Running Scared (24 page)

Risa didn’t like admitting it, but it made too much sense for her to deny. “I guess so. I hadn’t actually seen her in several years. We kept in touch by phone.”

The gold pen hesitated. “You have her number?”

“She moved around too much. She’d call me collect.”

“From a pay phone, no doubt.”

Risa shrugged. “I didn’t ask. The last time we talked, it sounded like a cell phone.”

“Moving up in the world.”

She thought of Cherelle’s clothes when they first met and said nothing. If that had been moving up, her friend had been a long way down.

“She didn’t call anyone the whole time she was in your room,” Shane added. “At least, not from your phone.”

“You checked?” Risa asked, irritated.

“Everything on this room comes out of the comp account.”

“Since when?”

The gold pen vanished back into his pocket with startling speed. “Since your friend put about ten grand on the tab.”

Risa’s jaw dropped.

He pulled out his pocket unit and keyed in a file number. Silently he handed the unit to her. The list of charges Cherelle had put against the room was startling.

And long.

“I’ll pay you back,” Risa said grimly.

“No.”

“Yes. It’s—”

“Not worth arguing about,” he cut in. “I have a standing reward of ten thousand dollars for information leading to the purchase of museum-quality artifacts. As far as I’m concerned, Cherelle collected it. Or are you going to argue that she had nothing to do with the Celtic gold we bought and it’s all a beaut of a coincidence?”

Out of habit, Risa started to argue, then stopped herself. “I’d like to, but even fuzzy feelings from childhood can’t make that one fly.” She scrolled quickly through the list of purchases and handed the unit back to him. “Well, now we know why the camera didn’t see her leaving the room before Bozo got here.”

Shane hadn’t kept track of Cherelle’s charges for today. He gave the list one fast look, took the unit back, and flipped it into communicate mode. Before he was finished talking, fifteen people were scanning stored camera data, looking for a hefty woman with short brown hair, baggy jeans, and a blue nylon wind shell.

“Tell them she’s probably dragging a black rolling suitcase,” Risa added. “Mine. It’s not in the closet.”

Shane added the information and disconnected. When he turned around, Risa was digging through the heap of clothes in the center of the room. At the bottom were two ratty suitcases.

“Cherelle’s?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He went to Risa, took one of the suitcases, and began feeling the seams with a gambler’s sensitive fingertips. All he found was old grime and a new rip. It was the same for the second suitcase. He glanced over to Risa. She was sorting through the mound of clothes on the floor with the swift, confident motions that had always fascinated him. That kind of cool precision was unexpected in a woman who looked—and was—as lushly sensual as Risa Sheridan.

“Are all the clothes on the floor yours?” he asked.

“So far,” Risa said.

“No notes in lipstick on the bathroom mirror?”

She snorted. “Cherelle wouldn’t waste good makeup.”

“No notes on the grocery list in the kitchen?”

She gave him a startled look.

He smiled. “No, I haven’t been snooping. Most people have a list going somewhere in the house. Kitchen, usually.”

“No note.”

“How about the list?”

A smile flickered over her face. “It’s there. Every word in my handwriting.”

She picked up a robe and shook it out with a hard snap that sent a crumpled piece of paper shooting out of the folds toward Shane. He snatched the paper out of the air with a lightning motion, smoothed out the page, and began reading silently.

“I didn’t know you were into the vortex thing,” he said, looking toward her.

“What vortex thing?”

“You know. Red-rock country and holding hands at the solstice. Talking to the dead through a channel or having the dead talk to you. Expanding your psychic—”

“Bullshit,” she muttered, then froze, trying to remember something Bozo had said. Not red-rock country, but something like it.

“—powers,” Shane finished. He turned over the colorful page, which had apparently been torn from some kind of pamphlet. “Well, well. She was doing the Sedona channeling scam.”

Risa looked up. “What?”

“Cherelle. Or should I say Lady Faulkner?”

“In Sedona?” Risa stood up.

“Looks like it. ‘Lady Faulkner will be your guide in all matters Druidic. Speak with King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, and the Master Druid, Merlin himself. Through Lady Faulkner you will know the most intimate practices of the ancient and powerful—‘ “

Risa snatched the paper from Shane’s hand, scanned rapidly, and grimaced. “So that’s what Bozo meant.”

“What?”

“He said something about the gold she got in Sedona from an old geezer.” Risa glanced up and found his eyes intent on her. “There’s more Celtic gold out there somewhere.”

“You didn’t mention that to Detective Wilson.”

“I was tired of his questions.” And she hadn’t wanted to implicate Shane in trafficking in hot gold artifacts. “You know they’re stolen, don’t you?”

Shane smiled. “Never doubted it. Question is, how long ago?”

“Not long enough,” she said succinctly.

“No. Not long enough.”

“You sound quite certain.”

“Factoid hasn’t found even a whisper of them on anybody’s hot sheet. Not Interpol, not Scotland Yard, not the stolen archaeological treasure data bases, not museum thefts, not private collectors—not one damn thing. If those gold objects ever existed in any public record, we can’t prove it.”

“Well, hell,” she said. “If Rarities’ top researcher can’t find anything, it’s not there to be found. Which leaves us with a problem.”

“No, it leaves
me
with a problem.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re fired.”

Los Angeles

November 3

Early evening

S.
K. Niall sat
in his Rarities office and gave the view screens on the far wall a quick, comprehensive glance. Dana stood next to him, her hand on his shoulder, kneading his muscles with the absentminded sensuality of a cat. He didn’t take it personally. Yet. That would come later, when they ate dinner at his cottage on Rarities Unlimited’s parklike grounds. The riots of color he managed to achieve in his November gardens were quite beautiful by moonlight. So were the lights of L.A. spread out below. From his bed they were incredible.

And so was Dana.

“I thought that damned meeting would never end,” Dana said. “Some people just don’t understand that they’re paying for an expert opinion, not an advertisement for their goods. Did Risa call back?”

“No. Want me to call her before we leave?”

Dana sighed, stretched, and began tracing the strong lines of Niall’s neck with delicate fingertips. “If it can wait until morning . . .”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“Big surprise. You’re always thinking of sex.”

His smile was quick and primitive as a love bite. “That’s one of the things you like best about me.”

She laughed as he lifted her over the arm of the chair and onto his lap. “Not again! One of these days we’ll get caught.”

“Promises, promises.” But he kept his hands out of the danger zones while he gave the security screens a final scan. “Looks good. All buttoned up for the night except for number-two clean room.”

Dana focused on the screen displaying the clean room that was still in use. Lawe Donovan, a part-time consultant with Rarities Unlimited, was checking out the emeralds in an early-Renaissance reliquary a dealer was hoping to sell. Ian Lapstrake was with him. They had formed a kind of rough-and-tumble friendship, probably because Lawe was missing his twin Justin, who at last communication was somewhere in Madagascar. The harsh illumination of the room turned Lawe’s hair from chestnut to gold and Ian’s black hair into a shiny kind of midnight.

“Like a study in darkness and light,” Dana murmured. “Beautiful in a masculine way.”

“Quit drooling. You’ll wound my manly feelings.”

“It would take a fifty-caliber round to wound your manly feelings.”

“Which is the second thing you like about me,” he retorted. “I don’t fold up at the first sign of your royal displeasure.”

“Then I’ll try my temper on Lawe. I’m ready to lock up and go home.”

“Go ahead. I’ll—”

“With you,” she cut in.

He glanced at her dark eyes. Their lazy, sultry gleam told him all he needed to know. Like him, she viewed their earlier play as a snack—and she was ready for a full meal. He lifted her to her feet and activated the audio for the third clean room.

“How’s it going, boyo?” he asked.

Lawe didn’t look up. At Rarities he had become accustomed to ceilings speaking to him without warning. “Depends on which outcome you prefer.”

“Happy clients are always good,” Dana said.

“Then it’s going badly.”

Dana tilted her head and studied the screen. “Why?”

“I’m ninety-nine percent sure that two of the emeralds are laboratory gems that have been stressed to reproduce the kind of fracturing that is common in natural emeralds. I can’t be a hundred percent certain without removing a stone and sacrificing a tiny bit of it for testing.”

“But the emeralds are fake?” she asked.

“Technically they’re quite real. Just man-made. Very nice color. Perfect for this kind of primitive cabochon setting and quite in line with early usage of gems, when stones were chosen for their depth of color rather than their brilliance.”

“Could they be replacements of earlier stones that were lost?” Dana asked.

“Could be. But I suspect at least some of the gold is a modern eighteen-karat alloy,” Lawe continued, pushing back from the table. “It just doesn’t have the feel of some of the old gold I’ve handled. If I’m right, at best you have a heavily repaired object. At worst a fraud. I’m not a gold expert, so I can only suggest that you do more tests.”

Dana looked at her thin platinum watch. “Tomorrow.”

“He has a ten a.m. flight to Seattle,” Ian said.

“We don’t need Lawe for lab tests,” Dana said. “Write up your preliminary report. If the client wants more tests on the emeralds themselves, we’ll take care of it.”

“It’s a lovely piece,” Lawe said.

“It’s a joker,” Ian said.

“So it’s a lovely joker.”

“Why would anyone put all that work and expensive raw materials into making a fake?” Ian asked, shaking his head.

“Because there aren’t any modern churches, kings, czars, or emperors who pay artisans to create gorgeous dust-catchers,” Lawe said. “But museums and collectors will pay high dollar for history with crowd appeal. So you create the history and get very well paid at the same time.” Lawe ran sensitive fingertips over the piece. “Either of my sisters would love this.”

“We’ll offer that fact to our client as a consolation prize,” Dana said. “Good night, gentlemen.”

“I believe that’s a hint,” Ian said, standing and stretching.

“Ya think?” Lawe asked, nudging the other man toward the door. “C’mon. You owe me a beer.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“You bet a beer that Factoid wouldn’t try the chocolate syrup thing twice on Gretchen.”

“So?” Ian asked.

“So she came back from lunch with a chocolate smear on her majestic cleavage.”

“That doesn’t prove that—”

Niall hit the audio switch. “Let’s go before something—”

His phone rang. One of his very personal numbers. The one very few people had. “Bloody hell.”

“Amen,” Dana muttered.

Niall checked the caller number, said “Tannahill” to Dana, and put the call on the speakerphone. “Niall here. What’s wrong?”

“Risa was attacked by a thug who thinks she has more Celtic gold artifacts like the ones I sent you.”

“Is she all right?” Dana and Niall asked simultaneously.

“Hello, Dana,” Shane said. “Risa outsmarted the guy, so she wasn’t hurt. Her apartment in the Golden Fleece was trashed and slashed.”

“Who did it?” Niall asked.

“Don’t know yet. The cops took a good photo off the camera data, and his fingerprints are all over the apartment, so we should have an ID pretty quick. I need Lapstrake here by tomorrow morning to help me persuade an artifact trader to tell the truth about where he got the goods.”

“He’ll be there,” Dana said. “He can protect Risa, too.”

“He’ll get real bored on the job,” Shane said.

“Why?”

“I fired her after her attacker got away.”

“You—” Niall began.

“I want her out of the game,” Shane said, talking over Niall. “One of her childhood friends is in this up to her dirty neck, and there are more gold artifacts floating around out there. Until they’re all accounted for, things could get lethal.”

Dana and Niall exchanged looks. Now they knew why Risa had called.

“I’ll be at Rarities by six a.m.,” Shane continued. “I’d appreciate a preliminary report on those four pieces. The gold is coming back to Vegas with me.”

“No need. Lapstrake will fly out with the artifacts and the preliminary report.” Dana paused. Her fingers moved fluidly on the cool desktop, as though playing notes on an imaginary flute. “Do you think Risa’s attacker will be back?”

“Doubt it.”

“Then why did you fire her?” Dana asked quietly.

“I told you. I want her safe, and the only way to keep her safe is to get her off the playing field.”

“What about your big New Year’s show?” Niall asked.

“What about it?”

“Who will be your curator?”

“I’ll worry about it later. Right now all I care about is keeping Risa from getting shot.”

“Ian can do that very efficiently, and we still would have the benefit of her expertise in tracking down the rest of the gold artifacts,” Dana said. “If her childhood friend does indeed have a part in—”

“No.” Shane overrode Dana. “I want Risa out of it. I’ll expect Lapstrake at the casino by seven a.m.”

There was the clear sound of a disconnect.

Niall made a grumbling sound. “Well, I’d better start checking out job possibilities for Risa. I’m sure he gave her a nice severance package, and I’m equally sure she told him to shove it up his arse.”

“Men,” Dana muttered. “What on earth possesses them to make decisions for fully capable women?”

Her partner ignored her. He’d heard her view on the male of the species before. Most of the time he was exempt. But not always.

It made life interesting.

“Well,” Dana said, “looks like Rarities will soon have a full-time consultant on ancient jewelry and Celtic gold artifacts.”

Niall shot her a look from amused blue-green eyes. “You’re putting her back on the Celtic gold?”

“Of course. Our motto is ‘Buy, Sell, Appraise, Protect.’ We exist for the artifacts, not for the clients. Someone out there has some extraordinary pieces of human history and art hidden away. We’re going to find them and return them to their rightful guardian. Risa is our best hope of doing it before some brainless piece of shit melts down the gold and crawls back into the sewers to hide.”

“Shane will be pissed off when he finds Risa back in the game.”

Dana smiled like a cat. “Yes, I rather think he will. It will do him good to be reminded just what money can and cannot buy.”

“What about the danger to Risa?”

Dana gave Niall the kind of look that said he was no longer exempt from her jaundiced view of men. “Did she ask to be packed in cotton and put on a high, safe shelf?”

He had the losing end of this argument and knew it. “Let’s get out of here before the phone—”

It was already ringing. Swearing, he hit the ID button. “It’s Risa.”

“I’ll take it,” Dana said, nudging him aside with a well-rounded hip so that she could reach the speaker button “Hello, Risa. Dana here. How would you like to go to work for Rarities full-time?”

“Took the words right out of my mouth. I’ll pack tonight and be there tomorrow morning.”

“No need to relocate yet.”

“I’d rather, if it’s all the same to you.”

“It isn’t.”

Niall winced. Dana could be tactful when she wanted to be. This wasn’t one of those times.

“Okay,” Risa said. “Where do you want me?”

“Stay where you are until Ian Lapstrake gets there. Remember him?”

“Tall, dark, moves well, smarter than he lets on.”

“You remember him.” Dana smiled slightly, knowing that Shane wouldn’t like having Ian underfoot with Risa around. “He’s your bodyguard until—”

“I don’t need one,” Risa interrupted.

“If you work for Rarities, you take orders from Dana and me,” Niall said. “We say you need a bodyguard. Subject closed.”

There was a pause. “Right. I need a bodyguard. Like hell, but I promise not to kill him. Then what?”

Dana’s smile was like a stiletto sliding out of a sheath, thin and deadly. “Then you find your childhood friend and get the rest of the Druid gold.”