LITMIR.BIZ

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have time to wonder who had done this to him. Right now, what was necessary was implementing damage control. And fast.

      Cole frowned. Dobson was still standing in his office, still shaking without giving any signs of stopping.

      “Get a grip, man, I’m not going to eat you,” Cole snapped. “Anything else missing?”

      Dobson moved his head from side to side like a deranged windshield wiper. “No, sir, just the statue. We checked. All the other paintings are still there.”

      Thank God for small favors. Cole picked up the phone receiver. “What about the surveillance tape?”

      He had a feeling he knew the answer to that one, but there was no harm in asking. Sometimes, the best of thieves made stupid mistakes. And whoever had taken this statue had just made a colossal one.

      Wide, watery eyes watched Cole’s every move. “The system’s down, sir.”

      So much for luck and stupid mistakes. “Get it back up and running.”

      Dobson looked relieved to offer a piece of positive information. “Already working on that, sir.”

      “Good.”

      Cole waved the man out. His mind was already on the next step. Being able to quickly anticipate all sides of a problem was what had brought him to the place he now occupied in the world.

      That and a wide network of friends and acquaintances he knew he could rely on for their skills and discretion.

      There was only one man he knew of who could handle the problem he was facing.

      Lorenzo Manelli.

      He didn’t keep the man’s number on speed dial, but it was a number he’d committed to memory long ago. Manelli’s talents were unique, as was his price. But there was none better. And he needed Lorenzo now.

      Despite the calm facade he projected, Cole could feel the tension rising within him as he waited for the ringing on the other end to cease and for an unrecorded voice to come on.

      When he heard a heavily accented voice murmur a greeting, Cole breathed a silent sigh of relief.

      “Lorenzo, I have a job that requires your special talents.”

      A soft, distant chuckle told him he need have no further concern. Whatever the request, it would be handled.

      And then a melodic voice instructed, “Go ahead.”

      She’d never been alone before.

      In her thirty-one years, Elizabeth Caldwell had never really been on her own, never walked into an apartment, closed the door and just taken in the silence, knowing that if she didn’t do anything to change it herself, the circumstances would remain this way.

      She’d be alone.

      Without Anthony. Without Danielle.

      Of course, there was still Jeremy Solienti, the man she thought of as Fagin to her Oliver. Their Oliver, she amended, because whatever had concerned her had also concerned Anthony and Danielle, and they were all connected in ways that went beyond the normal connections experienced by triplets. It was as if, psychically, there was an open telephone line that connected the three of them, night and day, to one another.

      Except that Danielle had chosen to hang up.

      First Danielle and now her. Or Anthony, depending on which side of the heated argument you looked at. And it had been a doozy, she thought, kicking off her shoes and sinking onto the newly purchased sofa bed that took up residence in the middle of the room.

      Danielle had opted to strike out on her own years ago, to leave the world of con games, teetering on the brink of falling over the invisible line that separated the right side of the law from the wrong. Jeremy, their once unofficial guardian, now employer and eternal mentor, made sure that the jobs they hired out to do always kept them a hairbreadth within the law, even if some of the methods they used in getting the jobs done could certainly not stand up to close scrutiny.

      But then, laws had not been passed to accommodate those who had been “blessed,” she thought with an enigmatic smile. She reached for the remote to turn on the television set, then decided against it.

      Decided to absorb the silence a little longer.

      In her case, the blessing had come in the guise of telekinetic powers that allowed her, when she concentrated very hard, to move small objects and make them do her bidding. When she and Dani and Anthony combined their powers, there was nothing they couldn’t do. For a price. The price went to line Jeremy’s coffers.

      Not that the man, in his own way, wasn’t good to them. In a move that made life stranger than fiction, Jeremy Solienti, a one-time mercenary, had wound up being their salvation. They were runaways on the verge of getting into serious trouble when he’d come across them. On the street with no money, they’d been reduced to becoming common pickpockets. Dani had picked Jeremy’s pocket at a carnival and the man had chased after her, finally cornering all of them as they attempted to flee.

      Once he’d taken back what was his, he quickly assessed the situation. Childless, with a soft spot for kids and an eye out for talent, he’d offered them a home. His.

      They’d been leery of him, but because they had nowhere else to go, they’d looked at one another and silently agreed.

      Jeremy had been sharp enough to pick up on their unique ability to communicate with each other. And their other abilities as well, as time went on. Comfortably wealthy with a vast network of informants and people who owed him favors, Jeremy set about incorporating the latest addition to his little “family.” He saw to it that they got a good education, both academic and otherwise.

      Because of Jeremy, they didn’t become just more statistics in an endless stream of runaways. They could pass themselves off as anything they wanted to with ease and poise. And in exchange for food, shelter and education, Jeremy availed himself of their unique powers, turning them into a new kind of team.

      Her mouth curved in a smile. She supposed what they eventually became was something akin to the X-Men meet the A-Team. Granted, they didn’t have superpowers, but they were definitely not the average person on the street, either. Because the average person on the street couldn’t move objects with his or her mind, couldn’t control things without lifting a finger or connect to other human beings and hear their thoughts.

      The latter was a connection she had with Anthony and Dani, or rather had had, until Dani had gone “off-line,” so to speak.

      But then a couple of weeks ago, Dani had come “on-line” again. Out of the blue, her sister had touched her thoughts because she needed help. She wanted her to promise to take care of her son, Alex, if anything ever happened to her.

      She’d told Anthony about it. And then all hell had broken loose.

      The confrontation had taken place in their apartment, the one that Anthony insisted they share so that he could “look after her.”

      “Look, she walked out on us, we didn’t walk out on her,” he’d railed, furious, when she tried to get him to talk about Dani. To mend broken fences so that they could be a family again.

      Elizabeth tried very hard not to take his outburst personally, not to let his yelling affect her. She knew better than anyone how Anthony felt about things, how sensitive he actually was. When Danielle had left them abruptly to go off on her own, their brother had taken it as a sign of abandonment. Another in a long line of abandonments, beginning with their mother.

      Of course, that hadn’t exactly been of their mother’s own volition. Deanna Payne had been killed when they were only three, strangled in their living room. When the commotion had begun that awful, sticky summer night, Anthony had shoved both Elizabeth and Danielle into the closet to keep them safe. He’d stayed with them, telling them to be quiet as the clothes around them cocooned the sounds of raised voices and then the screams.

      And then there was silence, an awful silence

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