Sidney Sheldon - Chasing Tomorrow

“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.

This time tomorrow I’ll be on the Eurostar on my way home.

It couldn’t come soon enough for Jean Rizzo. He missed his children, his apartment, his life. But he felt deflated. He’d arrived in London two weeks ago full of hope and excitement. Tracy’s hunch about Elizabeth Kennedy had been the right one. Elizabeth had returned to London after her failed L.A. job, to regroup and plan her next move. After a lot of good old-fashioned detective work, Jean had tracked her down and begun a grueling, week-long surveillance. He’d watched Elizabeth set up to swindle Edwin Greaves, the multimillionaire philanthropist and art collector. Brilliant in his day, Greaves had been cruelly ravaged by Alzheimer’s in old age, making him a vulnerable target. Like a shark smelling blood, Elizabeth Kennedy had exploited the old man’s weakness, making off with a painting worth millions.

Jean Rizzo thought, She has no scruples. She’d sell her own child if the price was right.

But he wasn’t here to catch Ms. Kennedy out in a con, or to recover stolen art. He was here to catch a killer. There had been no more murders since Sandra Whitmore, back in the summer. Since Elizabeth walked out of Cadogan Gardens with the oil painting, Jean Rizzo hadn’t let her out of his sight. But she’d met with no accomplices, made no sudden or unusual moves of any kind. More importantly, no murder had followed the art theft. Four days had passed now. The Bible Killer always struck within two days. The trail was as cold as Jean’s toes in his sodden, rain-drenched socks.

Tracy called from Colorado. “Maybe she works without a partner. It’s perfectly possible, Jean.”

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe the murders only happen after bigger, more high-profile jobs? It could be an adrenaline thing. If so, this con on Mr. Greaves might have been too low-key.”

“Hmm.”

Tracy had been true to her word and had helped Jean immensely with the investigation. Her insights into the workings of the con artist’s mind had been invaluable. And yet Jean Rizzo couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something, something crushingly obvious.

Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree entirely. Maybe Milton Buck was right after all. Maybe there is no link. Jean had been able to trace Elizabeth Kennedy to some of the cities at the times of the murders, but not to all of them. Was he spinning something out of nothing? Had finding first Tracy and now Elizabeth made him complacent—a king admiring a fine, golden cloth that no one else could see? A cloth woven from the threads of his own desperation?