Read Always a Thief for Free Online Page B

the exhibit.” Morgan cleared her throat. “It would be a dandy way to get at your collection, we both know that. Pretend to be after another thief, pretend to be helping the good guys, and—hey, presto—you're on the inside, where all the goodies are. A Trojan horse.”
    “Do you think that's what Alex is doing?”
    “I don't know. And neither do you.”
    Max sighed. “So far, he's done nothing to threaten the collection. He's at least nominally under Interpol's control, here to work on the right side of the law. I have to believe that. Because the thief he's trying to help Interpol put behind bars is far, far worse than Quinn has ever been.”
    “I forgot to ask about that the other night. Who is this thief you're risking your collection to trap?”
    “Well, unlike Quinn, this one hasn't caught the fancy of the press or public, so there's been almost no publicity about his activities. You probably haven't heard of him. At Interpol, his code name is Nightshade.”
    Briefly distracted by the name, she said, “Isn't that another name for some plants—like belladonna?”
    “Pure poison. And he—or she, I suppose—is definitely that. A far more violent and dangerous personality than Quinn, that much everyone is certain of. There have been eight murders committed during Nightshade's robberies in the past six years, all of them because someone got in his way.”
    “You're right, I haven't heard of him. Does he work in Europe, or—”
    “All over, but the majority of the robberies were committed here in the States. Every law-enforcement agency in the world has tried to identify him, and no one has even come up with a name. No living witnesses, no fingerprints or other forensic evidence conveniently left behind, and the computers can't even find a pattern in the robberies, except that he favors gems and tends toward the more old-fashioned scaling-the-wall-and-breaking-a-window sort of burglaries.”
    “Low-tech rather than high-tech.”
    “As far as Interpol can determine, yeah. It's one reason we picked an older museum in which to display the collection. Any thief worth his salt is going to know we're installing better electronic security, but he or she could also be at least reasonably certain that in this huge old building there are bound to be a few chinks in the defenses.”
    Morgan thought about that for a moment, then asked curiously, “If there's no pattern, then how do you know all the robberies were committed by the same person?”
    Max's sigh was a breath of sound. “Because the bastard always leaves a calling card. Which you don't know about, by the way, because Interpol and other police agencies keep it quiet in order to I.D. his crimes. He always leaves a dead rose. On the body if he kills someone in the commission of the robbery, and in place of whatever gem he took if there was no murder.”
    She shivered. “That's a morbid touch.”
    “No kidding. You should hear some of the theories advanced by police, FBI, and Interpol behavioral experts. The general consensus is that, aside from his love of gems and his tendency to kill anyone who gets in his way, Nightshade probably has a few more kinks in his nature.”
    “Sounds like. And since he's been so elusive, you guys decided to stack the deck in your favor. It's likely that a collection as priceless as yours going on public display for the first time in more than thirty years would lure Nightshade here to San Francisco. And if you know he's here and what he's after, you can set a trap to catch him.”
    “That's the idea.”
    “Won't he suspect a trap?”
    “If he's as smart as everyone agrees he is, he will. But greed tends to undermine common sense, or at least that's the hope in this case. That plus the edge we hope we have: Quinn. Setting a thief to catch a thief. The bait
has
to be something big, something very tempting to someone like Nightshade, to encourage him to perhaps act more recklessly than is normal for him.”
    “I'd say the