The Novels of Nora Roberts by Nora Roberts

Author:Nora Roberts [Roberts, Nora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, Suspense, Collections & Anthologies
ISBN: 9781101562055
Google: Y2UhC8bHjokC
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2011-10-25T16:53:15.552000+00:00

Twenty-two

IT was a perfectly beautiful September morning with the first hint of fall brisk in the air.

At least Al Roker had said so during one of his cheerful reports outside 50 Rock. But when you were caught in the vicious war of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, had already stepped on gum and were on your way behind enemy lines, sparkling air wasn’t a major concern.

She felt guilty. Worse, Tia was certain she looked guilty. At any moment she expected the people who crowded the sidewalk and street to stop and point their fingers at her.

She stopped at the corner, stared hard at the DON’T WALK signal just to keep herself focused. She had a desperate urge for her inhaler, but was afraid to dig in her purse for it. There was so much else in there.

So much illegal else.

Instead, she counted her own breaths—in out, in out—as she joined the flood that poured across the intersection an instant before the signal changed.

“Half a block more,” she said to herself, then flushed when she remembered she was wired. Tia Marsh, she thought incredulously, was wearing a wire. And everything she said, or that was said to her, was being picked up on the equipment in the van that was even now parked in a lot two blocks south of Morningside.

She resisted clearing her throat. Malachi would hear her and know she was nervous. If he knew, then she’d be more nervous.

It was like a dream. No, no, it was like sliding into a television show. Her scene was coming up, and for once in her life, she was going to hit her cue and remember her lines.

“Okay.” She said it quietly and purposefully this time. “Here we go.”

She opened the door of Morningside’s main showroom and stepped inside.

It was more formal than Wyley’s, and lacked, if she did say so herself, Wyley’s quiet charm.

She was aware that security cameras were recording her now. She knew precisely where they were located, since Jack had gone over the diagram with her, again and again.

She walked over to stare blindly at a display of Minton China until she calmed herself.

“May I help you, madam?”

Tia considered it the height of willpower that she didn’t simply leap out of her shoes and cling by her fingernails to the ornately plastered ceiling at the inquiring voice.

Reminding herself there wasn’t a flashing GUILTY sign on her forehead, she turned to the clerk. “No, thank you. I’d like to look around a bit.”

“Of course. I’m Janine. Please let me know if you need any help or have any questions.”

“Thank you.”

Janine, Tia noted as the clerk slipped discreetly away, was dressed sharply in a black suit that made her look skinny as a snake and nearly as exotic. And quick as that snake, she’d summed up and dismissed Tia as beneath notice.

It stung a bit, even though Tia reminded herself that was the point. She’d worn a dull brown suit and a cream-colored blouse—both of which she intended to throw out as soon as she got home—because they helped her fade into the woodwork.

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