Running Scared (4 page)

“Status usually is.”

He gave Risa an amused, approving look. Her combination of pragmatism and razor intelligence interested him as much as anything else about her, including her lush body.

And that worried him. Affairs weren’t based on intelligence and pragmatism. They were fast, greedy, and hot. Anything where intelligence crept in was a relationship.

Bad idea.

He wasn’t any good at relationships. The only ones he had were with family, and they could best be described as mutual combat in his father’s case, mutual sadness in his mother’s case, and mutual frustration all around.

If only you would try, you and your father could get along. Just try, Shane. Try. Please. For me.

His mother’s often-repeated plea echoed like an unhappy ghost through Shane’s memories. He ignored it with the ease of a lifetime’s practice. Not even for his mother would he put up with his father’s corrosive arrogance. End of argument. End of family life.

Beginning of Shane’s true education.

There was nothing like being broke on the streets to teach a man all the things he hadn’t learned while getting a master’s degree in business at Stanford University.

“As for age,” Risa continued, running her fingertips lightly along the cool, ancient gold, “I know of at least one torc that is similar in execution and style to this. It came from Marne, France, and dates back to the fourth century b.c.”

“Provisional estimate of worth?” Dana asked.

“With good—very good—provenance, I would start asking at three hundred thousand dollars and hope to make considerably more. Up to five hundred thousand. Maybe even higher. Depends on whether it’s a public auction, which tends to drive up prices just by the competitive nature of collectors, or a private sale to an interested individual.”

“Is it for sale?” Shane asked bluntly.

“Yes.” Dana said.

“May I?” he said, but he was already holding out his hand in silent demand.

Risa gave him the torc.

For a moment he simply closed his eyes and absorbed the weight, texture, and feel of the ancient jewelry. He couldn’t have said why he approached collecting gold artifacts this way; he knew only that he always had. No matter how spectacular a piece might appear, if it didn’t feel right, he didn’t buy it.

When his eyes opened they were the clear, bottomless green of imperial jade. And he was looking at Risa,
into
her.

The hair at the nape of her neck prickled. She turned away from him so quickly she nearly stumbled. “Tell your client that, subject to verification of provenance, he has an offer of three hundred—”

“Four,” Shane interrupted curtly.

“Four hundred thousand dollars,” she said between her teeth. “If he is uneasy that I would be both appraiser and acquirer, Tannahill Inc. will pay for a neutral appraisal.”

“Right,” Dana said. Mentally she toted up the commission to Rarities and smiled. “He won’t kick. He requested you by name.”

“Probably because he wanted Shane’s attention,” Risa said with faint bitterness. On her own she wasn’t well known enough to attract artifacts of the quality Shane was holding now.

“Doubtless,” Dana agreed. “Anyone with a fine gold artifact to sell anywhere in the world has heard of Shane Tannahill and the Golden Fleece.”

“It certainly makes my life interesting,” Risa muttered.

“Buying all that lovely stuff, eh?” Niall asked.

“No. Dealing with all the ‘lovely stuff’ that elbows its way out of the world’s sewers holding gold in both fists.”

Sedona

Halloween night

T
he book in Virgil’s lap
was heavy, scholarly, and filled with beautiful drawings and color photos of Celtic art. He didn’t need to look at the pages to know what was there. They filled his memory. The book was just one of many he had collected to educate himself about the nature of the gold artifacts that were packed in three World War II ammunition boxes under his bed. All of his past addresses were neatly stenciled on each box, a ritual recitation of all the places he had fled.

But no more. He finally understood that he couldn’t outrun the unthinkable.

He had chosen the spirit-infused Southwest for his last stand. He had hoped that putting the boxes of gold in the center of the three leaning stones he had found at the base of the nearby cliff would somehow . . . return the gold.

And free him.

When that plan had failed, he stuck the boxes under his bed and read books in hope of finding knowledge that would allow him to control whatever lived in the gold. That hadn’t worked either, but hope was as persistent as breath. And as necessary.

He had kept on reading and hoping to find the key that would set him free from the curse of Druid gold.

Once he had even tried to go back to the Welsh autumn, to the place where he had dug out the treasure more than half a century ago. Gold, sacred gold, three times three times three artifacts that were the core of Druid rituals—rituals where life ended and began again, where kings waited while Druids spoke to gods, where the very course of the sun and moon were assured. Beltane in May, when the time of warmth and hope returned to the land, and Samhain in November when the time of cold and desperation began once more.

Samhain, when what was real and what wasn’t flowed together and created an eerie whole.

It had been Samhain when he returned to Wales to find again the nine hills, six oak trees, three leaning stones, one tiny spring. He hadn’t taken a metal detector that second time. He wasn’t after gold. He was after absolution.

He hadn’t found it, nor the black spring in the center of the stones. The very place that he had discovered so easily in time of war eluded him in peace.

Defeated, still cursed, he had fled back to America. Here he remained, older and no wiser for all the books he had read. Nowhere in those books had he discovered anything to equal the twenty-seven objects he had found in the Druid grove. Nowhere in any of the modern fancies about white-robed Druids had he found anything to equal the power of the ancients whose minds had held the entire reality of a culture. Druids who cured the sick or made the healthy ill. Druids who talked with gods and held power greater than kings. Druids who knew no difference between themselves and a river or an oak or a stag; everything all of one piece, seamless, sacred.

And all that power was summed up and contained in the ritual artifacts he had stolen.

He was doomed.

Setting the book aside, he stared uneasily at the heavy gold torc whose circle of twisted gold chains gleamed coldly in the moonlight pouring through his open window. There was enough light to read by if you had young eyes, but not enough to bring out the red color in the huge rock faces that loomed just beyond his run-down little house.

Tourists paid big bucks to be hauled over the rugged land in pink jeeps or dusty open vans. He had never understood why. The sun was just as pretty lots of other places. The sky was just as blue. Yet visitors came here to Sedona to stand cheek by jowl with other visitors and shuffle along crowded vortex trails that already had been beaten hard by thousands of aging New Agers.

Virgil had even tried walking the vortex trails himself, back when he thought he could bleed off some of the bad luck that had hounded him since he went AWOL for a two-day trip to Wales. But no matter how many vortex sites he went to, no matter how hard he tried to open himself to that other reality, he always came back down the trail with the same old reality he had hauled up it in the first place.

In time he had discovered channeling. A one-hour session cost more than a trip to a fancy cathouse, but he hadn’t had much use for whores after he turned seventy-six. Besides, using a channel was a lot easier than clawing his way alone to the most remote and powerful vortex sites—the ones that weren’t listed in the flashy four-color pamphlets that sold for ten bucks apiece and weren’t worth the paper they were printed on. Using a channel was a lot easier on him than touching the damned gold itself and hearing hell beckoning in his own screams.

The clock’s hands stuttered and snapped together like the ends ofa fan.

Midnight. Halloween.

Samhain, when all boundaries blurred.

It had to be now.

After two tries he forced himself to grab the torc. His skin rippled violently as it tried to crawl away from the cold gold. He was certain he heard thunder way far off, hell and gone to Wales,
lightning pouring through his clenched hand, searing, burning, destroying . . .

The sound of his own screams shook Virgil out of whatever he had fallen into. Hell, as near as he could tell. He had seen it, touched it, and was terrified he would spend eternity with it.

“Can’t do it alone,” he said to the darkness. “Need the channel. Need her
now
.”

For a few minutes he put his head in his hands, pushed trembling fingers through thick white hair, and gathered his strength to face the darkness again.

At least Lady Faulkner would be with him this time.

The thought gave him enough courage to call the number he remembered even when he forgot other things. But not everything. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t forget the hell he would have sold his soul to forget.

If he still had a soul.

Motionless but for the tremor in his hands that never stopped these days, he waited for his channel to pick up the phone and answer questions about the state of his soul.

Camp Verde, Arizona

Halloween night

T
he telephone’s relentless
ringing finally dragged Cherelle Faulkner from a drugged sleep. Naked, she sat up and peered groggily through eyelashes clogged with mascara. Outside the window whose only curtain was dust, the motel’s faded neon sign blinked on and off, on and off, a slow heart beating in the darkness advertising rooms by the night or the week or the month.

The phone kept ringing.

She shoved her hands through the bleached length of her hair and kicked the man sleeping beside her. “Chrissake, Tim! Get the fucking phone!”

“Shit,” mumbled Tim Seton. “Listen to you. And here you’re always telling me to watch my mouth around the dumbs.”

“The only dumb in this bed is you, and we all know that assholes don’t have ears, so I don’t have to watch my fucking mouth, do I?”

Tim turned his beautiful profile away from her and fell back asleep.

The phone kept ringing.

With a hissing curse Cherelle clawed her way across Tim until she could see the Caller ID readout.

“Virgil,” she muttered. “Shit.”

Virgil O’Conner was one of their best dumbs—
clients
, she corrected herself silently. Paid cash. Up front. No hassle, no bouncing checks, no credit card trail. She wished they had fifty more like him. Hell, even five. With that and a little luck in Vegas, a girl could do as well as her childhood pal Risa already had.

Thinking of Risa made Cherelle slide back toward the good old days, when two smart Arkansas orphans had stuck it to the—

The phone was still ringing.

She shook off the last of her half-sleeping memories, pulled her vortex persona around her like invisible robes, and picked up the receiver. When she spoke, her voice was hushed and gentle.

“Good morning, Virgil. I sense that you’re having a difficult time.”

“Gotta see you.”

“Let me check my—”

“No,” he interrupted. “Now, Lady Faulkner. It’s gotta be now. While it’s still dark. That gold is killing me.”

She barely bit back the gutter words that were doing back flips on her tongue. “Gold, hmmm? Did you fall asleep over the pictures in one of your old books again?”

“Got things better than any damn book. You come quick. You’ll see.”

“Virgil . . .”
It’s the middle of the fucking night, you moron
. She clenched her jaw, swiped hair out of her eyes, and said carefully, “All right, I’ll come, but I’ll have to ask for double the usual fee. I’m sorry, but that’s the—”

“If you get here before dawn, I’ll give you four hundred,” he cut in.

“Cash?”

“Yeah.” It was all the money he had left, but he wasn’t worried. If this appointment didn’t do the trick, he didn’t think there would be any others. “But you gotta get here fast.”

Cherelle swallowed. “I’ll be with you before dawn. Peace and prosperity, Virgil.”

Before the client could answer, she dumped the phone in its cradle and shook her partner hard enough to make his blond-streaked hair fly. “Up and at ’em, pretty boy. Virgil has four big ol’ bills waiting for us.”

Tim opened one beautiful blue eye. “Who do we have to kill?”

“Ha, ha. You can’t even step on a cockroach. You have to have your jailhouse buddy do it for you.”

The other blue eye opened. He smiled like a china angel. “It gets done, don’t it?”

With a sound of disgust she dropped his shoulders and finished crawling over him to get out of bed. “Haul that sexy butt out of the sheets. We have to be at Virgil’s before dawn.”

“Socks won’t like it if we aren’t here when—”

“Socks can fuck himself.”

“Hey, you’re always down on my buddy.”

“I never went down on him, not even when he offered me a hundred.”

Snickering, Tim stretched. He liked jabbing at his lover. It was his way of getting even for not being half as smart as she was. Neither was Socks, for all his bragging. Next to Cherelle, they were both stupid. But that was okay.

Thinking was a pain in the ass.

So he left thinking to Cherelle unless it was more up his buddy’s alley, like fencing the occasional TV or DVD player. He didn’t tell Cherelle about that part of it. She would shit a brick if she knew Socks was burgling some of their clients. Not all of them. Hell, even
he
could figure out that would be stupid. Just a few of them when they left for the winter, the ones that had so many TVs they wouldn’t miss one or two.

Anyway, it was Cherelle’s fault. If she wasn’t so tight with cash, he wouldn’t have to moonlight with Socks. But she had a bug up her ass about saving enough money to get a place somewhere that nobody knew them and they wouldn’t have to be looking over their shoulder all the time. That took money, and that meant he was lucky to see a fifty from her once a week so that he could have a few beers with Socks and—

“Timothy Seton, get your ass out of that bed!”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” he said, but he made sure she didn’t hear. “I’m up, I’m up!” Then he looked down at his early-morning woody and laughed. “Sure enough, I am. How about it?”

She gave him a look that took the lead right out of his pencil.

Rather wistfully he glanced down at his deflating glory. Oh, well. There was more where that came from. And if she didn’t want it when it came around again, there were others that did.

Whistling, he headed for the shower that Cherelle had finally cleaned last week. About time, too. There had been enough crud on the floor to tickle his feet.