house, with those four armed security soldiers roaming, she could spend no longer thinking about such things. She needed to get her damn painting— and maybe one or two more— and get the hell out of Dodge.
The thief found her Grant Wood halfway down the right-hand wall. She did not fool around, jumping the alarm wire, pulling the painting down, and freeing it from its ornate antique gold frame… which, she momentarily lamented, could have been sold for a good price, as well; but that would have made this package even more bulky than it was now.
The thirty inch by thirty-nine inch sheet of Masonite was heavy and hard, and perhaps she just should have abandoned it as her goal, and gambled on a few canvases; but this painting was a sure thing, an objective she'd researched well.
Moody would say;
Max carefully slid the Wood into a zippered waterproof bag she'd carried in folded under her vest, and glanced around to see if she dared snatch one more prize, before the security boys came back.
As her eyes flicked from frame to frame, something in a corner at the far end of the room caught her attention— a pedestal on which perched a Plexiglas case about the size of a basketball, with something resting on black velvet inside. The only such display in the room, it had a temporary feeling, as if this had been arranged only until a better showcase could be found.
As she got closer— and finally began to comprehend just what it was she was beholding— her stomach wrenched, and she suddenly had the feeling that a nest of snakes was slithering down inside her…
Sitting smugly on black velvet, much as it had back at the Hollywood Heritage Museum, was the Heart of the Ocean.
The air seemed somehow thinner now, and her breathing came in short, rapid gasps. Questions tumbled through her mind, like dominoes knocking into each other…
Sufficient time had passed, since the original theft, for either of those transactions to have taken place; and yet somehow Max couldn't understand how the necklace had gotten from Moody's pocket to this room, in this house. Something seemed… wrong.
Very wrong.
Her face felt hot, her stomach icy, and goose bumps of fear ran up her arms, something that had not happened since…
…
“Beautiful, isn't it?” a warm voice asked from behind her.
And yet there was something cold about it.
In fact, the voice froze her, the zippered bag with the Grant Wood inside still dangling from her right hand, like an absurdly oversized purse.
It wasn't a voice belonging to any hired help: this was Jared Sterling's voice; she hadn't turned around yet, but she recognized it, from video clips she'd played on Kendra's computer.
Still looking at the lovely blue stone, she said, “Someone told me once… diamonds are a girl's best friend.”
“Wrong movie… You want to put the painting down?”
Max shook her head slowly. “Not really. I worked pretty hard to get it.”
“As did I.”
A door opened, and another voice blurted: “Sir!”
“Ah— Morales. Take over, would you? I'm just having a glass of warm milk… my ulcer again.”
Behind her, she heard a pistol cock.
“Try not to kill her, Morales,” the warm voice said. “She has a very nice ass.”
Then another door opened, and footsteps echoed away.
The new voice spoke again, and it was touched with a south-of-the-border lilt: “Turn around, you… slowly.”
She did as she'd been told— a good girl— and Morales stood in front of her now, his pistol aimed at the middle of her chest.
“Nice and easy now,” he said. “I want you to set that bag on the floor, like it's your poor sweet gran'ma.”
Again she did as told— even though she had no “sweet gran'ma” that she knew of.
Morales's other hand went up to his mouth and he spoke into his sleeve. “Intruder contained in the gallery, repeat, the gallery.”
Rising slowly, she heard a crackily “ten-four” from Morales's earpiece.
Then the security man crossed slowly toward her and, though his face remained impassive and professional, something sexual flickered in his eyes when he said, “I'm going to have to pat you down.”
“I don't think so.”
“Put your hands behind your head, little girl; wing those elbows.”
Morales crouched, keeping his handgun and his eyes on his captive even as his free hand reached for the zippered bag. He had begun to rise, slowly, when footsteps in the foyer drew his eyes toward the door, just long enough to give Max the opening she needed.
She swung at the waist, twisting her body as if exercising, and one of those elbows he'd requested caught Morales on the side of the head.
Pitching sideways from the blow, he got off one wild shot that buried itself in the wall, between two of those valuable pictures. She thrust her right foot into his throat, and— already off-balance— he tumbled backward, gasping for breath. Before he hit the floor, Max had kicked the gun from his fingers and it went spinning across the waxed wood floor, clattering against the floorboards clear across the room.
Morales gurgled and seemed vaguely conscious, but showed no sign of getting up.
Behind her, in that doorway Sterling had slipped out, a deep voice growled, “Freeze!”
Instead, Max did two cartwheels, and was into her back flip when the tall crew-cut leader's pistol coughed harshly, twice, both rounds missing the blur that was Max and burying themselves in a wall and a painting, respectively.
The catlike home invader landed in front of him, perhaps a yard separating them, enough room for her to kick the pistol from his hand. Then she pirouetted, back-kicked the estate's top security man in the belly, folding him up, and sent him flying across the room, where he smacked into a wall hard enough to make several pictures hang crooked.
He still had that gun, so she went to him, incredibly fast, and when he tried to rise, and looked at where she'd been, the intruder was gone… and he then glanced to his right, where she was now standing.
“Can't play with you,” she said. “Sorry… ”
Her left foot caught him in the groin and he cried out shrilly and sagged to the floor again. Max was taking no chances, however, and as soon as her left foot touched the floor, her right foot came up and caught the leader under the chin, knocking him unconscious and sending him sliding across the waxed surface, like a kid on a sled.
She sprinted back to where Morales lay bubbling— he was unconscious now— and snatched up the waterproof bag. Then she smashed the Plexiglas case with a kick, and— for the second time!— grabbed the precious Heart of the Ocean, triggering an alarm: a buzzerlike bawling.
Max slipped the necklace into a vest pocket, which she zipped shut, and carried the bag with the painting in her left hand as she moved toward the door that would take her back to the foyer— she had come in the front way, she'd go out the same.
She was heading for the security keypad when she all but bumped into the black guy, Maurer, finally down from upstairs, looking a little disheveled, and sweaty, from an apparently thorough and fruitless search of the vast
