Chapter 18

Sadie was struggling to strap her derringer beneath ten pounds of underwear when a knock rattled the penthouse door.

Assuming the caller was Collie, she blew a curl off her forehead. She hadn't seen the boy or his masked moocher all day.

"Just a minute," she muttered. "I'm coming!"

"Ciao, amore mia bella!" came the muffled response from the hall.

Sadie's hands stilled on her thigh holster. Now that voice hadn't been bred in Kentucky.

Dropping her skirts, she approached the door with caution. This morning, she might have appreciated the arrival of an Italian knight in shining armor, whose warm, rich baritone claimed her as his beautiful love—especially while Cass had been running amuck, smashing things.

But at 6:40 p.m., with her nerves as taut as fiddle strings, thanks to her worries about Maestro's mindless minions, she was tempted to shoot first, and ask questions later.

Struggling against the impulse, she stooped to squint through the keyhole. She spied a dashing sash of crimson silk, a trio of glittery medals, and a red rosebud clutched in a white-gloved fist.

What woman wouldn't open the door for that?

Hiding her pistol behind her back, she dared to turn the knob. To her surprise, a man in black swallowtails—with Mace's green eyes—clicked his heels and doubled over in a smart bow. She raised her eyebrows. Her fastidious boss had donned a coal-black wig, waxed a mustache into curly-cues, and fastened mutton chop whiskers to his jaw. He'd also given himself a paunch. She didn't know whether to be amused or annoyed.

"Baciami!" he cried, throwing his arms wide and puckering his lips.

Okay, that settles it. I'm annoyed.

"I am not going to kiss you," she hissed, pasting on a smile for the elevator operator, who stood gawking at them at the end of the hall.

Grabbing Mace's coat sleeve, she dragged him over the threshold and slammed the door. "You have a lot of nerve, showing up here. What do you want? Cass? I haven't seen him since this morning."

"I believe you."

"Well, that would be a first."

"Just doing my job."

"Yeah? And what's that supposed to mean?"

Amusement softened the impertinent gaze that drifted to her well-boosted bodice. "I heard you needed a bodyguard."

"No, Wilma ordered me to have a bodyguard. I'm perfectly capable of kicking some scumbag's ass at a birthday party."

"In that dress?" He whistled long and low, ogling her curve-hugging, spruce-green velvet. "All the more reason for me to tag along. To watch," he added drolly.

Hating that her cheeks warmed, Sadie glared with extra disdain at his gift. "I suppose that rose has thorns."

"You wouldn't like it if it wasn't thorny."

Hilarious.

Secretly impressed by Wilma's cunning choice of bodyguards—after all, as long as Mace was attending Wyntir's party, he couldn't arrest Cass—Sadie decided to cooperate. But she didn't have to like it.

"Take your pick of vases," she said tartly, pointing at her empty tequila bottle and the brimming water pitcher beside it. "And just for the record, you're early. I'm not finished dressing."

"No problem, doll." He winked. "Just holler if you need my help."

That'll never happen.

Stalking behind the dressing screen, she finished fastening her pistol to her thigh then crossed to the vanity, where she retrieved the pearl earbobs Wilma had loaned her for the evening.

As Sadie clipped on the dangles, her eyes strayed to Mace's brawny reflection in the mirror. He was checking his weapons. He unbuttoned his coat to adjust his shoulder holster; he tested the wrist trigger that dropped a .38 into his fist; he straightened his hem over his ankle sheath. As he was inspecting his cuff links, which were standard-issue smoke bombs for male agents, he caught her watching him in the mirror.

He had the poor grace to smirk.

She scowled and reached for her powder puff.

With nothing better to do, Mace shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and strolled around the room, acting nosy, like a detective. "How come this wallpaper smells like honeysuckle?"

"Don't ask."

"There's a nice big stain here. Have an accident?"

She dusted her nose in the ever-futile attempt to hide her freckles. "That's right. An accident."

He paced off the steps to her fragrance tray. "You threw that perfume bottle at point-blank range and missed? Please tell me Cassidy had already ducked out the door."

She twisted on her stool to glare at the nuisance. "Do you just like pissing me off?"

"Come to think of it, I can't remember a time when you weren't pissed at me."

"Shouldn't that tell you something?"

"Yeah." He flashed boyish dimples. "I'm hard to resist."

Her eyes narrowed. Why are my cheeks heating?

Since her mind was annoyingly blank, with no pithy comeback, she swiveled to face the mirror and dipped a well-lacquered forefinger into her pot of lip paint. Copper Shimmer. Not her favorite shade. But her hair was darker now, and the season was autumn, so she'd made the concession.

Applying the paint, she watched Mace's reflection as it squatted. The tails of his coat had been hiding tight, round buttocks. Reluctantly, she admired the corded calves connected to his even more impressive thighs. Clearly, this was a man who didn't spend his days and nights in a saddle...

Damn! Her heart skipped a beat. Mace was picking a black splinter from the carpet. How had she possibly missed it? She'd crawled over that wool pile three times, hunting for pieces of the music box that Cass had smashed!

"What's this?" Mace's curiosity quickly dissolved to suspicion. Crossing to a lamp, he inspected his find. "It looks like wood. Painted with black enamel."

"Mystery solved," she retorted with practiced nonchalance.

He tossed her a sharp glance. She made sure she looked busy, blotting the excess paint from her lips.

"You kids must have had some cat fight."

"Am I allowed any privacy in my own bedroom?"

She didn't like the way he was assessing her reflection with that hooded stare. She sensed he was making up his mind about something.

"Nothing you borrowed from the agency vault appears to be missing. What got busted?"

"Why don't you figure it out, detective?"

She probably shouldn't have said that. He flipped open a hollow button on his vest and carefully fitted the splinter inside.

"I was joking, Mace."

"Never joke about evidence, doll."

"Are you always this creepy when you go courting?"

"Are we courting?"

Ugh!

"Let's get our story straight," she said briskly in an attempt to change the subject. "I am Fiore Torchia, the Contessa di Montaldeo. I live in an obscenely large palazzo in Naples. I'm a widow touring the Americas, because I'm rich and bored and have nothing better to do since Luigi's death. Who are you?"

He inclined his head. "I am Don Niccolaio Brianza Assante, Barone di Monte Somma. The lover you were entertaining behind Luigi's back."

"Try again."

Unperturbed by her snub, he fitted a monocle to his right eye. "Very well. You can call me Nico. I'm your cousin."

"On my mother's side."

"If you insist."

"Must you wear the monocle?"

His lips twitched. "Rather Continental, don't you think?"

"You don't want to know what I think." With the magnified eyeball, he looked like a tree frog. "Why are you in Denver, Nico?"

"Duty calls. It's time to escort my favorite cousin home."

"No dice. I told Goddard my next stop after Denver was Frisco. Therefore, you want to grow grapes in sunny California. You hope to purchase a vineyard in Napa County."

"To expand the family business." Mace nodded. "Works for me."

Sadie sighed. If only their charade could be that simple. "How much Italian do you really speak? Apparently, Goddard travelled to Italy, and he's familiar with the language."

"I can get by," Mace said gruffly. "My Pa was a bricklayer in Blue Island, about a day's ride from Chicago. My neighbors were mostly Italian and German. Does Goddard suspect you're a fraud?"

She averted her eyes, recalling the music box.

"It's possible," she admitted reluctantly.

A moment passed as this dire news hovered like an executioner's ax between them.

Was Dante Goddard really Maestro? Sadie hated to admit it, but the suspicion was reasonable. He was a psychiatrist, with access to mind-altering drugs. Wyntir had said he disdained hypnosis, but he wouldn't need hypnosis to manipulate minds. He was an expert on human behavior.

And if he wasn't Maestro, Sadie thought grimly, then she'd hit a dead end. She was no closer to catching the bastard.

This realization was almost as troubling as the notion that she'd been so incredibly stupid. So thoroughly duped. She'd never once imagined Goddard as a criminal mastermind. Not even after he'd made lights flash in her head with his "therapeutic" neck massage.

Come to think of it, maybe I fainted because he drugged my champagne!

She shivered at the notion.

Now she was terrified to imagine what he'd really whispered in her ear at the auction, when her mind had been dazed and she'd been too weak to defend herself. Would the music box have triggered his command to steal for him? Kill for him?

Her skin grew clammy at the thought.

Mace crossed to her chair. She gripped the seat, bracing herself. She expected him to go bulldog on her, to start barking about her befuddled female instincts where handsome, pleasant-smelling psychopaths were concerned.

Instead, he dropped to one knee.

"Tonight, you will not leave my sight. Agreed?"

His voice had been quiet but firm. When his great, warm hand engulfed hers, she nodded, a tad mystified to recognize the concern in his fiercely green stare.

"But I'm not worried about me," she blurted, tugging her hand free and jumping to her feet. She was uncomfortable with the slow, slippery slide into trust that their newfound pact signified. Ten hours ago, hadn't Mace threatened her with house arrest? "I'm worried about Wyntir. She's in love with Goddard. Or maybe she's being manipulated to believe she's in love with him. In any event, she depends on him for everything—"

"I read your reports," Mace said grimly. "Wilma filled me in on the rest. Miss Greyfell's mind is fragile. She has been blacking out, and Goddard has been preying on her innocence."

"We have to save Wyntir before it's too late!"

Mace's jaw hardened. "If I know anything about a woman in love—" his smile was mirthless "—she won't listen to reason. In fact, she'll take the first opportunity to warn him of his danger. We have to tread lightly. Do nothing, say nothing about your suspicions. Goddard won't harm Wyntir until they're married, and he has full control of her inheritance. Tonight, we have one purpose, and one purpose only."

Sadie drew a shuddering breath. "Find proof."

"That's right."

The clock on the mantel was chiming seven o'clock when Mace retrieved her cape from the bed. Reluctantly, she let him wrap the sable around her shoulders. Reaching for her matching muff and beaded reticule, she left a light burning by the window. She hoped Cass would see it and come back. She'd been an idiot. She'd let her hurt and pride blind her to the real Dante, to the monster who lurked beneath the suave manners and impeccable tailoring.

But Cass, common coyote that he was, had sniffed out the truth beneath the sophisticate's lies. He'd been right all along. If all went well tonight, she would walk out of Greyfell Manor with the proof to hang Maestro and exonerate Daredevil. Maybe then, Cass would forgive her.

Stepping into the hall, she heard the elevator arrive. The operator rolled open the door, as if to cue her charade. She forced herself to take Mace's arm, to laugh up into his darkly fringed gaze like a woman who was fond of her long-lost cousin and his banal observations about American weather.

God have mercy. Tonight's going to be torture.

* * *

Some twenty feet above Wyntir's front yard, Cass crouched in a snow-dusted Ponderosa pine. He was puffing a cigarette and waiting for the last family on the guest list to arrive. The sound of wheels, crunching on the drive, would make the dogs start to bark and give him his opportunity to sneak inside the house without suspicion. His other plan—to drug the Dobermans—would have caused problems if he acted too soon. The last thing he needed was for some servant to find the unresponsive pups, before he could complete his mission.

"I figure it like this," Cass told his furry nemeses, who'd flopped belly-down in the snow to growl at his tree. "You and I are on the same side. You're here to protect Wyntir, and I'm here to save her."

Maximus's black lips curled away from gleaming, two-inch fangs. And he was the friendly one.

"Can't say I blame you," Cass commiserated, tapping ash into the wind. "I reckon I'd be annoyed, too, if I got banished out here to freeze my tail off. I bet Dante was responsible."

The dogs' ears swiveled. Their growls crescendoed.

"See that? You know who I'm talking about. Looks like we have lots in common. I hate Dante; you hate Dante. Why can't we all get along?"

In response, Brutus licked his chops. To the Alpha, Cass figured he looked like a big, black squirrel-steak with a Stetson.

"Now I understand why you wear the blood-colored collar, pal."

At last, the distant clopping of hooves, accompanied by jingling bells, pierced the crisp, Colorado night. Cass squinted past the steam of his breaths to spy bobbing lanterns. The driver was turning the coach into Wyntir's drive.

At last his chance had come.

Cass tugged his black neckerchief over his nose and slid the coil of hemp off a nearby branch. For a showboater who'd roped fleeing steers from the back of a galloping horse, lassoing a chimney wasn't much of a challenge—even if the moon was dark, his limbs were stiff, and two gaping maws of death waited to gobble him up below.

Amused by this melodramatic notion, he spun the rope in his black-gloved fist. Howling like hell hounds, Brutus and Maximus bounded to their paws.

"Whoa," the driver called to his team.

A coach door with gilded arms swung wide, loosing heat and perfume into the air. Maximus and Brutus were going berserk. They didn't know which was the bigger threat: the silver-haired granny, who stepped down to the drive, or the rope that whooshed through the air, snaring the brick smoke stack. Cass tugged hard to tighten the knot.

"Good God, what a racket," groused a man by the carriage.

The gent's back was turned, so Cass took a running leap and swung. Wind whistled through his ears. Brutus charged after him, leaping for the seat of his pants. The Alpha's teeth snapped air. Cass might have laughed if he hadn't been concentrating so hard on keeping his feet between his chest and the wall. He didn't want to crack a rib when he slammed into the second story.

His oomph sounded like an explosion to his ears. So did the scraping of his rowels on brick. But no one in the drive looked up to investigate the cracking icicles or the grinding metal as the rope bent the flashing. All his noise was masked by hellacious barking.

Half grinning, half panting, Cass began hauling himself hand over hand up the rope.

The dogs went apoplectic.

"I was invited here, you mangy menace!" the little, stooped granny scolded, wagging a finger at Maximus. "Tahoma, go bite him."

"We'll have none of your ghost talk, Mother."

"Are you sure you sprang from my womb?" Lilybelle grumbled, stumping up the cobblestones with her cane. "Because sometimes, I think the real Wortham was switched at birth with a fuddy-duddy."

Cass smothered a snicker as Lilybelle passed beneath him. He was pulling himself onto the roof's eight-inch ledge when he heard her cane rap the door. The butler took half a second to respond, but she snapped at him anyway:

"It's about time! I nearly froze to death! You want a blue-haired corpse on your porch? Move aside, Humphrey, you're sucking up my heat..."

The door slammed behind the long-suffering Wortham, whose arms were laden with presents.

Cass flattened his spine beside a dormer window and saluted his furry nemeses. "See that? There are worse things than being cold. You could be haunted by a dead fox."

The dogs continued to bark curses at him, so he unbuttoned his duster. A swift tug of his belt loosened the bundle of butcher paper, strapped to his waist. Brutus reared up, scratching eagerly at the bricks. Maximus followed suit.

"Aw, fess up. You knew I had these all along."

Cass hurled the steaks as far as he could. The Dobermans chased the package around the side of the house. A few moments later, the barking ended, and the feasting began.

Sweet dreams, boys.

Cass snapped open a glass cutter. No respectable burglar traveled without one. With its help, he got past the lock on the dormer window faster than Lilybelle could make a scene. And that was saying something.

Dust and lavender assaulted his nose. Smothering a sneeze, he struck a match. Judging from the clutter of cradles, rocking horses, and trunks, he guessed he'd crawled into a storage chamber. A string quartet's arrangement of Roses from the South floated through the floorboards. The music disguised his cursing each time his match burned out. Finally, he stumbled to the attic door. Cracking it open, he let his eyes adjust to the low flame in the hall's single sconce, before he was on the prowl again, hunting for a stairwell.

Based on the diagram Brodie had drawn, the dining room, parlor, and conservatory were all on the first floor. Greyfell Manor had no ballroom, so Cass figured the hosts, guests, and servants would all be congregating on the lower level. If he was lucky, they'd stay there for hours, letting him scout the second story in peace.

With the stealth of his coyote namesake, he crept down the claustrophobic hall that served as the servants' staircase. So far so good, he thought, furtively poking his head past the door. He spied what he guessed to be Wyntir's bedroom, since tufts of white fur clung to the jamb, where her Persian must have rubbed against it.

In fact, the more he looked, the more cat hair he saw, sprinkled along the rug or jutting from the claw-foot legs of accent tables and chairs. Oddly enough, all these tufts seemed to be waving in the same direction, as if riffled by a gentle breeze.

Cass squatted, tugging off a glove. Sure enough, a cold stream of air tickled his fingers, about an inch above the floor. It seemed to be coming from a pair of open mahogany doors, which his diagram labeled, "The Library."

Casting a wary glance behind him, Cass hurried across the hall, slipped into the dimly lit chamber, and closed the doors. The aroma of burned pine emanated from the hearth. Although the library was warm at knee-level, cold air persisted near the carpet. It led him to a bookcase embedded in a wall. Frowning, he checked Brodie's painstaking diagram again. A dumbwaiter was supposed to be here. The shaft had been sealed—and poorly, judging by the draft.

Strange. Brodie had sourced city records to create his diagram. Any blueprint filed with the planning commission should have indicated a renovation to the house.

I'll be damned if Goddard gets charged with nothing more than city tax evasion.

Doggedly, Cass lit a lamp and held it higher. A male's sanctum sanctorum leaped into relief, including stuffed leather chairs, polished brass spittoons, a mounted elk trophy, and a cabinet full of liquor. Cass also spied a music stand and a highly polished violin, which rested with its bow on a stool, as if waiting for its owner to return.

But Cass was less interested in the fiddle than the leather-bound volumes that stretched to the edge of the oak rafters. He scanned for disturbed dust. Scratches. Fingerprints. Worn bindings. Anything that might indicate one of the books had recently been removed from its shelf.

A smart thief, who didn't have a suitable buyer, would distribute his cache in several hiding places. A cocky thief, who'd purged the household of witnesses, would continue to use hiding places that had been convenient in the past. Cass figured Goddard fell into both categories.

Finally, he spied what he'd been looking for: a spine bound in nondescript brown with slightly worn gilt lettering. The volume jutted about a straw's breadth past its neighbors. Titled, Frygt og Bæven, which to Cass's mind was gibberish, the work was authored by some foreigner named Johannes de Silentio. More to the point, the book was situated on the fifth shelf, which was too high for Wyntir but within stretching distance for a man of Goddard's height.

I've got you now, you bastard.

Eagerly, Cass reached for the book. When it rattled in his fist, his anticipation sharpened. Which stolen treasure had he found? The Heart of Fire? Mephistopheles's Jewels? The Namdaran Emeralds?

Before he could find out, footsteps echoed in the hall. They were coming closer fast. Muttering an oath, he shoved the book back into place and blew out the lamp. He barely had time to jump for a rafter and pull himself up among the spider webs before Wyntir burst into the room.