Always a Thief - Kay Hooper [87]
“It's a dangerous weakness.”
“Is it? Why?”
“Because you can't defend yourself. Suppose, for instance, that I decided your usefulness to me had ended. After all, I'd much rather keep the Talisman emerald myself—no need to break up the collection. And I hardly need your help now that I have the proper identity codes to placate Ace for an hour or so.”
Rather grimly, Quinn said, “I didn't give you those codes.”
“No, you very wisely kept them to yourself.” Leo looked at him with a faint, empty smile. “But you forget, my friend—I've been doing this a long time. Longer than you, if the truth be told. I took the precaution of cultivating my own source inside the museum—though I didn't sleep with him.”
“Who?”
“Ken Dugan. He's such an ambitious man. So eager to please. And I'm so eminently trustworthy, of course, so respectable. I'm sure he never thought twice about leaving me alone in his office once or twice for just a few minutes while he took care of a little problem out in the museum.”
“Let me guess. He has a lousy memory and had to write down the codes and passwords?”
“So many people do, you know. And hide those little slips of paper in such obvious places. The codes weren't hard to find. Not hard at all.”
Quinn took a step toward the desk but halted abruptly when Leo reached into his open desk drawer and produced a businesslike automatic.
Morgan felt her heart stop. The gun, a shiny black thing with a long snout—a silencer, she realized dimly—seemed to her enormous. She wanted to cry out, to do something. But the harshly whispered warning echoed hollowly in her mind. No matter what you see or hear, no matter what you think is happening in that room . . . She had promised him.
“This is not a good idea,” Quinn was saying evenly, his face expressionless.
Leo walked around his desk, the gun fixed unwaveringly on the other man. “I beg to differ,” he said in a polite tone. “I'm not wildly enthusiastic about killing you in my own house, you understand, but it seems the best way. I don't have the time tonight to take you somewhere else, and I won't make the stupid mistake of trying to keep you alive somewhere until I can make other arrangements.”
“I hate to sound trite, but you'll never get away with it.”
He knows what he's doing . . . please, God, he knows what he's doing. . . .
“Alex, you disappoint me. Of course I'll get away with it. I have so often before. And this time, since I plan to make certain the authorities believe the mysterious Quinn pulled off the robbery of the century—and then fled the country—I'll make very sure your body is never found.”
“Oh, I couldn't possibly take the credit for something I didn't do.”
“The one flaw in my grand design; I'd much rather take the credit myself. But you see how it is. Living right here in San Francisco, well, I just can't take the chance that any of the bright boys and girls at Interpol will link me with this particular robbery. So you'll get the kudos, I'm afraid.”
“Leo, we can talk about this.”
“That's the mistake the villains always make in movies and on television,” Leo mused thoughtfully. “They let their victims talk too much. Good-bye, Alex.”
He shot Quinn three times full in the chest.
It wasn't her promise that froze Morgan on the terrace; it was soul-deep shock and a pain so great she was literally paralyzed by it. The three shots—so soft, almost apologetic as they issued in whistling pops from the silenced gun—slammed Quinn's powerful body backward with stunning force, out of her sight when he crashed heavily to the floor, and she could only stare numbly at the place where he'd stood.
Leo, sure of his marksmanship, didn't bother to check the fallen Quinn. Instead, he glanced at his watch, then got an extra clip for the automatic out of his desk drawer and left the room with a brisk step.
Again, it wasn't her promise that kept Morgan still until she heard the sound of his car leaving the house; it was simply that, until the sound jarred her loose, she'd been trapped in a dark and horrible place.