She strolled slowly along the deserted, darkened corridor, shoes sinking into thick soft carpet as she passed the open double doors to one of the main display rooms. The musical ripple of water from a fountain almost masked the faint click of a door closing.
She froze. A chill swept down her spine. Someone was in the building with her.
Gently, she opened her briefcase, extracted her cell phone and pressed the short dial that would put her through to the night watchman. No alarms had gone off, the security system hadn’t been breached, but that didn’t mean safety. The stolen artifacts had disappeared without one alarm being tripped.
It could be the night watchman, or a staff member working late, as she was. The auction house was huge, and dealt in art, antiques and estate jewelry as well as Asian and Pacific-Rim artifacts. A number of Laine’s staff had clearance to be in the building, although after the theft had been discovered three days ago they’d clamped down on security, and most of the keys had been handed in and security clearances revoked.
Before the call could be picked up, the night watchman, Charlie Watson, stepped through a side door.
“Everything all right, Miss Laine?”
Tyler let out a breath and disconnected the call. “I heard a noise and got spooked. I was just ringing you to check if there was anyone else in the building.”
Charlie’s gaze lacked its usual warmth and slid away too quickly. “It was probably Mr. Laine you heard. He just left.”
Mr. Laine. Last week Charlie would have referred to her adoptive brother as Richard. Tyler’s stomach tightened at the loss of Charlie’s easy manner. Everyone at Laine’s was on edge; the police investigation and the intense media speculation had seen to that. But now that the first shock of the theft had passed, an uncomfortable speculation had set in—the kind of speculation Tyler should have been prepared for.
She had worked hard for Laine’s—she’d worked even harder to be a part of her family—but there was no getting past the fact that she had been adopted into the wealthy jeweler family, not born into it. Pretty clothes and an exclusive education aside, she was the cuckoo in Laine’s nest, with a murky past the media had latched on to like a starving dog closing its jaws on a juicy bone. She didn’t need it spelled out that Charlie, who had always gone out of his way to be pleasant to her before, thought it was more than likely that she had had something to do with the theft.
He strolled past her into the display room. “Guess we’re all a little jumpy since the theft.”
He cast his eye over a glassed-in display of ivory that Tyler had catalogued and put together just before the jade had disappeared from a vault that had ten-inch steel walls, twenty-four-hour computer and camera surveillance, and a time lock that sealed it shut from five-thirty at night until eight in the morning.
A wave of weariness washed through Tyler as she slipped the cell phone back into her briefcase. “What do you think of the ivory?”
Charlie shoved his hands in his pockets and stared assessingly at the exquisitely carved set of Indonesian amulets. His gaze studiously avoided hers. “Not as pretty as the jade.”
In Tyler’s mind, as outwardly plain and workman-like as the jade was, nothing was as “pretty.”
When she’d first held the scabbard accoutrement she’d been filled with an inexplicable excitement that had gone beyond the thrill of finding artifacts that had been made and used by people not just centuries ago, but milleniums. Her palms had tingled, and heat had swept through her. She’d lost long minutes while she’d sat, the piece held loosely cupped in the palms of her hands—her mind oddly disconnected. It had taken the persistent buzz of the phone on her desk to pull her back to the present, and even then the subtle, tingling flow had continued, as if the crystalline grains contained within their cool green matrix the fiery imprint of life. The belt ornament and the carved bird had both felt similar, but neither was as powerful as the scabbard accoutrement, which was a warrior’s piece, worn thin with time—smooth and uncomplicated—designed to encircle the sheath of a sword and proclaim, in this instance, not the warlord the warrior fought for, but his faith.
It was possible the warrior had either been a warlord himself, with no further insignia other than the solar symbol required, or he could have been one of the early warrior monks, predating the Shaolin.
The mystery of who had owned and used the jade, and how Chinese artifacts had come to be entombed in a Maori burial cave aside, the pieces had grabbed her at a deeper level than any other artifacts ever had. She’d experienced moments of connection with other objects before, as if the artifact in some strange way held the essence of a different time or place, or even a person, but never as strongly as this.
When the jade had been stolen, she’d felt a sense of violation out of all proportion to what she should have felt—as if the thief had walked into her home and taken a very private possession.
Despite the fact that her only link with the jade was a purely business one, and that the possession of the pieces was open to public debate, in a strange way, on a very personal level, the jade had belonged to her.
Fifteen minutes later, Tyler drove into the underground entrance of her apartment building, escaping the leading edge of a tropical storm front that had swept down from the north.
She parked in her space, gathered her briefcase, and locked the car, shivering as a damp blast of air tugged at her lightweight jacket and skirt, and frowning because the garage was close to pitch-black. Several of the lights must have died at once, or else the storm had knocked them out, leaving only the lights above the elevator and those in the stairwell shining.
Thunder rumbled and a flicker of lightning briefly lit the gloom as she walked toward the stairwell. Her apartment was on the ground floor—a luxury she’d been happy to afford for herself because the gardens around the apartment block were so beautiful. When she came home from work, she liked nothing better than to sit out on her tiny sun-drenched terrace, surrounded by cool, glossy green rhododendrons and nikau palms and fall asleep on her lounger reading a book.
A footfall registered, out of sync with hers. She paused to listen, but almost instantly shook off the paranoia that gripped her. No other vehicle had entered the garage since she’d arrived. What she’d heard had probably been an echo of her own step bouncing off the concrete walls.
Lately, she’d been jumping at her own shadow. A few odd things had happened, including several phone calls from someone who’d hung up as soon as she’d answered. On a couple of occasions she’d been certain that she’d been followed, even though she hadn’t so much as caught a glimpse of anyone.
Another footfall sounded, this time sharply distinct. A raw flash of alarm went through her and her step quickened. She threw an assessing glance around the gloomy cavern of the garage.
A hand snaked out of darkness and closed on her arm, wrenching her to a halt. Adrenaline flooded her system, almost stopping her heart. Her arm jerked in automatic reflex as she spun, teeth bared, and stepped into her attacker, throwing him off balance as she snapped her elbow into a face that was eerily blanked out by a balaclava. He grunted with pain and released his hold. A second man materialized out of the smothering blackness and ripped the briefcase from her.
Fear and rage and the sharp instincts of a child who’d spent more time defending herself than she’d ever spent with tea sets or dolls burst hotly through her. With her right hand now free, she swung, fingers bunched into a tight fist, and connected with the solid bone of a jaw, snapping her attacker’s head back. A strangled sound burst from his mouth, and the balaclava was knocked askew, giving her a glimpse of dark skin and high, slanted cheekbones as she wheeled, holding her handbag to her chest so that there was nothing trailing for either man to grab, and flung herself toward the elevator.