Moving Target (33 page)

The quality of her voice made the hair stir on the back of Erik’s neck. This was a woman who would fight for whatever she loved and let hell take the loser.

“I never did an old woman,” Wallace said instantly.

“Good thing it wasn’t her
grandfather
,” Erik said, not knowing if he believed the professional liar. “Right, Bad Billy?”

Wallace shut up.

Erik felt like dropping the rock he held and a few more for good measure. Men like Wallace gave him a pain real low down in his butt. They were barbarians swaggering through civilization, taking advantage of the rules while breaking them, giving nothing back to the world but a raised middle finger.

“Do you believe him?” Serena asked.

“Until I have a better reason not to, yeah. Nothing we found in his file suggests he likes to burn people. He prefers bullets or tire irons.” Erik flipped the rock back and forth in his hands, thinking fast. “Okay, Bad Billy. You’re going to climb down off that cliff and go back to your car. We’re going to watch, but not from any of the places you’ll expect us to be. If you’re a good boy, your car will still work when you get there. If not, you’ll have a hell of a long walk back home. Any questions?”

“Think you’re real tough, don’t you?” Wallace asked bitterly.

“I’m better than tough. I’m smart. Any time you don’t believe it, I’ll be happy to demonstrate. Again.”

Wallace was just barely smart enough himself to bite back all the gutter talk he wanted to share. He ignored Serena, dismissing her as an amateur. If he wasn’t stuck here on the cliff, he would have fed her the gun by now.

“Start climbing down,” Erik said. “I don’t have to tell you what will happen if you don’t keep your hands in sight, do I?”

“Fuck you,” Wallace said roughly.

“Not in this lifetime.”

“Fucking pansy-assed—“ Wallace slipped, scrambled, flailed, caught himself.

And came up with a gun in his hand.

The unfamiliar double-pull on the trigger made Serena’s first shot go wide. The rock Erik fired at Wallace was right on target. It hit the man like a club, numbing his gun hand, sending the weapon flying. Serena’s second shot was wild, because the instant Erik released the rock, his arm kept on swinging, knocking her gun aside. Wallace didn’t see, because he was back to hugging the cliff. In his mind there was only one threat, and its name was Erik North.

“Let the land take care of it,” Erik said to Serena without looking away from Wallace, who was rapidly losing his hold on the cliff. One good hand just wasn’t enough. “Less questions that way.”

She stared at Erik for a moment that sent ice down her spine. She had always sensed a warrior’s cold pragmatism beneath his smile, but she had never really felt it. Until now.

Wallace slid like a sack of mud to the bottom of the cliff and started rolling down the ridge. After about twenty yards, a big rock stopped him. For a few moments he lay there, dazed. Then he pulled himself to his feet and looked up to the top of the cliff.

No one was there.

He turned and went painfully down the slope, wondering if his car would be where he had left it.

It was.

But it didn’t work.

W
hat do you mean, you lost them!”

Wallace grimaced. Even the distorter couldn’t conceal the anger in his mystery client’s voice.

“You moron. How could you lose them? Where?”

“Up a fucking mountain, that’s where. North led me on a runaround, dumped me off a cliff, and drained my gas tank. When I got to a place where my cell phone worked, I called my partner, then I called you.”

“Find them. Fast.”

“I plan on it. You care what shape he’s in when I’m done?”

“No.”

“What about her?” Wallace asked.

“Just get me those pages any way you can.”

“You’re not paying me enough for Murder One.”

“I’ll put a hundred thousand in an account in your name with the Bank of Aruba.”

“Two hundred.”

“One-fifty. Don’t fuck up again, Wallace. Dead men don’t spend money.”

N
o sooner had Erik and Serena walked in the front door of North Castle than his pager went off. He looked at the pager window. Dana.

From upstairs came the sound of the vacuum cleaner. Lila-Marie was hard at work keeping house.

“I forgot to ask how Mr. Picky feels about vacuums,” he said.

“Loves ’em. Being vacuumed is a special treat.”

He gave her a sideways look. She had been tight and pale for the hike back to his SUV. During most of the drive, she had been quiet, watching him as if she hadn’t seen him before.

Then she had asked:
Do you do this sort of thing often?

Not if I can help it.

Oddly, that had seemed to reassure her. She had sighed, leaned into the car seat, and said:
It’s new to me.

Didn’t look like it. You did just fine, Serena. A real mama tiger.

Her smile had been brief, but real.

So had his.

“I’m serious,” Serena said, listening to the vacuum upstairs. “It took Picky a while to get what he wanted through my dense brain, but he managed. He drools in ecstasy when I vacuum him.”

“Maybe I should tell Factoid to try it with Gretchen.”

Serena blinked. “Excuse me?”

“If you ask, I’ll tell you, but you won’t want to know.”

She looked at the expectant curve of his mouth and decided not to take the lure. “Okay. I’ll go check on Picky.”

In disbelief, Erik watched the lithe flex and sway of Serena’s hips as she climbed the stairs. If she had been one of his younger sisters, he would have been pestered until he told her more than she wanted to know. That would have been fun, kind of, but mostly it would have been irritating.

No doubt about it, Serena wasn’t his little sister. Thank God. The things he wanted to do with her didn’t come under the category of brotherly, except maybe in ancient Egypt.

Smiling, he keyed Dana’s number into the cellular.

“What’s up, boss?” he asked.

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“Like I told Niall as soon as I got off the mountain, I’m still studying the pages when I’m not leading Bad Billy on a wilderness hike.”

“Hmm. Niall didn’t say anything except that you would be late coming here. Did Wallace enjoy the outing?”

“Doubt it.”

“Did he survive intact?”

“More or less. No marks on him that couldn’t be accounted for by a careless hiker taking a header down a small cliff.”

“Excellent.” Dana all but purred. “Did you learn anything?”

“He doesn’t know who hired him.”

“Do you believe that?”

“For now,” Erik said. “It fits the pattern. He’s the type who would blackmail someone if he thought it was worth the trouble. Since whoever hired him knows he’s a leg-breaker, a black-bag specialist, and quite probably a killer, he’s paid accordingly. I have to assume that anyone who can afford him would be worth shaking down.”

“Did Wallace try to intimidate you?”

“Yeah. He didn’t know the difference between tough and smart.”

“You’re both.”

“Nope. I’m smart but I’m tapioca. Just ask Niall.”

Niall’s voice came from somewhere close to Dana. “Balls.”

“You’ve assured me that Fuzzies don’t have them,” Erik said, smiling because Niall couldn’t see it.

When Niall answered, his voice was much clearer. Obviously he had grabbed the phone from Dana. “You wearing a gun?” he demanded.

“Only because you made it a deal-breaker.”

“It still is, boyo.”

“I can’t hear you over the vacuum cleaner,” Erik said loudly.

Dana must have reclaimed the phone from Niall, because it was her voice that said, “Don’t even think about it. If Niall says you carry, you damn well carry.”

Erik shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

“Do keep it in mind while you attend the International Antiquarian Book Exposition in L.A.”

“Say again?”

“You heard me. If anyone asks, Rarities has a client who wants an opinion of a fourteenth-century Book of the Hours.”

“What kind of opinion?”

“Is it worth the money Pinsky is asking.”

“No. Morgan Pinsky always asks too much. See? I just saved you mileage to L.A.”

“You know you’re dying to go through all those boxes of loose leaves to see if there’s a nugget in with the dross,” Dana said. “If Pinsky is within bargaining distance of a bearable price, and the manuscript is as represented, buy it.”

“Define bearable.”

“Under one million. His asking price is two and change.”

Erik whistled. “Pinsky has delusions of grandeur.”

“Perhaps. And perhaps he has a beautifully illuminated Book of the Hours with the name of a French duke in the front and the coat of arms of a royal bastard throughout.”

“What about the Huntington Library?”

“They told him it didn’t meet the needs of their collection. I’ve told the hotel to expect you and a guest. Several, actually. Niall insists that you not be left alone.”

“Don’t forget the twenty-pound cat.”

“What?”

“Maybe twenty-one by now. Picky has a serious canned salmon habit and where Serena goes, he goes.”

“If the hotel can handle toddlers, it can handle a cat.”

“Is Pinsky expecting me?”

“Of course not. The fair runs through tomorrow. Expect to stay.”

“I have several dealers I have to talk to about missing leaves from the Book of the Learned,” Erik began, trying to control his impatience. “Can’t the Pinsky stuff wait?”

“I assume you’re talking about Albert Lars, Reginald Smythe, and Janet Strawbinger, all of whom have owned sheets that originally came from the Book of the Learned, despite their present fifteenth-century French surface.”

“Yes,” he said impatiently. “I went over all this with—”

“Bert and Reggie will both be at the exposition,” Dana cut in. “Bert, as always, is living beyond the allowance his parents give him. They’re ninety and ticking along just fine. Probably good for another decade, so money is the way to Bert’s heart. Reggie, as always, is living from sale to sale. Again, money will open his doors. The third dealer whose background you requested—”

“Strawbinger.”

“Yes. Strawbinger. She’s overseas. Germany. One of the old castles is cleaning out its basement. Her balance sheet is healthy enough that something other than money might be required to get her attention, unless she loses her head over the contents of the castle and is strapped until she sells some of it.”

Erik shrugged. “She was the least interesting to me of the three.” He thought quickly, balancing various demands. “All right. I’ve already digitized Serena’s pages and loaded them on my computer and in the Rarities archive. We’ll bring the real pages in, leave them in one of Rarities’s vaults, do the Exposition dance, and then she and I are loose.”

“Except for a few operatives tagging along, fine. What do you have in mind?”

“Finding the rest of the Book of the Learned.”

Silence.

“It’s the only way I’ll be able to put a price on the pages Serena has, which is the only way I can fill your client’s request,” Erik added smoothly.

Dana laughed. “That’s what I like about smart men—they’re almost always worth the trouble they cause.” Ralph Kung’s voice in the background demanded her attention. Cleary Warrick Montclair was tired of being on hold. “Damnation, that woman never gives up,” Dana said. “Switch her to my second phone.”

Niall grabbed the first phone and talked fast to Erik. “Watch your back. Wallace isn’t called Bad Billy just because all the other monikers were taken.”

“Is he really good for murder?” Erik asked.

“In court or out?”

“Out.”

“He’s rumored to be, and now you’ve pissed him off. Don’t be the Fuzzy dickhead who makes those rumors a reality.”

T
he long, monotonous thunder of huge jet planes sliding down out of the sky to land at Los Angeles International Airport didn’t penetrate the hotel’s faux-marble lobby. In the bar adjoining the lobby, patrons with wire-rim glasses, wilted shirts, tweed or corduroy coats, and bad hair were the order of the day. There were more martinis crossing the bar than microbrews or wine. From the look on the cocktail server’s face, the antiquarian book folks tipped the way they dressed—badly.

Erik glanced away from the bar lobby to the easel that supported a placard welcoming everyone to the International Antiquarian Book Exposition and instructing them to please sign in on the lower mezzanine level. He stifled a sigh that was part wistful, part impatient. The wistfulness came from the unquenchable hope that somewhere, somehow, amid all the first-edition Hardy Boys and Betty Boop posters, there would be an undiscovered page from the Book of the Learned. His impatience came from the same source: so much crap, so little gold.

But then, the same could be said of everything. Hotel lobbies, for example.

According to Lapstrake, the good news was that Wallace’s partner had indeed arrived at North Castle but had gotten there too late to catch Erik and Serena. No one had followed them to L.A. Erik thought they might have picked up a shadow at the Retreat—the small, very fine hotel Rarities always used for clients—but he couldn’t be sure. He was, however, certain that no one had followed them to this hotel.

Yet.

And he was going to stand around the lobby for a while just to see if that changed.

“You rushed me out the back door of our quiet, luxurious hotel in Beverly Hills for this?” Serena asked, looking around the loud, echoing lobby of the airport hotel. The clients at the Beverly Hills Retreat had all been expensively, if sometimes casually, dressed. Not the people at this hotel. She hadn’t seen such a wretched collection of clothes since her thrift shop days. “Some of the suit coats those men have on are old enough to qualify for museum status.” She looked at the fifteen-by-fifteen-foot lavender silk-flower arrangement, complete with real dust and spiderwebs. “As for the hotel decor, forget it. I’m sure trying to.”