Mind the Gap

chapter Twelve

intersection

The burglar alarm wailed like an air-raid signal. Jazz flew down the front steps, desperation mixing

with a strange eu-phoria as she tucked the blade into her rucksack. She heard the thief shouting after her,

but if he thought a harsh word would stop her, he was a fool. A black taxi cruised by and a courier scooter

whipped past, but the streets around Willow Park had little traffic this time of day. That didn't mean there

were no witnesses, though. An old woman out walking her dog stopped to stare. Two mothers picnicked in

the park, one with a little girl playing on the grass beside her and the other with a baby sleeping in a pram.

The alarm woke the baby, who started to cry.

A well-dressed man stood on the far corner, a mobile phone clapped to his ear. He turned his back



and covered his other ear, far too intent upon his conversation to be distracted by something as mundane as

daylight robbery.

Jazz glanced back as she crossed the street. The thief shrugged on his jacket and stuffed something

—gloves, perhaps—into his shoulder bag as he trotted along the side walk, appearing for all the world like a

businessman in a hurry, no less ordinary than the self-important fool on his mobile half a block away. He'd

shut the door behind him. The alarm still blared and he cast a casual, almost annoyed look back at the house

he'd just tried to rob. Other than the handful of people who must have seen him emerge, no one would have

thought him responsible.

"F*ck," Jazz whispered. One glance around revealed that everyone in the park and on the street had

their eyes on her. Even the old woman's yappy dog focused on her, bark-ing madly.

She ought to have played it cool until she was out of sight, like the suave bastard stepping briskly

along the side-walk parallel to her as she reached the other side of the street. But it was too late for

subtlety. She leaped onto the sidewalk and kept running past a posh restaurant. Most of Mayfair consisted

of luxury hotels, office space, and resi-dences that had once housed nobility or ministry officials. Some still

did. But London was a rat's warren of alleys, even in Mayfair. She had to vanish as quickly as possible,

before the police arrived.

A familiar whistle drew her attention. Jazz looked up and saw Hattie coming toward her, head

adorned with a pink felt hat with fake flowers pinned to the brim. She ducked into a dress shop and Jazz

followed.

"Annie, there you are, love!" Hattie said excitedly, em-bracing her for the benefit of the shopgirls.

Her hand clutched the strap of Jazz's bag, which was heavy with the strange blade and the other shiny bits

she'd taken from Uncle Mort's house. "Give us the bag," she whispered.

"Lovely hat," Jazz said in reply. She snatched it off Hattie's head and plopped it on her own, then

slipped out of her sweatshirt and handed it over. "Leave me the bag, go."

Hattie might have suffered a certain amount of brain slippage, but she wasn't daft. The girl nodded,

pulled on the sweatshirt and zipped it, then hurried out of the shop. She turned back the way Jazz had

come.

From inside, Jazz peered out of the shop windows. The thief had been marching toward the door, but

now he al-tered course toward Hattie. Even as he reached her, another figure hurried along the sidewalk

—Mr. Stevie Sharpe. As the thief reached for Hattie, Stevie purposely collided with him. The man ought to

have fallen, but he spun away from the impact, reached out and grabbed Stevie by the wrist, and then

cuffed him in the temple.

Stevie staggered backward. The thief —looking like a stockbroker or barrister—tried again to get

hold of Hattie. This time Stevie didn't bother trying to make it look like an accident. He tackled the man, and

the two of them spilled into the street. A screech of tires followed as a taxi skidded to a halt, slewing

sideways.

"Can I help you, miss?" one of the shopgirls asked.

Jazz did not even glance at them, hoping they wouldn't be able to recognize her face if she managed

to get nicked for this.

She went out the door, turned right, and hurried along past a jeweler's and a men's clothing store.

When she reached the corner, she turned right again and broke into a run, darted diagonally across the

street, and slipped into the service alley behind the Grand Jubilee Hotel. Her trainers were nearly silent on

the pavement. An enormous black Dumpster sat by the hotel's loading dock, and she had to fight the

temptation to toss away Hattie's pink bonnet. The girl would never forgive her.

After the hotel, the alley went behind a pair of older buildings, lovely Georgian structures transformed

into of-fices. The alley narrowed here, but she hurried on. Her tem-ples throbbed and her heart pounded,

but a grin began to spread across her face as she switched her bag from one shoulder to the other. Things

had not gone as planned. Things had, in fact, been completely bollixed by the arrival of that handsome thief.

Now that she was away and the ter-ror of capture had passed, she almost felt giddy. The bloke had been

startlingly good-looking. Some of the girls she knew had been attracted to their teachers, but older men had

never done a thing for her, save the occasional actor. This one, though... She'd liked the way his eyes

flashed with anger.

Not that she wanted him to catch her. That was the very last thing she wanted. From the way he'd

sought the sword that she now carried, and the fury in his voice when she'd stolen it right from under his

nose, she thought he might do anything to get it back. That made him a very dangerous man, indeed.

She'd been damn lucky. Setting off the alarm hadn't bought her the head start she'd hoped. Stevie,

Hattie, Gob, and Switch had been meant to take turns looking out for her with some of the others, but Jazz



wasn't supposed to leave the house until the mark returned home in the early evening. If Hattie and Stevie

hadn't been alert when the whole thing went tits up, she never would've gotten away from the guy.

Hope they're all right, she thought. Particularly, she hoped Stevie was all right. By now the police

would have re-sponded to the alarm. The thief wouldn't have stayed be-hind to turn in her friends for fear

of witnesses reporting him fleeing from the house. One way or another, they'd all be away by now.

The question was, how much damage had the thief done Stevie before taking off?

The alley ended ahead. Jazz clutched the strap of the bag tightly and stepped onto the street, turned

right, and dropped into a brisk walk. Now would be a terrible time to draw attention to herself —though the

pink flowered hat would be conspicuous enough.

No shouts greeted her emergence and no sirens blared.

At the next corner she crossed the street into a narrow arcade of trendy boutiques and gift shops. A

small Italian restaurant and an antiquarian bookstore stood at the end of the arcade, where a fruit-seller had

set up a cart on one side and another bloke sold flowers on the other. The arcade let out on a main road

where traffic roared past in both direc-tions, belching exhaust fumes and snatches of music.

Jazz joined the bustle on the sidewalk and made her way to the light at the corner. Across the street

was Green Park. Jazz caught a glimpse of a man in the crowd waiting to cross. Thin and dapperly dressed,

he carried a shoulder bag much like the thief's. She hesitated, but then the light changed and the throng

began to move, and she saw that this was a much older man with pug Irish features and glasses.

"Silly girl," she whispered, and swept across the street.

The trees of Green Park cast long fingers of shade across the lawns. She spied an empty bench and

recalled sit-ting with Stevie yesterday, pretending to be more than just his mate. Pretending to be a normal

seventeen-year-old girl who fancied an entirely ordinary boy. Much as the upside world had its terrors for

her, the memory of those hours made her strangely sad.

Without another glance at the trees, she grabbed the rail-ing and hurried down the stairs into Green

Park Tube station. The bag over her shoulder felt heavier with every step and she shifted to accommodate

it. Jazz moved past a cluster of tourists trying to figure out the map of the Underground and reached into

her pocket for her Travelcard. Her flight from Willow Square to Green Park had taken less than four

min-utes; her heart still raced. She cast a quick look around but saw no familiar faces —neither friend nor

foe. Then she slipped through the turnstile and hurried down a tiled corri-dor toward the platform.

From the tunnels came the rumble of an approaching train and the squeal as it began to brake. Jazz

held the bag against her, still feeling the weight of that strange blade, and picked up her pace. The train

arrived as she joined the crowd on the platform. Out of habit and the instinct Harry had worked to instill in

her, she plunged into the thickest part of the crowd as though heading for a door in the center, then cut

across toward the next car. She stepped onto the train and immediately began walking. Jazz unzipped the

bag, stuffed the pink hat into it, then zipped it closed again, moving as unobtrusively as possible.

People jostled one another, a few taking the open seats but most standing, holding on wherever they

could. Jazz stood beside the doors between cars and put her back to the wall. She kept her head forward so

her hair veiled her face. The train pulled away and she exhaled, willing herself to calm down.

Like some amusement-park ride, the cars rattled over the tracks, twisted through the Underground,

and soon be-gan to slow for the next stop. Just before they pulled into the illuminated area of the station,

she glanced out the window and saw the flicker of motion, the luminescent outline of one of the ghosts of

old London. Jazz blinked, startled to see a specter beyond the limits of the abandoned parts of the

Underground. But then she saw the top hat and the way the magician shot his cuffs just before a trick. She

bent to peer out the window, and just before she lost sight of him, he pro-duced a phantom dove from thin

air. It flapped white silk wings and flew up into the darkness of the tunnel.

The train hissed as it slowed, crawling into the station.

"Piccadilly Circus," a recorded voice said. "Next stop, Leicester Square."

The doors slid open.

"Mind the gap," said the voice.

People flooded off the train. Piccadilly was a major stop. Jazz took an empty seat in the corner and

kept her head down. Someone settled into the next seat, bumping her, and another crowd began to fill the

car.

The man beside her set down his shoulder bag.

"You're very good, you know," he said. "Stealthy and quick, with a deft touch. I'd no idea anyone else

was in the house."

Jazz froze. The doors closed and the train began to pull out of the station. Leicester Square seemed a

thousand miles away. The other people in the car loomed up around her. To them, she might as well have



been invisible. She'd done that much correctly. No one had noticed her —or the well-dressed man seated

beside her. But with the people packed in, she had nowhere to run.

"On the street, though, you could use some work," he went on. "You were watching for pursuit by

foot, never con-sidering an alternative. The taxi that nearly struck your little friend and me? I hired it. Once

you came out of the alley and crossed to that arcade, it was obvious you were headed for Green Park. Had

you hired a taxi of your own, it would have made things difficult. And I suppose if I'd been unfamiliar with

this part of the city, you might have lost me when you first entered the alley. That much was intuition on my

part, I confess. Where else could you have gone so quickly? A shop or restaurant wouldn't guarantee you a

rear exit unless you'd planned that in advance, and your friends' clumsiness made clear that you had not

considered your retreat care-fully enough. So, the alley.

"From there, it was easier than you'd imagine to avoid detection while following you down into the

Tube station. And so, here we are."

Jazz gripped the strap of her bag so tightly that she felt her fingernails cutting crescents into the flesh

of her palm.* She forced herself to lift her head and look at the man. Only inches separated his face from

hers. She inhaled slowly, steadying her nerves, and when she did she breathed in the warmth of his own

exhaled breath. The intimacy of the mo-ment startled her.

She closed her eyes and cleared her head. When she opened them, she thought she would find anger

on his face. She'd thought his words were mockery. But he stud-ied her with open fascination, his eyes an

intense icy blue that she could not turn away from. He carried himself like an older man, but could not have

been more than thirty-five. The game of cat and mouse that had begun back in that house in Willow Square

had just come to a conclusion. For a moment, she nearly apologized for stealing the trea-sure he had gone

there seeking. To her it was nothing more than an artifact, something to sell, or for Harry Fowler to put on a

shelf or in a box with his collection of trinkets and oddities the others had brought home for him over the

years. Jazz had stolen it on a whim, but it had been this man's only goal.

But she would not apologize. She would simply deny it, play the encounter as coyly as possible, and

look for an op-portunity to flee. With Stevie, she'd rehearsed a number of things a young woman might

scream to make onlookers think she was being accosted.

But she said none of those things.

"You're not angry anymore," Jazz said. "Why?"

"The day has taken a curious and unexpected turn," said the thief, "but an interesting one."

The train began to slow. Jazz glanced at the doors, tried to determine if she would be able to push

through the crowd and get out before him, and if there was anything she could do to slow him down. No

way would she lead him back to Harry and the others, not when they'd just had to relocate. Well dressed he

might be, but she had a feeling this man would follow her —and the contents of her bag—anywhere.

So how could she escape him?

The answer troubled her. She would have to hurt him, because otherwise there was every chance

that he would hurt her. No way in hell was this bloke going to let her walk away with what she'd stolen.

When she glanced at him again, he must have seen dark thoughts in her eyes.

"Ah, that's a shame, then. I'd hoped to avoid ugliness."

"How?"

The speakers on the train crackled. "Leicester Square," said the electronic voice. "Next stop, Covent

Garden."

The thief gave her a charming, beguiling smile. "Con-tinue on with me one stop. There's a lovely cafe

that re-minds me a great deal of Paris. Let me buy you a coffee and we'll have a chat. We experienced a

remarkable coincidence today, and I can't imagine you aren't at least a tiny bit curi-ous about how we

happened to come together. For my part, I'm certainly curious about you."

The doors hissed open.

Jazz tensed, ready to plunge through the people jammed onto the train to get off. The thief only

watched her, making no move to keep her there.

The moment went on for several beats and then the doors closed again.

They sat side by side in silence. When the train pulled* into Covent Garden station the thief rose,

threaded through commuters, and stepped off onto the platform. He started walking away, then paused and

looked back.

Jazz got off the train and followed.



****

When he'd said the cafe was in Covent Garden, Jazz had as-sumed he meant on the piazza. She'd

only been there a few times and, to her, the restaurants and shops and the street performers entertaining



the crowds on a summer day on the, piazza was Covent Garden. But the Augusta Cafe was nestled away

amid the trees and flowers of Embankment Gardens, away from the crowds.

"Would you like the patio or the terrace?" asked the host-ess, a girl not much older than Jazz. Her

accent revealed her as a northerner, likely in London for university. "The patio's lovely today, but you can

see the river from the terrace."

The thief looked quite at home in the midst of the fancy cafe, and he charmed the hostess with his

roguish smile. "Not sure I want to look at the Thames. Never quite makes me want to go for a swim."

The dark-haired girl wrinkled her nose, grinning. "Can you imagine? It's pretty to look at, but you'd

catch some-thing dreadful. So it's the patio, then?"

Jazz had felt invisible to them, but then the thief looked at her as though they shared some grand jest.

"What do you think, love?"

"It sounds perfect," Jazz found herself saying, as though they'd rehearsed these lines. That was what

it felt like —a performance.

The hostess led them on a winding path among the ta-bles on the patio. Several were occupied by

men and women who were obviously there on business, with clients or associates. At one sat a burly

bearded man in a T-shirt and jeans with an attractive dark-complexioned woman who held his hand across

the tabletop. From their clothes and the relaxed air about them, she marked them as Americans. From

an-other table came a steady stream of French spoken by a pair of fiftyish women holidaying together.

Jazz observed them all, careful not to let them notice her attention. When the thief pulled out a chair

for her, she sat down. The hostess left them with menus and then hurried back to her post, where a

white-haired gentleman with a newspaper under one arm awaited her.

In a tank top and cotton trousers, Jazz soaked up the warmth of the sun. She had deprived herself of

it for so much of the time since she had gone on the run that she could not help relishing it now. The tables

all had umbrellas that provided shade, but she wanted to feel the heat on her skin. The breeze that blew

across the patio and rustled in the leaves of the trees was redolent with the scents of a dozen different

flowers.

"You approve," the thief said.

Jazz had been avoiding his blue eyes. Now she forced herself to look at him. The man sat in the

shade of the um-brella. At any other time, he would have blended perfectly into the scene on the patio. Jazz

would have blended as well —just an ordinary London girl, out and about on a sum-mer day. But together,

they were an odd enough pairing to draw attention. It worried her.

"It's beautiful here," she admitted, reaching up to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. "I'm just not sure

what I'm supposed to say to you. Given how we met, I mean."

He cocked his head, studying her, and tried to hide the smile that touched his lips. "Well, I certainly

think we both worked hard today. I'd say we've earned a peaceful moment or two, not to mention coffee.

They do the most remarkable Italian coffees here. The cappuccino is lovely. There are iced coffees as

well. Or if you prefer tea —"

"I'm fine with coffee."

"Good." He leaned forward and tapped the menu. "The last page. They've got quite the variety."

With that, he began perusing the menu as if they had nothing more important to discuss than coffee.

Jazz stared at him for several moments, but then she glanced nervously around. What the hell had she been

thinking, coming here with him?

Certainly he had made her curious, but Jazz wasn't shal-low enough to become a fool just because

some handsome man intrigued her. He'd given her no choice, really. If she'd fought him, even if she'd

managed to get the better of him on the train or in the station, they'd have drawn enough at-tention that the

police would be summoned. She might get nicked, which terrified her. Her mother had taught her that the

police could not be trusted, and given what the mayor had been up to, that seemed truer than ever. But if

she'd simply run, she would have led him back to the United Kingdom, putting her friends in danger.

No choice.

She glanced around again. Sitting on the patio of the cafe, perusing a menu of exotic coffees, felt like

a masquer-ade. Out there in the open, anyone might see her. The Uncles and their BMW men couldn't be

everywhere, but this was simply throwing caution to the wind. Jazz did not enjoy the damp and the darkness

of the Underground, but it represented safety.

Laughter rippled in the air. She glanced across the gar-dens and saw a little girl, no more than three,

chasing a boy of around the same age while their parents strolled along a path behind them. The father held

a red balloon.

Jazz felt the muscles in her neck and shoulders begin to loosen.



An hour in the sun. A cup of coffee. It wouldn't kill her. She thought of Cadge as she watched those

children play and how he would have smiled to see them. He would have hated this handsome gentleman

thief on principle, but the cafe... Cadge would have loved the cafe.

The waiter —a tall, athletic bloke with a shaved head and artfully groomed chin

stubble—approached.

"Hello, I'm Rob. Have you decided what you'd like, or shall I give you more time?"

Jazz and the thief regarded each other over the tops of their menus. He arched an eyebrow, lips

pressed into a thin smile.

"Look at you," she said. "So bloody pleased with your-self."

He blinked in surprise and then grinned.

Jazz looked at the waiter. "Iced coffee with a double shot of espresso and just a dash of cream."

Handsome Rob nodded, smiling bemusedly. "Excel-lent." He turned to the thief. "And you, sir?"

"Cappuccino, frosted with cinnamon. And a glass of ice water, if you would."

"Straightaway."

He gathered their menus and headed back into the cafe. When he'd gone, and without the menus to

focus on, Jazz and the thief had nothing else to distract them from each other.

"I suppose the first order of business ought to be names," he said. "I'm Terence." He offered her his

hand, leaning out of the umbrella's shade.

"Jazz," she said, reaching out to shake.

His grip was firm but brief. Meant only as a greeting, not to intimidate.

"An interesting name."

"Short for Jasmine."

"Beautiful. Seems sort of a shame to have a name like that and not use it."

"So nobody's ever called you Terry?"

Terence smiled. "Not my friends."

"Have a lot of those, do you, Terry?"

He laughed, then nodded in appreciation. "A precious few, Jasmine. Do you fence?"

"What, you mean like with swords? Do I look like some posh tart, then? Next you'll ask me if I sail."

"I don't see you as a sailor, actually But fencing... you'd have a talent for it, I think."

Jazz sat back and crossed her legs, enjoying the sun, wishing she wore a skirt or shorts instead of

long trousers. "And why is that?"

"You clearly relish the sparring and the quick riposte. You're quick on your feet, light and agile. As I

mentioned on the Tube, you managed to slink around the house while I was there, with me none the wiser.

And believe me, I was alert for the presence of others. It's a rare creature who can trump me the way you

did today."

A waiter brought a tray of sandwiches to a table of well-coiffed professionals at the far side of the

patio. As he walked past her, Jazz inhaled the aroma of the food and her stomach rumbled. She ignored it

but thought back to the moment on the train when Terence had sat so close to her, had spoken to her, and

she had inhaled his warm, sweet breath.

"Do your friends share your view of yourself, or are you really as much an egotist as you sound?"

"Both, I suspect."

Jazz smiled. "Of course."

"I don't suppose you're going to tell me where you learned your craft?" Terence asked. Thus far he

had care-fully avoided mentioning whose house they had been at or anything even remotely resembling a

discussion of theft. There was something thrilling about having this conversa-tion where others could hear

yet making it oblique enough that no one would understand what they were talking about.

"I can't do that."

He sat forward and slipped out of his jacket. "Of course not." Neatly, he arranged the jacket on the

back of one of the two empty chairs at their table. His clothes were stylish and impeccable.

"Do you always dress so well for work?"

"I dress to fit the job. Shall I tell you where you learned your craft?"

"You're a psychic now as well? You have so many mar-ketable skills."

Terence sat back, perhaps unconsciously mimicking her pose. "You're a tunnel rat."

Jazz flinched inwardly but tried to keep her expression neutral. How the hell did he know that?

"Oh, you could have somewhere aboveground, but I don't think so," the thief went on. "The pallor of

your skin gives you away, and your clothes have a bit of a moldy smell that might've come from your

auntie's damp basement or something, but taken together with your complexion, tunnel rat's the safest



guess. I suspect you've learned sleight of hand that would make the finest prestidigitator proud, relieving

passersby of the burden of having to carry their wallets, purses, mobiles, and whatever else your fingers

might reach.

"You haven't been away from home very long. Your ed-ucation makes that clear. And the way

you're constantly on guard, even this far from the scene of our encounter, makes it clear you're running

from something other than your bravura performance earlier."

The waiter interrupted with their coffees. He set down napkins, then Terence's cup and Jazz's glass.

"Can I get you anything else?"

"We're perfect, thanks, Rob," Jazz told him.

He liked her using his name. Pleased, he put his tray un-der his arm and threaded back through the

patio to the cafe.

"All right, you've read your share of Doyle," Jazz said, turning to Terence. She picked up her iced

coffee and took a sip, wrinkling her nose. It needed sugar. "I won't argue. Rather, let's just cut to the 'so

what?' I had the good fortune to get to something you wanted before you did and you're upset."

"You have skill, not good fortune."

Jazz shrugged. "Whatever. And what of it? You think I'm a tunnel rat. Pretty sure you live a bit

higher than I do, breathe a rarer air. How does any of that lead to fancy coffee in the garden?"

The bag with the money and knickknacks she'd stolen from Mort's house —along with the strange

holed blade— sat on the fourth chair, within reach of either of them. She was pretty sure that Terence

hadn't even looked at it.

"What you did today was far beyond the scope of what you and your accomplices would normally

attempt. That's simple deduction."

"We aspire to greater things."

Terence stirred his cappuccino and set the spoon aside. "Admirable, wanting to improve your lot." He

took a sip. Jazz could smell the cinnamon wafting off the top. "But you'll forgive me, I hope, if I say I have

difficulty believing in today's coincidence. I suspect, whether you're aware of it or not, there is another

reason you were in that house today."

Her thoughts immediately flashed to the framed photo-graphs in her bag. The shock of seeing her

father in that old picture, standing with the Uncles, remained fresh.

"What do you know of the apparatus?"

Jazz frowned. "The what?"

Terence cocked his head, obviously surprised by her reply.

"The object you stole today," he whispered, glancing around, no longer as confident as he'd been.

"What made you take it?"

Jazz smiled. She also whispered. It wouldn't do for them to be overheard, now that they were no

longer skirting their subject. "I nicked plenty of things today. I only took the sod-ding blade because I saw it

was what you were looking for and figured it was valuable."

He studied her, and Jazz saw the moment where he decided he believed her. Terence sighed and

gave a small, self-deprecating laugh. "It's worth more to me than you can imagine, but to you it's worthless.

You really only took it be-cause you saw I wanted it?"

She nodded.

"And that house?" He lowered his voice further. "Mortimer Keating's house? Who chose that house

in partic-ular? You're new to this line of work. Your friends have been in the game longer, but neither of

them seemed bright enough to organize a tea party, much less a high-society burglary."

"You underestimate them."

Terence raised his cappuccino in a mock toast, then sipped it. "Maybe so. Regardless, someone sent

you to that house. But I see you won't tell me who it was. Fair enough. Can't say I blame you."

He set the cup down. "Have you ever heard of the Blackwood Club?"

Jazz started to shake her head but faltered. She'd never heard of any Blackwood Club, but the name

Blackwood was familiar enough to stir up nausea in her gut. Josephine Blackwood had been present at her

mother's murder —in-deed, she "saw to it herself."

"No?" Terence asked.

"No," she replied, barely able to get the word out.

Now, at last, he looked at her bag. Since she'd set it on the chair, he had behaved as though it wasn't

there at all, as though it did not contain the very thing for which he went to such great lengths at the house

of the Uncle who'd once told her to call him Mort. Mortimer Keating. She let the name settle in her mind

and found she liked having his iden-tity. It made him less terrifying to her —made her feel like she could



hurt him, if she could get close enough.

"If I ask you for it, would you give it to me?" Terence said, voice low.

"If I say no, will you try to take it?"

He chuckled softly, but then his expression grew serious again. "All that time, down there in the

tunnels. I'm sorry, Jasmine, but I can't believe it's all coincidence."

"I couldn't care less what you believe."

Something flashed in those ice-blue eyes, and for the first time she thought that Terence might be a

dangerous man. "Does the phrase 'the spirit of London' mean anything to you?"

She took a long drink of her iced coffee, almost draining it, and when she set it down the ice clinked

in the glass. Then she reached for the bag, grabbed the strap, and pulled it onto her lap.

"Thank you for the coffee," she said. "But the conversa-tion's gone a bit dull, don't you think? I'd best

get going."

Yet she could not rise. Those blue eyes fixed her in place, so intense was his stare.

"Do you ever see ghosts down there?" Terence asked.

Her heart skipped a beat and she caught her breath, knowing that her face had betrayed her.

Understanding dawned in his eyes. What the hell did he know? Jazz had been willing to chalk it all up to

coincidence and let it go at that, but now she realized it could not be. Whatever this thing in her bag was,

and whoever Terence might be, it was all connected. How this related to her mother's death and the Uncles

she didn't know, but Terence had just asked a question that destroyed any assumptions she had made.

"You should come home with me," the thief said.

The words hung there between them. Jazz tried to make sense of them, but her confusion had

become a maelstrom. What was true? Who could she trust? Surely not this man she had just met, this

gentleman bandit?

Jazz leaned across the table and lowered her voice.

"You might think yourself something more, Terry, but you're no better than me. You wear

sophistication the way you wear that suit and tie, carry around your looks the way you carry that shoulder

bag. Maybe you live high, but you might as well be down in the tunnels with me. You're a thief, not a bloody

baron."

His brow furrowed and he stared at her a moment, then sipped at his cappuccino again. He sat in

contemplation, searching her face for something —Jazz had no idea what. Slowly, Terence sat forward so

that they leaned toward each other across the table. Prior to that moment, observers might have thought

them uncle and niece, even father and daughter. But now passersby would think them quarreling lovers, no

matter her age.

"I am a master."

"You're not my bloody master."

He tapped one finger on the table, then sat back. "I could be. You have aspirations? I could teach

you. Help you fulfill them. I could show you a life that would otherwise al-ways be out of your reach. You

have natural talent, but with proper training you could achieve a lot more. You could have almost anything,

really, but given your present circum-stances, you might begin with a warm bed, clean clothes, the finest

foods. And the security and confidence not to be so frightened all the time."

Jazz nearly shouted at him, denied being frightened. But he'd already pointed out the way she looked

around, always on guard. There would be no point in lying now.

"I have friends. I couldn't just —"

Terence stood, sliding his chair back. "You could. We've already established you haven't been down

there long. How close could you have gotten in that time? How well do you even know these friends?"

"Better than I know you," she said.

But the question was not lost on her. The fact that Harry had chosen Mort's house to rob lingered in

the back of her mind. But as for how close she had gotten to the oth-ers in the United Kingdom, Terence

had no idea. A single thought of Cadge was all she needed to know that she had friends in the

Underground. And maybe, where Stevie was concerned, more than friends.

"They'll be worried about me," Jazz said, holding the bag on her lap.

Terence glanced at it, then reluctantly pulled his gaze away. He plucked a wallet from his pocket and

tossed a twenty-pound note on the table. It was far too much for their coffees, but he showed no inclination

to wait for change. The money meant nothing to him.

And if the money meant nothing, then why had he bro-ken into Mortimer Keating's house today?

Why did he want that strange serrated blade?

"Tell me something," she said. "What's this apparatus you asked me about? What does it do?"



Terence hesitated a moment, then gave a small shake of his head. He pointed at the bag on her lap.

"I need that. You have no idea how I need it. But I'm not going to try to take it from you. I'm hoping that at

some point you'll be willing to give it to me. But I also meant what I said about teaching you. You're a

remarkable girl, Jasmine. Only the dead be-long so far underground. It's time for you to come back to life.

"I'm going now. But think about what I've said. If you want to try a different path from the one

you're on now, meet me tomorrow afternoon at half-two in front of the Victoria and Albert Museum. I'll

wait, but not for long."

Jazz stared at him.

Terence smiled, slung his jacket over his shoulder, and gave a small bow of his head. "A pleasure to

meet you."

"And you, strangely enough," she replied.

He turned and strolled across the patio, weaving around other tables, and out into the park. In

moments he was out of sight.

Jazz picked up her glass and drained the last of her coffee.