Running Scared (18 page)

Las Vegas

November 3

Late morning

S
mith-White didn’t look
like his name. Instead of being tall, thin, and distinguished, he was short, bald, and round as Santa. But there was nothing particularly jolly about his eyes. They were the kind of opaque gray that reminded people of old snow.

With barely concealed impatience, Risa waited for Smith-White to finally get down to business.

Knowing his guest’s tastes, Shane had sent for Turkish coffee and sweets. The fact that Smith-White was still smacking his lips and choosing among the fruit tarts and candied fruit slices told Risa that she would have to wait a little longer to see the gold. It also told her that Smith-White was toying with them because he had something really superior to sell.

That didn’t make waiting any easier.

Neither Shane nor Risa glanced at the locked spun-aluminum box Smith-White had set on the low table next to the coffee service.

The guard barely looked away from the box. Anything that was allowed into the upper reaches of the Golden Fleece without being searched made him unhappy.

“Lovely,” Smith-White said, blotting powdered sugar from his upper lip. “Your dessert chefs are simply the best outside of Manhattan. Probably inside, too.”

“I’ll be sure to pass along your pleasure,” Shane said. “More coffee?”

Risa wanted to kick him for offering.

Smith-White hesitated, realized that Shane wasn’t going to open the subject of business, and mentally gave the owner of the Golden Fleece high marks for his poker face. If Shane had anything more on his mind than a pleasant conversation with a visitor, it sure didn’t show anywhere, even in his body language. With a tiny sigh, Smith-White accepted that he would have to open the negotiations. Shane Tannahill could teach patience to a statue.

“Thank you,” Smith-White said. “I know that both of us have many demands on our time. It was gracious of you to see me on such short notice.”

Shane nodded pleasantly as he poured another dark, syrupy dollop of liquid into Smith-White’s dainty cup, which was too small even to be called a demitasse. When Shane finished, he reached for his own coffee. Rather than slamming it in one slurping swoop like a native, he took a bare taste of the thick, incredibly sweet Turkish coffee. Between caffeine and sugar, the stuff had a kick like a crazed camel.

Smith-White’s compact, well-manicured fingers caressed the aluminum box.

Shane took another sip of coffee.

Risa thought about the joys of homicide.

The guard shifted his suit coat slightly and watched the visitor’s hands. He sincerely hoped the prissy visitor didn’t have anything more than gold inside the box. It was real close quarters for any kind of gun work.

The sound of the four-dial lock being manipulated was quite loud in the silence. Smith-White was making long work of what should have been a familiar combination.

“Has the torc arrived yet?” Shane asked Risa in a lazy voice.

“I’ll check.”

She stood and walked over to her computer. The fact that Shane was watching her with eyes that were anything but lazy made her wish she had worn a head-to-heels burlap bag. Not that her slacks and jacket were tight—indeed, they were fashionably loose and unstructured—but he made her feel every bit of her ample female curves as though he had run his hands over her. Not for the first time, she wished she was thin and cat-sleek. But she wasn’t and never would be.

Get over it,
she told herself curtly.

She keyed in a familiar URL and waited.

“According to their tracking system,” she said, “the torc left the airport at ten thirty-six this morning and is on the way to us as I speak.”

“Good. Thank you.”

Something in the quality of his voice made her look at him. It was there in his eyes, too.

Heat.

Smith-White realized that his attempt to create suspense had failed. He cleared his throat and finished opening the lock with nimble fingers. Then he held the lid up so that he was the only one who could see inside.

And the guard, of course. Smith-White didn’t really notice him, because he wasn’t a buyer.

While Smith-White pulled on surgical gloves, the guard took a good look inside the box, then another one just to be sure. Finally he hitched a hip against one of the sturdy display cabinets and relaxed. If anything inside the guest’s aluminum box shot bullets, had a cutting edge, or exploded, he would eat a yard of plastic poker chips—no salt, no ketchup.

Risa settled into her chair and checked her nails for problems. Nothing ragged. Nothing torn. Nothing chipped. And if that dear man didn’t pull something more than his hand out of the aluminum box real quick, she was going to go right over the coffee table after him and ruin a perfectly good manicure ripping his smug face off.

“Here we go,” Smith-White said blandly. “A rather nice bit of jewelry, don’t you think?”

First impressions flooded through Risa as she looked at the circular, hand-size brooch resting in a shallow box lined with black velvet. Celtic, no doubt about it. Fine. A sun symbol shaped in gold to hold a chief’s or Druid’s robes. Probably fourth to seventh century a.d. Possibly Irish. Possibly Scots. Gold with red champlevé inlay repeating the sinuous lines etched in the metal itself. Apparently intact.

And she had never seen a gold brooch like it. Bronze, yes. Silver, yes. But never gold.

She looked at her boss. From Shane’s expression, Smith-White could have been holding out a tuna sandwich, no mayo.

Risa hoped that her poker face was half as good as Shane’s. It was all she could do not to snatch the pin from Smith-White and examine it more closely.

“May I?” Shane asked, holding out his hand.

“Of course. Would you like gloves?” Smith-White held out a pair. “Extra large, like your hands.”

“I’d prefer not to,” Shane said. “That’s why I collect gold. High-karat gold doesn’t tarnish with brief handling. But you know your gold. If this won’t take any contact with bare skin . . .”

Smith-White wasn’t about to say that he thought the gold was inferior. Nor was he going to remove his own gloves. Saying nothing, he dropped the spare gloves on the table.

“Would you like me to lift the brooch from the tray?” Smith-White asked evenly.

“Please,” Shane said.

With no wasted motions, Risa snapped on her own surgical gloves. The less the surface of the gold was contaminated by handling, the easier it would be to answer questions in the lab. And she had a feeling there were going to be lots of questions.

She only wished the answers would be what she wanted to hear.

With narrowed eyes she watched Smith-White pass the brooch over to her boss. She looked at Shane, not at the object itself. Though she couldn’t point to any single change that came over him when he held the brooch, she knew that he would buy it.

He glanced at her, saw that she understood, and didn’t know whether to be annoyed that she saw what no one else could or pleased because it saved time. He studied the brooch, turned it over with a deft motion of his hand, and passed the gold on to her.

Even through gloves, the feel of the gold was almost hot against her skin rather than cold. An odd whisper of sensation went up her arm. She hadn’t felt anything like it since Wales. She hadn’t wanted to feel anything like it ever again.

She pulled a jeweler’s loupe from her pocket and examined the brooch. At 10x magnification the integrity of the etched designs leaped into high relief. Curving, abstract in places, startlingly real when curves became bird heads and took flight in a series of diminishing inverted Vs. The spaces between repetitions of the central design flared bloodred with an enameling technique that hadn’t lost color or crispness to the passing centuries.

“I’d like better light,” she said after a moment. “And, Mr. Tannahill, my job will be easier if you wear gloves in the future.”

Only Risa saw the flicker of surprise on his face. She had never insisted before. Without a word he took the spare gloves Smith-White was holding out to him again.

“May I?” she asked Smith-White, gesturing toward her work area.

He waved his hand, giving her permission to examine the brooch under any light she wanted.

On one of her worktables there was a bright, full-spectrum light framing an oversized ten-power magnifying glass on a swing arm. She used it when she wanted to have her hands free for drawing or taking notes while examining an artifact. What she wanted now was the binocular 10x to 30x zoom microscope that was on the second table. She pulled over her rolling chair, positioned the brooch, adjusted the zoom . . . and felt time flowing over her in a soundless rush that stole her very breath.

An artist holding the brooch, dreaming the designs, incising the symbols in solid gold. Every stroke a prayer to the gods who ruled sky and lightning and sun-blaze, the burning wheel of life turning and returning, and man so small, so weak, so weary . . .

Risa blew out a breath, shook off the waking dream, and forced herself to concentrate on the here and now.

The artifact was handmade. Definitely. The irregularities were reassuring. They gave the piece a feeling of warmth where so much machine-made jewelry could be cold. The design was classically Celtic—a series of abstract, sinuous lines that “flowered” periodically into a three-part design that evoked bird heads. Throughout the circle of the brooch there were three such flowerings with three “leaves” each, and the second of each of the three leaves was intricately enameled in red glass. A zigzag of raised gold separated the enameled from the plain gold in a design that suggested both a wheel and an eye. The bird head on either side of the enameled design had a smaller version of the complex, three-part design cut into the metal itself.

The long, tapering pin was decorated with the same design. Somehow the artist had managed to adjust the design so that the proportions remained balanced along the narrowing length of the fastening itself, all the way down to a point that was still keen enough to penetrate cloth. The complexity was staggering, as was the skill. The ancient artist had had only his own eyes and prayers, yet a modern curator needed a microscope to appreciate his work.

The sound of Shane’s dainty Turkish coffee cup being returned to its equally dainty saucer told Risa that she had been quiet long enough.

“Yes,” she said blandly without looking up, “a rather nice bit of jewelry. It’s in excellent condition. Rather too excellent for my comfort. Most items that have been around since the sixth or seventh century a.d. show more wear. A lot more.”

“Not if they have been someone’s prized possession,” Smith-White said smoothly. “Think of the pope’s ritual items, sacred symbols in gold lovingly stored and passed from generation to generation, used only on occasions of highest ceremony.”

Then how did they end up in your hands?
Risa asked silently, sardonically. Doubtless Shane was thinking the same thing. Problem was, he didn’t care as much about provenance as she did.

Saying nothing, Risa took another long look at the brooch. She made sure when she finally swung the lamp away that she gave the security camera a good, unimpaired view of the piece. She had a mountain of research to do and damned little time to do it in.

She would have given a lot for the database at Rarities Unlimited.

Casually she turned the brooch over to give the camera a shot at the other side—also beautifully incised—before she picked up the gold and returned it to Smith-White.

He put the brooch in its velvet-lined tray, then left it on the coffee table for Shane to admire and, hopefully, desire enough to pay half a million dollars for. Minimum. Deliberately Smith-White refilled his tiny coffee cup and sip-sucked noisily in the approved Turkish manner until only the grittiest dregs remained in the cup.

The guard shifted to his other hip.

Risa waited and thought again about ruining her manicure on Smith-White. She glanced at her watch.

So did Shane.

Smith-White took the hint. He reached into the aluminum carrying case again.

“This is another nice bit,” he said. “It’s a votive offering presented to a very, very powerful Druid or made at his behest for an important religious ceremony. My guess would be winter solstice, when those poor shivering bastards prayed for the sun to return on its appointed rounds.”

He didn’t wait for Shane to ask for the object. He simply held out the stylized horse figurine in its velvet-lined tray. Shane picked up the figurine, then almost dropped it at the jolt of energy that sizzled through his hand.

“The weight of gold is always surprising, isn’t it?” Smith-White said with a satisfied smile.

Risa knew it was more than that. Shane had handled enough gold that its heft didn’t take him by surprise.

But something certainly had.

When Shane glanced from the horse to her, she knew he would be buying it along with the brooch.

Bloody hell, as Niall would say.

With rapidly failing patience, Risa waited for Shane to pass the object over for her to inspect. Instead of simply giving it to her, he slid one hand under hers before he put the object in her palm with the other. She didn’t know which shocked her more—the heat of his hand or the bolt of sensation that went through her when the horse met her palm. She did know one thing: if he hadn’t been bracing her hand, she would have dropped the priceless figurine.

A look at the infinite green of his eyes told her that he knew it, too.

“Thank you,” she said in a husky voice.

His smile said that it had been his pleasure.

Without a word she got up and stalked over to her worktable. She held on to the horse with both hands the whole way. The original burning sensation had subsided, but the tingling of her palm went clear to the back of her eyes.

It was Wales all over again.

Dizziness like dark lightning, the soundless cries of people long dead worshipping gods who had also died . . .

Ruthlessly she crushed the thought and the sense of time swirling around her in a silent storm. Letting out a breath, she focused the microscope on the horse.