Lost and Found (7 page)

“One good reason is that she has come up with something far more profitable to do with your helmet than return it to you. She told us that old armor was very, very hot in the antiques market, remember? Prices for the good pieces are going through the roof.”

“Uh-oh,” Notch said. “I think I’m beginning to get the picture here.”

“You sayin’ what I think you’re sayin’?” Dewey asked uneasily.

“She grew up in the art business,” Mack said. “She knows the players. If she has located your helmet, she could just as easily have located a new buyer for it, too. I have a hunch that she’s on her way to see the current owner to try to broker her own deal on the underground market.”

“You mean she’s gonna sell our helmet to someone
else instead of returning it to us?” Notch’s voice rose. “Like she’s supposed to?”

“I think that is a very real possibility,” Mack said.

“Got to hand it to her,” Dewey’s voice was laced with resignation and a tinge of reluctant admiration. “If she gets her hands on our helmet and sets up a deal that doesn’t include us or you, Mack, she could make herself a bundle. A lot more than you were gonna pay her, I bet.”

“Yes.” Mack tapped a key to bring up a new flight schedule. “A lot more. And she won’t have to deal with any middlemen or pay any auction house commissions and fees.”

“Guess I knew right from the start it was all too good to be true,” Notch said. “Dewey, you and me weren’t born to get rich quick, and that’s a fact.”

“It was sort of nice thinkin’ about what we could have done with the money, though,” Dewey said wistfully. “We had us some great plans for Military World.”

“Easy come, easy go,” Notch said philosophically.

“It hasn’t gone yet.” Mack took off his glasses and set them down on the table beside the keyboard. “Cady Briggs seems to have overlooked the fact that she’s still under contract with me.”

There was a short beat of startled silence on the other end.

“What are you gonna do, Mack?” Dewey asked.

“What do you think I’m going to do? I’m going after her.” Mack got to his feet. “I plan to remind her that she’s working for me and that Lost and Found is really big on the concept of employee loyalty.”

H
er hands were shaking. Cady stood in the night-darkened shadows of the dripping redwoods and tried to breathe from the bottom of her stomach. She could not take the pill she kept in the little case on the end of her key chain. It would dull her senses, and she needed all of them badly. The tendrils of fog that swirled around her were already doing a great job of blurring the situation.

It was the fog that had saved her a few minutes ago. The mist and the night had shielded her when the two men had walked past her hiding place.

So close. It had been so horrifyingly close. If she hadn’t heard them coming toward her, hadn’t followed her instincts and moved into the trees…

Don’t go there. You can dwell on the near miss later when you have your panic attack. Right now you have to think
.

She studied the illuminated windows of the small A-frame cabin. The two men had walked out of the front door a few minutes ago carrying bulky objects swathed in waterproof tarps. The lights inside the small structure had
revealed the ski masks that covered their faces. They had moved swiftly, depositing their burdens in the nondescript van parked in the drive. She had overheard their conversation when they returned to the house because they had passed within a few feet of where she stood.

They had been discussing the timing of the burglary.

“…It’s taking too long to load this stuff. We’ve gotta get out of here.”

“Take it easy. Another couple of trips and it’s over.”

“I don’t like this. I’ve got a bad feeling about this job.”

“You like the money, don’t you?”

Cady had called Ambrose Vandyke from the airport in San Jose. He had given her precise directions to the cabin. He had been cheerful and eager. There had been no hint of fear in his voice. The two men must have arrived sometime after he had hung up the phone, she thought.

She had walked into the middle of a burglary in progress. The only reason she had not
driven
into it was because she had found the gate at the foot of the narrow, twisted drive locked. She had tried calling Vandyke’s number on her cell phone, but there had been no answer. Unwilling to turn back after having come so far, she had pulled on her raincoat, gotten out of the car and made her way around the gate. She had noticed the van when she had emerged from the trees. The shrouded shapes in the back of the vehicle and the open door of the cabin had sent a chill of warning through her.

The logical thing to do was to retreat to a place where she could safely put in a call to 911 without risk of being overheard. But heaven only knew how long it would take for help to arrive in this remote location. Meanwhile, Ambrose Vandyke was in grave danger. She could not stand here and do nothing.

She wondered if creating a distraction would serve a useful purpose. Eyeing the van, she tried to think through the suffocating tide of fear.

The vehicle was parked at the top of the very steep drive. If she could get to it without being seen, release the parking brake and put the van in neutral…

She sensed the presence of someone coming up behind her a beat before he moved, but by then it was too late. One large hand closed around her mouth, silencing the scream before she could utter a sound. An arm wrapped around her waist, pinning her hard against a large, masculine body.

“Quiet.” Mack spoke directly into her ear as he hauled her deeper into the fog-bound redwoods. “Not a sound.”

She nodded frantically to show that she understood. Relief crashed through her, coming so swiftly on the heels of the heart-stopping fear that it was almost too much to bear.

Mack took his hand away from her mouth. She clutched his arm to maintain her balance, turned and stood on tiptoe to whisper her warning.

“Burglary. Two men, I think.”

“I saw them,” he said, just as softly.

“How did you—?”

“Never mind. Got to get you out of here.”

She shook her head quickly. “We can’t leave Vandyke alone with them. Who knows what they’ll do to him?”

“I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, go back to the car. Call 911 and get the hell away from here. Understood?”

“I was about to release the brake in the van so that it would roll down the hill with all of the stolen things. I thought that would bring them out of the house long enough for me to get inside, bolt the door and call the cops.”

“You’re assuming there’s a bolt on the door.”

“Everyone has a bolt. Mack, we’ve got to do something. They could be getting ready to murder Mr. Vandyke, even as we—”

“Okay, okay. Let me think.”

Mack studied the front door of the cabin and then switched his gaze to the van. She could almost see him mentally calculating distances and odds.

“Well?” she prodded.

“I think we’ll go with your idea to release the parking brake. But I’ll handle it. You stay here. Whatever you do, don’t show yourself. Got it?”

“Sure. Got it.”

“If anything goes wrong, run for it. Don’t think twice, just do it.”

She said nothing.

“Understood?” he asked with an edge.

“Right. Sure. Understood.”

The decision made, Mack did not hesitate any longer. He left her in the dripping darkness, gliding swiftly out into the open. She watched, her heart in her throat, as he circled around the van, keeping the vehicle between himself and the front door of the cabin. She prayed the fog would thicken to give him more cover.

When he disappeared on the far side of the van, she almost stopped breathing altogether. A few seconds later the vehicle started to move.

In eerie silence it lumbered slowly backward. A fresh wave of fear engulfed her. This wasn’t going to work if the two men didn’t realize that something had gone wrong outside the cabin.

The vehicle continued its strangely silent retreat down the incline into the fog. She looked for Mack in the empty space near the front of the cabin. There was no sign of him.

In desperation, she reached down to find a rock she could hurl through a window to get the burglars’ attention. Before she could toss it, however, one of the men appeared in the doorway. He stopped abruptly.

“Sonofabitch, Sandler. The
van
. You stupid bastard, you didn’t set the brake.”

The furious burglar burst through the doorway. He crossed the small deck and jumped the three steps to the ground. An instant later, he lurched violently as if he had tripped over an invisible object in his path. He stumbled and went down without making a sound. His body flopped out of sight in the darkness below the deck.

The second man loomed in the doorway. “What the hell—?”

He took a step forward and came to an abrupt halt. Unlike his partner, he did not drop like a stunned steer. He froze.

In the glow of the doorway, light glinted malevolently on the steel poised at his throat. Not a small pocketknife.

Cady sucked in her breath at the sight of the ancient sword. She realized that Mack must have found it in the back of the van.

Sandler was paralyzed by the blade. “What?”

“Drop the gun,” Mack said from behind him. “Do it now.”

“What?” the burglar said again, sounding bewildered.

“You’ve got three seconds.”

Sandler did not say “what” again. Apparently having grasped the enormity of the change that had taken place in the situation, he gingerly removed the weapon from his belt and stooped to set it down on the deck.

Mack shifted slightly, gliding around Sandler. He did not take the tip of the blade away from the man’s throat. When he got near the gun, he used the toe of one running shoe to nudge it out of reach.

“Cady,” he said loudly into the darkness. “Come here.”

She needed no second urging. She hurried out of the cover of the trees and rushed toward the open door.

“Pick up the gun.” Mack did not take his attention off Sandler. “Hand it to me.”

She scooped up the weapon without a word and gave it to him. He checked it swiftly with obvious expertise before
he lowered the sword point. Then he took a step back to the open door and glanced briefly into the interior of the cabin.

“You’d better see to your friend,” he said to Cady.

“Oh, lord, Mr. Vandyke.” She went to the doorway and peered inside. “Are you okay, Mr. Vandyke?”

“Over here.”

She whirled and saw a young angular man with dark brown hair sitting in the corner. He was bound hand and foot with duct tape. A colorful surfboard hung on the wall beside him. His brown eyes welled with relief at the sight of her.

“Scissors on the table,” he said. “Next to the computer.”

She dashed across the wooden floor, seized the scissors and rushed back to free Ambrose from the tape.

“I’ve been so worried about you, Mr. Vandyke,” she said as she gently cut the tape. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.” Ambrose groaned and rubbed his reddened wrists. “Thanks to you and your friend. I assume you’re Cady Briggs?”

“Yes, and I was scared to death.”

“You and me both,” Ambrose said. “I was afraid you would walk into the middle of this and they’d get you, too.”

“They almost did get her,” Mack said in a very even voice.

Ambrose blinked owlishly. “Who are you?”

“The name is Easton. Mack Easton.”

Ambrose nodded. “Good thing she brought you along.”

“You want to give me a hand here?” Mack said. “The guy on the ground is still unconscious. We need to get this one secured first.”

“You bet.” Ambrose grimaced and caught his breath as he scrambled awkwardly to his feet. “Don’t worry, there’s plenty of duct tape.”

Outside there was a dull, clanging thud. Cady realized the van had finally come to rest.

“Good grief,” she whispered. “The armor.”

“Relax,” Ambrose said, “that stuff was built to withstand a lot of impact, remember?”

She went to the door and looked out at the vehicle. It was scrunched at an angle against a large boulder.

“I don’t think that being bounced around in the back of a van is quite what the original designers had in mind for that armor,” she said.

“Yeah, well, I’m not nearly as worried about the condition of that steel right now as I might have been before these two bastards showed up.” Ambrose finished his task and stood back to examine Mack. “Who exactly are you, besides being Cady’s friend?”

“I’m her boss,” Mack said.

S
he hadn’t tried to screw him, after all.

Two hours later, after the cops had left with the two burglars in custody, Mack stood in front of the blazing fire. He listened to Cady and Ambrose Vandyke discuss the old armor that had been dragged out of the van and piled in the corner. He did not trust himself to join in the conversation. It was all he could do to just stand there and look civilized.

At least he hoped he looked civilized. He’d been running on adrenaline for several hours now. Large doses of the stuff had unpredictable effects.

“A friend of mine named Tim Masters specializes in arms and armor. He told me about your collection, Ambrose,” Cady said. She looked up from where she sat cross-legged, with the missing helmet in her lap. “He said that he had done some consulting for you and that you were focusing on rare pieces produced by the best northern Italian armorers. He mentioned that you were trying to acquire a complete garniture…”

Mack tuned out the discussion and swallowed some tea Ambrose had made for his guests. The taste of the
stuff irritated him. He had never been a fan of tea. He liked coffee. Strong coffee.

Okay, so he had made a miscalculation based on the evidence he’d had in hand. He had leaped to what had seemed a logical conclusion. But he had been wrong. She had simply been doing her job as she’d understood it, tracing the missing helmet. The fact that she hadn’t followed procedure and had taken a terrible risk that could have gotten her killed was a major problem, but he would deal with that later.