Hatshepsut's Collar (The Artifact Hunters #2) (43 page)

Quarry: 1. n a place, typically a large pit, from which stone may be extracted. 2. n a person being chased or sought.

ain, sun, or hurricane, Watchers stood guard, eyes always open, and ears forever listening. He never moved from his position with claws curled around the building parapet. He didn’t mind the rain so much; at least it washed away the excrement left by perching birds. Down below, his favorite show pulled into the car park and his eyes tracked the sweet piece of booty that emerged from the Maserati. He’d watched her for the last five years, ever since the spring day she moved into the apartment building. She arrived as a twenty-one year old graduate, embarking on her career. Back then, she dressed like a flirty Audrey Hepburn, with capris and white cotton shirts. As her career and confidence grew, she morphed into a sexed up Rita Hayworth with tight wiggle skirts and seamed stockings.

As the years passed, suspicion nagged at him. He noticed little things, like when she pinched the bridge of her nose, fending off a headache. Or when a person crossed her path, and she shook her head, as though clearing double vision. Other days, she focused her gaze on empty space, seeing something invisible to those around her.

Under his watch, Jema Johnson blossomed into the courtroom diva. She earned her rep not because of her antics, but because she looked like a 1940s pin-up. While her opponents wiped drool off their briefs, she wiped the courtroom floor with them. She had the most impressive win ratio of any city defense attorney. Keeping his ears open through the network, rumors circulated that she possessed a sixth sense, capable of discerning which clients told the truth, and who lied through their teeth.

Rumors piled on top of suspicions, making a heap too large to ignore. Connecting his mind to the network, he passed his intel about the pinup girl higher up the food chain, to Jacob Deacon, head Warden in the city.

He was about to shut down his mind for a well-deserved time out when he received manna from heaven. As she pulled files from the back of her car, something small hit the ground.

Oh yeah, baby, you dropped something. Bend over and pick it up.

he tiny flash drive made a soft thud as it slid from the file and hit the concrete. JJ swore under her breath and clutching the numerous files to her chest before bending at the waist to retrieve the drive. A shiver ran down her spine as though some pervert gawked at her arse. Straightening, she turned, and her gaze roamed over the high walls enclosing the car park.

Nothing. No one. Weird.

Shaking off her unease, she locked the car and headed to the back entrance of the apartment block. Built in the 1920s with the clean, simple lines of the art deco movement, the red brick was highlighted with bold cream lines. The only blemish on the grand dame was the thing the architect had for gargoyles. They were plastered all over the building: crawling up drainpipes, clinging to stone parapets, even invading the foyer and hallways.

No wonder I think I’m being watched. Those beady, little eyes are everywhere.

Wrangling the files, her handbag, a shopping tote, and her keys, she managed to make it through the door of her second floor apartment without dropping anything. She hit the light switch with her shoulder and dumped her armload on the large table around the corner in the study nook.

She took a deep breath and let calm wash through her bones. The apartment came courtesy of her first clients. Distant relatives wanted to shove the dying woman in a hospice, separate her from her soul mate, and take control of her fortune. JJ fought, and won, for Marta’s right to die on her own terms. Marta died in her home, along with her devoted nurse and lover, Lily. Cancer took one, a bottle of pills the other.

Her friends thought her mad, living in the apartment where two people died, but JJ sensed only deep love emitted by the previous occupants and absorbed into the very walls. Lily cared for Marta until the end, telling her every day she was beautiful, long after the chemo took her hair and the cancer wasted her frame. Then Lily swallowed the pills, phoned the doctor, and lay down to join Marta in eternal sleep. Marta left the apartment to JJ, along with a trust of sufficient size to fund her fledgling practice. Lily bequeathed her Maserati.

Every day, JJ thanked the women who gave her the freedom to follow her own course, and an apartment that sheltered her from the chaos and noise of the city.

She toed off her high heels, padded in her stockings to the kitchen, and dropped the tote on the bench. Reaching into the bag, she pulled out a bottle of Pinot Noir and then twisted off the screw cap.

She poured the deep, burgundy liquid into a large glass. Another Friday night with her files, laptop, and a yellow legal pad for company. Not that JJ minded. Taking underdog cases wouldn’t make her rich, but it eased something in her soul. She levelled the playing field in a city where the justice you received depended on the lawyers you could afford. The downside meant she spent evenings plotting strategies and combing through evidence reports, looking for hairline fractures she could rupture.

Her current case, Mandy Simpson, had unfortunate taste in men and picked one that liked to use her as a punching bag. Until one night when Mandy’s scrabbling fingers curled around something while he tried to cave her face in, and she struck back. She plunged a kitchen knife up into his gut and, by sheer fluke, pierced his heart. The abuser’s powerful father threw all his weight, and fortune, behind having the shattered woman tried for murder.

The prosecution’s case hinged on painting Mandy as a knife-wielding, ninja assassin intent on killing the heir of the most powerful man in the city. JJ argued self-defense. One glance at the stack of police reports for the domestic call outs, and JJ knew she championed the right side. The haunted look in the other woman’s eyes confirmed her decision and hardened her resolve.

A few hours later, and a rough outline for the case took form on her legal pad. The wine glass sat empty when her phone gave a cricket shrill. She glanced at the screen before answering.

“What have you done, Ariel?”

Laughter and music garbled over the line before the voice answered. “Grab a pen, I’m giving you an address, it’s a rescue mission.”

JJ sighed, and listened to the slurred vowels, while she scribbled down her whereabouts. Ariel, her best friend for fifteen years, had been dumped by yet another schmuck and sought escape in the bottom of a bottle. This little mermaid chose to swim in a tequila ocean to ease her pain. JJ had to rescue Ariel before she threw herself at another warm body who would break her heart in record time.

She frowned at the address, recognizing the area, but not the club. “Give me twenty minutes.”

“I’ll be here.” With a shriek, the line went dead.

“Just great,” JJ muttered, casting a longing look at the half-full bottle of red and the stack of work. Midnight, but she had only scratched the surface of what she wanted to achieve before Monday. Tossing the phone in her bag, she slid her feet back into the heels and picked up the car keys. Her life revolved around rescuing lost souls. Except tonight, there was no chauvinistic prosecutor to humiliate and no jury of twelve people too stupid to escape the call up notice, to bedazzle. Tonight, she had to haul her drunken friend’s backside out of some club before she climbed into the wrong car with the wrong guy and became another unfortunate statistic.