Caught

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“We’re not going to be here later, remember?”

“Exactly.”

The main conservation lab was in the shape of a thick sideways L balanced on its short leg. To the right of the main door lay the inner wall that formed the library and the scientific lab; combined with the rest of the L, it formed a rectangle maybe fifty feet deep by a hundred feet long.

“What’s down here?” Alex asked, skirting the outer wall of the scientific lab to follow the long arm of the L.

“More workspace. The supply room. The chemical shower. The bathroom.”

“Thank God for small favors. What’s behind this door?” He twisted the knob with no more success than the front door.

“Oh, that’s the head conservator’s office. Paul Wingate. It’s just a nook, though. No way out.”

“Let’s not rule anything out sight unseen.” He studied the modern lock on the door. “That one we might have a chance at.”

“For all the good it will do you. And there aren’t any ways out of the supply room, either, so I guess that means we’re stuck.”

“Not for long. I’m telling you, security will find us.”

Julia paced across the lab. “What if they don’t?”

He couldn’t help watching her. “We get out Monday morning when everybody comes to work.”

“I can’t wait that long. I can’t miss this thing tomorrow night.”

“What is it?”

“The New York Performing Arts Institute gala. My mother’s pet project. She’s been working on it for four months and if I’m not there, I’ll be hearing about it for at least that long.” She moved restlessly across the lab, scanning the walls and ceiling, picking up the phone again, only to shake her head.

“What about a computer?” Alex asked suddenly.

“A computer?”

“Sure. E-mail. The Internet. We ought to be able to get a message to someone, even just to ask them to call the cops for us.” He looked around. “Don’t they have one in here?”

“I don’t know,” Julia said dubiously. “There’s a computer in the rare-book repository but it’s off-line, just for indices and electronic research.”

“Nothing out here?”

She shook her head helplessly. “Too much dust from all the stone. It’s not the greatest environment. Most of the staff have cubes upstairs. Paul’s the only one with an office down here.”

“And his is locked.” Alex walked over to the workbench.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for some wire.”

“And that would be because…?”

“I’m going to try to pick that lock.”

“Oh, of course. Got experience at it, do you?”

“I’m a man of many talents.”

She watched as he located some stiff wire and used pliers to bend the top quarter inch to a right angle. “Did you apprentice with a second-story man in your youth?”

“Hey, I got my Boy Scout merit badge in B and E.”

Julia snorted but watched with interest as Alex nudged his ersatz picks into the lock on Paul’s door. “I should object, you know. You’re violating the privacy of a staffer.”

He flicked her a glance. “Duly noted. I’ll lock up again when I’m done, and if you want to stay in here as penance when they come to let me out, feel free.” He closed his eyes as he manipulated the tools, completely focused on the hidden workings of the lock.

And somehow, she found herself completely focused on him. This was ridiculous. Quite aside from the fact that she’d already decided their…arrangement was history, she had far more important things to worry about than the length of his lashes and the way his five- o’clock shadow darkened his jaw.

She made herself look away. “I don’t see what good it’ll do you if you get in, anyway. You don’t know his password.”

“It might be scribbled down somewhere. It might be something common. Mine’s set to remember so that all I have to do is hit Enter.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You’re not supposed to do that.”

He flicked her an amused look. “Uh-oh, are you going to tell?”

“Alex—”

“Look, it’s a long shot, but we might get lucky.”

“We’ll be lucky to even get through the door.”

“When have I not been lucky?” Alex grunted. “Got it!” Rising, he stuck a hand inside to turn on the light, swinging the door wide and stepping into the familiar chaos that was Paul’s world.

Alex stared, hands on his hips. “Man, how does he get any work done in here?” he asked in disgust.

“People who break and enter don’t have a whole lot of room for complaint,” Julia pointed out, but she didn’t blame him.

The eight-by-ten office was crammed with books, papers and tools, cast-off silicone molds of carvings and a host of other things Julia couldn’t identify. The desk nudged against the far wall was nearly covered with papers and books. The spare chair merely provided a resting place for still more. A chemical-stained lab coat hung from a hook on the door.

Not for the first time Julia wondered how the irascible conservator ever managed to find anything. Brilliant, he might be, but neat was not his strong suit.

“How does he rate a laptop?” Alex demanded in an injured tone. “I begged for six months and they wouldn’t give me one.”

Julia bit her lip to cover a smile. “He travels to a lot of conservation conferences.”

“I travel.”

She drew up the extra chair. “I guess he’s cuter than you are.”

“Hard to believe,” Alex muttered dusting the computer off. He reached beyond it to pick up a coffee mug stuffed with metal rods. “What is this stuff?”

“Oh, scalpels, dental tools, glass stirrers…” Julia reached over to pull out a hollow brown rod that looked like a paintbrush without the brush. “And African porcupine quills.”

“African porc—” Alex gave her a suspicious look. “You’re joking.”

“Nope,” she said serenely. “They make great probing tools.”

“And the bags of dirt?”

“Excavation dirt. We save everything. You never know when you might need it.”

“You’re all nuts,” he muttered, staring at a jumble of small stone and plaster blocks at the back of the desk. He stacked some books on one of the piles and reached for the laptop.

“Oh, don’t put those there.” Adroitly, Julia shifted the books away from the wooden box Alex had set them on. “That’s an artifact box.”

“And it’ll protect whatever’s inside. Isn’t that the point?”

“The last thing we need is for it to fall over or something.” Julia glanced more closely at the box and made a noise of annoyance.

“What’s wrong?” Alex asked.

She blew out a breath. “Paul. He’s got this little problem with following procedure. This is still supposed to be in inventory storage. It’s still got the pull slip on it.” Julia cracked open the top to reveal a stone figure of Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the dead.

“Maybe he’s trying to clean or do conservation stuff or whatever.”

“He still should have done his paperwork. He didn’t even notify me.”

“‘Your rules mean nothing to me’?”

“More like ‘My work is too important for me to worry about your stupid bureaucracy.’”

“Sounds like a charmer. So why don’t you lay down the law to him?”

Julia sighed. “It’s not my place. He doesn’t report to me. And, anyway, he’s really, really talented. Last summer, we cleaned up our inventory. We get lots of bits and pieces of things in here from digs, stuff that we don’t know where it belongs. Paul found the nose of Xerxes.”

Alex’s mouth twitched. “The nose of Xerxes?”

“A marble bust we’ve had for forty years. For forty years, it’s been missing its nose and Paul recognized it at a glance. He’s got this amazing sense for the shape and form of things. When someone’s that good, you cut them a lot of slack.”

“So he’s sloppy. Nobody’s good at everything,” he observed. “Except me, of course.”

“Except you,” she said drily. “Although you might wait to congratulate yourself until you’ve gotten the job done.”

He gave her a look that shivered into her bones. “I always get the job done, darlin’,” he drawled.

“Big talk.”

“It’s not just talk. You of all people should know that. Anyway, sloppy isn’t always a bad thing,” he said cheerfully. “Our boy slapped his computer shut a little too quickly, before it finished closing down.”

“So?”

He gestured at the e-mail application on the screen. “So everything’s still running. That means we’ll still be online.”

Despite herself, she was impressed. “That’ll help. Good job.”

“Feel free to shower me with all the affection you like,” he invited.

Julia rolled her eyes. “Just send the e-mail, will you? We’ve got to get out of here and notify someone that the amulet is gone.”

“Long gone, at this point. It’s not like the cops are going to find them.”

“I hope they do. That amulet might be the White Star, stolen from Zoey Zander’s collection.”

“The Stanhope heist?”

“Yes.”

Alex’s fingers flew over the keys. “What is it, Egyptian?”

“I don’t think so. A neighboring kingdom. There’s some sort of a superstition about it, that it brings good luck to the pure of heart.”

Alex made a noise of irritation at the computer. “It didn’t bring good luck to us.”

“You’re hardly pure of heart.”

“But I’m pure in other places.” He frowned and tapped some more keys. “So what happens with Marissa?”

“Don’t remind me,” Julia groaned and dropped her head into her hands. “How am I going to tell her? She brings the amulet here to me, I tell her I’ll take care of it and it winds up stolen. It’s going to reflect terribly on the museum. And me.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve got a bigger problem than that,” he said grimly.

“What do you mean?”

He pointed to the screen. “The network’s down.”

5

Friday, 7:45 p.m.

“WHAT?” Julia stared at Alex.

“The network’s down. Look.”

Network not available. The black letters on the screen seemed to vibrate, taunting her. “How can it be down?” she demanded. “I don’t believe this. No phones, no cell phone, no Internet. What the hell’s going on?