Moving Target (21 page)

“Black.”

As soon as she was out of sight, he turned and looked through the etched glass panel in the front door. The dull Japanese car hadn’t moved. The man had. He was looking at Erik’s license plate with discreet, high-tech binoculars.

Damn!

Automatically Erik’s hand went to the communications unit at the back of his belt. All that kept him from using it was the certainty that his reluctant hostess wouldn’t understand why he was chatting on a snoop-proof cell phone with Rarities about whether or not they had put a tail on Serena Charters and told the tail to keep a license plate log of visitors.

Usually Rarities would tell Erik if they had arranged for backup. Usually.

Niall was nothing if not unpredictable. It kept everyone on their toes, especially the folks trying to penetrate the security at Rarities Unlimited.

Erik settled for second best: E-mail. He had already memorized the license plate and make of the tail’s car. As for the tail himself, he was the type of middle-aged generic white male that had given the FBI a look all its own. But the FBI was still stuck with American cars. This guy had the perfect West Coast undercover car: foreign.

Composing a brief message in his mind, Erik grabbed a stylus out of the communications unit, which was designed for just those embarrassing moments when even a soft voice would be too loud. He sent his message the old-fashioned way, writing quickly on the small electronic pad, “original” to Dana, copy to Factoid. Then he replaced the unit in its carrying case at the small of his back.

A lot of men carried guns in the same place. Erik hoped he never would have to again.

Despite the quick E-mail, he planned to call Rarities as soon as he knew Serena couldn’t overhear the conversation. Shorthand was no substitute for real words, real impressions, real dialogue.

He followed Serena’s steps past a series of fabric screens that walled off the great room from the front door, creating an entryway. Under normal circumstances he would have noticed and appreciated the quality of textile in the screens, but at the moment he was thinking about something more urgent than artistry.

He was wondering what would be the most tactful way to ask Serena if she had noticed anyone following her home the night before.

As soon as he reached the kitchen doorway, he froze. It might have been his divided attention. It might have been his lack of sleep. It might have been a lot of things. Whatever it was, the sense of déjà vu he got when he saw her pouring a steaming mug of coffee stopped him like a stone wall.

For a few staggering moments he was certain he had seen her do that for him before. Not coffee, but something that had steamed and promised warmth on a cold day. And it hadn’t been a mug. It had been a bowl incised with ancient runic symbols.

He could see it.

He shook his head sharply, ending the overwhelming moment. Now was no time to let the medieval part of his soul get fanciful. There were more pressing things at hand than the impossible sense of familiarity that came every time he saw the curve of her cheek or candlelight reflected in her violet eyes and red-gold hair.

“Did you have much traffic last night?” he asked.

With disbelief in the arc of her left eyebrow, she looked over her shoulder at him. “It was after midnight. Even in southern California, sooner or later rush hour ends.”

He shrugged. “I just wondered. Sometimes a woman driving alone late at night, some guy thinks it’s cute to follow her. . . .” His voice trailed off invitingly.

She put down the coffeepot. “Like the coyotes, so far so good.”

“No one followed you?”

“If they did, I didn’t notice.” She looked at him closely. “Do you worry about this a lot?”

“I have two younger sisters.” It was lame, but it was something.

“Were they ever followed?”

“Once.”

“What happened?”

“They called me.”

Serena waited.

Erik kept his mouth shut. He didn’t think she would feel any better knowing that he had taken the guy’s license number, traced it to his cheap apartment, and had a little talk with him. Then he had given the license number to the cops so that they could tell the jerk how much they loved him. He had heard later that one of the female deputies gave the guy some curbside therapy when she found him tailgating a frightened woman at 2
A.M
.

“What happened?” Serena asked.

“They kept their heads and got home safe and sound. Is that coffee for me?”

She looked at the mug in her hand. “Er, yes. Sorry. Black, right?”

“Thanks.” He took the cup, swallowed, and made a sound of surprised pleasure. “This is good.”

She smiled crookedly. “I rarely poison guests on the first visit.”

“Second?”

“I try to wait until the third.”

He smiled, drained half the mug, and licked his lips. “After the way you nuked the coffee at my house, I thought yours would be terrible.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“I’m not.”

He finished the cup, washed his hands, dried them thoroughly on the towel she handed him, and looked at her expectantly.

Despite her possessive, protective reluctance to share the beautiful leaves with anyone, she couldn’t help smiling back at him. “And here I thought you made that long drive just to see me.”

He winced. “No matter how I answer that one, I lose.”

Laughing, she washed her own hands, wiped them on her jeans, and headed for the second exit in the odd kitchen. “Follow me.”

He looked at the smooth swing of her hips and said huskily, “My pleasure.”

Her head swung around in surprise, but he had expected that. His expression was innocent and his eyes were on her face.

“What?” he asked.

She started to say something, saw the trap, and jumped back. “Now I know how you felt. There’s no answer I can make that doesn’t put both feet in my mouth.”

“At least yours look tasty.”

She blinked, looked at her bare feet, and then back at him. “Before we go any further, maybe you should eat breakfast.”

“Why?”

“If my feet look tasty, you’ll devour the pages in one gulp.”

Erik’s slow smile was a mixture of humor and male sensuality that stopped Serena’s breath.

“When it comes to the good stuff, I’m a slow and very thorough kind of man,” he assured her.

“I’m not touching that one.”

His lips quirked. “You sure?”

“My grandmother raised only one dumb child. It wasn’t me.”

Erik thought about the man with the nearly invisible headphones and a relief tube no doubt tucked away in a handy place. He hoped Serena was right about her intelligence, but he wasn’t betting her life on it. All her grandmother’s secrecy and shrewdness hadn’t kept her from a violent death.

He wondered if Factoid or one of his minions had cracked the county sheriff’s computer yet. It would be nice to know what the guys with badges really thought about Ellis Weaver’s murder. Or was it Ellis Charters? Given the information that he had sent last night to the Rarities computer, Factoid should have discovered something useful by now.

For once, Erik was looking forward to having his pager vibrate against his belt.

And for once the damn thing was quiet.

D
ana Gaynor was wearing the kind of sleek wool pantsuit that was perfect for a blustery January day in Los Angeles, when the wind blew cold off the ocean and the clouds were serious about unloading rain onshore. The cranberry color of her clothes set off her smooth dark hair and provided a warm focus to the room full of windows overlooking a rainy day, but at the moment she wasn’t conscious of such unimportant details. There was a frown line between her eyes and an unhappy curve to her mouth.

Joe-Bob McCoy shifted uneasily. He wasn’t used to coming up empty on a Rarities assignment, particularly one that had Dana’s full attention. He wished the job had involved Old Master paintings rather than medieval manuscripts; Dana’s interest in Old Masters was barely room temperature in a meat locker.

The phone rang, giving McCoy a reprieve.

Dana gave the instrument a lethal look. She had told her assistant Ralph Kung not to bother her unless it had to do with Serena Charters and the manuscript pages.

“This better be good,” she muttered as she grabbed the phone and snarled. “Who?”

“Cleary Warrick Montclair.”

“Not good enough. Hold her hand.”

“She declined. Rather shrilly, if you must know.”

“Where’s Niall?”

“He took the day off. It’s bare-root time.”

“What?”

“Time to plant bare-root roses.”

“Flowers? I’m working my butt off and he’s out planting ruddy flowers?”

“It’s raining,” Kung offered as a kind of consolation. “You can see him from your window.”

She didn’t bother to look. “Do bare-root roses have thorns?” she demanded.

“I believe so.”

“I hope he sits on one. Give me thirty seconds and put Cleary on.” She pinned Factoid with a glittering dark glance. “Spit it out.”

“Nothing new on the grandmother except for death-scene stuff,” he said in a rush. “She completely invented herself.”

“Bloody hell, I knew that. Now I want to know who she was before that and why she reinvented herself. So quit sniffing after Gretchen
and get to work.
”

“I haven’t been sniff—” he began, turning to leave.

“No.” Dana cut in. “Work here. In my office. Where I can watch you.”

“But—”

Dana was talking again, and not to McCoy. Even if he couldn’t have heard the words, he would have known she was talking to a client. Her tone was calm, cultured, confident, and above all, reasonable.

“Hello, Cleary. How is your father?”

“Livid.”

Dana wished she could feel sorry about it. She couldn’t. Warrick was a very rich, very unpleasant, very old man, and his daughter had been on the phone to Rarities every half hour since 6
A.M
.

“Have you tried adjusting his medications?” Dana asked pleasantly.

Cleary was too surprised to speak.

Dana took advantage of it. “Ms. Montclair, I will be blunt. It is difficult for us to accomplish anything when the House of Warrick is on the phone demanding minute-by-minute updates. We appreciate your concern, we share your sense of urgency, and we will work much more efficiently if we are interrupted less often. We have your phone number, your fax, your E-mail, your cell phone, your pager, and your instant Internet connection. We have a man with Ms. Charters right now. If anything opens up in regard to purchasing the leaves, we will notify you immediately.”

The client was unimpressed. “Look, the House of Warrick pays a lot of money to Rarities for—”

“Exactly,” Dana cut in smoothly. “You expect a return on your investment. You will get it. You will get it much faster if you let us work unhindered.”

Silence, then, “But he’s so angry,” Cleary said, her voice ragged. “His heart . . .”

Privately Dana doubted that the old bastard had one. “Have you called his doctor?”

“Of course!”

Every half hour, no doubt. Dana sighed. The passions that art or business created in people were difficult enough to deal with. The more personal traumas and dramas of family life were impossible.

“We are doing everything we can,” Dana said soothingly. “Would you like me to reassure your father personally?”

“No. When I suggested it, he said your time would be better spent working rather than baby-sitting.”

Dana’s eyebrows lifted. Maybe the old man wasn’t so bad after all. He certainly seemed to have a better grip on the realities of the situation than his daughter.

“In that case, Cleary, we’ll be in touch. Soon.”

“At least have your assistant send in hourly updates.”

“During business hours, of course.”

“But—”

“Thank you for calling, Cleary. We appreciate your concern.”

Dana hung up and looked at McCoy. She expected him to be in some kind of computer trance, but he was looking at her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Erik was trying to reach you a minute ago but he settled for E-mail, copy to me.”

“Urgent?”

“There’s a guy augered in down the street from the Charters house. Erik sent the license plate and description. He wants to know if the guy is ours.”

“I didn’t request anyone.” She reached for one of the two-way radio units that Niall insisted she keep within reach at all times. He had the matching one. By tacit agreement, it was used only for emergencies. “Niall, you there?”

“What’s up, luv?”

“Did you assign anyone to watch Serena?”

“No.”

“Backup for Erik?”

“No.”

“Bloody hell. We’ve got a bogey.”

E
rik looked at the old leather portfolio tucked beneath Serena’s arm. “I still can’t believe you kept that in your van in a locked plastic toolbox that was bolted to the floor.”

“Don’t sound so horrified. The box is waterproof, clean, and the alarm system and lock are good on the van. The locks on my house are as wonky as the doorbell. As for an alarm system . . .” She shrugged. “My smoke sensors have batteries, does that count?”

He opened his mouth, thought better of it, and shut it again. The sooner they were in the house with the pages, the better. Not that there was any real hope that the guy down the street hadn’t seen her open the van and casually pull out the big portfolio. Their tail was probably calling in right now, which meant things could get lively at any time.

Unless the man belonged to Rarities.

Silently Erik wondered if the tail was friend or felon. If the latter, it would be really nice to know if Serena’s grandmother had died randomly or because she had something somebody nasty wanted. Pages from the Book of the Learned, for instance. Or even the whole bloody book.

Damn it, Factoid! Where are you when I need you?

Nothing answered, particularly not the pager on Erik’s belt. He had an uneasy feeling that a gun would do him more good than the silent pager. It was the kind of feeling he hated, because he didn’t like guns. He liked the pattern that was forming even less.