Illegal Possession Read Free Page A

and got into bed. He turned off the lamp on his nightstand and lay back, staring up into darkness. And he said only one more word, a word that seemed to his bewildered mind to sum up exactly how he felt about the entire situation.
    “Hell.”
             
    Some time later, and two miles away from the isolated house she’d left behind her, Troy climbed into a waiting helicopter. She strapped herself in and then donned headphones to talk to the pilot over the roar of the aircraft as it lifted off.
    “Home, James,” she said cheerfully.
    “I don’t see the painting.” It was a bear-rumble of a voice, exactly suited to the broad, stolid face of the middle-aged man at the controls.
    Troy finally allowed the evening’s accumulated giggles to escape. “It’s being delivered, Jamie. Tomorrow at the Lincoln Memorial.”
    A grunt was Jamie’s only response until the helicopter was well on its way to an airstrip near a fashionable suburb of Washington, D.C. When he did speak, the bear-rumble voice was amused, affectionate, and rueful. “You’ve found another stray, eh?”
    Swallowing another giggle, Troy said casually, “I’d hardly call Dallas Cameron a stray. Would you?”
    The helicopter dipped slightly at an ungentle jerk on the controls. Jamie’s incredulous eyes stabbed at her across the dimly lit cockpit. “Dallas Cameron?” he asked faintly.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Scrupulously legal Dallas Cameron?”
    “The very same.”
    “The one they call ‘Ace’ to his face and ‘Genghis Khan’ behind his back?”
    “Yep.”
    “Oh, God.”

TWO
    D ALLAS C AMERON HAD lived in Washington for nearly two months now. He’d moved his main office from the heart of the Silicon Valley in California to D.C. slightly more than six months ago, and had spent those first few months commuting between the two offices. Now the West Coast office was in capable hands, and Dallas had chosen to remain in the East.
    He’d discovered that he enjoyed the hectic pace of life in the nation’s capital, enjoyed being surrounded by historic sights and the multilingual, multinational people who lived and worked there. His house was out of the hands of decorators now and was beginning to feel like a home to him, and he’d already landed a rather substantial contract with a certain government department to supply electronic components for aircraft and spacecraft.
    Now, sitting on the wide steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Dallas wondered dispassionately what the odds were against his being in the most policed city in the country with a stolen painting in his hands and not getting caught.
    “Idiot,” he muttered to himself, watching his words assume a frosty shape in the cold air and then dropping his gaze to the cardboard tube held in his gloved hands. He asked himself if he was here because he’d believed Troy’s story about the painting, or simply because he wanted very badly to see her again, in broad daylight this time, without the sense of unreality he’d felt during last night’s meeting.
    He knew the right answer.
    Thoughtfully Dallas gazed out across the long pool separating the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, his eyes following the string of Japanese cherry trees lining the Reflecting Pool. Their limbs were bare now, not yet ready to flower into the beautiful blossoms that would draw the eyes of tourists and natives alike. Lovely blossoms.
    What color were her eyes? And her hair? How old was she? And how, for God’s sake, had she stumbled onto her extremely odd occupation? Did she ever, he wondered, steal paintings from their rightful owners?
    Uneasily Dallas shifted slightly, the movement due not to the cold marble beneath him but to uncertain thoughts.
    Although no one in his or her right mind would ever call Dallas naive, more than one of his less scrupulous business associates had accused him of being unworldly in certain views and judgments. To Dallas there was right and there was wrong, and a man took his stand