ELIZABETH KENNEDY LAUGHED TO herself as the black cab splashed along the Embankment toward the City.
Stupid old fool.
Unzipping the canvas bag, Elizabeth looked lovingly at the painting, an exquisitely executed oil of a classic, Turneresque pastoral scene. Everything she’d told Edwin Greaves was true. The painting wasn’t a Turner. It was a forgery, one of Gresham Knight’s best. And it was valuable. At least ten times more valuable than the £50,000 Elizabeth had just paid for it. The check she’d given Edwin was real enough, although the account was untraceable to her. Greaves would get something for his stupidity, which was more than he deserved. Perhaps he could buy his grasping, inheritance-hungry son a new tennis racket?
London looked gray and dreary in the rain. The Thames snaked beside the road, swollen and sluggish. Commuters scurried into the tube stations like rats down a drain, stooped and shivering beneath their umbrellas and mackintosh raincoats. But Elizabeth was pleased to be home. Warm and safe in the back of the cab, with her latest acquisition nestled triumphantly in her lap, she felt her confidence slowly returning.
L.A. had been a disaster. Months of work “grooming” the Brooksteins had ended in failure and humiliation at the hands of none other than Tracy bloody Whitney. Elizabeth loathed Tracy. Partly because people in the business still spoke of her in hushed tones, as if she were some sort of goddess whose record as a con artist could never be broken. By Elizabeth’s count, she had already outperformed Tracy Whitney on every measurable scale. She’d pulled off more jobs, for more money than Whitney had ever earned, even in her heyday. But the root of Elizabeth’s dislike was not professional envy, but sexual jealousy.
Jeff Stevens loved Tracy Whitney.
Elizabeth could not forgive Tracy for that.
Nor could she understand it.
I’m better looking than that bitch, and I’m infinitely better in bed. Why would Jeff choose her when he could have had me?
Elizabeth hadn’t intended to fall for Jeff. Indeed, of all her countless scores of male conquests, Jeff Stevens was the only man with whom she’d ever felt something more than a straightforward desire to have sex. Perhaps it was the fact that she’d never had him sexually, apart from that one kiss. And yet there had been intimacy there, emotionally. Jeff brought out something deeper in Elizabeth, something no other man had, before or since.
He’s like my mirror. My twin. He’s part of me.
Over the years, Elizabeth had researched Jeff’s life and background extensively. The more she discovered, the more similarities she found between his life and her own. They had both been abandoned by their parents when young, both effectively “adopted.” They’d learned to live by their wits from their midteens, and to use their good looks and street smarts to outwit the greedy and make their way in the world. They both did what they did for the thrill as much as for the money. And because they were the best at it. The best of the best. Add to that their powerful sexual chemistry and it was clear to Elizabeth that she and Jeff Stevens were destined to be together.
There was only one fly in the ointment. Jeff Stevens hated Elizabeth Kennedy with a passion bordering on the psychotic. Their paths had crossed once or twice over the past decade—they were in the same business after all. Jeff never failed to cut her dead.
Jeff’s last words to Elizabeth had been said in Hong Kong three years ago. Elizabeth was on a job at the time, a rather daring diamond heist at the airport—a high point of her career, as it turned out. Jeff was after some ancient Chinese stone tablets for a collector in Peru. He’d returned to his hotel room one night to find Elizabeth naked and waiting for him in his bed.
“Admit it,” she purred, spreading her smooth, caramel-brown legs and arching her perfect dancer’s back. “You want me. You want me as much as I want you. You always have.”
The bulge in Jeff’s pants seemed to confirm her suspicions. But the look of revulsion on his face spoke otherwise.
“I wouldn’t sleep with you if you were the last woman on earth.”
“Sure you would,” said Elizabeth. “Remember how badly you wanted to in London? Before your wife walked in and ruined it all.”
“Get out.”
He picked up Elizabeth’s clothes, threw them at her and opened the door.
“I lost the only woman I ever loved because of you.”
The humiliation of Jeff’s sexual rejection had faded, but the memory of his words still stung. The only woman I ever loved . . .
Tracy Whitney wasn’t Jeff Stevens’s soul mate.
Elizabeth Kennedy was.
Someday, somehow, she would force him to open his eyes.
“Here we are, love.”
The cab had stopped. They’d reached Canary Wharf already. Elizabeth paid the fare and hurried into her building, a glass-and-steel monolith with panoramic views across London. Her apartment was stunning, a five-thousand-square-foot penthouse stuffed full of fine art and exquisite modern furniture. Having grown up in a poky, cramped council house in Wolverhampton, Elizabeth craved space and simplicity. Much of her decor had an Asian theme and the entire space was high-ceilinged and open plan. A bamboo screen separated Elizabeth’s enormous, bespoke bed with its red silk sheets from a living room that looked more like an art gallery than a private home. Kicking off her shoes and setting the Gresham Knight oil painting gently down on the red lacquer dining table, she poured herself a glass of perfectly chilled Château d’Yquem and sank down onto the sofa.
Too pumped to watch television, she tapped a manicured finger on her iPad and closed her eyes, allowing the calming sounds of Verdi to flood her senses. As they did so often, her thoughts turned to Jeff Stevens.
Darling Jeff. Where are you now, I wonder?
Elizabeth had heard through the grapevine that Jeff was planning a big job in New York over Christmas. She didn’t know what it was yet, although Jeff being Jeff, it was sure to involve some obscure medieval manuscript or piece of Etruscan pottery. Elizabeth did not share his fascination with old and dusty relics of civilizations past. Why limit your resale market if you didn’t have to? Elizabeth almost never took jobs on commission, preferring to auction off her spoils on the black market to the highest bidder.
Running her fingers through her hair—she was growing out the severe cut she’d had in L.A., and now sported a midlength auburn bob—Elizabeth pondered a return to the States. She hadn’t given up on Jeff Stevens. New York would be her best opportunity to seduce him since Hong Kong. This time, she would try a less direct approach. She would attempt to impress him professionally before turning on the big guns. If she pulled off something spectacular and ingenious, she might at least win his respect. That would be a start.
Various possibilities presented themselves. The rich and stupid flocked to New York at Christmastime. It was really just a question of picking off that one juicy, stray gazelle. That and convincing her business partner to let her go in the first place.
“It’s far too soon,” he snapped when Elizabeth suggested it over the phone. “We do nothing more in America for a year at least.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
The debacle over the Iranian rubies had dented Elizabeth’s confidence, but it seemed to have shattered her partner’s equilibrium completely. Ever since the failed Brookstein job, he’d been jumpy and neurotic, perpetually looking over both their shoulders.
“The FBI is all over us.”
“All over me, you mean,” Elizabeth corrected. “Anyway, so what? Since when do we run scared from the federal bunch of idiots? I want to do New York.”
“No.”
“There’s a charity gala on the—”
“I said no.”
The line went dead.
Elizabeth Kennedy was beginning to grow increasingly weary of her partner. The longer they worked together, the more weird and controlling he became. In the beginning she’d been happy to play second fiddle, the young rookie to his seasoned mentor. Especially as he was prepared to split profits fifty-fifty. But now, with each succeeding job, she questioned whether or not she really needed him. They’d been a great team and made a phenomenal amount of money together. But all great partnerships came to an end eventually.
Who knows, perhaps when Jeff finally sees the light, he and I could start working together. New York could be the start of a new chapter.
Elizabeth Kennedy sipped her wine and allowed herself to dream.
JEAN RIZZO YAWNED AS the tube train rattled toward Paddington Station. He’d barely slept the previous night, and was dead on his feet, but there was no chance of getting a seat. The car was overcrowded and dirty. A horrible stench of bad breath and body odor mixed with commuters’ competing perfumes and aftershaves made his stomach churn.