Free The Art of Deception by Nora Roberts Page B

Procedure, he thought on an oath. He was sick to death of procedure. But Kirby had been right. Adam had a very firm grip on what was right and what was wrong.
    He turned and continued down the passage.
    Abruptly the corridor snaked off, with steep stone steps forking to the left. Mounting them, he found himself in another corridor. A spider scrambled on the wall as he played his light over it. Kirby hadn’t exaggerated much about the size. The third story, he decided, was as good a place to start as any.
    He turned the first mechanism he found and slipped through the opening. Dust and dustcovers. Moving quietly, he began a slow, methodical search.
    Kirby was restless. While Adam had been standing on the other side of the wall, fighting back the urge to open the panel, she’d been pacing her room. She’d considered going up to her studio. Work might calm her—but any work she did in this frame of mind would be trash. Frustrated, she sank down on the window seat. She could see the faint reflection of her own face and stared at it.
    She wasn’t completely in control. Almost any other flaw would’ve been easier to admit. Control was essential and, under the current circumstances, vital. The problem was getting it back.
    The problem was, she corrected, Adam Haines.
    Attraction? Yes, but that was simple and easily dealt with. There was something more twisted into it that was anything but simple. He could involve her, and once involved, nothing would be easily dealt with.
    Laying her hands on the sill, she rested her head on them. He could hurt her. That was a first—a frightening first. Not a superficial blow to the pride or ego, Kirby admitted, but a hurt down deep where it counted; where it wouldn’t heal.
    Obviously, she told herself, forewarned was forearmed. She just wouldn’t let him involve her, therefore she wouldn’t let him hurt her. And that little piece of logic brought her right back to the control she didn’t have. While she struggled to methodically untangle her thoughts, the beam of headlights distracted her.
    Who’d be coming by at this time of night? she wondered without too much surprise. Fairchild had a habit of asking people over at odd hours. Kirby pressed her nose to the glass. A sound, not unlike Isabelle’s growl, came from her throat.
    “Of all the nerve,” she muttered. “Of all the bloody nerve.”
    Springing up, she paced the floor three times before she grabbed a robe and left the room.
    Above her head, Adam was about to reenter the passageway when he, too, saw the beams. Automatically he switched off his flashlight and stepped beside the window. He watched the man step from a late-model Mercedes and walk toward the house. Interesting, Adam decided. Abandoning the passageway, he slipped silently into the hall.
    The sound of voices drifted up as he eased himself into the cover of a doorway and waited. Footsteps drew nearer. From his concealment, Adam watched Cards lead a slim, dark man up to Fairchild’s tower studio.
    “Mr. Hiller to see you, sir.” Cards gave the information as if it were four in the afternoon rather than after midnight.

    “Stuart, so nice of you to come.” Fairchild’s voice boomed through the doorway. “Come in, come in.”
    After counting to ten, Adam started to move toward the door Cards had shut, but just then a flurry of white scrambled up the stairs. Swearing, he pressed back into the wall as Kirby passed, close enough to touch.
    What the hell is this? he demanded, torn between frustration and the urge to laugh. Here he was, trapped in a doorway, while people crept up tower steps in the middle of the night. While he watched, Kirby gathered the skirt of her robe around her knees and tiptoed up to the tower.
    It was a nightmare, he decided. Women with floating hair sneaking around drafty corridors in filmy white. Secret passages. Clandestine meetings. A normal, sensible man wouldn’t be involved in it for a minute. Then again, he’d stopped being