Illegal Possession Read Free

men checks this room every two hours, and his last check was an hour and a half ago. I’d suggest you go back to your room and forget that you were in here tonight; if the security man finds you after I’ve gone, your host is apt to be rather suspicious in the morning.”
    “How are you getting out?” Dallas asked, staring at her. “For that matter, how’d you get
in
?”
    “Turn off the light and I’ll show you.” Before he could reach the switch beside the door, she added, “Wait a second,” and removed the small flashlight from her belt again. “Better take this so you won’t bump into the furniture. Point it at the floor if you don’t mind.”
    Accepting the flashlight, he muttered, “And if I do mind?”
    Ignoring the disgruntled question, Troy waited serenely for him to follow her requests. Commands? When darkness had once more claimed the room, she waited until the darting beam of light—pointing toward the floor, she observed with amusement—reached her. Then she moved silently toward the window. She pulled the drapes apart and slid one leg over the sill, leaning out and reaching for her line.
    Dallas barely had time to note these activities before she had disappeared through the window. Startled, he only just remembered to keep the flashlight hidden inside before poking his head out the window. “What—”
    “Shhh.” It was only a sibilant whisper, as were the words that followed. “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.”
    He could just make out her face in the darkness, and his eyes slid sideways and down, following the direction of her gaze. Into his line of sight came a guard and a vicious-looking Doberman.
    In his place at the head of a boardroom table Dallas “Ace” Cameron was a man widely known for his nerves of steel. Nothing, both friends and enemies had said at various times, had ever shaken his iron composure. But now, as his eyes followed the progress of the watchman below, Dallas felt his heart stop.
    Here he was, leaning out of his host’s library window in the wee hours of the morning, holding a stolen (from whomever) painting in one hand, a thief’s flashlight in the other, and highly conscious of the woman clinging to the brick wall to his right with the ease of a damn fly. And when the watchman chose to dawdle leisurely directly below them, Dallas felt his heart begin to beat again. It sounded like a jungle drum to him.
    He also had to sneeze. Badly.
    For an agonizing moment the watchman remained directly under them, his voice reaching them in the cold night air as he complained absently to his companion about lousy working conditions. It seemed to be an old refrain to the Doberman, because he paid little attention to his handler. Instead, he gave Dallas a very bad moment by sniffing around the bushes close to the house.
    But then the guard had called the dog to heel, and they wandered on around the corner of the building. Dallas let himself breathe again, conscious of an overwhelming sense of…relief? He looked at Troy, wondering if the brush with certain discovery had shaken her composure.
    She was smiling at him.
    “The Lincoln Memorial,” she whispered. “Tomorrow—I mean, today—around two in the afternoon. Okay?”
    Instead of replying, Dallas leaned farther out and let his gaze follow the rope upward to where it disappeared over the edge of the roof. Then he looked back at the most unusual cat burglar he was ever likely to encounter. “The Lincoln Memorial. At two,” he murmured, defeated.
    “Leave the window open about an inch,” she instructed efficiently. “And the drapes as well. See you tomorrow.” Then she began to move up the rope hand over hand, her feet walking up the wall as easily as if it had been a floor.
    Ten minutes later Dallas was back in his bedroom. He found himself staring at a rolled-up painting and a flashlight. Muttering to himself, he thrust both under his pillows, taking care not to press down on them when he tossed his robe aside