Always a Thief - Kay Hooper [0]
Title Page
Author's Note
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Bantam Books by Kay Hooper
Praise for Kay Hooper's Stealing Shadows
Preview
Copyright Page
AUTHOR'S NOTE
About ten years ago, I wrote a series of short contemporary novels for Bantam's Loveswept romance series. That's right—romances.
But a funny thing happened while I was writing those books. Although I enjoyed all the characters, one in particular was, quite literally, difficult to keep offstage when he wasn't supposed to be active in the story. My cat burglar Quinn practically walked off the pages, and even at the time my agent told me that “one day” I'd have to do more with him.
One day came.
Sometimes a writer is lucky enough to be able to look back at older work and be granted the opportunity to rewrite it as she wanted to write it at the time; I was writing series romance then, and there were simply things I couldn't do in the books because of what they were—and when they were. I am very proud of those books, but they were definitely stories written for a particular audience at a particular time.
At the time, I was unable—because of both the length of the books and the genre itself—to make the characters as complex as I wanted, to give them shades of gray, ambiguities of motive and personality. And since I was already, by then, feeling the need to stretch my wings, to write bigger, more complex books, I was very conscious that I was not providing Quinn and some other characters the wider canvas they deserved.
Which brings me to the second reason I wanted to include this note in the “Thief” books: Once a Thief and Always a Thief are not the books you remember if you read the original versions. They've been, in a sense, reimagined. I haven't just added a few thousand words here and there—I have restructured the stories in several ways.
Some scenes remain from the originals, but even those have been shifted, sometimes slightly, to provide a different perspective or provide that wider canvas for the characters. Some characters have either stepped back out of the spotlight or disappeared entirely from the narrative, and new ones are introduced. The same goes for some plotlines.
This is Quinn's story, or at least the beginning of it. And since he continued to be a lively presence in my writer's imagination long after his story was supposedly told, I gather he has more adventures in mind. We'll see.
If you've enjoyed my more recent suspense novels, I hope you'll give this one a try. It's not as dark and gritty as the Bishop books, and if there are any psychic elements—well, we'll just have to wait and find out about that—but Quinn is a lot of fun, and he's allowed me to show a lighter, more playful side of my writing.
My agent calls this sort of story a “caper, a bright, fun, witty adventure that holds on to its sense of humor even though there might well be deadly danger lurking about.”
Might well be . . . and there is. Because there's a spectacular collection of gems and artworks about to go on display, and more than one person is ready and willing to do whatever it takes in order to possess it. Even kill.
Come meet Quinn, and let me know what you think of him. I like him a lot. And I hope you do too.
PROLOGUE
The fog could have made it easier for Quinn to shadow his quarry without giving away his own presence, but he had already discovered that the shifting gray mist could be as unpredictable as a living creature, thick as pea soup one moment and wispy thin the next, so he stayed as far back as he could without losing the target.
It made things more difficult.
His foot slipped a bit on a fog-wet roof tile, and he made a mental note to look for a pair of newer, better soft-soled shoes for these nighttime excursions. That went through his mind even as his gloved hands reached for—and dislodged—another of