Present Day

"Quiet night, Dave."

"For a change. Let's hope it stays that way."

Guards. Veronica Bright, crouched among the bushes and hidden by the deep shadows of the moonless night, held still and waited for the two men to walk past her. The taller one stopped, and with a flick of his lighter, lit a cigarette. He inhaled, the bright ember illuminating his face.

The acrid smell of burnt tobacco wafted towards Veronica, tickling her nose. She wrinkled it, trying to squelch the need to sneeze. It didn't help. Panic reared its unwelcome head. In a moment, she would sneeze, and they would find her.

Move! Silently, she willed the pair to continue their rounds.

"You know Mr. Grey doesn't permit smoking." The shorter guard crossed his arms.

"Yeah, inside. Which is why I am smoking outside." He inhaled again then moved off with the other guard following.

Careful not to rustle the foliage, Veronica reached up, rubbed her nose, and then pinched it closed. The men turned the corner towards the lower garden and out of her line of site.

She couldn't hold back anymore and sneezed into her shirtsleeve, muffling the sound as best as she could.

She hesitated, waiting for the guards to come running back and yank her from her hiding place.

Only blissful silence reached her ears. With a quiet sigh, she laid her palm against her sternum.

Her heart pounded in her chest.

She took a deep breath and willed it to slow.

This wasn't the first time she'd been compelled to enter a place that was considered off limits, but those were tombs sealed by men and time and guarded with the occasional booby trap--not Glock-toting bodyguards.

The dead were much safer.

That didn't matter. Michael had stolen from her, and she wasn't going to let him get away with taking what didn't belong to him. Not again.

Her jaw tightened as the last of the fear flowed away, leaving a burning anger and the need for revenge in its wake. Time to go.

Dressed in black jeans, a long-sleeved black cotton shirt, and carrying her backpack, Veronica skirted the edge of the hedge just a few feet from the outer rim of the lit yard. She glanced back at the path the men had walked down, but it remained empty.

Quickly, she made her way to the left side of the mansion until she was underneath one of the main balconies.

Pulling a rope and grapple from the main pocket of her backpack, she swung the climbing gear up and over the second-floor marble railing.

The grapple broke the night's silence, clinking, then scraping across the tiles before catching against the railings edge. Again, Veronica hesitated, but no shouts of discovery sounded.

Muscles straining, she climbed hand-over-hand up the rappelling rope. Gripping the top of the cool, marble railing, she slipped over the edge and onto the balcony, not giving herself time to contemplate her actions.

Crawling on her elbows, she snaked over to the French doors that led into Michael's private study.

She rose to her knees, and taking the glasscutter from the pouch at her waist, she suctioned it to the windowpane and drew a circle next to the door handle.

Pulling the glass disc free, Veronica set it down on the tiles and took a deep breath. Now came the hard part. She took the small, electronic code-breaker from the pouch.

She glared at her assistant's newest invention. Veronica hated depending on electronic devices, preferring the physical weight of the shotgun resting between her shoulder blades and a direct confrontation to subterfuge.

Reaching through the small, round hole, she turned the handle and opened the doors.

No alarm sounded, but she knew the lack of noise meant nothing. The alarm was on a thirty-second delay to give Michael time to turn it off, and in thirty-one seconds, all hell was going to break loose.

Leaving the balcony doors ajar, she ran to the room's main entrance.

Four seconds.

The keypad was to the left of the door--just as she remembered.

She put the small flashlight between her teeth and pulled the cover off the plastic alarm box. Red wire. Red wire.

She found it and used her pocketknife to strip away the plastic surrounding the copper threads.

Ten seconds.

Clamping the code-breaker's alligator clip on the wire's bare spot, she hit 'Enter' and prayed the tiny machine would do its work. If it didn't find the alarm code within the next twenty seconds, she'd have to depend on her wits.

She glanced at the red number screen of the code-breaker. It found three numbers. Three more to go.

Twenty seconds.

The numbers flashed as it searched for the rest.

Four numbers. Twenty-three seconds.

It flashed faster now.

Five numbers. Twenty-seven seconds.

Her heart beat faster. "Come on. Come on."

The code-breaker beeped, its work done.

Twenty-nine seconds.

Veronica let go the breath she'd been holding.

Unhooking the device, she shoved it back into her pack.

She headed over to Michael's desk. She'd seen him open his walk-in safe while sitting in the oversized, leather chair and knew there was a button in the desk itself. Using her knife, she pried open the middle drawer. She ran her gloved hands over the inside of the desk and touched a small bump on the back, right corner. She pressed it, and a door-sized section of wall slid open.

She smiled, relieved.

Time to get her prize and go.

Flashlight in hand, she rummaged through the walk-in safe, tempted to take all the artifacts. An Incan mask. A Greco-Roman sword. Even pottery.

She picked up a glazed vase and ran her hands over its simple elegant lines.

Tempting, but she didn't steal from others. She wasn't like Michael. She only took back what was hers.

A small, cloth-covered object at the back of the safe caught her eyes. She flipped open the material. A clay jar, incised with line art and painted with red-ochre shone dull in the light. The proto-historic Turkish burial urn.

She picked it up, and her skin prickled as the familiar excitement coursed through her. Recovering the artifact from a safe wasn't the same as excavating it from an overgrown burial mound on the Turkish countryside, but no matter, it still felt like Christmas, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July all rolled into one to touch something that no one had seen for over two thousand years. She ran a fingertip along a painted lightening bolt. "Beautiful." And if she were right, the burial of a holy woman. Perhaps one of the first.

She shrugged the pack off her back, unzipped it, and pulled out the padded cloth. Wrapping the urn, she stuffed it inside.

"Put it down, Veronica."

Michael.

He continued, his deep voice resonating in the dark. "I'd hate to shoot you. After all, I know how perfect your body is."

She bit her lip at the comment, drawing blood.

Worse than the intimate remark was the 'click' of a gun being cocked.

"Damn." She didn't need the lights on to know there was a gun pointed at her head, and she started to tremble. She blinked hard, forcing back panic.

Rebecca had said Michael was gone for the evening. Playing rich benefactor at some charity event with his girlfriend du' jour. If she got out of here without being killed or thrown into jail, her assistant was going to have to do some explaining.

But now was not the time to give into fear. Taking a deep, calming breath, Veronica set her backpack on the floor of the massive vault.

"Thank you. Now turn around, hands in the air."

Shadowed in dark, Veronica faced her captor. He stood in the doorway, a familiar image.

Once, they were friends and even lovers. Both raised in archaeological families, they'd spent summers together while their parents worked at whatever site they happened to be excavating.

As a child, she'd had a crush on him. Loved him with all the love a thirteen-year-old girl could muster for a sixteen-year-old boy.

Later, when she'd graduated with her Doctorate, they'd become lovers, and she'd thought her life complete. Her parents were thrilled with their relationship. His parents were delighted.

Hell, she was beside herself with joy at the thought of spending her life with Michael Grey.

She'd shared his bed. Shared her body. Shared her soul.

And he'd betrayed her.

It had been worse than simply using her then leaving her like a plaything. Instead, he'd done the unthinkable--stolen an artifact and abandoned her in a Brazilian jail cell to meet the consequences of his actions.

She shuddered at the memory.

She had helped Michael break into a private estate after he told her the owner had stolen a Mayan fertility statue from Michael's employer. Michael had been so passionate, so righteous, in his need to 'save' the stolen property that she hadn't hesitated to help him.

Standing in the darkened mansion, Michael had taken the statue, kissed her in the dark and went out a side window while she'd run to the back door to make her escape.

That was when the police jumped her. Not knowing who they were, she'd fought and ended up being beaten for her effort. It wasn't until her opponents cuffed her and she saw their cars marked with the word policía that she realized what had happened.

Michael had lied. They weren't saving the statue. They were stealing it.

From the book THE MIDAS TRAP by Sharron McClellan
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The edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A., Copyright © 2005