Always a Thief - Kay Hooper [18]
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 hell 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 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 fiancée, she was also their computer expert and had written the security program that would protect the Bannister collection. She had 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,