Partners in Crime Read Online Free PDF Page B

think of telling you any such thing. Where do you think I got it?” He stood there looking down at her, patient, amused, and she was sorely tempted to kick him in the shins.
    “From my godfather? Maybe you figured you could get more money from him if you strung me along and reported to him.”
    “You do have a devious mind.” He was clearly admiring rather than offended. “I never even thought of that. The idea has merit, but it’s full of holes. Tremaine doesn’t sound like the sort who’d appreciate my offer of assistance. He’d probably just turn me in to the police and double the security. Guess again.”
    Her nerves were at a screaming pitch, her palms damp and slippery inside the over-large pair of driving gloves he’d forced her to wear. “Now isn’t the time to play games.”
    “Why not? It eases the tension.”
    “For you, maybe. Not for me.”
    He took pity on her, his gloved hand cuffing her chin lightly. “Cheer up, Madame X. If you’re going to embark, on a life of crime you’ll have to be cool, calm and collected. I got the key off your key ring.”
    “Mine?” He surprised her into a little shriek, and the hand that had cuffed her chin immediately covered her mouth, pushing her against the wall.
    “Not that cool,” he muttered in her ear. “We aren’t supposed to be here, remember?” He removed his hand. “You had a set of keys lying on your dresser. Presumably your brother’s? Everything was nicely marked—apartment, beach house, Vermont house, L-l, L-2, Techno. It didn’t take a great criminal mind to figure the last key would get us in here without having to resort to credit cards and jimmies and the like.”
    “I should have thought of it myself,” she said, self-recrimination warring with another, less acceptable emotion. He was standing close enough for her to feel the body heat emanating through the expensive gray sweat suit. The feelings he aroused in her were disturbing, unacceptable, and inescapable. She was reacting to him as a woman reacts to a man she wants, and she was a hundred times a fool to do so.
    “That’s all right,” he said, still not moving, too close, too damned close. “All part of the service.”
    “Service?” The word was breathless. She could lean a little closer in the darkened hallway and be touching him again. It was tempting, very tempting.
    “Jimmy the Stoolie’s Rent-a-Crook.”
    It was enough to break the hypnotic spell. “Are we going to search this place or not?” she snapped, remembering to keep her voice to a whisper.
    “I suppose we’d better. It’s now—” he checked the ultrathin gold watch on his strong wrist “—eleven fifty-three. Tremaine uses Foxfire Security Systems, which means two men, two Dobermans, and probably two guns, will be here sometime after one o’clock. They have three stops before this one, and it depends whether any of my colleagues have chosen tonight to break into one of Foxfire’s other clients’ offices. I don’t expect we’ll be so lucky, so we’d better be out of here no later than quarter of one. Okay?”
    She stared up at him. “How do you know all that?”
    “Professional secret. Quarter of one okay with you?”
    “Fine,” she said, fighting back the distrust.
    “Then let’s go.”
    It was damned lucky she was gullible, Sandy thought. He couldn’t very well tell her he’d called a colleague who’d called a client who’d called a friend to find out how Technocracies Ltd. handled security. She probably didn’t want to know the sordid details, anyway. She’d rather believe he had some sort of criminal osmosis.
    The keys had been a stroke of good luck. They’d get through the night with similar luck, if his sources had been correct. As they moved through the empty hallways he wondered what the real Jimmy would have done if Madame X had shown up at his motel room.
    Tried to seduce her, for one thing. And while that reaction hadn’t been Sandy’s first, it was becoming more and