Once a Thief by Kay Hooper

always figured the myth got a lot bigger than the man.”
    Morgan wasn’t so sure about that, but wasn’t about to say so. Instead, she said, “He is supposed to be good, though. Very, very good at what he does.”
    “Being active and at large for ten years, he damned well has to be good.”
    After a slight hesitation, Morgan said, “There haven’t been any reported robberies by Quinn in the States until now; I checked. He came here, Wolfe. Straight here, to San Francisco. And he knew I was the director of Max’s exhibit. I don’t know what he was doing at the other museum last night—but I think we should assume the Bannister collection is his ultimate target.”
    “Great,” Wolfe said a bit grimly. “That’s just great.”
    “It isn’t a totally unexpected problem,” Morgan pointed out. “We’ve known all along the exhibit would be a target. And it certainly is a big enough target to tempt even an international thief like Quinn. But it doesn’t change anything. You said it yourself; all we can do is make it as difficult as possible for any thief, or group of thieves, to get to the exhibit. And you said Max gave us full authority to do whatever it takes.”
    “Yeah, but I wish he’d consider canceling. I’m more than a little inclined to call him again and try my hand at persuading him to.”
    “You know him better than I do,” Morgan said. “But from all he’s said to me, I don’t think it’s an option.”
    “No, probably not.”
    “Besides, he’s on his honeymoon. He’ll be back in a couple of weeks, still well before the collection is moved from the vault and long before the exhibit is due to open. Maybe by then we’ll have something a little more definite to tell him.”
    “You
saw
Quinn, Morgan. Talked to him. How more definite could that be?”
    “He only told me that’s who he was. Maybe he was lying.”
    “Is that what you think?”
    She hesitated, then swore under her breath. “No. I think it was Quinn. But we still don’t know for sure that he’s after the collection. We can assume, but we don’t know for sure. He could decide to take advantage of all the attention being focused on the exhibit to rob somebody else.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Okay, chances are good he’s after the collection.”
    Wolfe stared at her.
    “More than good,” she admitted reluctantly.
    “I’d say pretty damned certain.”
    Morgan sighed. “Yeah.” She gathered her copies of police reports and various notes and stacked them neatly on her blotter. “Well, I’m getting on the horn to the security company right now. If their bright boys and girls know any tricks we
haven’t
planned for security here, I want to know what they are. If we have to, we’ll turn this place into Fort Knox.”
    “I hear that.”
     
    Carla Reeves delivered the information he demanded. It didn’t take her long, since she had complete access to everything he wanted, and making copies of the schematics was easy. It was also easy to get them out of the office, because she’d developed the sterling reputation of working late and the night guard was accustomed to locking up after her.
    She met her blackmailer where and when he’d instructed, and handed over a zip disk.
    “These are the most recent diagrams?”
    Carla nodded. “Yeah.”
    “Thank you, Carla.”
    She eyed him. “So . . . we’re done now?”
    “We’re done . . . for now.”
    It was what she’d expected, though it certainly didn’t make her happy. “Look, I can’t keep nosing around in the system, making copies of stuff for you. There are safeguards built in, firewalls I might not see until it’s too late.”
    “Then if I were you,” he said, “I’d be very, very careful.”
    “Please, I can’t—”
    “You’d better. And do try not to get caught, Carla. I’m afraid I wouldn’t be happy about that. Not happy at all.”
    Carla Reeves felt a chill and it had nothing at all to do with the cool night air.
     
    Morgan ran into Wolfe just