Mind the Gap (17 page)

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. “Continue on with me one stop. There’s a lovely café that reminds 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 curious 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 café was in Covent Garden, Jazz had assumed 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 Café 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 hostess, 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 café, 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 something 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 tables 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 another 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 umbrella. 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 summer 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 shallow 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 attention 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 café, perusing a menu of exotic coffees, felt like a masquerade. 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 gardens 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 café…Cadge would have loved the café.

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 yourself.”

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. “Excellent.” 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 café. 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 carefully avoided mentioning whose house they had been at or anything even remotely resembling a discussion of theft. There was something thrilling about having this conversation 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 marketable 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 education 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 under his arm and threaded back through the patio to the café.

“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 photographs 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 sodding 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 because you saw I wanted it?”