To Catch a Thief Read Online Free PDF Page A

him up?
    The monitors flickered again and the HVAC clicked off. Lightning crackled high overhead, the sound muffled by the museum’s thick walls.
    Jonell sat forward as all the monitors went dark. Cursing, he lunged for the security phone, but the line was dead. He grabbed the battery-powered walkie-talkie to put in a radio alert to the general switchboard, standard procedure, even though a backup generator would kick in any second.
    The movement came from his left and he dropped the walkie talkie as a leather strap locked him to the chair, his hands caught behind his back. He struggled against cool fingers that gripped his neck.
    â€œNo, you can’t—”
    The needle prick came quickly, burning against the inside of his nose, which made no sense at all. The room blurred and he tried to speak as he heard the sound of the security panel door being unlocked. Someone was removing the surveillance board timer, he realized. Blurring fingers ejected the surveillance disk.
    It had all been planned to the second, Jonell thought dimly. Planned by someone on the inside.
    Was it Rogers? Another one of the new guards they had hired in the past month?
    He moaned, caught by crushing pain at his chest. As his body went slack, Everett Jonell realized that he’d never see the new grandbaby or his wife or his proud daughter again. The sorrow was the last thing he felt.

    S IX MINUTES , fifteen seconds to go.
    The figure at the security command post inserted a new time stamp digitally at the security panel, typing in a string of computer code. Then he pocketed the old surveillance disk and inserted a new one, already formatted and complete with museum images calibrated to the current time stamp. Nothing had been left to chance.
    Nudging his boss’s lifeless body onto the floor, the figure finished his disk exchange and then checked the black-and-white images that appeared on the row of monitors.
    All good to go.
    He opened his cell phone, dialed a number and hung up after one ring.
    Though the far monitor showed no activity, he knew that someone was carefully easing open the door of storeroom #3-A at that very moment.
    He closed his eyes, savoring his memory of the exquisite chalk sketch of the most famous woman on the planet.
    Thanks to his discreet program override, the monitor display would loop back with preset images and movements timed to coincide with normal museum patterns. After the thorough infrared assessments that had just been completed, no new tests on the art were scheduled for thirty-six hours. Only at that point would the theft be discovered.
    By then, da Vinci’s preparatory ink and chalk study for the Mona Lisa would be safely locked in a vault, ready for covert transport out of the U.S.
    He checked his watch.
    Three minutes, twenty-two seconds to go. Calmly he lifted Jonell’s fallen walkie-talkie and studied its face. Everything appeared to be in working order, he was happy to see.
    His cell phone buzzed quietly, one burst and then no more.
    All clear.
    Target acquired and clues in place. Ready to exit the building . Everything was moving nicely ahead of schedule.
    He thought briefly about the funds that would be wired to four of his offshore accounts by this time tomorrow. Maybe he’d buy that island in the Seychelles after all. It was remote enough and there was a fresh water source as well as a sizable bungalow with upgraded docks.
    He shoved away the thought. There was still risky work to be done. In two minutes he would phone in an emergency call notifying the switchboard of Everett Jonell’s collapse, sounding suitably shocked and upset. Once his regular shift was complete, he would drive to the short-term apartment that he leased in northern Maryland under one of his many other names. Once there he would collect the carefully wrapped piece of art. After the transfer was done, he would follow his normal schedule with no deviation.
    He’d even attend Everett Jonell’s