remained at the gala almost to the very end. Setting her doubts about the sculpture aside, she’d mingled and talked with a variety of people, absorbing tidbits here and there and storing them away as future sources of information. She never knew when something could come in handy in her line of work.
Twice, she’d noticed, Cole Williams looked as if he was attempting to make his way back to her. Both times someone had buttonholed him, dragging him away to hold court over a group of people. Once she’d witnessed a little blonde, whose allowance only seemed to cover half a dress, hang herself off his arm until he’d handed her off to someone else. The blonde hadn’t looked happy.
Busy man, that Williams, she mused.
As she made her way through the dark, deserted Philadelphia streets now, she wondered if Williams suspected that he might have a fake in the center of his collection. Although, she amended, it actually wasn’t part of his collection. The plaque beside it said that Venus Smiling was on loan from the Jonathan MacFarland collection.
She was familiar with the name. The man was another captain of industry who liked his art. Mainly, MacFarland liked his art to be private, but according to one newspaper article, he’d been prevailed upon, because of a recent merger between one of Williams’s companies and one of his own, to make a peace offering by loaning out his sculpture.
Word on the street was that the two men didn’t exactly get along. As she recalled, it had something to do with early days, Williams’s code of honor and MacFarland’s apparent lack of the same.
Elizabeth stopped walking and listened. A dog, sans its master, came ambling down the block across from her. It stopped for a moment, as if debating whether she was worth crossing the street for, then obviously decided she wasn’t. The animal trotted off into the night. She began walking again. Her mouth curved in a smile. She wondered what it might do to the merger if MacFarland discovered that his sculpture was a fake.
Had Cole Williams made the substitution himself? To get even for something done to him by MacFarland at an earlier date?
“Whoa, Lizzie, you’re getting ahead of yourself,” she cautioned under her breath as she made her way into the alley behind the gallery. “Maybe Williams is the victim. And that’s if the thing actually is a fake.” There was always the chance that she was wrong.
Although not likely.
She just had this feeling and she’d learned a long time ago not to shrug off her intuition without first exploring the cause of that reaction. Most of the time she was right.
If not for her curiosity, Elizabeth told herself as she scanned the rear exit of the gallery, this really wasn’t her problem.
But, oh, this was such a challenge.
The slight trickle of perspiration was gone, dried up in the heat of her anticipation. She was primed and ready to go.
For a moment she stood before the exit, bracing herself. There was probably a guard somewhere in the building, although given the relatively small size of the place, there might not be. What there was on the premises without a doubt was a security system. Knowing Williams, it was probably a damn good one. Had this been a job commissioned by Jeremy and undertaken by Anthony and her, there would have been a maximum of preparations made. There would have been diagrams secured, schedules memorized, all contingencies weighed and measured. One to two weeks of intense work at a minimum.
There was no time for that.
She was diving into this headfirst, acting on a whim only a little while after the gala had ended and the last guest had gone home.
She’d gone home herself, never connecting again with Williams. Maybe if she had, she wouldn’t have returned here.
Who was she kidding? She would have come back. Curiosity was one of her best attributes, along with tenacity.
She’d changed her clothes, putting on all black attire, and given it a couple of hours before returning. By the time she had, the caterers and cleaning crews had all left. The place looked deserted. There were floodlights at the front entrance, where the gallery faced the world. The rear of the gallery, however, was cast in almost pitch darkness.
There was no moon tonight, allowing her to blend in with the shadows.
It was time to get started.
“All systems go,” she whispered to herself.
Elizabeth stared at the lock on the rear door. It appeared to be a simple padlock. If it was, that was only because the security inside was probably so great, she reasoned. The padlock almost dared a thief to come in and try his luck.
Well, she wasn’t a thief. At least, not tonight. But she had never let a dare go unanswered, not even as a child. She had the scars to prove it. But that had been before she’d learned something about herself and how to use her unique abilities.
Elizabeth reverted to them now. Staring at the lock, she began to concentrate, focusing all of her thoughts, all her energy, on the shiny metal object. Her breathing slowed. She could literally feel her blood slow down in her veins. It was as if all her systems were being channeled into this one object.
The lock shuddered, opened and fell off.
Coming to, she caught the lock in her gloved hand before it hit the ground. She set it aside and blew out a long breath. The easy part was over.
Closing her eyes for better concentration, she felt around the perimeter of the door. Satisfied that nothing would be tripped if she opened it, she eased it forward, then quickly stepped inside.
From where she stood, she could see the main room of the gallery. The statue, up on its alabaster pedestal, was still bathed in lights. Obviously not for effect. To throw off a thief?
Were the lights part of the security, or just a decoy for the real thing?
Reaching into the shoulder bag she’d brought with her, Elizabeth took out a pair of dark glasses. To the casual observer, they looked like sunglasses, but they actually allowed her to see the different ultraviolet rays that bounced around undetectable to the naked eye.
Just as she thought. The statue stood in the center of