She squinted at him with those unsettling eyes, then snapped her mouth shut, trying again to cross her arms over her chest, causing the cuffs to rattle.
He didn’t have to explain who Dark Man was. Most thieves, once they reached a certain level of success and notoriety, were known by nicknames. He absently rubbed his chin. He’d taken to calling Nicole Black Cat. Some other names included Pablo, for the English thief who stole strictly Picassos, and there was even a Mr. Ed, who concentrated his extracurricular activities on rustling highly insured thoroughbred racehorses.
Bestowing the nickname Dark Man, however, hadn’t been done in a light or amusing way. Dark Man was named as such because he was utterly and totally dark. When he was involved in a theft, people usually ended up hurt. Or dead.
And no one seemed to know who he was.
Alex went on. “Two months ago he was involved in the Norton Museum job in Omaha. Two security guards and an assistant curator—who was father to twin two-year-old boys—were shot dead at point-blank range.”
Nicole stared at where she was running her palm along the length of her skirt then back again. Stress lines bracketed the sides of her naughty mouth, but otherwise he couldn’t tell how she was taking what he was saying.
“Three months before that, there was the gallery job in San Francisco. Four injured, one paralyzed for life.”
He rounded the bed and sat down next to her on the mattress. “I want this guy, Nicole. I want him so bad I can’t think straight.”
She blinked to stare at him, her dark eyes questioning. “I thought you weren’t a cop anymore.”
“I’m not,” he said, but didn’t offer anything more. She didn’t have to know that Dark Man had haunted him throughout his career. Or that the thief was responsible for twenty-five percent of the policy payouts issued by his company last year.
“And I should help you…why?” she asked.
Because it’s the right thing to do, he wanted to say.
But he didn’t. Because if there was one thing he’d learned during his career in the N.Y.P.D., it was that right and wrong were twisted in the criminal underworld. Black became white and the gray area stretched to a point where even the black and white were essentially obliterated.
“Because if you don’t, then I turn you over to the authorities investigating the Bowman diamond heist last summer.”
He had to give her credit—she didn’t even blink. “I wasn’t involved with it.”
He gave her a half smile. “After I get done explaining everything to the authorities, do you really think it will matter?”
He watched her slender throat work around a swallow. Alex decided he liked the blond wig. It was short and sassy and showed her neck and shoulders off in a sexily elegant way.
Nicole said, “I can’t help you.”
“Why?”
She slanted a gaze in his direction as if addressing a particularly slow child. “The code.”
“Ah,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “You mean honor among thieves and all that.”
She smiled at him, but there was little or no amusement in the action. “Something like that.”
“And what do you think your fellow thieves would think of you targeting them for theft, then leaving them alone to take the fall?”
Color flushed her cheeks as she cursed under her breath. “You wouldn’t dare.”
At this point, Alex would.
Dark Man had plagued him throughout his eight-year career with the N.Y.P.D. He even suspected that the thief’s first known job at a small folk art museum in SoHo had coincided with Alex’s first day on the job in robbery/homicide.
But it wasn’t just that Dark Man was a thorn in his side, or that Alex wanted to settle a score like you see in those macho “B” movies or dime-store novels.
No. He needed to get him because he was no longer a harmless thief. He was a serial killer who seemed to enjoy taking people’s lives more than the loot.
And no one, nowhere, had a clue as to his real identity.
Oh, sure, the police had worked up a psychological profile on him. Mid-thirties. Loner. Classic passive-aggressive with sociopathic tendencies. But Alex could have told you that just reading the crime reports. The thief taunted his victims before killing them. Goaded them into risking their lives for material objects, then appeared to take great joy in making them pay for such a shallow move.
But the police profiler had also said that Dark Man would be a good-looking man. Popular with the ladies. Perhaps even a man well known in the public sector.
Did Nicole know him?
Alex discovered that during his thought processes he’d placed his hand on her bare knee and was lightly tracing circles on her pale skin with his thumb. If she did know who Dark Man was, he knew straight-out asking her wouldn’t get the intended results.
But forcing her to work with him…well, that was an altogether different tack that he hoped would yield him the man he’d been searching for so long. His determination had little to do with the fact that the insurance company had paid out a great deal of money to cover the items he’d stolen. It had everything to do with his belief that the only room the guy was entitled to inhabit was an eight-by-eight prison cell for the rest of his unnatural life.
Alex raised his eyes to look into Nicole’s, only she was watching his thumb make those lazy circles.
He removed his hand.
She moved her leg out of the way, then reached up to draw the blond wig from her head. Alex watched, fascinated, as she removed one, then two pins and her silky dark hair swept down to frame her pale face, in one blink taking her from icy cold temptress to dangerously sexy seductress.
“How do you think I can help you?”
Risky question, that, he thought as his gaze dropped to where her dark hair teased her nipples through the thin black fabric of her dress. His mouth watered just remembering the tangy taste of her skin. Her instant, uninhibited response.
Had he ever been with a woman so spontaneous? A woman who knew straight off what she wanted, no game-playing, no wondering if it was too soon or if she would look too bad if she revealed she wanted him as badly as he wanted her?
Oh, and Alex definitely wanted Nicole. Just like a sinner who couldn’t help but sin.
He got up from the bed and held out his hand. She instantly dropped the two hairpins into his palm.
“You have the uncanny ability to know when something’s going to happen before it does,” he told her.
The cuffs clanked against the iron headboard as she propped the wig on one of the two iron posts. “How long, exactly, have you been watching me?”
Alex pocketed the pins, then picked up the pajamas and refolded them, thinking of the countless photographs of her that covered the corkboard in his office at work. “Long enough.”
“Mmm.” He watched her recross her legs in a slow, languid way designed to drive any man mad. “And did it make you…hot? You know, watching me when I didn’t know you were?”
Alex couldn’t seem to take his gaze away from her slender thighs, still hearing the sound of skin sliding against skin.
“You know, watching me, but not being able to touch me?”
Alex forced his gaze up to her face. “My surveillance was of a strictly professional nature.”
She considered him for a long moment, then held up the hand