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
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