Always a Thief - Kay Hooper [14]
“It's not going to do me any good to argue, huh?”
“No. Not about this.”
Whatever response Storm might have made became unimportant when the subject of their discussion rapped on the door and pushed it open without waiting for a response.
“We've got trouble,” Jared said.
It was early Saturday evening when Morgan's phone rang, and she picked it up hastily since Quinn was sleeping in the next room. “Hello?”
“How is he?” Max asked.
“Getting restless. I had to threaten to tie him to the bed, but he finally agreed to at least try to sleep. He's already been up a couple of times, Max. The doc was right—he does heal fast.”
“Probably a necessity for a man in his line of work.”
Morgan hesitated, then said, “You don't sound very disapproving of his line of work.”
“It isn't my place to judge. Besides, do you honestly think my approval or disapproval would change anything?”
“No. No, it wouldn't. I guess I'm just surprised at how calmly you're taking all this. And how helpful you've been to Quinn.”
“Did you expect me to say no when you called?”
Morgan had to laugh. “To be honest, it never crossed my mind that you might. All I was thinking was that you could get a doctor here quietly without the police having to know. But it would probably have been better for both of us if you—or I—had called the police that night.”
“Better for the exhibit, you mean?”
“Yeah. Of course that's what I meant. Better for the exhibit.” Morgan cleared her throat. “It would be a dandy way to get at your collection, we both know that. Pretend to be after another thief, pretend to be helping the good guys, and—hey, presto—you're on the inside, where all the goodies are. A Trojan horse.”
“Do you think that's what Alex is doing?”
“I don't know. And neither do you.”
Max sighed. “So far, he's done nothing to threaten the collection. He's at least nominally under Interpol's control, here to work on the right side of the law. I have to believe that. Because the thief he's trying to help Interpol put behind bars is far, far worse than Quinn has ever been.”
“I forgot to ask about that the other night. Who is this thief you're risking your collection to trap?”
“Well, unlike Quinn, this one hasn't caught the fancy of the press or public, so there's been almost no publicity about his activities. You probably haven't heard of him. At Interpol, his code name is Nightshade.”
Briefly distracted by the name, she said, “Isn't that another name for some plants—like belladonna?”
“Pure poison. And he—or she, I suppose—is definitely that. A far more violent and dangerous personality than Quinn, that much everyone is certain of. There have been eight murders committed during Nightshade's robberies in the past six years, all of them because someone got in his way.”
“You're right, I haven't heard of him. Does he work in Europe, or—”
“All over, but the majority of the robberies were committed here in the States. Every law-enforcement agency in the world has tried to identify him, and no one has even come up with a name. No living witnesses, no fingerprints or other forensic evidence conveniently left behind, and the computers can't even find a pattern in the robberies, except that he favors gems and tends toward the more old-fashioned scaling-the-wall-and-breaking-a-window sort of burglaries.”
“Low-tech rather than high-tech.”
“As far as Interpol can determine, yeah. It's one reason we picked an older museum in which to display the collection. Any thief worth his salt is going to know we're installing better electronic security, but he or she could also be at least reasonably certain that in this huge old building there are bound to be a few chinks in the defenses.”
Morgan thought about that for a moment, then asked curiously, “If there's no pattern, then how do you know all the robberies were committed by the same person?”
Max's sigh was a breath of sound.