Midnight Jewels

right thing, taking the steps required to close his Circle or Ring or whatever he called it. He was no Aaron Sanders out to steal from an unsuspecting, trusting victim. Croft was on a three-year-old mission of vengeance.
    It would have been so much easier to deal with him if he were simply another Aaron Sanders, Mercy decided gloomily.
    There was no sound from either the main level of the house or the upstairs. Mercy breathed a sigh of relief as she stood for a moment on the first step that led down to the tropical garden pool room. When she was convinced no one heard her moving down the hall, she padded down the flight of steps. Fortunately the Dobermans weren't house dogs. They would be outside doing sentry duty.
    The glass doors to the darkened garden gave easily when she turned the handle. Mercy went through onto the little platform. The lights were still on in the pool, but the wealth of foliage was shrouded in complete darkness. There weren't even any windows to provide a modicum of starlight. There was only the eerie glow from the swimming pool. From her vantage point on the platform Mercy could see portions of the pool as it wound its way among the overhanging ferns and wide-leafed palms. The blue tinged light looked oddly unnatural.
    The scent of the thick greenery was strong. It seemed to overpower even the trace of chlorine that hung in the air. It was like looking into a night darkened jungle, and for the first time Mercy wondered how easy it would be to find her way through it to the room that held the vault. That afternoon it had been simple enough because of the ample lighting overhead and planted among the foliage. Tonight it would be a different matter.
    She didn't even know where the light switch was and wouldn't have dared use it even if she had been able to locate it.
    There was no time to waste. She had to go on the assumption that Croft had already found his way into the vault room. She wondered how he expected to open the vault itself. Mercy gathered her courage and her sense of direction and went down the steps into the night shrouded garden.
    She stumbled onto one of the delicate gravel paths more by luck than planning. Once on it she managed to follow it by feel. It wasn't all that difficult. When she accidentally tended to veer off she felt the gravel change to moist loam beneath her toes. A second or two later she stumbled into a palm frond or stumbled over a fern.
    It was strange how disorienting it was trying to walk through the elaborate garden in the darkness. She tried to use the faint glow of the pool to navigate but it wasn't very easy. There were several points along the way when the pool light was completely hidden by the heavy growth between the path and the water's edge.
    This was stupid, Mercy decided a few minutes after she had started. Progress was slow and somewhat painful. Gravel didn't provide the most comfortable path for bare feet. What if Croft hadn't gone into the vault room? she thought to ask herself with blunt disgust. This wretched jaunt could be a totally wasted trip. He might even now be merrily sifting through the contents of Gladstone's upstairs study.
    Stupid, crazy, ridiculous and potentially humiliating. When she found Croft she was going to give him a piece of her mind.
    She never even sensed the movement in the air behind her. When the large masculine hand slipped across her mouth and the arm went around her waist, Mercy didn't have so much as a split second's warning. One instant she was laboriously making her way through the overgrown garden; the next she was held prisoner against a man's body.
    Mercy wanted to scream and couldn't breathe a word. She wanted to struggle and found herself immobilized. When she made a furious effort to employ some of the more brutal tricks she had learned in the three-hour self-defense class she realized in horrified shock that it was totally useless. She went limp. It was the only action left to her.
    "You stupid little idiot. What the hell are you doing wandering around here in the middle of the night?" Croft's voice . was a furious breath of sound against her ear. He seemed to realize she couldn't answer him as long as he had his palm flattened across her mouth. Slowly he withdrew it. "Keep your voice down."
    Mercy gasped for air. "My God, you scared me to death. Don't you ever jump out at me from the bushes like that again. Do you hear me?"
    "Damn it to hell. You're supposed to be upstairs asleep."
    "I was asleep until