Sometimes the only thing that can make a job bearable is a shot of whiskey. At least that’s what Lenny Goldberg, Lierrickson’s Museum 1st floor security guard, thought as he made his way towards the supply room at the end of the hall. He moved as quietly as a 300 lb man could towards a stool in the corner of the dimly lit room. A huge grin spread across his face as he reached behind a cardboard box and pulled out a bottle. Quickly he opened it and winched slightly as the alcohol burned the back of this throat.

"I betcha they don’t have anything like this down at that fancy smancy party of theirs" He muttered as he took another sip. His words were slightly slurred. This was the third break he’d taken in the last 2 hours and his head was beginning to spin a little.

The party should have been in full swing by now. Tonight was the Museum’s annual fundraising event. Miami’s most famous and richest were in attendance. Lenny could hear the music float through the air vent that was above this head. It was the classical stuff, the kind Lenny couldn’t stand. He could hear someone yelling. He dismissed it as some loud-mouthed yuppie making a speech. Lenny took another sip of whisky. He glanced at his watch and cursed slightly. Six more hours, and then his shift would be over.

"Oh well betta save some for later." He twisted the cap back on the bottle and placed it back in his little hiding place. Lenny pulled himself to his feet and stretched. Just then he heard a noise. "What the hell…?" It was some type of scratching sound. He whirled around sloppily and tried to figure out where it is was coming from.

Then a few feet in front of him, the vent door from the ceiling fell open. Next came two black boots, following by legs, and soon a whole person. Lenny closed his eyes for a second, and wondered if he was imagining it. But when he opened them, and in front of him stood a person dressed in black from head to toe. They were facing him now, standing completely still. Lenny couldn’t see their face for the ski mask.

Holy shit it’s a thief. He screamed in his head as he reached for this gun and drew it. "Hold it right there you son of bitch." Again his words were slightly slurred. The dark figure in front of him still didn’t move. They just continued to stare at him. Lenny squinted and looked into the strangers’ deep blue eyes. It was like looking at ice. He almost thought he could see his reflection in them.

It was then that Lenny Goldberg began to sweat. Whether it was from the liquor of the stranger’s unwavering gaze, he didn’t know. "Put your hands in the air."

Again they didn’t move.

"Put your hands in the air or I will blow your fucking brains out." He yelled. Finally the stranger decided to corporate and then put their hands in the air. Lenny smiled. "Looks like someone finally noticed who was in charge."

Apparently when Lenny made that statement he didn’t know how wrong he was. A second later the stranger quickly raised their leg and kicked the gun out of this hand. Before he knew it, Lenny was slammed against the wall. When he opened his eyes, all he saw was a fist coming towards his face. The last thing Lenny saw before it all went black was a pair of blue eyes.

She had long ago discarded the wine colored dress that had she’d worn that evening. In its place she slipped on a light blue silk robe that matched the color of her eyes perfectly. She pulled the pins out of her hair and let thick long ebony tresses fall wildly against her shoulders.

She fixed herself a drink and walked out to her terrace. The light breeze felt wonderful against her skin. She closed her eyes and enjoyed it. A smile played on her full lips when she looked down at the object in her hand.

The plum sized ruby looked absolutely exquisite in the moonlight. She brought it closer to her face to inspect it better from various angles.

It had all gone according to plan, except for the guard unexpectedly showing up in the supply room. Against her better judgment she’s knocked him out. It was either that, or tie him up and gag him. At the time she didn’t have the right accessories to accomplish the latter. Nor had she had time. Besides he would only have a headache when he came to. She smirked. Whether the headache it would be from her doing or the alcohol he’d been drinking she didn’t know.

Then there was the fact that he couldn’t identify her even if he tried. Her face had been covered.

Though the plan had some unforeseen events, it had all worked out. The bright red ruby she palmed in her hand was certainly proof enough.

"Would someone get those reporters out here. I mean it’s just a fucking rock that’s missing not a kid." Detective Daniel McNeil yelled as the walked in his office and slammed the door. He sat down at this desk and carefully placed his hot cup of coffee down.

He ran his fingers through his dark blond hair and sighed. Sometimes he definitely didn’t have the luck of the draw. Of all the robbery cases in Miami, he had to be appointed primary on the Lierrickson’s Museum Heist. It never ceased to amaze him how when the rich lose one of their little toys, the whole world is suppose stop.

McNeil picked up a newspaper and read the headline.

Rhine Ruby Stolen. It read in big black letters.

Apparently during one of the Miami’s numerous idle rich parties a group of thieves decided they would strike it rich. Since all the thieves were all arrested and the partygoer’s things returned it should have been a simple open and shut case. But that would have been in a perfect world. A $50 million ruby the size of a plum that had been on display was missing and McNeil didn’t know where the hell it was. As McNeil sat there steaming over the task that laid a head of him, his door opened.

"I thought I said I didn’t want to be disturbed…" When he looked up, there in front of him was an attractive petite blonde. His sentence trailed off where his eyes began. She was dressed conservatively in tailor-cut navy blue suit and creamed colored blouse. She had tan colored wool coat folded over one arm, with a briefcase in the other. McNeil made contact with her green eyes and saw she was smiling.

"Detective McNeil?" She asked as she walked further into is office, as if he hadn’t just been screaming.

"That would be me."

"Great." She laid her briefcase on his desk and her coat on the back of the chair before she sat down.

"Oh by all means have a seat." McNeil said with sarcasm dripping from his gruff voice.

"Thank you." She said and smiled. "I guess I should introduce myself."

"That would be helpful."

"My name is Erin Bradshaw." She extended her hand across the desk to McNeil. He shook it and took note of how soft it was.

"Nice to meet you Ms. Bradshaw."

"Oh call me Erin…everyone else does." It wasn’t the entire truth, but hey she was going to be spending quite a bit of time with the man in front of her.

"Ok Erin." McNeil sat back in his chair and placed his feet on the edge of this desk. "Now that we have all the pleasantries out of the way. Who the hell are yah?"

"Erin laughed. "Of course…how rude of me. I’m with Prenhall and Winemen Insurance…"

McNeil waved his hands in the air and cut her off. He should have known. "Whatever you’re selling I don’t want."

"I’m not here to sell insurance…I’m here about a robbery."

"Oh…" McNeil rose to his feet and walked towards the door. "Ok…Erin maybe one of the officers out front can help you. I’m a little busy."

"I guess so. With a $50 million dollar ruby missing and all."

"What do you know about that?"

"I’m here to help you find it."

"Excuse me?" He closed the door. "What do you mean here to help me? I thought you worked for an insurance company."

Erin sighed. "I do and if you would have let me finish…well never mind. Look Prenhall and Winemen were the insurers of the infamous Rhine Ruby. And they’re just not in the business of cutting $50 million checks without doing some investigating of their own."

"So you’re one of those art bounty hunter guys." McNeil rolled his eyes. "Great that’s all I need is some wannabe cop fucking up my investigation."

Erin looked offended. "First of all I have no desire to be a cop, I hear the pay is lousy as hell and it looks like your investigation was fucked up before I came along."

"Now wait just a damn minute."

"No you wait." Erin stood up and ran a hand through her short layered blond hair. These assholes never like to make this easy. "I’m not interested in getting in a macho contest with a cop who’s afraid of a woman stepping on his turf. I’m here to help you. We both want the same thing…to find that ruby."

McNeil sat back down and smiled. She was an adorable little lady, he thought as he gave her a quick once over again. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. "How much is your take on all of this?"

"Ten percent." Erin replied smugly.

"Well lady we may all want the same thing…but you’re sure as hell going to get a lot more than me out of this. You’re right the cop pay is lousy."

"Don’t be jealous McNeil." She reached for her briefcase and opened it. "Just cooperative."

"So you’re the one who retrieved the stolen Rembrandt in Paris last year."

"Yeap." Erin replied after taking a huge bite out of her chicken salad sandwich.

"I’m impressed." McNeil responded nodding his head. Once McNeil realized that Erin Bradshaw wasn’t going anywhere, he decided to take her advice and cooperate. He later learned that she didn’t need too much cooperation. She seemed to have more information in the leather briefcase and head of hers than some of the people on his team did. She was sharp, witty, and undeniably intelligent. Plus she wasn’t too bad to look at. McNeil also had the feeling that if he didn’t include her in his investigation, he would probably end up regretting it.

"It wasn’t the hardest case I ever had. " She hunched her shoulders and drank the rest of her mineral water.

"But lucrative."

"Very much so." She watched McNeil throw away what was left of his lunch. Erin had to smile. McNeil was definitely the typical cop from this clothes and attitude to the five o’clock shadow on his jaw. "So back to this case. When are we going to head over to the Museum? We need to investigate the scene, look at security tapes, and talk to witnesses."

"We?"

"Yeah, for at least the next couple of days, we’re going to be a team." Erin reached for her coat and got up.

"A couple days huh? You’re that optimistic."

"No McNeil I’m just that good." When she saw McNeil smirk, Erin turned around.

"I’ve got shot gun." She called out over her shoulder and she walked out of the office.

Outside McNeil’s office was a mad house. It was like a scene from a cop show. Erin had seen enough police stations during her career with Prenhall and Winemen Insurance. Nothing looked out of the ordinary except for a group huddled at one of the detective’s desk. Interesting. She was going to walk over, but the crowd of officers opened up a little and she saw a woman sitting down. All Erin could see was her profile. Dark brown hair, possible black cascaded widely down her back. The woman swept it back from her face, revealing a large golden hoop earring hanging from her ear. She was talking animatedly to the cop, using her hands to help explain whatever she was trying to convey. Erin’s green gaze moved over to the person in front of her. The officer was writing quickly to keep up with the woman. Erin took note that most of the people gathered at the desk were men.

"Already to go?" She heard McNeil say from behind her.

"Sure." Erin replied still watching the dark haired woman across the room. The woman must have said something funny, because all the men started laughing. "McNeil?"

"Yeah."

"Who’s that over there." She asked as she began walking towards the exit of the police station.

"Who?" McNeil quickened his step to keep up with her, and at the same time struggling to get this coat on.

"The dark haired woman over there." She nodded left.

McNeil followed her gaze. "Oh that’s Leigh Sinclaire."

The name immediately rang a bell in Erin’s head. "She’s the woman who helped apprehend the thieves last night." She recalled several witnesses’ statements pertaining to the woman’s heroic efforts when Ms. Sinclaire had showed up expectantly while the robbery was still in process.

"Yeah, I guess she’s giving her statement." McNeil opened the door for Erin. "After you."

"Tell me McNeil how many officers does it take to record one woman’s statement?"

He smiled. "As many as there’s room for."

Erin looked at him with a question in her green eyes.

"You obviously have not met the woman." He whistled suggestively and chuckled when Erin rolled her eyes and walked out.

"So let me get this straight…" Erin asked as she studied the empty case that once housed the Rhine Ruby. She fingered the yellow police tape playfully as she spoke." The party took place in the larger gallery next door. Which is eventually where the robbery took place."

"That is correct." Philip Hensley answered, the museum’s curator answered. He was a small man in both height and girth. So much so that Erin smiled to herself when she had been first introduced to him. She rarely got the chance to meet men whom that she could make eye contact with, without looking up.

"Although open during regular hours, the room was off limits last night"

"Yes, ma’am." Hensley was talking to Erin’s back by this point. She was surveying the room and acted as if she didn’t care whether he answered the question or not. He glanced over to McNeil, who was casually leaning against the wall drinking coffee. "Yes, I believe that I’ve conveyed all of this to the police last night when we realized that the ruby was missing."

"If you don’t mind." Erin turned her attention back to him. "Could you just explain it again for me?"

"Certainly." He answered, although anyone could tell he’d rather be doing something else. "Yes, this area is normally open during the museum hours. And every evening when the Museum closes at 8 o’clock the area is closed and secured until the working hours of the next day. Last night was no exception. "

"The Rhine Ruby was only on loan to the Museum correct?"

"That’s true." There was a bit of embarrassment in his voice. "It was on tour."

"And you’d had extra security measures put in place."

"That’s correct." Erin looked down at an inventory of the security equipment

"No bad." She said aloud. They had even installed infrared beams. "But apparently not good enough. " If there was one thing that Erin Bradshaw knew was that it didn’t matter how good a security system was, it the thief was determined enough.

"So how’d they get in any way? I didn’t see anything about that in the police report." She turned her attention back to Hensley, but McNeil answered.

"They let them in." He answered with a chuckle.

"Excuse me?" Erin looked at Hensley; he still hadn’t rid his face of embarrassment.

McNeil continued. "It seems that our sticky fingered friends arrived earlier yesterday afternoon in a shipment delivered to the Museum."

Erin smiled and nodded. "Interesting approach. So that means that they were already here when the Museum closed. And surfaced after the party began. There was van parked out back a little ways down the street right?"

"Yeap." McNeil said. "We assume its theirs. No one has claimed it. "

Erin turned towards McNeil. "Have they gotten an officer who speaks German to talk to how little thieves yet?"

"They’re working on that as we speak. Maybe then we can get some more info."

"Perhaps." Erin hunched her shoulders. "Let’s look at the video tapes shall we."

A little while later Erin and McNeil were in the security office, Earl Rimes, the daytime security guard to monitored the cameras.

"Ok show us the footage of the room where the Rhine Ruby was kept." She asked and glanced over at McNeil who seemed to enjoy how she was taking charge.

"Sure, but you’re not going to see very much." Earl warned before he hit play. A second later a gray image appeared on the screen. Erin leaned a little closer.

"What the hell is that?" McNeil asked.

"The Rhine Ruby display." Earl responded. "I told you, that it wasn’t much to see."

"And why is that?" Erin narrowed her eyes and took note that she could make out some images on the screen, but barely. "I can see some things…like look right there, isn’t that the glass case." She touched the screen with her finger. "And look" She shifted her finger down a little. "And I think that’s the ruby."

Erin glanced back at the men behind her, and saw they were squinting too. "Yeah." Earl commented, "I think you’re right. I can kinda see it too."

McNeil must have gotten tired of squinting, so he sat back and sighed. "Looks like you guys bought some cheap cameras, because I can’t see shit."

"Actually, they’re very expensive cameras." Hensley said. He’d been sitting in the back of the room in silence. "At night the cameras register increases in heat, so that they’re able to pick up movement in the dark."

"So if a person was in the room, even if it was pitched black, you’d have an image of them because a human’s body heat would be more than the temperature of the room." Erin asked, never taking her eyes off the screen.

"Correct. However the catch is that there has to be at least a twenty degree difference in temperature, for the equipment pick up on it. " Hensley answered.

"So what you’re telling me, is that the reason we can’t see shit, as Detective McNeil so eloquently put it, is because for some reason the temperature in that room increased around the Rhine Ruby display by almost twenty degrees.

"Yes. I believe that there was a malfunction in the heating system last night." Hensley said.

"McNeil are you thinking what I’m thinking." Erin questioned.

"I believe so." He said skeptically, but the truth was he didn’t know what she what the hell her was thinking.

"Can we see footage from the room where the robbery took place?" Erin said quickly, never revealing her suspicions about the heat increase.

"Sure." After Earl pressed a few buttons, the screen switched to a different image. This one was clear, showed the robbery in progress. For few minutes, they all watched the footage. To Erin it all seemed pretty much routine. The party seemed to be sailing along with women in elegant gowns, the men in dashing tuxedoes. She could almost heat their idle chatter at stocks, bonds, and indirectly how rich they were. All of a sudden the thieves burst in through the entrance. Erin knew from the police report that by this time the security guard in the lobby had been knocked out. All the thieves appeared to be dressed in black with ski masks. Two of them had guns while the other three collected the money and jewelry from rich and scared. From the left of the screen, Erin saw that a woman had entered the room. What happened next was amazing. Erin watched in awe as tall elegantly dressed dark haired woman took out the two robbers with guns. A kick here, a punch there, and then she had the gun turned on the other three.

"Impressive." Erin commented.

"It’s a good thing that Ms. Sinclaire came in when she did." Hensley said. Anyone listening to him could tell that he was quite taken with the woman. "She’s a third degree black belt you know."

"What are you talking about?" McNeil got up and playfully punched the air. "I could have done that with my eyes closed."

"Believe me…I don’t doubt it." Erin said sarcastically. "Did anyone else notice that none of the thieves ever left the room?"

"Yeah, I did noticed." McNeil answered looking at the monitors.

"And they were the only five apprehended and the ruby wasn’t found in their possession."

"Correct."

"Of course you already know this McNeil, but it seems at least one other person got away."

"Well then, this person must have never entered here." He pointed to the footage of the robbery.

"But they did enter the room with the Rhine Ruby." Erin replied. "Earl, there are cameras in the hallway right?"

"Yeah."

"Can you bring up the footage recorded by the camera closet to the entrance of the Rhine Ruby Display."?

"Sure, but we’ve already looked at them. No one entered that area all night. All you’re gonna see is the security guard doing his rounds before the robbery."

"Well how the hell did they get the Ruby, if no one ever entered the room?" McNeil said looking at Erin.

Erin stared at the screen for a minute and then abruptly walked out of the room. When McNeil and the others caught up with her, she was standing in from of the Rhine Ruby Display. "If they didn’t come in through there." She pointed to the entrance. "Then they had to come in from somewhere else."

"But that is the only way in or out." McNeil explained.

"Maybe not." Erin moved closer to the glass display case and picked it up.

"Look Erin you’re not suppose to touch that. You do see the yellow tape don’t you." McNeil moved beside her.

Erin continued as if he hadn’t said anything. "Make yourself useful will ya." She handed the case to McNeil. She ran her finger lightly over the velvet cushion where the ruby had once rested. She picked it up and handed it to McNeil as well. Then will both hands she pushed down on the hard surface of the stand. To everyone’s surprise, except Erin, the bottom fell down.

"What’s under here?" She asked turning to Hensley.

"I don’t know…a supply room maybe." He walked closer and joined McNeil to look down the hole in stand that revealed another hole in the floor.

"How the hell did you know that?" McNeil asked scratching his head.

"It must be a woman thing." Erin responded smugly. "Now let’s go check out this supply room shall we."

Dr. Vanessa Duncan smiled to herself, when her secretary announced that her "favorite patient" was there. She smoothed back her dark hair and put on her glasses. "See her in." She called back over the intercom.

The door opened and the woman walked in like she walked into every other place…like she owned it. Dressed in black jeans, a light blue turtleneck, and black leather jacket, she looked very casual. The woman’s raven hair fell past her shoulders and moved slightly as she moved. Dark shades hid her eyes, but the not high cheekbones underneath. Her lips were full and formed a lazy grin.

"Hey Doc." She said as she removed her shades to reveal her blue eyes.

"Good afternoon Leigh." Vanessa replied back and nodded towards the couch.

"I know the routine." She said with a smirk and sat down. She crossed her legs and stretched her arms along the back of the couch.

"Of course." It always amused her, how Leigh Sinclaire waited for her to start the conversation. She remembered the first time; Leigh had walked into her office three years before. She had rolled her eyes in dreaded anticipation of hearing another over privileged white girl complain about her problems. But to her admitted amazement, Leigh had turned out to be anything but self-centered. As a matter of fact, their first session was nothing like a session with her other patients. They’d conversed like old friends, so much so that Vanessa had to catch herself several times before crossing the line between doctor and patient.

Even after three years of "treatment", she was no closer to figuring out the beautiful CEO than she was the day Vanessa had first met her. They’d had numerous conversations about Leigh’s father, deceased mother, her company, her sometimes uncontrollable temper and ever exciting social life. Actually after hearing people complain for hours, Leigh’s visit was always a welcomed relief.

When Leigh would enter her office, she never knew what to expect. She could be in a bad mood, and would start to relay a story about how someone had managed to piss her off. Or she would come in and tell an animated story about an adventure she’d had on one of her many vacations. Vanessa smiled thinking about how Leigh had brought pictures the last time from her trip to the Himalayas and couple of gifts for her sons.

The woman was something of an enigma, though. She could be brooding, moody, and totally intimidating. Or she could be the life of the party, all smiles, jokes, and good times.

"Dressed rather casual aren’t we. You don’t have any meetings today?" Dr. Duncan inquired with a raised eyebrow.

"I spent most of the morning in the police station. No need to waste panty hose of those guys." Actually it had been most of the night and the morning. The police had been "nice" of enough to let her go home to change, before taking her official statement the next morning.

"Ah…that’s right. You got the chance to play hero last night." Vanessa recalled reading about the Rhine Ruby being stolen and a few lines about Leigh had help capture thieves. "How does that make you feel?"

"Very tired." Leigh rubbed her temples. "Can we talk about something else please?"

"Sure, what would you like to talk about?"

"I don’t know, you tell me." The last thing Leigh wanted to talk about was the robbery. For more reasons than Dr. Duncan knew.

"Well when we last let off, you were talking about how lately you’ve become bored with your work. And you were going to try to find other activities to spark the interest that running your company used to provide. Did you do this?"

The bored expression on Leigh’s beautiful features soon changed, Dr. Duncan finally saw the mischievous glint in her eyes that she was all too familiar with. She shifted in her seat slightly. "Yeah, I did."

Vanessa looked at Leigh curiously for a second. To her Leigh looked like the cat that had just ate the canary…she had a secret, but Vanessa had the strange feeling that she didn’t want know what it was. But she asked anyway.

"What did you do? Take up another sport…that you’ll no doubt excel at."

"No I didn’t take up a sport."

"More charitable activities? " Vanessa truly doubted she needed any more of those. A small country could probably be supported off the amount of money the woman gave to charity.

"No."

Duncan stared at her and then sighed. "My goodness Leigh, you didn’t beat someone up again did you? I mean besides the thieves last night."

Leigh rolled her eyes. "For the last time Doc, I did not beat up that man. He pissed me off, so I merely put him in place."

"Leigh you grabbed onto the lapels of this jacket and them slammed him against the wall."

She was referring to the altercation that had almost led to a restraining order against Leigh the year before. It all stemmed from the fact that she’d decided to fire one of her third line managers. Leigh was never one for mincing words, so perhaps she hadn’t chosen the more delicate words to tell him that he was lazy, inept, and losing her company money.

"He was lucky that’s all I did. I mean he did call me a bitch."

"And that was reason enough, right?"

"In a perfect world yes." She answered and then let out a defected sigh. "But no, I should have kept my temper in check." Then she smiled. "But he should have as well. The last I heard, he couldn’t even get a job at McDonald’s."

Dr. Duncan chuckled. "So Leigh Sinclaire isn’t one to be crossed." Although, Vanessa didn’t keep up with the business world, you didn’t need to have a MBA to know that Leigh Sinclaire was an enemy you didn’t want to make. At the age of thirty, she was CEO and president of the Sinclaire Software Company, which was well on its way to be being the next Microsoft. Actually, Vanessa recalled an article about how Bill Gates should be watching his front door, because any day now Leigh was going to be knocking the door down, and moving in.

"I guess one could say that." She answered with a raised eyebrow. "But when you say it Doc, it sounds like a bad thing."

That was an entirely different conversation, Dr. Duncan thought. They had spent hours discussing how Leigh’s temper had landed her in hot water more than once as far as her company was concerned. Vanessa decided that it would take too long to count the number of mediation sessions she had to administer at SSC because Leigh had screamed too loud at an employee, or cut a little to low when criticizing their work. "But as always Leigh we’ve gotten off the subject." She looked back down at her desk and picked up a pen. "What did you do to try to cure your boredom?"

"Nothing much." She hunched. Leigh definitely knew she couldn’t tell her what she’d truly done to relieve the deep sense of boredom she had been feeling the last couple of weeks. Even though there was a doctor patient confidentially, Leigh did not want to open up that can of worms. It would no doubt end in a long lecture, with Vanessa handing her the phone to call the cops. Nope she wasn’t going to tell her.

"You’re not going to tell me are you?" Vanessa questioned, already knowing the answer.

"I’m afraid not Doc, because if I did I’d have to kill ya." She winked and rose to her feet and walked over to the window. "Let’s just say that I’ve been keeping myself pretty busy these days."

"I bet you are." Vanessa looked at Leigh sternly before letting a smile crease her smooth brown cheeks. "Just stay out of trouble."

"Me in trouble…never." Leigh grinned back. "Doc how’s the hubby and kids?"

"Just fine thanks."

"Did Jason make the softball team?"

"He sure did." Vanessa always appreciated Leigh’s interest in her personal life, but she had to keep it professional. "But Leigh we’re not here to talk about me."

"Oh yeah." Leigh plopped back down on the couch. "I guess since its my dime…it should be my life we discuss." Even though Leigh never liked to talk about problems. Knowing this she’d often asked herself why she came to see a therapist?

"How’s the social life?"

"You tell me. It’s all over the papers." Over the years Leigh had gotten use to the media acting as if her life was any of their business. Use to it yes, but at times it still annoyed the hell out of her. There had been an incident once, with a photographer, who didn’t seem to understand the words "Fuck off.", so Leigh had given a physical demonstration.

"I don’t believe everything I read Leigh." Vanessa replied remembering the gossip column snippet about Leigh’s break-up with famous actor Brent Landers. Apparently the actor was so devastated by the relationship ending that he couldn’t finish his current movie.

"Well maybe this time you should." Leigh said with a sheepish look on her face.

"So you really dumped him huh?"

"Dump is such a harsh word…"

Vanessa rolled her eyes. "Ok…you ended the relationship."

"Afraid so. He was crowding me."

"Leigh he’s been on location the last three months." She looked at the blue-eyed woman suspiciously. "How was he crowding you?"

"He called several times a day Doc." She rationalized.

"So another man gets his heart broken by The Tech World’s Bad Girl."

"At least that’s what the papers say." Suddenly a frown appeared on Leigh’s face. "You’d think they could come up with a catchier title for me by now. They make me sound like a hacker or something."

Vanessa and Leigh had laughed several times about the media’s name for her. One might think because Leigh ran a fortune 500 company that she would only be the media darling of the business community. But she wasn’t. She had all the attributes of a movie star…beautiful, photogenic, and mischievous behavior. Leigh Sinclaire was a permanent fixture on the business page, best dress list, and gossip columns. In some cases she was more captivating than any of Hollywood’s actresses. She dated actors, athletes, and prominent businessmen. Leigh Sinclaire was known for being tough in business and even tougher in other situations. Her temper had garnished a headline of two in several publications.

"But back to your relationships…Leigh don’t you see a pattern."

Leigh sighed. "Damn doc are we already to the part where you tell me that in my relationships I have a love them and leave them mentality." Leigh used her fingers to make imaginary quotes.

"Yes we are."

"I think we’ve talked that subject to death don’t you think."

"Maybe not. Think about this Leigh…you’ve never been dumped."

Leigh laughed. "And that’s a bad thing?"

"Think about why."

"I’ve been lucky." Leigh shrugged. "Or unlucky enough to find men that I know I don’t want to be with. And like in business you have to know when to cut your losses and move on." And Leigh had to admit that she’d done that quite often…but hey that was life.

"Or you’ve been scared."

"Scared?" Leigh looked offended. "I may be a lot of things Doc, but afraid isn’t one of them."

"Yes Leigh, you may be fearless when it comes to corporate raiding or traipsing through the Amazon…but we’re talking about love here."

Leigh put up her hand. "Who said we were talking about love? Not me."

"You never do Leigh."

"Because I haven’t found it. What’s the point of bringing it up?"

"Now we’re getting somewhere." Vanessa got up and sat on the edge of her desk and then folded her arms. "Leigh do you want to be in love?"

All of sudden Leigh felt something she usually never did…uncomfortable. But one rule she’d learned over the years was never to let them see you sweat.

"Blue eyes and…and…perfume." Lenny stuttered as the paramedics were loading him onto the stretcher.

"Ok Mr. Goldberg…I heard you. Blue eyes and perfume." Erin repeated for him and laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "We’re going to get the person that did this to you."

Lenny smiled and then closed his eyes. Then the paramedics rolled him away.

McNeil walked up behind her. "I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking that man needs an AA meeting more than he does an ambulance." He handed Erin the bottle.

"Tell me about it. I can still smell the alcohol." Erin wrinkled her nose in disgust and this got a slight laugh from McNeil.

Against McNeil’s wishes, Erin had crawled down the hole she discovered earlier at the site of the Rhine Ruby exhibit. Down on all fours, she made her way through a long airshaft. Several times, she had cursed slightly when she thought about what her hair and creamed colored blouse looked like because the metallic surface of the vent was covered in layers of dust. Then she’s thought about the look on her parents’ faces if they could have seen their little girl just then and laughed. When she finally came to an opening, she’d jumped down. There she’d not only found an abandoned supply room, but one unconscious Lenny Goldberg. Once she’d been able to wake the security guard up, he’d told her about the thief. Erin had called McNeil from her cell phone and within minutes the place was swarming with cops and an ambulance on the way.

"So I guess this supports your theory about a phantom thief." McNeil commented.

"I guess so." Erin tried to dust herself "I wish I knew how the whole perfume and blue eyes could help us though."

"Oh by the way, while you were crawling through air vents, I got a call from the station. The translator is there and our boys are finally singing."

"I hope they’re saying something useful."

"Get this. Remember when I told you that the guns confiscated were filled with blanks."

"Yeah."

"Well it seems our thieves were as surprised as us to find that out."

"They didn’t know."

"They were hired by a third party who supplied them the guns. "

"So they were decoys…interesting." Erin said before walking towards the door.

"Hey where are you going?" McNeil called after her.

"To take a shower."

If Leigh ever thought that she needed to be committed and sent to a mental hospital it was now…because she had truly been bored out of her mind. She sat at the end of the long mahogany table at SSC and listened to the two men at the other end talk. Well if she was to be honest with herself, she’d stopped listening some time before. Actually she had started singing the lyrics to "Purple Rain" in her head and toying with the idea of possibly going skydiving that weekend.

"As you can see our company can be a major asset to SSC." The short red headed man with thick wire rimmed glasses said before looking at this partner who had even thicker glasses and was even shorter. Leigh smirked on the inside; they fit the stereotypical image of a computer programmer. Did I ever look like that? Perhaps…but I was a hell of a lot taller. No…I never looked like that.

The truth of the matter was that Leigh didn’t see how they could be an asset to her company. A liability perhaps…but definitely not an asset. She glanced to her left at her VP of marketing and sighed. Where the hell had he found these guys?

Michael Richards, SSC’s vice president of marketing, looked over at Leigh and smiled, she did not return it. He quickly returned his attention back to the presentation. Leigh took that opportunity to study his profile. He was what you would call handsome, with dark brown hair, and brown eyes. He was dressed as always conservatively, in a dark blue suit. Leigh took note of her own attire, she was still dressed in jeans, which was usually her attire except when she met with important customers and investors…and the two men before her were definitely not that. Also she hadn’t a chance to change after her session with Dr. Duncan. The episode at the police station had pushed her day back several hours. See what trouble you can get yourself into Leigh. She chastised herself.

For the last hour she’d listened to these guys talk about virtual reality…yes talk…apparently they didn’t have anything to show. And if that wasn’t enough, they had stopped several times in their presentation to explain things to Leigh in metaphors that even a child could understand. That had really pissed her off. Didn’t they know that she’d started the damn company from scratch? Hell she had written most of the code for their most profitable products. If she wanted to hear things explained to her like she was five, she’d take a refresher kindergarten course. Apparently they hadn’t been paying much attention to Leigh’s expressions, because they continued to do it.

She had taken all she could take. "I think I heard enough." Leigh said and interrupted the presenters in mid sentence.

"But we hadn’t talked about phase ten yet."

"And you won’t." She replied crisply and rose from her seat. "I’ll have my people get back to you when we make a decision." She walked over to the window. Actually the decision had already been made, but Leigh was willing to let them think they perhaps had a chance.

"But…" The two men looked at each other. Leigh looked back and noticed that they hadn’t moved.

"I’m sorry is there some misunderstanding." She folded her arms across her chest and cast one of her best blue-eyed glares their way.

Apparently she’d made her point. The two mean gathered their belongings and quickly walked, no almost ran out of the room.

Michael had simply smirked when he saw how Leigh had intimidated the men.

"So what do you think?" Michael asked as he got up from the table as well, and smoothed the front of his suit. He spoke with an English accent.

Leigh took a deep breath. "I don’t like them."

"What?" Michael asked with disappointment on his face.

"I said that I didn’t like them." Leigh replied never taking her attention away from the view the window presented. "It was a total waste of my time."

"But Leigh…" He walked closer. "You said that you wanted to start playing in the arena of virtual reality…so I found you a company that specializes in that area. We could buy them at a cheap price."

"I don’t doubt that, but in return we’d be getting a cheap product." She turned around. "Damn it Michael they didn’t even have a prototype to show. And did you see their design? That shit wouldn’t fly if they literally put wings on it. How the hell could you think that those Star Trek Convention rejects would impress me? You’re in marketing. Do you really think they have the image that SSC wants to project?"

"I just thought…"

"No Michael you didn’t think. " She said evenly as she picked up her briefcase. "I asked you to bring me a company worth buying…not one worth destroying. When you get it right, give Anna a call and get on my schedule."

Michael put up his hands. "Look Leigh I’m sorry. You’re right. They were totally below our standard of acceptability. I let a low price cloud my judgment. I guess I’m just so damn anxious to announce to the public that we want to be contender in the virtual reality field. "

"Sure whatever." She said evenly and started walking towards the door.

"Leigh…wait. I want to talk."

From the tone in his voice, she knew that it wasn’t about business. She really didn’t have time for this bullshit today. "I have another meeting."

"It’ll only take a moment."

Leigh stopped and turned. She figured she should deal with it now, instead of later. "I’m listening." She said not hiding her irritation.

"I’ve missed you Leigh." Michael said smiling seductively as he reached out and touched her cheek. Leigh knew he wanted her to say the same thing back…but she didn’t.

Her face remained emotionless. Besides how could she miss him, when his office was just down the hall from hers? Or when she had to see his grinning face in meetings. "When can I see you again?"

"Michael we’ve been through this…its over."

"But I don’t want it to be." He counted smoothly.

Michael Richards had been a mistake. An old mistake that tended to resurface every time the man got horny and they were alone together. Which Leigh tried to avoid as much as possible.

Leigh had broken her own rule against office romances. After a party, Leigh had gotten a little drunk and Michael had been there. It had lasted a little longer than she’d intended. Leigh wasn’t proud of her behavior, but hey they were both adults. So why couldn’t he put it behind them, she had.

"You don’t have a choice Michael. Now like I said I have another appointment."

"Cancel it."

Leigh laughed, but there was no humor in it. "You must be kidding." She turned to leave again.

"No I’m not kidding. I heard you finally dumped that joke of an actor Brent Landers. You have nothing to feel guilty about Leigh. So..." He walked close, so close that Leigh could smell his aftershave. "Why don’t we close and lock the door, eh?" Leigh saw the lust filling his brown eyes.

A lazy grin appeared on her face. "Funny I was just thinking the same thing." And without another word, Leigh walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Erin sat in her bedroom and sighed. Her bed had to be buried somewhere beneath the mass of paperwork.

It was late, and she had spent hours at the police station questioning the men apprehended for the robbery. Like McNeil had relayed earlier, they claimed to be hired by an unknown person to rob the people at the party that night. They were paid $50,000 up front and were promised another $50,000 when the job was completed. Erin had definitely come to the conclusion that they had been hired to be a distraction while the Rhine Ruby was being stolen.

Also since her encounter with Lenny Goldberg, her gut was telling her that not only was the missing thief one of the guests…but a woman as well. That would explain why no other suspicious people or anyone for that matter was seen leaving the building on the security cameras. And it would explain the perfume.

She picked up the remote and once again played back the footage from the party to see if she’d missed anything. She ruled out the security staff because no women were employed as security guards. Erin laughed and ruled out most of the guests, these women were definitely not capable of crawling through air vents, let alone knocking out a 300 lb man.

She looked up at the television and saw that it was to the part where Leigh Sinclaire was playing hero…and then something clicked. Hadn’t she left the party before the robbery?

Erin rewound the tape back to the time before Leigh Sinclaire had left the party and then let it play. She took note that 3 minutes, had elapsed before the thieves entered, and another 5 minutes before the woman had returned.

And it would be really easy for her to play hero, if she already knew that the guns had blanks in them.

"Perhaps…" The woman was definitely capable of disarming a man, and her tall sleek frame could allow for some of the maneuvering necessary for carrying off the caper. But even to Erin, it seemed like a preposterous idea. A CEO of a major software company robbing a museum. She hit pause on the frame where Leigh Sinclaire had the gun turned on the robbers…but perhaps.

"Let’s see does she have blue eyes." But since the footage was in black and white, it was hard to tell and also there were no close ups of the woman. Then she remembered how Hensley had mentioned something about Leigh Sinclaire being on this month’s issue of Forbes magazine. If Erin wasn’t mistaken, she received that magazine. She moved from her bed over to her desk. Since she had been out the country before being assigned to this case, there were stacks of the mail all over the place. She hadn’t a chance to go through it since her return.

Well Erin, now is as good a time as any. Erin tried to sort through it methodically, but the curiosity of what Leigh Sinclaire looked liked was starting to get to her. Though, she knew about Leigh Sinclaire was she was tall, dark-haired, and what she’d gathered from McNeil’s comment earlier that day…she must be attractive as well. The most separating she did was cast everything that wasn’t Forbes magazine in a pile. And then...Bingo.

Erin came across the a magazine with Forbes written across the top…but it looked more like a cover for Rolling Stone. The heading said:

Erin caught the play on words immediately, and then definitely saw why the woman was a hot commodity. Leigh Sinclaire was dressed in a pair of well-worn jeans, black boots, and a black tight v-neck T-shirt. Her dark hair hung in glossy luxury around her shoulders and went well with her tanned complexion. On her head titled slightly was a black cowboy hat, trimmed in silver and matched the hoop earrings dangling from her ears. Although the hat cast a slight shadow over the face, her striking blues eyes stood out. They looked like ice…. hard, clear, and cold. Erin thought as she leaned closer over the picture. Her face was beautiful…high cheekbones, full mouth curled into an intriguing smirk. Her thumb on her right hand was casually looped in the waistband of her jeans, her left arm hung at her side. Erin half expected for a gun holster to be around the woman’s waist. The background of the cover was a huge CD with flames flying from it.

She most definitely had blues eyes. And though, she knew that Leigh Sinclaire had been staring at the camera, for an instant Erin felt like she had been looking at her and a feeling of familiarity settled over her.

"Well that’s a different type of CEO." Erin muttered before opening the magazine in search of the cover story. "Even if she’s not the thief, this should be a good read."

It had certainly been a long day, Leigh thought as she entered the front door. "Honey I’m home." She yelled as she shut the door behind her. A small smile lit of her face as she heard the sound of familiar footsteps.

A few seconds later, Leigh’s tall frame was almost knocked over by the huge brown and white St. Bernard.

"Take it easy boy." She cooed as she bent down and petted his head. "Didn’t I just see you this morning?" The dog barked and rubbed up against her leg. "Yeah yeah I missed you too." Leigh put down her briefcase and walked into her spacious living room and plopped down in an armchair. "Bernie the next time I have the bright idea of pulling off the heist of the century, don’t let me do it on a school night. OK?"

It had been a hectic day. After the incident with Michael things had gotten worse.

It was really hard to get any work done, when there were people asking her millions of questions about the robbery. She’d been on an over-seas call, when the line had suddenly gone dead. And if that wasn’t enough, she had to attend a three hour design/sizing meeting and listened to five developers argue about performance issues pertaining to different algorithms. But she had managed to get through with a bottle of Advil and only yelling a hand full of times.

Leigh recalled the night before, and for a fleeting moment, felt the sense of triumph she’d felt when she’d taken the ruby…and gotten away with it. A cocky grin appeared as she thought about how the ruby had been in her purse the whole time, while the cops had questioned her in the ballroom. Hell everyone there thought that she was hero.

And that was the part that sucked…being thought of as hero. But what was she suppose to do, let the idiots rob everyone. Then Leigh smiled again…beating the crap out of those guys had been kind of fun.

She took off her shoes and stretched after she got up off the couch. "So Bernie did Mary make me some dinner, or was she mean and wants to let me fend for myself?" Bernie just looked at her with those big brown eyes, panted with his tongue out. "You know one of these days you’re going to actually say something back…."

She headed towards the kitchen and cut on the light. "Looks like someone still loves me." On the table was a note that her housekeeper, Mary Rowlings, had left telling her about the grilled chicken salad she had left for her in the refrigerator. "Well its not a cheeseburger with chili cheese fries, but it’ll have to do." She muttered. Mary had been on Leigh’s case for years about her eating habits. But Leigh figured she had been blessed because no matter what she ate, she never gained an ounce. Of course she was more active than the average person, but she liked to think that it was all genetics.

She grabbed a Mountain Dew and the salad then headed toward what she liked to call her "play room". Leigh loved this room. It contained a wide screen television, pool table, ping-pong machine, and her favorite couch in the whole wide world. The furniture in her living room was pretty, expensive, and uncomfortable as hell. But the beige cushy couch, she’d had since her college years was priceless. She sat down and stretched out her long legs and cut on the television. Bernie came and laid down on the floor in front of the couch. She flicked through channels until she saw an old episode of the X-Files. The sci-fi show had become one Leigh’s favorite. "Hey Bernie you think Mulder and Scully will ever get together?"

Leigh glanced at the answering machine and sighed…the red light was blinking.

She’d checked her messages before she’d left SSC, which means these were all new messages since her trip home. Reluctantly she reached over and hit play. After the sound of the beep, Leigh immediately recognized the voice of the first message. It was Brent.

"Leigh honey its me. Why aren’t you returning any of my phone calls?" There was a pause. He was drunk. Leigh could tell from the slight slur in his voice. "Just tell me what I did, so I can make it all right. My life’s shit without you Leigh…call me please." The next four messages were the same, which made a total of eight messages from him today. For a moment, Leigh considered returning his phones calls, but what good would that do. They needed to make a clean break…eventually the actor would forget about her…just like the others.

The answering machine beeped again. "Leigh this is Dan Matthews…we’ve got a problem here at SSC. Give me a call in the 4^th floor test lab as soon as you get this message."

Leigh cursed loudly as she reached for the phone and noticed that Bernie had lifted up his head. "Oh stop being so damn self-righteous. If dogs could talk they’d use profanity too." She dialed SSC.

"Dan this is Leigh…there better be a fire over there in the lab." She said coolly. Leigh had made it clear on several occasions not to call her at home unless it was an emergency. But apparently the world was full of emergencies.

"I don’t know about a fire Leigh, but if we don’t get this fixed…we’re going to be in a load of shit."

Erin sat in front of her laptop and rubbed her temples. Although the magazine article about Leigh Sinclaire in Forbes had been informative, from a business perspective, it lacked the information that Erin needed to totally size up the woman’s personality. What she’d gathered so far was that Leigh Sinclaire was an intelligent risk taker, who was taking the world of software to the next level and pushing it towards the edge. The beautiful CEO was Texas born and graduated at the top of her class from Florida State University with a dual degree in Finance and Computer Engineering. Straight out of college, she’d started Sinclaire Software Company, and now eight years later, it was a fortune 500 company. Right now, she was literally the golden child of the computer industry. She wasn’t the typical CEO, she was known for conducting meetings wearing jeans rather than business attire. This told her that the woman was unconventional, and that could be useful. In a nutshell, Erin had learned that Leigh Sinclaire was definitely smart enough to pull off the robbery, but was she gutsy enough to do so.

Erin needed more information, so she took to the Internet. She went to SSC’s corporate web page, but only found more of the same biographical information with a nice, but very conservative picture of Leigh. She then did a search using Leigh Sinclaire’s name, and was a little shocked at the amount of web pages that were in the result.

At the top of the list was a link to Entertainment Beat’s website. Erin watched a picture of Leigh and a very attracted blonde man appear. Erin thought she recognized the man, and it hit her that it was the famous actor Brent Landers.

Apparently Brent Landers was now being sued for breach of contract, because he hadn’t shown up to the set of his latest movie since the apparent break-up.

"Interesting." Erin said allowed as she read the rest of the article. At the bottom of the web page was a list of links to similar articles…and Erin proceeded to read each one.

"Like I said Leigh if we don’t get this fixed fast, we’re going to be in deep shit."

"Don’t you think I know that Randy." Leigh snapped right after she hit the seven ball in the corner pocket. She was having a conference call with one of second line FVT managers and at the same time working on her pool game. "Tell me this…where is Chuck Anderson’s ass, you guys report directly to him."

"We tried to contact him, but we couldn’t reach him. He probably wouldn’t have been much help anyway. We need advice from someone high up in the chain that can tell us what to say to SanTech, if we can’t get this solved tonight."

Leigh had always prided herself for being a hands-on president and CEO. She decided when she first started SSC that she was not going to turn into a corporate suit and forget what a line of code looked liked. This had often proved to her advantage in meetings, when some slick techie or marketing genius would try to pull the wool over her eyes. Leigh could talk about any of her company’s projects and products on a high level or get as low as code. It has also helped with the company’s morale because the employees felt like Leigh was really interested in what they did. It would also backfire, because they would often call her with problems that someone lower down in the chain of command should be able to answer. I bet Lew Gershner doesn’t get phone calls like this in the middle of the night. But Leigh suspected that because she kept such a close eye on operations that upper management had somehow decided that they didn’t need to. She made a mental note, to call a meeting with her upper management and access their skills.

Also Chuck Anderson was notorious for turning off his pager when he didn’t feel like being bothered. She would also have to make it a point to talk to him tomorrow.

"Now what I don’t know is how the hell could we get this far into Driver 5 development, and not know that the shit doesn’t run on AIX or Sun." Her next shot would probably be the six…no the two would be better.

"Well it seems the developers do most of their coding and unit testing on the windows platforms."

Yeap, the two ball went into the side pocket. Leigh walked around the table and took a sip of her beer. "I remember signing an invoice approving an ass load of Sun and Aix boxes. Are you telling me that no one is using them?" There was no sound on the other end of the speakerphone, which gave Leigh her answer. And it was one she didn’t like. Leigh glanced over that the St. Bernard, Bernie, who had been watching his master play pool. She mouthed the words "Idiots" as she walked over and petted is head. "Randy, is Dan there with you?" She moved back towards the table. Leigh chalked the end of her pool stick and tried to figure out her next shot."

"I’m right here Leigh." A deeper male voice boomed over the phone, it belonged to David McNeil, her second line development manager.

"Wonderful." She cooed before her voice turned hard again. "Same question I posed to Randy, and you better have an answer." Leigh placed the stick behind her back and carefully aimed at the six ball. She gently tapped the ball and watched it go into the side pocket. She turned again to Bernie and winked.

"We were told umm that we didn’t need to worry about AIX and SUN." Leigh heard the uncertainty in the man’s voice and rolled her eyes.

"And who told you that?"

"The enablement team in the last line items meeting."

"No the enablement team said that were going to help stir companies toward using mostly windows platforms. That way we won’t have to waste extra time on these other platforms. But Dan at least until the end of the year, we have software deliverables that are suppose to run across all platforms. And it just so happens that the company we promised an early drop of Orion File Manager to runs mostly on Solaris."

"I had no idea…"

"Apparently." Leigh said evenly. "Has SanTech already uninstalled their old version of OFM?"

"Yes, they have."

"Well let’s see…" Leigh had to think. "Well what is the limited functionality on AIX and SUN?"

"It won’t start"

"Damn…they can’t even bring the app up." See Doc, this is where delegation gets you. Leigh put down the pool stick and picked her beer back up. She began to pace.

"Yeah, when they try to start it, it just hangs." It was Randy talking again.

"Interesting." She plopped down on the couch beside Bernie. He immediately moved and placed his head in her lab. "They didn’t have a problem running the old version, correct?"

"That’s right." The two men on the phone said in unison.

"Didn’t we change the version of JAVA we were running under the application?" Leigh asked in search of a simple solution.

"Yeah, we moved up to 1.3 to take advantage of some new API’s for customization and usability" Dan explained.

"Leigh we already thought about that, and it turned into a dead end. We called SanTech and ask them what version of JAVA they wear running on their machines. If they weren’t running the 1.3 jdk, we told them that they needed to do so. Hell they can get that shit for free off the Internet. We also asked them to make sure that they had all the necessary patches and fixpacks. SUN and AIX are notorious for core dumps and hangs. They bitched about having to do the extra work, so Randy sent them a simple program that could uninstall their old version of JAVA and install a later version…similar to a program they use for setting up the machine here in the test lab.

"Shit" Leigh commented before standing up again. "So OFM 3.5 won’t run on our SUN or AIX machines either."

"Yeah, every attempt failed."

"What do the log files say."

"Nothing special."

"And you guys are telling me that there is no one in either of your departments that knows what the hell is going on."

There was silence on the phone again, until Dan spoke again. "Well Leigh, the developers have pretty much been busy, since driver 6 is starting to get cranked up. We’ve been red for a couple weeks, because of the shit load of defects that came in. If we don’t want to slip further in the schedule, we can’t free up enough resources to track this problem down. We have a couple of guys in the lab, as you can see no good results. I’m thinking we should just tell the SanTech folks to reinstall the old version until we get this straightened out. "

"That’s no good. They needed to integrate our latest stuff to make their code cut off date. That was the whole point of dropping them an early version. If they don’t deliver on time, then they’ll lose their application contracts and that means we’ll lose SanTech. Had I known that the shit wasn’t thoroughly tested, I wouldn’t have made such a deal. " Leigh just sighed. "All the code is out on the LAN right."

"Yeah."

"Contact Ted Ryan over at SanTech and tell him that I am personally looking into this situation and then call me back in a couple of hours. And your asses better hope that I have good news when you do. " Leigh hung up the phone. She looked at her dog and raised an eyebrow. "You wouldn’t happen to know how to debug on AIX or Sun would you?" The dog simply lifted his head and then barked. "I didn’t think so." Leigh slowly rose off the couch and stretched. "So much for a quiet evening at home…come on Bernie."

"The woman is definitely something." Erin said aloud to herself. For the last several hours, she’d read every bit of information she could get her hands on about Leigh Sinclaire.

Not only was the woman a high tech CEO, she was a master of martial arts, into every sport that could have daredevil attached to it, her vacations were more like expeditions than getaways, and the woman gave to charity like water. If that wasn’t enough she’s been romantically linked to a prince in Saudi Arabia and a football player from the Dallas Cowboys. Several times she’d ended up in the hot seat because of her infamous temper. She even had charges pressed, but they were always miraculously dropped.

But what really interested Erin was the fact that Leigh Sinclaire was an art collector.

"And what art lover would not like to have the Rhine Ruby in their collection."

In her gut, Erin knew that this was her thief. Leigh Sinclaire had the opportunity, the know how, and a motive. The motive was a little weak though. If Leigh Sinclaire had stolen the Rhine Ruby, she certainly couldn’t showcase it without being caught. "So why would she see steal it Erin?" She asked herself aloud.

Erin glanced over at her laptop screen at a picture of Leigh Sinclaire. She was mountain climbing in Brazil. She was dressed in a pair cut off jean shorts, tennis shoes, and white T-shirt. She was dangerously dangling from the rope while waving at the camera with both hands. "Why do intelligent rich people do stupid stunts like that?" Then a light went off in her head. "For the hell of it and the challenge of it." And a woman like Leigh Sinclaire would steal a 50 million dollar ruby for the same reason.

"You’re a life saver Leigh." Randy said enthusiastically over the phone.

"Well boys there is a reason that the company is named after me you know." She replied smugly. She was now in her home office in front of her flat screen computer. After her conversation with Randy and Dan, Leigh had logged on to SSC’s network and downloaded the latest build of OFM. She tracked all major code additions since their last drop to SanTech a month earlier. She noticed that one line item involved making a change to several make files. In one of the make files a line had been accidentally deleted out that jarred a special class file needed for the product to run on AIX or Solaris. Leigh had make the changes in the make file and sent it back to Randy and Dan at the lab. They’d tried it out and it worked.

"Leigh we sent it over to SanTech and they seem to be up and running now. You really saved the day you know. Thanks." Dan added to the praise the two men were giving her.

"No need guys."

"Guess who just called."

"Who?"

"Chuck Anderson."

"Did you tell him that the crisis was over?" Leigh said sarcastically.

"Sure did and I told him you were the one who helped us out."

"What did he say?"

"He laid into me about jumping the line of command and that I shouldn’t have contacted you until I had spoken to him."

"Pay him no mine Randy. He was nowhere to be found. You did right to call me. And if he gives you any shit about it tomorrow, you drop me a line and let me know. Okay."

"Sure thing Leigh. Well we’ll let you get back to what’s left of your evening...or I guess I should say morning"

Leigh glanced at the clock on her desk it was 2:08 am. "Yeah maybe that would be a good idea."

"Ok see yah."

Leigh reached over and cut off the speakerphone. Tracking down the problem had taken several hours, but it had been worth it just to hear the admiration and gratitude in the men’s voices.

She sat back in her chair and smiled. Leigh had missed that. She’s missed the rush of the saving the moment at the last possibly second. More and more lately her responsibilities had become administrative. Leigh had tried to resist that process as much as possible. She’d done it mainly to please her board of directors, who insisted that she delegate more of the day-to-day activities. It had been hard though. Leigh remembered the early days of SSC, when she and a couple of guys were responsible for the design, implementation, and marketing. Back then she had been flying by the seat of her pants and almost everything thing had come down to the wire. And she had absolutely loved it.

But now SSC basically ran like clock work, except for the occasional problems like the one that night. There was no doubt in Leigh’s mind that SSC needed her, but not in the same way that it once did. The company had a good reputation now, even though there were those who thought Leigh’s bad girl reputation sometimes overshadowed it. But Leigh suspected that it just made more people curious about SSC.

Still Leigh’s days were busy, a little more than she’d liked, but they’d become routine…so she had become somewhat bored. And to a woman like Leigh Sinclaire, boredom was a like disease. It had to be cured immediately.

She kicked up her feet up and laid them on the edge of her desk. She looked over at the dog resting by the door. "Hey Bernie wanna see something kinda cool?" She slid her fingers under her desk until they came to rest on a button. She pushed it and watched the

painting on the wall in front of her slide up. There was shelf that held a glass covering, and it inside was the Rhine Ruby.

Leigh got up from her desk and crossed the room. "It really is exquisite, isn’t Bernie." But when she looked at the St. Bernard, he was still gnawing on his toy as if he’d never heard her. "It figures that you’re the only one that I can show this too, and you could care less." Leigh joked has she removed the case and picked up the ruby. Her mind was soon filled with memories. One of which was the first day she’d laid eyes on the jewel she now had in her grasp.

There had basically been three reasons, why Leigh Sinclaire had decided to steal the Rhine Ruby on that faithful day. The first of which was that Leigh was bored and really pissed off. And when she felt like that…she tended to get herself into trouble. And this all too familiar mix of emotions had lead her to the museum.

Leigh had just finished being in an hour long screaming match with her marketing and finance departments and had decided that she needed a break. She’d chosen the museum, which over the years had become her favorite spot other than the beach than seemed to relax her.

Leigh always thought it funny that she, a girl from the outskirts of Houston, Texas had come to love and appreciate art. Being in the museum always reminded Leigh how wondrous and creative the mind and soul could be when inspired.

The second reason that turned the executive into a jewel thief was the fact she had found herself in a conversation with Hensley as he bragged about the new security that the museum now had put in place because of the Rhine Ruby’s tour. She had listened and nodded her head as he spoke of how they had been many attempts to steal the ruby since it had been on tour. Hensley had no intention of Lierrickson’s being the first museum to allow such a thing to happen. He seriously doubted that anyone could outwit the security.

Although Hensley thought he was impressing the raven-haired beauty with his confidence and information, little did he know that he’d just issued a challenge to her. Their conversation was barely over before Leigh’s quick analytical mind was "casing the joint" as she liked to refer to it. And her creative mind was coming up with a plan.

The third reason, which Leigh didn’t want to really admit to herself, why she was so obsessed with stealing the Rhine Ruby, was that there was a myth associated with the jewel. Leigh had lingered in the back of the crowd at the exhibit as the tour guide explained the story. Legend stated that whomever possessed the Rhine Ruby would find true love.

The story intrigued her.

A couple days after her visit to the museum, Leigh had concocted what she thought was the perfect plan. In between meetings and activities, she would often alter the plan based on whatever new idea or theory came to mind. It had in fact become a hobby or past time and she had never thought she would actually attempt such a thing. But the more she thought about it, the more she was tempted to try it. So she had and like pretty much everything else that Leigh Sinclaire tried…she had exceeded at it.

Leigh looked at the jewel in front of her now and gently shoot her head. "Yeah Leigh you pulled it off, but what hell are you suppose to do now."

"You’ve got to be me shitting me." McNeil exclaimed. Erin nodded her head negatively. "You think Leigh Sinclaire is the missing thief."

"I know so." She replied confidently.

"No way."

"Why McNeil? Because she’s a woman." She challenged.

"Not just a woman. She’s a rich intelligent beautiful woman…can you really see her crawling around through air vents with a ski mask on?"

"Yes, I can. McNeil just think about it for a minute."

"No. It just doesn’t make sense." He sat down at his desk. "Besides she helped captured the thieves."

"Yeah, after she was missing from the party."

"So what. She says she was in Hensley’s office."

"Exactly she says. No one saw her there."

"So because she left the party for a few minutes, you think she’s the thief."

"No, the security guard says he remembers smelling perfume and that the thief had blue eyes. The perfume points to a woman, and you have to admit that you she has a set of eyes that are pretty hard to forget."

"Coincidence…plus you and I both know that guard was pretty drunk before the attacker ever laid a hand on him. Erin he doesn’t have much credibility."

Erin threw a magazine and printouts on his desk. "What about this article? It says that Leigh Sinclaire has quite an art collection. I mean from the way they described it; she’s got her own personal museum in her home. She even had some artwork to spare. Did you see her on the news this morning loaning a priceless sculpture to the museum until they find the ruby?"

"So?" McNeil looked down at the cover and was staring into the eyes of Leigh Sinclaire. Yeah, they were unforgettable, but that didn’t make the woman a thief. Then he made a note to himself that if Forbes continued to make covers like this one he would definitely have to start subscribing.

"She could have taken it to add to her collection." Erin rationalized.

"Oh yeah, no one’s gonna notice that she had a ruby the size of fist."

"Okay, maybe she has no intention of showing it. Maybe the she’s bored of being just being rich, gorgeous, and intelligent. Maybe she wanted to prove she could be a thief too." Erin knew she sounded like she was grabbing at straws, but she had that feeling. That burning in her stomach was telling her she was right.

"I think that ten percent is clouding your judgment."

"McNeil I telling you, she’s our girl." She said finally laying both her hands flat on the desk.

McNeil looked at her for a second. "Do you know what a woman like this could do to you if you’re wrong about this?"

A slow grin showed on Erin’s face. "Nothing compared to what I can to do her, if I’m right?

"And up next is Leigh Sinclaire, founder and CEO of the Sinclaire Software Company." The announcer in the impeccable tuxedo said as she Leigh walked on stage.

And the minute she did, cameras started flashing. Someone just walking in the room, could have mistook the event as an award show, but it was yet another charity event.

An auction, but not for art. The committee had round up some of the city’s most eligible bachelorettes and Leigh’s name had been at the top of the list. They didn’t ask them for any money, just the opportunity to sell their company for one evening.

"All you have to do is show up and I guarantee someone will bid on you for the chance to just look into those baby blues of yours for an evening." The chairman of the committee had said when Leigh had agreed to be in the auction.

Leigh stood tall and elegant in a strapless white gown with a split that gave quite a view of her long legs when she walked. Her raven hair was pinned up and with tendrils falling towards her face. She winked at her escort Aidan Prescot as she made her way to the end of the stage. Well Leigh this should be a hoot. But if no one bids more than $5000 for you…you might need to consult an image consultant.

"Let’s start the bidding at $1000 dollars shall we."

"$1000."

"$1500"

"$2000"

And that’s how it went for the next few minutes. The bidding amounts got higher and higher. Leigh smiled and tried not to feel like a piece of meat. But that was hard, especially when she saw that Michael was one of the people bidding on her.

"$15,000" Michael yelled out and grinned at Leigh. She was definitely paying him too much money, if he could throw $15,000 away just to go out with her. Leigh really hoped that he wouldn’t win, she was about to give a nod towards Aidan to out bid him…she would gladly pay him back out of her own pocket.

"Wow $15,000 dollars from the gentleman at table 4." The announcer said. "Well it looks like the The Tech World’s Bad Girl has broke the record of $14,500 from last year. Do I hear $15,500"

"$20,000" came a bid from the back of the room. It was a female voice; a hush went over the crowd.

"Ok that’s $20,000…" The announcer struggled to see to the back of the ballroom. "…from the lady in green at table 34. Seems like Ms. Sinclaire has a wider appeal than I thought." The crowd laughed a little and then suddenly another man out of nowhere bid $25,000. Leigh rolled her eyes. Men were so kinky.

"$30,000." It was from the lady in the back again. The glare from the lights was too bright for Leigh to see the woman, but she struggled to see anyway.

"$31,000."

"$32,000."

"$33,000"

"$34,000"

"$50,000" Again it was the female voice from the back of the room.

"I’ll be damn…" Leigh said quietly even though, the announcer heard.

"I know he replied." A little shocked. "Ok, do I hear $50,500 from the anyone?"

Leigh looked at Michael and she could see anger written all over his face. Then she gave a glance at Aidan who motioned if she wanted him to outbid the mysterious woman, but Leigh nodded no.

"Going once, Going twice" Then there was the loud slam of the gavel. "Sold to the Lady in Green at table 34 for $50,000." The applause there after had been thunderous.

Leigh smiled brightly and turned to walk off the stage.

What the hell is that all about? Leigh thought when she was finally off stage. Who wanted her company so bad that they would pay $50,000 for it? A collage of faces and names raced through her head…most of which were old beaus. Momentarily she thought that perhaps it could be Brent making a last ditch effort to save their relationship. It was possible that he could hire someone to vote for him…and why not a woman. But she doubted it.

"Well Leigh its only one way to find out...go talk to the lady." She said aloud to herself as she turned to enter the ballroom.

Leigh walked through the crowd and smiled at familiar faces as she made her way towards the corner. People looked at her curiously and she half wondered if they were as curious to see the woman who had bid on her as she was. It wasn’t everyday that someone paid $50,000 dollars to have dinner with you…let alone another woman. When she finally reached table 34, to her dismay it was empty.

"Looking for me?" She heard a voice from behind her say. Quickly she turned around. There standing before her was a petite attractive blond smiling at her. Leigh now saw the green dress that had earned her title of the "The Lady in Green." Like her own dress, it left little to the imagination and complimented her eyes and hair perfectly.

"I guess I am." Leigh extended her hand. The blond shook it firmly and then let it go. She nodded towards the table.

The pictures Erin had seen did not do the woman before her justice…she was beautiful. Her eyes were even more striking in person, and her presence even more powerful than the articles she’d read tried to convey. She certainly is very tall.

"This is a black and white ball you know." Leigh commented as, Erin felt her blue eyes sweep over her dress, before they both sat down. Erin took note of the rich husky voice.

"I know. But a little color never hurt anyone."

"True." Leigh replied with a smile and leaned toward Erin as if she was about to tell a secret. "Last year I wore red." She whispered and then sat back. "But I decided to play it conservative this year."

"Well that’s no fun."

"You’re telling me." Leigh contemplated the woman for a second, and confirmed that she had never seen her before, even though she felt as if she had. "So who were you bidding for? Is some old guy in a wheel chair going to suddenly appear…and tell me how he desperately wants to have his way with me." Leigh smiled and picked up a bread stick and took a bite.

"No…I bid on you for myself." Erin thought she had caught her off guard…but Leigh Sinclaire’s expression didn’t change at all. The truth of the matter was that Erin hadn’t expected to bid on Leigh at all. But all her attempts to get close to the woman during the evening had failed. So when she saw the room bidding in a frenzy to simply go out with the sexy raven-haired CEO, Erin had thrown her hat in the ring. Yeah a hat that was worth $50,000 dollars and now everyone probably thinks you’re a lesbian that fantasizes about Leigh Sinclaire. Erin wanted to laugh at the thought, which made Leigh’s next statement all the more ironic.

"So you want to have your way with me. Is that it?" There was a devilish glint in her blue eyes. Hey I don’t swing that way, but I willing to play along for a short while. I mean hey it’s for charity. Also this party was boring as hell until this woman showed up…this could be very interesting. Leigh thought to herself.

"I guess you could say that. " Erin leaned in closer. Hey what’s going on here, maybe its time to drop the innuendos.

"Interesting…and what exactly it is that you want from me?" Leigh are you really sure you want to find out.

A smirk played on Erin’s lips. "A confession…"

Blue eyes narrowed slightly with a mixture of confusion and interest. "A confession? About what?"

"The Rhine Ruby…I’m on to you Leigh Sinclaire." There was a silence then, as the two woman just stared at each other.

Uh Oh…."I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"I think you do." Erin replied evenly.

"Are you insinuating that I had something to do with the robbery?"

"I’m not insinuating it…I’m flat out saying it. You’re a thief. I know it and you know it." Erin searched the alluring blue eyes for a shred of guilt, but instead she saw a twinkle.

"You’ve got to be kidding me." Leigh laughed.

"Actually I’m very serious." Leigh looked at Erin for a few seconds…a little too long. Leigh knew it and so did Erin. She had her. "My my my is the mighty Leigh Sinclaire speechless?"

"No…more like intrigued." She smiled.

"Because you’re caught?"

"No because…you’ve just paid $50,000 to accuse me of being a jewel thief. Hell you could have done that for free. And people have said that I’m wasteful with money."

"It got your attention." Erin handed her a glass of champagne.

"It most definitely did." Leigh accepted the glass and took a sip…never taking her eyes off Erin.

"No, I paid $50,000 to get on your calendar. You’re a very busy woman Ms. Sinclaire."

Leigh chuckled. "You’re damn creative I give you that." Erin heard a trace of the Texas accent that she’d read about. There was a certain charm to it. She rose from the table.

She reached in her purse and pulled out a card. "Call me…so we can arrange our little "date". And then she was off.

Leigh narrowed her blue eyes and watched her leave. She looked down at the card and read it aloud. "Erin Bradshaw…Prenhall and Winemen Insurance Agency."

"Who was that?" She heard Aidan say over her shoulder.

"I don’t know, but I’m definitely going to find out." She opened her purse and placed the card inside and then smiled in the same direction the "Lady in Green" had left in.

"You bid $50,000 dollars." McNeil exclaimed as he watched Erin pour herself a cup of coffee.

"Yeah I did." Erin admitted hesitantly and walked over to her desk and sat down. "I admit it wasn’t one of my best ideas, but effective. Now she has to see me."

"You couldn’t have just called."

Erin sighed. "Let’s just say I tried to get on her calendar and I thought that two months from now was a little too late."

McNeil just looked at Erin and shook his head. "Do what ever you want, I just better not see any kind of invoice come across my desk to approve a $50,000 check."

"You won’t. It’s already been taken care of."

"Oh I forgot about your ten percent take. You must have quite the little nest egg stashed away for yourself."

"Let’s just say I’m comfortable." But they both knew that Erin was a lot more than comfortable. The truth was that if she wanted to retire right now at the age of 27, she could…but what would be the fun in that, she’s told herself on many occasions.

"McNeil tell me this is a joke." A loud male voice boomed, causing both Erin and McNeil to turn abruptly. It was Walter Minton from the DA’s office. He was walking towards them. He was a tall burly man clad in a gray suit.

McNeil rolled his eyes. "What did I do this time?"

"This." Minton threw down a piece of paper on the desk. Erin was the one to pick it up.

"A search warrant for the Leigh Sinclaire’s house." She said out loud. She’d had no idea that McNeil had put the paper work together for such a warrant. It did Erin’s ego some good to know that McNeil believe enough in her theory to go ahead and get the warrant.

"That’s right…and please tell me you’re joking."

"I’m afraid not." McNeil answered. "We have reason to believe that she was involved in the Rhine Ruby robbery."

"You’re kidding me right?" Minton asked with obvious disbelief.

"No he isn’t. Leigh Sinclaire is a suspect in the robbery." Erin interjected.

"And who the hell are you?" He snapped her way.

"I’m Erin Bradshaw from…"

"Oh, you’re the art bounty hunter. So I’m thinking this is your bright idea." He nodded towards the warrant. "Young lady do you have any idea what a woman like this could do to the Miami PD as well at the District Attorney’s office?"

Why does everyone keep asking me that? "I think I have some idea." Erin replied.

"They why are you pursuing this?"

"Because she’s guilty. And isn’t it your job to make sure that the guilty are held accountable for there actions." Erin stated simply.

"Not when I could end up with my balls in a sling. I mean this woman punched out a photographer because he snapped a picture…what do you think she’s going to do when she hears about this?"

"She already knows." Erin said smugly as she crossed her arms across her chest. "I personally delivered the news."

"And we still have jobs?"

"Apparently." McNeil said as he looked around the room. "Mint just calm down will ya."

"She’s going to crucify us!" Minton rubbed his temples and just sighed. "I can’t believe the judge even granted this warrant."

"Well believe it."

"I can’t believe you’re going along with this either McNeil."

"Me neither…" He muttered and quickly perked up when she saw that Erin was shooting him green-eyed daggers. "Believe it or not we do have a case. It may not be the strongest case in the world…but it’s the only lead we have right now."

"The right lead." Erin challenged as she stood up and waved the warrant under both their noses. "Looks like we have a house to go look at." She said with a smile before walking off.

"Is Ms. Sinclaire at home." McNeil asked as he showed his badge to the woman who answered the door of the home that belonged to Leigh Sinclaire. McNeil must have had at least 5 other officers with him, to aid in the search of the house. Erin was also in attendance, but chose to stand out by the car instead.

The older woman had only opened the door partially. "May I ask why you’re here?"

"We have a search warrant." McNeil replied.

"Mary who is it at the door?" The voice came from inside the house, and McNeil knew that it belonged to Leigh Sinclaire. He shifted his position and tried to see inside the house.

"It’s the police. Seems they have a warrant to search your house."

"Really?" The door opened wider and Leigh Sinclaire appeared before McNeil. She was wearing a light blue spandex aerobic outfit that showed off her tall lean frame. It was a two-piece, and revealed her smooth tone stomach. A white towel was carelessly thrown over her shoulder. She got more than a few appreciative glances from the men behind McNeil. And as much as McNeil would like to deny it, his eyes were glued to her as well.

"Mary I can take it from here." She said to the older woman as she put a hand on her shoulder. The woman glared at McNeil before retreating back into the house. Leigh smoothed back a few dark wet tendrils of hair that had fallen into her face. "A warrant huh. You’ve interrupted my work out for this?" She said with a bored expression emerging on the CEO’s beautiful features.

McNeil handed the warrant to her and Leigh began reading it. "It’s all there Ms. Sinclaire. Read all you want. Hell call your attorney but we’re coming in to search the house."

Leigh raised one perfectly arched eyebrow. "Hey Rodger, could you come here for a moment." She called over her shoulder. Leigh pushed the door open wider to reveal a tall well muscled man walking up behind her. He was wearing workout clothes as well.

"Yeah Leigh." He eyed the men standing on the front porch suspiciously.

"It seems these gentlemen would like to search my lovely home." She handed the piece of paper to Rodger.

"Really?" He began reading.

"Oh how rude of me." Leigh said with an exaggerated embarrassed look on her face. "Detective McNeil meet Rodger Williams. My kickboxing coach as well as my lawyer."

When Erin saw McNeil and his "crew" headed back towards their cars, she had to admit to herself that she wasn’t surprised. On the way over, it somehow dawned on her that getting in Leigh Sinclaire’s house with simply a warrant was way too easy. She tried to suppress a grin as McNeil walked up.

"I can’t believe it", he muttered before getting in the car and slamming the door.

Erin got in too. "What happened?"

"Her lawyer." He snapped. "That’s what happened. The bastard found so many loopholes in our warrant, that even I’m beginning to wonder why the hell the judge granted it in the first place."

"Her lawyer?" That was fast, Erin thought. But she knew that when you’re rich as Leigh Sinclaire you can have a multitude of resources at her fingers at a moment’s notice. What…did she do call him on the phone?"

"I wish, at least we could have been searching while she called him. It seems our little search and seizure attempt interrupted by her kickboxing lesson. And just take one guess who her coach was."

Erin just shook her head and glanced back at the house. Leigh was standing in the doorway waving good-bye and McNeil drove off. "Don’t worry detective…" Erin said as she waved back. "I’ll get inside the house."

Leigh sat at her desk and stared at her computer screen at the latest performance figures. But she found it hard to concentrate. She mind kept conjuring up an image of an attractive blonde woman who had bid $50,000 dollars on her a couple days before. Leigh had thought of little else since the auction. She twirled around in her chair and looked down at the city below her through the window. Considering everything that Erin Bradshaw had said to her, Leigh should have been nervous. She should have been worried about the fact that someone was on to her...that someone knew that she'd stolen the Rhine Ruby. But she wasn't. Why Leigh? She wondered to herself.

Because she doesn't know that you did it...she can't possibly know that. The reason you're not scared...is because you're intrigued. You want to know how this woman figured out that it was you. Or at least came to the possibility that it could be you

Leigh had to admit when the blonde had accused her of being the thief; a twinge of fear had gone down her spine. For a tiny instant she thought that she was caught...but that feeling quickly faded. Erin Bradshaw merely suspected her. Here it was a couple of days later and no cops had ambushed her and placed her in handcuffs.

Sure they had shown up to her home and tried to search it. But after Harry had work his legal magic on the officers, they’d left her residence without ever getting the chance to enter. Not that they would have found the Ruby anyway.

But remembering the look of determination and confidence that the blonde projected when she voiced her suspicions, let Leigh know that that the attempted search and seizure would not be the last she heard from the Miami PD. But what intrigued her more was that she knew she hadn’t seen the last of Erin Bradshaw. After all Leigh still owed her a "date"…a date worth $50,000.

With a quick click of her mouse, Leigh pulled up her email application and began composing a new message. Then there was a knock at her door.

"Who is it?" She yelled as she continued to type. Leigh could have asked more calmly, but when she yelled, the people who didn’t really have anything important to say usually left. Although it wasn’t an official part of the SSC’s employee handbook, if was a well-known fact that when Leigh Sinclaire was in a bad mood…she was not to be bothered unless absolutely necessary. She often used this to her advantage because it helped screen visitors when Anna wasn’t at her desk.

"Leigh its Ernie."

"Come on in." Leigh called back in a more relaxed tone.

Ernest Wilson walked in and Leigh looked up and smiled. She’d met the older man while she was interning at Generation Soft while still in college. Ernie had been her manager and her mentor. A younger Leigh Sinclaire had impressed him so much with her ambition, intelligence, creativity, and drive that when Leigh had started SSC, she asked Ernie to be her VP in Charge of Operations for all of SSC’s business applications. He had happily accepted and left a twenty-year career at Generation Soft behind.

"Ernie my man what can I do for yah." Leigh said as she sat back in her chair and twirled a pin in her hand.

Ernie was a tall black man in his late forties and from the old school of the computer industry. He was dressed in pair of pair of dark slacks and white cotton shirt. He scratched his beard and sighed roughly as she sat down in the chair across from Leigh. "You killed the Dynamic Associates deal?"

"Yeah I did." Leigh replied simply. "Is there a problem with that Ernie?"

"Leigh when you do stuff like that, it might be nice if you tell people in advance."

"I did."

"Leigh you sent an email at 3:30am this morning stating that we were no longer going to integrate with Dynamic Associates for the Unity Console Project." Which wasn’t out of the ordinary for Leigh. She was known for checking her email at late hours of the night.

"Exactly. So that you would get the email when you came in this morning and would plan your day accordingly."

"No explanation what so ever as to why."

Leigh frowned and one dark eyebrow was raised until it was hidden under raven colored bangs. "Ernie you know why. Haven’t you and your team been complaining to me for the last couple of weeks about how DA’s application is just too slow and has hindered the development environment immensely? I’ve looked at the stats and I totally agree. Dynamic Associates may have the code already in place that the Unity Console Project needs, but the it just not a match. We either need to find another app with better performance or simply write the code ourselves. "

"Do we have the man power to pull that off?" Ernie asked, knowing what Leigh had just stated how he felt as well.

"If we have to add some resources, I’m all for it." Leigh pictured the guys in the Finance Department choking her for saying such a thing. "I think in the long run keeping everything in house will be to our advantage."

"Leigh I agree, but there are a whole lot of other people who were counting on this deal going through and they aren’t too happy."

"Like who?"

"For one Michael. He was going to announce to the press tomorrow how Dynamic Associates and SSC were partnering on this project. He wrote me a pretty nasty note this morning. He’s not happy Leigh."

"Ernie, Michael is never happy. Who else?"

"Well Jeff McCall from DA phoned this morning. He says he sunk a lot of resources into this deal, for you to simply screw him and his people at the last minute like this."

"Screwed him? Ernie if it wasn’t for our guys debugging their fucked up code, they

would be worse than knee deep in shit. We did him a favor."

"Is that how you’re going to explain it to the board." He retorted. Over the years Ernie had been Leigh’s conscious when it came to keeping her temper and language in tact. Often Leigh wondered if he was in cohorts with Dr. Duncan.

Inwardly Ernie was smiling, Leigh hadn’t changed in 10 years…smoother maybe…but still a maverick at heart.

Leigh shook her head. "Don’t tell me that they’re calling another inquisition."

"It’s a meeting Leigh."

"Yeah where most of them want to burn me at the stake."

"Leigh it was decided in a meeting that we were to partner with DA, don’t you think it should be determined in a meeting if we suddenly decide not to. Speaking of which, we’re late."

"Ernie you know as well as I do, that most of those old guys don’t know anything about this business. They really make me regret the day I took this company public. I can’t believe the stockholders voted those people in. I guess I should be lucky they kept me as CEO and president." Even after Leigh had gone public, she still owed thirty-three percent of the stock and her father owed five percent. Which basically gave the Sinclaires control of the company. Over the years, Leigh may have ruffled some feathers, but all she ever needed was at least fifteen percent of the company to support her, and she had always exceeded that.

Leigh hadn’t wanted to be greedy and totally appoint every board member herself. Instead she had left a few positions open to the stockholders…and that decision had been biting her in the ass ever since.

"That’s why you need to be careful Leigh."

"Not to sound arrogant…but this company needs me. And that’s why I’m running it. And unless I really fuck up Ernie…that’s how it’s going to stay."

"I think you just failed at something."

"Excuse me?"

"I believe you sounded very arrogant just then." Ernie had to smile when he saw the look on Leigh’s face and the playful glare in her ice blue eyes. "But I wouldn’t have it any other way."

Leigh rolled her eyes and laughed. "I guess I do that sometimes. So I’m thinking I better tone it down before this so called meeting." She got up from the desk and smoothed her hair. "You think this meeting will be over by 3:30 I’m got plans this afternoon and I want to go home first?" Leigh looked down at her watch. "Let’s see they usually yell at me for an hour. Listen to me yell for an hour. Take another hour to come to the conclusion that I’m actually making sense and begrudgingly admit it. So…yeah I think I’ll be out of here on time."

"Well at least it’s not like the time you called from your cell phone and canceled a deal while you were on a two week trip in the Congo." Ernie conceded at he got up as well.

"Took us damn near three days to get in touch with you again."

"See Ernie…I’ve matured over the years." Leigh said with a rakish grin and winked. " Too bad I decided at the last minute not to wear jeans and a T-shirt. That always seems to irk the hell out of them." She said as she walked passed Ernie. She’d decided on black slacks with a gray silk blouse. "Come on my friend…its time to go to war."

Erin walked into her apartment and went straight to her office. The run had done her good. It had given her a chance to clear her mind. Her breathing had slowed down, and she wiped her face with the towel that was already handing from the back of her chair. It had been fours days and she was no closer to finding the Rhine Ruby, than she was when she was first assigned the case. No, that wasn’t entirely true. Thanks to her, the police now had a suspect. Unfortunately, they were not dealing with the average Joe Blow thief. They were dealing with an intelligent woman who was responsible for building a fortune 500 company from the ground up. She was in fact a woman with so many connections, that she could elude the police for years, and never even leave the city.

Erin opened up a folder on her desk and pulled out a photo of Leigh Sinclaire. Even though the picture was black and white, her eyes still drew you in. Erin wondered for a moment, just how many men had fell prey to the azure depths of Ms. Sinclaire’s eyes. Apparently quite a few, if the gossip around town had any truth to it. It didn’t matter, because she was woman and would not fall victim to the famous charm.

Though, she did have to admit to herself that there was something about Leigh.

She couldn’t quite put a figure on the way she felt when she’d first met the dark haired tycoon, but it was something.

She placed the picture back on her desk and turned on her laptop. A minute later, she saw that she had mail. She hoped it wasn’t her supervisors from Prenhall and Winemen asking for an update. She really didn’t feel like justifying her belief that Leigh Sinclaire was the thief. Erin would send them a thorough report later on after she had more concrete evidence.

She schemed through her messages, and one in particular caught her eye. It was from Leigh Sinclaire. Erin momentarily wondered how she had even known what her email address was, but then again she knew that the woman had resources.

Ms. Bradshaw,

I’m so sorry that Detective McNeil and his "posse" came all the way over and couldn’t stay. I noticed that you chose to stay by the car…interesting. But I digress…I was looking at my To Do List, and I still owe you a "date". How about today at 4:00 pm? I’ll pick you up at your apartment. See you then.

L.

Erin wondered how she knew where she was staying, but it didn’t matter. She had planned on contacting Leigh Sinclaire first about to setting up their "date", but she had beaten her to it. Sure she could turn her down and make it on her terms but what would be the point. She needed to talk to the woman, and there was no reason to postpone it. Also she knew that if someone like Leigh Sinclaire wanted to ignore someone they could. She could bury the police department and her in so much legal paperwork from her lawyer that they couldn’t step one hundred feet near her. Yet, she had contacted Erin knowing that she wanted to prove her guilty of possessing the Rhine Ruby.

She didn’t even bother replying to the message. Erin knew that Leigh Sinclaire was no doubt sure that she would be accepting the invitation. After all the woman was probably use to people saying "How high?", when she says "Jump". Erin rolled her eyes at her own thought, and ran a hand through her wet blonde hair. Erin glanced over at her clock…it was 3:00pm. She got up and headed towards the shower. She had less than an hour to get ready. Thirty minutes later she emerged from the bathroom refreshed. She walked quickly over to the closet to pick out an outfit. Several minutes had gone by and Erin realized that she had been discarding at least five outfits. One outfit made her look hippy, one made her chest look to small, …so forth. Damn it Erin she’s a woman…you’re not going to be able to seduce her into confessing so who gives fuck how your hips look. On that note she settled on a gray skirt, matching suit jacket, and a pink blouse. Totally professional.

At times like these, Erin was glad she kept her hair the length she did. She quickly blow-dried and styled it.

She was just finished applying her makeup when there was a knock at the door. Erin slipped on her black high heel shoes before walking to let in her guest. When she opened the door, there stood Leigh Sinclaire leaning lazily against the doorframe. "Hey there." She said as she walked into the room without being asked.

"Come right on it." Erin replied with a voice dripping with sarcasm.

"I did that already." Leigh said with a smile and dropped down on the couch and stretched out her long jean clad legs. Suddenly Erin saw blue eyes studying her intently. "Your outfit is all wrong."

"Excuse me." Erin didn’t even bother to cover that she was offended by her observation. The annoyance in the green eyes was not lost on Leigh.

"Don’t get me wrong I love the outfit you have on…but I think you’re a little overdressed for the beach."

"The beach? Your note said nothing about the beach?"

"Oh sorry about the oversight." She hunched her shoulders. "I mean I owe you a date" Leigh made imaginary quotes with her fingers. "I thought we’d go to the beach…if that’s alright with you." Erin then took note of Leigh’s attire. She had on a pair of light blue jeans, with a white shirt under a light brown suede jacket. She had on pair of light brown boots. Her dark hair cascaded wildly past her shoulders with large gold hoop earrings dangling from her ears. "I can wait while you change." She picked up a magazine and began thumbing through it.

"Of course." Erin mumbled as she left the room. A few minutes later she returned dressed in jeans and a green shirt, and tennis shoes. Leigh was sitting on the couch flipping through the channels. Erin cleared her throat to make her presence known. Leigh looked up.

"Now that’s more like it." She smiled and stood up. "I see you’ve been reading about me." Leigh held up a magazine with her picture on the front.

"Guilty as charged." Erin shrugged. "Interesting picture."

"That’s what they say. I’ve gotten a lot of bullshit thrown my way because of this picture. They say it’s too…"

"Sexy." Erin blurted out before she could catch herself.

"More like unprofessional." Then Leigh grinned and raised a perfectly arched eyebrow. "But I do like your answer." There was a pause then. If Leigh wasn’t mistaken she’d made the blonde blush. Whoa Leigh you’ve never done that before.

"You know that’s a great jacket you have on." Erin commented as she walked toward Leigh.

"Really?"

"Yeah, do you mind if I try in on. Just to see how the color would look on me. I saw a coat similar the other day at Sak’s"

"Sure." Leigh eyed her curiously as she slowly took off her jacket and then handed it to Erin. "I know that it’s too big, but knock yourself out."

With a grin on her face, Erin took the coat and quickly put it on. "Let me see what it looks like in the mirror." She quickly ran into the other room.

Leigh waited there a minute or too, before Erin returned with the jacket in her hand. "You’re right its too big…ready to go."

A few minutes later they were seated in the back of Leigh’s limo.

"I seem to be quite popular." Leigh commented as she nodded over her shoulder. Erin looked out the rear window and noticed the two men getting in car. She recognized them immediately. They were the cops that McNeil had assigned to tail Leigh.

"Well when you don’t play by the rules you’ve got to pay the consequences." Erin replied, as she got a little more comfortable against the cushions. She looked over and noticed that Leigh sat casually with one leg tucked under her. She had one hand behind her head and was looking at her.

"Tell me this…who was the genius that not only added my name to the list of suspects…but moved it to very quickly to the top?"

"That would be me." Erin replied evenly before turning her attention to the view outside of the window.

"I thought as much. This is definitely going to be interesting."

"You’re taking me to the Museum."

"Yeah, why not? I’d like to see how you think I pulled off this little caper."

"Not how I think…how I know."

"Well lead the way Ms. Bradshaw…you have my full attention."

"Hell for $50,000 I should have more than that." Erin simply smirked and walked towards the gallery. All of the police tape had been removed and the area had been opened back up for the viewing. Where the Rhine Ruby used to be was now replaced by now an onyx colored sculpture of two hands.

"That was very nice of you."

"What?" Leigh asked she came to stand beside her.

"The sculpture…from you own personal collection right?"

"Yeah I came across it during a stay in Africa."

"You’re quite the art collector I see."

"I guess you can say that."

"I bet a gigantic ruby would make an excellent addition to your collection."

"The world may never know."

"We’ll see." She moved over towards another piece of art. "Now if I was going to steal something it would be this." Erin tapped her finger against the glass frame of a gold bracelet.

"Really?"

"Yeah…it was said to have belonged to Cleopatra…Queen of the Nile herself."

"Interesting. It’s not the most expensive piece in here you know."

"Doesn’t have to be…if a person doesn’t plan to sell it."

"True." Leigh nodded her head in agreement, and then quickly moved in front of Erin. "Tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"How I supposedly stole the Rhine Ruby."

Erin arched an eyebrow and looked up at Leigh. "A little anxious aren’t we."

"I’m a little curious that’s all." She had a glint in her blues eyes that reminded Erin of a child going to the circus for the first time. I don’t believe this. She’s enjoying the fact that I know that she did it. I think this is purely entertainment to her.

Leigh saw the look on the blonde’s face, and suddenly wanted to know her thoughts. "Is something wrong?"

"Its just that you’re enjoying this a little too much for a suspect in a major jewelry heist."

"Enjoying myself?" An amuse expression emerged on her beautiful face. "How would you like me to act Ms. Bradshaw? Nervous? Scared? Oh I know guilty."

"At least a little more cautious."

Leigh was silent for a moment as if she was considering Erin’s statement. "Cautious is not my style." She finally said before her gaze shifted to the people passing by.

"So I noticed." Erin muttered.

"Look I could ignore you and let my lawyers handle all this. But the fact is that I’ve never been really good at delegation. It would be irresponsible of me to not keep myself thoroughly informed about the case that the police seem to have against me. Also you seem like an intelligent woman. I’m sure you’re not accusingly me of this crime just for the hell of it. Correct?"

"Absolutely."

"So I’m curious as to what you think you know. And sometimes when I’m curious, I get intrigued…hence my behavior." She hunched. "But if that seems to bother you. I could look real nervous and develop a tick every time you mention the robbery." She demonstrated for Erin, and they both laughed.

"Don’t go out of your way for me." Erin said. They began walking through the exhibits again. "So your curious mind wants to know how I think you did it"

"Of course."

"Well the little caper started way before the other night at this museum."

"Most robberies do."

"Do you want to hear my theory or what?"

"I’m sorry please continue." Leigh imitated zipping her lips. Feisty…Leigh thought.

"I believe that these men were hired to fail."

"To fail? You mean they were decoys."

"Exactly. They were hired to rob the guests at the party…and more specifically to be a distraction. By the way, do you speak German?" Erin asked nonchalantly.

"I’m fluent in it." Leigh responded before returning her attention back to the conversation at hand. "Interesting theory. So while some of New York’s richest were scared shitless with their hands in the air, the real robbery was taking place.

"Yes and I must admit you did a superb job."

"I did?"

"Oh yes…I must say it was the perfect heist."

"On the contrary…the perfect heist is when you’re never even suspected of pulling it off." Which, I never thought I would be. But oh well….

"True…but as close to perfect as you can get. Except for three things…"

"Which are?"

"Lenny Goldberg?"

"I’m suppose to know who this Lenny is?" Of course you know who that is.

"He’s the guy that surprised you by taking an unexpected break in the usually empty supply room."

"I’m sorry you’ve lost me."

"I seriously doubt that…. Lenny Goldberg was taking an unscheduled break when out of no where…a suspicious character dressed in black drops out of the ceiling. They clock him on the head and then they’re on their way. At around the same time that all five thieves that were apprehended were being recorded in the main hall."

"Awww…so the police didn’t catch all of them."

"Precisely…the police didn’t catch you."

"You seem to be forgetting that I helped apprehend those thieves."

"No I haven’t. It seems you happened to unexpectantly walked in and turned Xena Warrior princess on them."

Leigh laughed. "Cute analogy."

"Where were you?"

"It’s in the police report."

"Why not just restate it for my benefit."

"I had to make an important phone call…so I went up to Philip’s office for a few minutes. If you check the phone records I’m sure there will be a record of the call." It didn’t surprise Erin that Leigh personally knew the manager of the Museum.

"Eight minutes. You were gone eight minutes". She had measured the time from video footage from when Leigh was seen leaving the gallery until she came back.

"Fine eight minutes…that doesn’t make me a jewel thief Ms. Bradshaw"

"No it doesn’t but something else does."

"I’m listening."

"Blue eyes."

"Blue eyes? "

"You’ve got them and so did the thief who knocked out the guard."

"Such damaging evidence. " Leigh rolled her eyes playfully. "And for this I’ve got Dumb and Dumber tailing me 24 hours a day."

"The guard remembered that the thief had blue eyes."

"So do millions of other people. Are they suspects as well?"

"Everyone doesn’t have like yours." Erin wished she hadn’t have said it. The comment had sounded bad…and like a cheap come-on. Leigh simply stared for a second.

"Is that a compliment Ms. Bradshaw?" She asked with a pleased expression.

"It’s…well. Damn it you know they’re one of your most striking features. When we asked the guard what he remembered…he was clear about two things…blue eyes and perfume. What kind do you wear by the way?"

Without skipping a beat Leigh answered. "Waking Dreams"

"Never heard of it"

"I hope not…I spend quite a few bucks to have it made just for me."

"So since you’re on this whole "I’m innocent kick" Erin said waving her hands. "You won’t mind letting me have a sample to see if Lenny can recognize it."

"Of course I wouldn’t mine…its just that…well I’m all out." She shrugged apologetically.

"Really?" Green eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Don’t look at me that way. I’m telling you the truth. I’m waiting for another shipment."

"You’re worth an ass load of money…and you’re waiting for a shipment of perfume."

"An sweet older woman in Brazil makes it for me."

"You’ve got to me kidding me."

"No, I’m serious. I came across it a few years ago…when I was a trip with some friends. I’ve been hooked on the stuff ever since. It’s a blend of special herbs, and tropical plants. "

"How convenient?"

Blues eyes locked with green. "Look I used my last drop this morning." She leaned in close to Erin. With a gentle swoop she lifted her ebony tresses away from neck. "Here…see how great it is for yourself."

Her neck was just inches from Erin’s face. She didn’t know why she did but she moved closer. A wisp of Leigh’s hair touched her cheek. She inhaled and her nose was filled with a scent like no other. It was sweet, smoky, and totally intoxicating.

"Good stuff huh?" She heard Leigh say.

"I’ll say." Erin said barely louder than a whisper.

"Well worth the wait."

Suddenly Erin felt very silly and embarrassed as she thought of the position she was sharing with Leigh. From the right angle it could almost look as if they were making out in the corner of the Museum. Her mouth was just inches away from Leigh’s neck. She abruptly straightened up and heard Leigh’s chuckle.

"Don’t worry I don’t think anyone was watching."

Erin composed herself quickly. "Who cares? Anyone can tell you’re not my type. " She retorted coolly before moving forward.

"Touché." Leigh laughed and walked to catch up with her. "You said three things."

"What?"

"You said there were three things…I didn’t count on, Lenny, blue eyes…and "

Leigh watched a slow smile emerged on Erin’s face. "You hadn’t taken into account that someone like me would be working on the case."

Leigh merely shook her head and crossed her arms. And I thought I had the good lines when it came to banter. "So Ms. Bradshaw according to your theory I left the party, changed, stole the ruby, changed, and appeared just in time to take out the decoy thieves."

"Exactly."

"Well not only in your eyes am I Xena, Warrior Princess, but Superwoman as well."

"No, I think you’re a highly capable individual Leigh Sinclaire."

"Well thank you." She bowed subtlety. "You know you should be a writer…you’re got quite the imagination."

"Really. And here I am thinking you should be an actress, because you’re giving one hell of a performance."

"Then perhaps maybe we’re both in the wrong professions." Leigh replaced her shades on over her eyes. "Let’s go eat shall we, I’m starving."

An hour later Erin and Leigh sat on the beach. Erin sat Indian style while sipping a glass of wine. Leigh laid on her side with one hand behind her head nibbling on a croissant. She had long ago discarded her boots and socks. Leigh had made the comment that it was a waste to come to the beach and not feel the sand on her feet. There was cool breeze in the air, be the spot they sat in was warmed by the sun.

Leigh had also delivered the meal you had promised from the auction. And it had been absolutely delicious, if Erin had to say so herself. They had engaged in idle banter as they ate. At one point, during the meal Erin had watched amusingly as Leigh walked over to the two cops tailing them and offered them some food. "Can’t have them starving, while I sit here and enjoy myself". She’s said when she came back and laid down on the blanket.

"So how long did it take your cook to prepared this mean?"

"I’m hurt. Do you honestly think I would pass off someone else’s meal as my own? " She sat up a little. "Oh I forgot you already think I’m a thief."

Erin tilted her head, as if contemplating something. "The business world is going to miss you when you’re behind bars. Among other people."

"You think? And my downfall would have all been arranged by a small town journalist from Kansas of all places."

Erin turned and smiled. "I see you’ve been doing your homework."

"I have to. You’re proving to be tough competition Ms. Bradshaw". She then took a sip of wine herself. "What made you get out of the newspaper biz into that of hunting down thieves and bringing them to justice?"

"Do you really wanna know?"

"I don’t ask questions I already know the answers too. It’s redundant and wastes time."

Erin smirked. "Fine. Well when you’re working for the ‘Daily Raccoon" in Dawson County, Kansas there isn’t much to write about."

"You mean writing about shucking corn wasn’t exhilarating." Leigh teased.

"Very funny…but no. I wanted more. So I headed to Chicago and left everything behind." Leigh momentarily wondered what she left behind. There was a trace of sadness in her voice. Family? A lost love maybe?

Erin stretched her legs out in front of here and noticed how they were no wear as long as Leigh’s. "My first job was working for the ‘The Post.’

"Impressive…coming straight from a small time paper Kansas."

"Yeah, but I was a gofer…can you believe that?"

"You taking orders from someone…no" Leigh poured herself another glass of wine. Erin motioned for her to fill hers as well.

"Well a couple of weeks after I worked there, there was a robbery. A priceless sculpture had been stolen from the home of one of the Chicago’s richest families, Danfeilds. A writer at the paper needed help doing research for an article. "

"So basically you would be doing all the work, someone else’s name would be on the article."

"Exactly. Basically the cops didn’t have any leads, and I found out that the sculpture was insured for 20 million dollars. Then a couple days later Deerfield industries filed for bankruptcy. I had this funny feeling. So I got to thinking what if they stole their own sculpture for the insurance money. A crazy idea…but I felt it was worth looking into. I was familiar with the case from research. So I went back over the files. And the more and more I looked…the less and less it looked like a robbery." Erin smiled slightly as she thought about all the late nights she had put in at the paper going through police reports, insurance claims, and newspaper articles about the financial status of the Deerfield family.

"I went to my supervisor, then to the cops and nobody believed me. I went to Prenhall and Winemen and they did. When it was all over Deerfield went to prison for fraud, and I had a commission check and a job from P&W. "

"So you’re the one that brought down Daniel Deerfield?"

"Afraid so."

"Good riddance…I didn’t like him anyway. He tried to proposition me once in exchange for business favors…"

"Really? What did you do?’

"Let’s just say that I had more than a helping hand in his business going bankrupt." Leigh winked. "So you became a millionaire overnight?"

"Jealous?" Erin smiled, and Leigh noticed how her noise wrinkled slightly.

"I once made a 20 million dollars in one hour…when you’ve beat that I’ll be jealous Ms. Bradshaw."

"You can call me Erin. Every time someone calls me Ms. Bradshaw an image of my mother pops up in my head."

"Only if you agree to call me Leigh instead of Leigh Sinclaire. Every time I hear someone call my whole name…I feel like I’m about to be sent to detention or something."

"Fine then Leigh, it’s a deal."

"Great Erin." Leigh looked at her with a question in her blue eyes. "You know we could have taken care of the whole name thing when I picked you up this afternoon."

"I guess we could have…but I was trying to keep things formal. You are a suspect in a major jewelry heist and I’m helping the police to catch you."

"Things aren’t formal anymore?"

"Take a look around you. " She motioned with her hands. "Plus you don’t have any shoes on. Things are far from formal." They both laughed and slowly their giggles subsided.

And though, she wouldn’t admit to the woman sitting across from her, she was enjoying the informality of their "meeting." Leigh Sinclaire was good company.

There was a silence. It seemed that they both realized that the other was watching the sunset. It was beautiful with a glorious lavender with flecks of orange. Erin broke the silence first. "I must say I was really impressed with your schooling. Double majored in finance and computer engineering in college…" Erin glanced over at Leigh, who looked bored. "Is something wrong?"

"Erin do you really want to talk about this stuff?"

"I was just trying to make conversation."

"You paid $50,000 dollars to be in my company for an evening. Do you really wanna talk about stuff you already know? Let’s be honest you’ve done enough research about me that you could probably win a Leigh Sinclaire Trivia contest. What is it that you really want to know about me? You said it yourself…this setting is far from formal." Leigh reached into the basket and pulled out a small bowl of strawberries and a jar of honey. "Desert?"

Erin looked at her for a long moment. True, she didn’t want to talk about Leigh’s accomplishments. It wasn’t that she didn’t find them intriguing and impressive, it was something everyone knew about her.

"Why are we here?" She finally asked.

"You paid for me." Leigh answered matter of factly.

"I know that but, if you wanted to you could have found a loophole. Why all this, when you know that I want to prove that you’re are a jewel thief. And don’t give that bullshit line again about how you don’t like to delegate."

"For the chase of course." She answered with a grin. "How could I possibly not play in this game of cat and mouse that you’ve set forth for me?"

"I should have known." Erin nodded. "But why bother if you’re innocent?"

Leigh licked her lips and her expression became thoughtful. "Because you don’t think I am…and that my new friend is reason enough."

A little while later, Leigh’s limo pulled up in front of Erin’s apartment building. Leigh got out first and Erin followed. The night air had grown cool. Erin shivered lightly as she pulled her jacket tighter around her. Leigh leaned against the car and glanced over at the cops who had been tailing them all evening. She waved playfully at them and then turned to Erin.

"See I got you home in one piece. Tell Dumb and Dumber I’m not such a bad gal after all." She looked at Erin accusingly.

"What is it now?"

"Exactly what did you tell Detective McNeil about me anyway? I mean they act like I’m going to split town at any moment."

"Nothing except that I think you’re a…"

"Highly capability individual." The both said in unison and bringing smile to both of their faces. Leigh arched an eyebrow. "Don’t tell me that’s going to be my downfall in all of this."

"I seriously doubt it." Erin said before turning towards the apartment building. ‘"I had a nice time by the way." She called over her shoulder.

"Wait just a minute, we’re not finished." Leigh called after her without moving away from the car.

"Excuse me?" Erin turned around.

"You’ve concocted this whole theory about how I stole the Rhine Ruby. And as entertaining as if was, you’ve neglected to tell me one thing." Leigh pointed a long slender finger at Erin and motioned for her to come closer.

"And exactly what did I neglect to tell you."

"Your theory of why I would do it."

"Ahhhh yes." She then walked back over to the car. "You want me to tell you your motivation." She said in an exaggerated theatrical voice.

Leigh chuckled lightly. "Yeah I would". She folded her arms across her chest.

"For the hell of it." She said simply

"I stole a 50 million dollar ruby for the hell of it?"

"Since its stolen and very rare…you can’t show it or sell it without being caught. So I thought to myself, why would she do it. She’s rich…then I thought…what if she was bored…"

Bingo...give the cute blonde a cigar. "Seems like an awful lot to go through for simple boredom."

"Maybe not. Perhaps being a successful businesswoman wasn’t as exciting as it used to be. And it wasn’t like you hadn’t tried every possible dare devil endeavor you could find. You needed a new and different rush. I mean if I had pulled off the perfect crime and no one knew but me, I would be floating on cloud nine."

Leigh smiled and Erin knew then that she agreed with her. "Sometimes the best accomplishment is the one known only to yourself. Intriguing" She opened her limo door and got in the car. Erin watched the window roll down slowly, revealing a pair azure eyes, before the rest of Leigh’s face. "But not enough to convict I’m afraid." Then she paused and studied Erin for a moment with her head slightly cocked to the side. Slowly a knowing grin erupted on her full lips. "But this isn’t about a conviction is it? Or even making sure the ruby is returned."

"Why do you say that?"

"I don’t know. It just seems like you’re more interested in just catching me with my hand in the cookie jar."

"And I will catch you Leigh Sinclaire."

"I have no doubt you’ll try. Like I said earlier I’m done my research and you’re good, but I must warn you. I’m better…". On that note the window rolled up and limo pulled off.

Erin pulled her jacket tighter around her. "We’ll see about that."

 Part II

If you liked it, if you hated it, or if you just want to send email about it: fire_ice82@hotmail.com