Christina Skye - To Catch a Thief

Nell forced away her uneasiness. Her windows were all closed, her doors locked. Her workroom alarm was set, which made her absolutely safe.

Of course you are. You always set your alarm when you work late. Stop dithering and finish the painting.

She had been uneasy since her return from Scotland the week before, and to her great irritation she hadn’t been able to get Lieutenant Dakota Smith out of her mind, even during long days of intense restoration work.

Now that project was almost done. Looking down at Tintoretto’s jewellike study of Saint George fighting a dragon, Nell didn’t want to let go. Living in the mind of a genius could be extremely addictive.

But now the exquisite restoration was complete. She studied the area near the dragon’s head and then put down her fine Russian red sable brush.

Done.

There was nothing more to add, no detail that would intrude to place her vision over Tintoretto’s. No art restorer allowed personal technique to challenge the integrity of the original image.

The moment Nell was finished, exhaustion struck. The restoration process required fanatical focus and patience. When you were hunched over a sixteenth-century masterpiece, you couldn’t afford even one slip of the hand. So you never let down your guard. Not ever.

And that also happened to be one of Nell’s un-shakable life rules, right up there under don’t trust and don’t lean. If most people would consider that cynical, it was too damned bad.

Life had not exactly been a kind teacher.

She rubbed her face. After long hours of meticulous brushwork cleaning the canvas, her eyes burned, her fingers ached, and her shoulders felt as if they’d been impaled by razors.

One more reason that Nell was looking forward to walking home after closing her workshop. San Francisco’s cool, salty air always helped her loosen up and put the work behind her.

After that, she would call her father to check in. If she was lucky, she might get the truth about his urgent calls to her in Scotland. For the moment, he was sticking to his story of sudden chest pains that had made him panic and call her from the emergency room.

Nell didn’t buy it—she knew her father well enough to know that he cared little about his own health. He was worrying about something else. She just didn’t know what.

She locked her workshop door and triggered the alarms for active monitoring, jogging in place to warm up. So far she’d been lucky, with no robberies or thefts of any sort, but she made it a point not to take chances. Her alarm system was the best you could buy. Even her father had approved of it.

She stretched from side to side, savoring the silence of the street while mist curled past in pale tendrils. The cool air felt good on her face as she settled into a stride up Geary Street.

A few blocks later she noticed him, a lone figure in black. He’d been half a block behind her for almost five minutes now, which didn’t do much for the coincidence theory.

Nell picked up her pace. Geary Street was deserted, its boutiques and wine bars closed for the night. There could be a good reason for a man to be following her; she just couldn’t think what it was.

At least she had her pepper spray.

Nell sprinted across the street and cut down an alley that led to an all-night coffee shop with poetry readings fuelled by unlimited caffeine. Right now she wanted bright lights and warm bodies.

She was one block from the shop’s beckoning lights when she heard the snap of gravel behind her. A hand snaked around her neck, groping for her throat.

She reacted before panic could set in, spraying him and then tucking her chin as she snapped forward and sent the man flying over her head. Blood geysered as he hit the dirty concrete and moaned brokenly.

Nell kept on moving toward the end of the alley. Maybe the creep would think twice before hitting on another woman walking alone at night.

Or not—given that more figures had appeared from behind a parked car. She sprinted to the wall at the far side of the street.

One of her pursuers pulled something long and narrow from his pocket.

A big cardboard box rustled near her feet. Nell recognized the homeless man who looked out of the torn box that was his current home. She had made a practice of leaving him a sandwich or a jar of his favorite honey maple almonds on her night walks.

His grimy face creased in a smile. “How ya doin’, Legs?”

“I’ve been better,” she muttered.

Her first attacker was back on his feet now. The two men crossed the street, headed toward Nell.

“What are you doing?” The old man stood up un-steadily, one hand on the graffiti-covered wall. “Leave her alone, you shits.”

The closer man, a Caucasian with gang tattoos on one arm, gave two vicious kicks of his steel-toed boot and crumpled the old man onto the pavement.

Nell reacted in fury, kicking his legs out from under him. When he toppled, she twisted sharply to the left and swung a piece of discarded plumber’s pipe toward the other man’s face. He was big, but Nell was quicker and she knew these streets and alleys well from her frequent walks home. Jumping onto a cement wall, she struck hard at the side of the man’s head, catching him unaware.

Creep number two hit the alley, gurgling as his face slammed into the greasy pavement.

That had to hurt.

Something rolled across the ground near her feet. Nell realized it was a syringe. Had it been meant for her?

She felt her hands start to shake. She tried to think, digging in her pocket for her cell phone to call 911.

Off to her left, the homeless man gave a groan and spit out two decayed teeth. When he saw the attackers out cold, he gave Nell a crooked smile. “Hell, Legs, where were you when I needed you back in January ’68? My boys and me coulda used you when we stormed the crap out of Hue.”

“A little before my time.” She helped the old man to his feet, dug in her dropped handbag and held out some bills. “Dessert’s on me tonight. Watch yourself out here.”

“Count on it. Got my Purple Heart to protect me.” He pulled out a medal from beneath his stained jacket, the ribbon caught around his gnarled fingers.

One of the nation’s highest honors, the medal was the only thing of value left to a forgotten hero. Talk about crappy unfair.

“Thanks for the ducats, Legs.”

“Anytime.”

Nell was dialing 911 when she saw two men slide out of a gray van parked across the street. Under a broken streetlight she noticed that the closer man had a small pistol level at his leg.

She fought a sickening sense of fear. This was no simple robbery. They had come here for her. But why? Were they after the Tintoretto? Maybe another piece of art in her workshop?

The old man in the torn jacket pushed Nell toward the far end of the alley. “R-run, honey. They got—”

A sudden crack of gunfire cut him off. Nell saw blood splash over his pile of boxes. He groaned and then a bullet screamed past her ear.

Nell pushed past her fear, struggling to keep her mind sharp and focused. Above all, she knew that fear was her worst enemy. Her father’s friends had taught her that, along with an array of carefully selected judo and kickboxing moves. She had never forgotten any of those lessons.

But she was running on caffeine fumes now, exhausted from a twelve-hour day, and there was no telling how many more of the creeps were waiting in nearby cars.

Nell scanned the shadows and then grabbed two heavy lids from a row of garbage cans. She threw the lids at her pursuers, then ducked behind a VW bus with four flat tires. Bullets drilled the garbage can lids and cracked the windows of the VW. Falling glass rained down around her.

Nell’s heart pounded as she peered through the broken windows, looking for fresh cover.

A low voice called out of the darkness. “Stay where you are, Nell. We don’t want to hurt you.”

They knew her name?

Fighting panic, she threw a third garbage can lid behind her, then crawled along the foot of the wall, staying low until she reached a smaller street behind a dilapidated warehouse.

A bright beam of halogen lights cut through the darkness, blinding her.

“All we want to do is talk, Nell. Your father will explain everything to you.”

Her father? Surely he didn’t know these people.

Fighting a sense of horror, Nell crawled on in the darkness. Could her father be involved with men like these? He’d sworn that he was done with stealing and she’d believed him.

A bullet whined over her head, hitting a big white Dumpster at the far end of the alley. Nell tried to remember how far it was from the Dumpster to the nearest cross street.

Ten feet and she’d be eating lead.

“Last warning, Nell.”

She kept inching backward. Her foot struck an empty can, the sound echoing down the narrow alley.

A bullet hit the wall near her shoulder. Cement fragments tore at her cheek and she tasted blood on her lip.

They were cutting her off.

She saw a sudden movement at the end of the alley, beyond the Dumpster. She froze, boxed in completely now. There were too many of them.

“Nell, over here.” The voice from the darkness seemed familiar. “Turn around.”

She blinked, trying to place the voice. A client? No, not that. Scotland.

Dakota?

“Keep moving six more feet. I’ve got your back covered.”

NELL BACKED UP slowly, straining to breathe, straining to make sense of why this man had suddenly reappeared in her life. “How did you find—”

“No time for that. Just keep moving.” He sounded very calm, not remotely surprised to see men with guns following Nell and circling warily.

In one smooth movement, he pulled her toward him and then shot out the halogen light. Behind them, bullets cracked on cement, the noise deafening in the confined alley. Rough fingers gripped Nell’s arm and then she was yanked back behind the protective metal walls of the Dumpster, out of range of the gunfire.

Where were the police when you needed them? Hadn’t anyone reported the disturbance?

“Three feet behind you, Nell. Focus. Reach up and you’ll feel the top of a metal fire escape ladder. Pull yourself up and move. Don’t look back and don’t stop, no matter what happens down here.”

Nell didn’t even consider arguing. She was already grabbing for the ladder. “What about you?” she said breathlessly.

“I’ve got unfinished business here.” His voice was cold. “Move.”

Nell didn’t hesitate. With one jump, her hand closed around the middle rung of the fire escape and she swung her legs up.

But when she reached the third rung, a retaining brace pulled free, dumping her and twelve feet of rusted metal right back in the middle of the alley.

“Go out the alley behind me,” Dakota snapped. “My car is the black Explorer at the crosswalk. Here’s the key.”

He shoved something into her hand. “Drive home, lock your door and stay there.”

Footsteps hammered toward the far end of the alley, cutting off that route of escape.

“Forget it.” He sounded irritated. “Stay right behind me, but keep clear of my right hand.”

His shooting hand.

But Nell wasn’t about to slow him down against what looked like increasingly bad odds. With both ends of the alley blocked, that left only up.

She ran past the fire escape and grabbed a heavy rain gutter. A bullet ripped over her right shoulder. Pain burned through her neck as the round gouged a piece of brick out of the wall.

Ignoring her pain, Nell pulled her way hand over hand up the gutter until she reached the roof. To her right, a limestone wall rose to the neighboring apartment building.