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“Please, sweetheart, say yes,” cajoled Fletch. Had she caught his use of the endearment?
“But preliminarily only to dinner.”
“Preliminarily,” he said with a smile, thinking once he had her at the Savoy, he’d be able to persuade her to come upstairs with him.
“What time?” he asked, not wanting to lose his momentum, but being reminded by the shrieking alarm that he needed to focus on the job and not on the woman he recognized was quickly becoming his obsession.
“Can we play it a little loose? I have a feeling I may be a while.”
“Why?” she asked, seeming to be more interested in him than the alarm that was sounding.
“That alarm bell?” he said, giving a nod to the museum. “I have a sneaking suspicion the bell tolls for me.”
He could feel her teetering on the edge of whether to agree or not, when one of his men came running down the stairs. “Fletch! Fletch! Thank God, you’re here. It’s gone.”
“Fuck.” His dick’s reaction to this possible end to his plans was even less polite.
Before he could think how to respond, Claire grabbed a pen out of her purse, turned his hand palm up and wrote her cell number on it. “I’ll stay in the city. I can find a place to work and start drafting the memo. You go do whatever it is you need to do. If it’s going to be too late, just let me know.”
She was coming! She was coming! Not yet his dick reminded him, but she will once I’m through with her. If possible, his dick was even more excited and happy than the rest of him.
He nodded. “First chance I get, I’ll text you, so you have my number as well. Will Pennington vouch for you?”
Fletch prayed she’d say yes. The pieces of the puzzle of the mysterious jewel thief were falling into place, and he didn’t like the picture they seemed to be forming. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from hinting that she might need an alibi, depending on what the video footage showed and what his people had seen.
Claire nodded.
“Good.” He kissed her cheek again. “We’ll get his statement and if we need more, I’ll call you.”
“If you’re sure,” she said, gazing into his eyes.
“I’ve never been more sure about anything in my entire life.”
He kissed her again, this time on the lips. He’d meant to only press his lips to hers for the merest fraction of a second, but her mouth was far too tempting. He hauled her into his arms, his mouth descending on hers in a fierce, fiery, and all too fleeting kiss. Holding her close enough so that she could feel his erection throbbing between them, he kissed her properly—his lips demanding hers submit to him so that he could taste and explore.
Fletch forced himself to release her before following his man up the stairs to deal with whatever bullshit was cock blocking him. He paused at the top of the stairs to turn and look at her. Claire raised her hand in a little wave and then blew him a kiss. He pretended to catch the kiss and press it to his lips like some romantic idiot.
He turned to head into the building as the distinctive sound of police sirens began to fill the air. It was going to be a long afternoon. Claire’s being here when whatever had happened had happened didn’t bode well and only locked in another piece of the puzzle.
His team was waiting just inside the door. “What do we have?” he asked.
“The necklace is gone. We had some kind of disturbance in the power flow,” answered one of his men.
“The EMP?” Fletch asked of no one in particular.
“Yes,” answered Carter as he ran up to join them. “We were hit with an EMP. So simple; so easy. They didn’t have to get past any of our security measures, just aim the pulse at our building and everything went down.”
“For how long?”
“Couldn’t have been more than ninety seconds.”
“They had to have planned this,” said the first man. “Whoever it was just walked up to the case, cut a hole in the back and swapped out the necklace for a cheap imitation. We’ve shut down the building and are starting to question people. The Yard’s been called, and as you can hear, are joining us now.”
“Did you have time to review the camera footage?” he asked.
Carter nodded. “Yep, that’s why I was late. There’s nothing. I spotted some movement, but that weird glitch we saw the night of the gala is back. I’m convinced someone is using a device that obscures their face and other details of the person wearing it. But I can see enough in the halo effect to believe it’s a woman.”
Fletch felt as though he’d been punched in the gut as all the pieces of the puzzle came together.
