Running Scared (37 page)

Las Vegas

November 5

Night

S
hane was out
in the parking lot before the intruder’s semiautomatic spit out the second and third shots. When he saw the blocky figure in the doorway to Cherelle’s room, Shane snapped his gun into position and squeezed on the trigger.

In the split second before he could fire, a shotgun blasted from across the lot. The attacker’s arms jerked up, and he staggered into Cherelle’s room. Another blast spun him around. A third one knocked him down. He stayed there.

Both Niall and Shane had tracked the last muzzle flashes. They fired twice each in a staccato hail. A hoarse cry came, followed by the sound of something hitting the ground. Gun at the ready, Niall ran across the lot in a zigzag pattern.

Shane made a long, diving roll that took him inside Cherelle’s room.
“Risa.”

“Back here. Hurry!”

He kicked the gun out of the intruder’s lax fingers and ran toward Risa’s voice. As soon as he reached the little passageway leading to the bathroom, his heart jerked and his guts turned to ice.

There was blood everywhere.

Risa and Cherelle were in the middle of it.

He went to his knees beside Risa. “Where are you hit?”

“Help Cherelle!”

“Where are you hit?”

“It’s not me. It’s Cherelle. Oh, Jesus, it’s Cherelle!”

If Shane hadn’t already been on his knees, relief would have put him there. “Let me see her.”

“I can’t let go. She’s bleeding too much.” Tears left trails down Risa’s blood-spattered face. “Cherelle! Cherelle, can you hear me?”

Shane saw what Risa couldn’t accept: Cherelle’s blood no longer pulsed between Risa’s fingers. He measured the utter slackness of Cherelle’s body. With gentle fingertips he closed the pale, staring eyes.

Risa made a raw sound.

In the front room Niall peeled off the attacker’s ski mask. “It’s our old buddy Socks. Deader than dirt. Risa?”

“She’s all right,” Shane answered.

“Cherelle?”

“Dead.”

Shane eased Risa away from Cherelle’s body. “What about the one in the parking lot?” he asked.

“White male, somewhere between fifty and sixty. Looks more like an executive than a shooter.”

“Dead?”

“He should make it.”

“I’ll be right back,” Shane said to Risa.

Wearily she nodded.

Both men headed out of the room at a trot. There wouldn’t be much time before the cops arrived.

Dana was already at the second man’s side. A gun gleamed in her hand. She pointed a flashlight at his face and hit the switch.

“Recognize him?” she asked Shane.

“Rich Morrison.”

From all directions sirens wailed, still distant. But not for long.

“Get the money,” Shane said to Dana. “Our story is that the gold changed hands before Cherelle died.”

“Back to the room,” Dana said. “We need to get the rest of our stories straight. It’s going to be a bloody long bitch of a night.”

Las Vegas

November 7

Afternoon

A
pril Joy walked in
and looked at the five people who sat around Shane’s office in varying states of exhaustion. She knew how they felt. It had been a long night and longer morning for her, too.

Caffeine was no substitute for sleep.

“I think this pretty well defines the concept of cluster fuck,” she said.

Niall and Dana watched April, wondering when she was going to drop the last shoe. They didn’t know what it would be. They only knew that the brilliant, ruthless Ms. Joy always had at least one more weapon in her arsenal than people expected.

“What did Gail say?” Shane asked.

Not that he thought Gail would change her public story, but he had to be sure before he tried to cut a deal with the very sharp April Joy. His earlier talk with Gail had been private and to the point: either she helped him or he buried her. She knew he could do it.

More important, she knew he
would.

“Same thing she said the first time,” April said. “She got the call. She chickened out.”

“I can vouch for that. She never left the building,” Ian said. “Spent the night on the casino floor talking to the customers. It’s all on video.”

Shane began walking his gold pen across his fingers, end over end, the
click
of gold meeting gold, silence, silence,
click.
“Who did Gail talk to right after she decided to back out?” he asked April.

“Morrison and Firenze.”

“Carl or John?”

“Carl. He took Gail’s money back to the vault. Morrison left, supposedly to take his money back to his own vault.”

Click.
“Who did Carl talk to about the meeting?” Shane asked April.

“Gail.”

“No one else?”

“Just those two,” April said.

Click.

April looked at Risa. “You’re sure Cherelle wouldn’t have called Socks in for backup?”

“Yes. She didn’t trust him. With good reason. He never gave her a chance. Just walked in and started shooting.”

Click.

Shane’s free hand smoothed over Risa’s dark hair. She let out a long breath and looked at her hands as though expecting to see them covered in bright arterial blood.

“What about Tim Seton?” Risa asked in a low voice. “Has he turned up?”

“No,” April said.

“If the amount of blood he left on his mother’s doorstep is any indication,” Ian said, “he wouldn’t have been in any shape to hold a pump shotgun long enough to send several rounds through his buddy Socks. Morrison’s lawyers can scream all they want. He’s good for murder one. When he figures it out, he’ll start talking.”

Click.

“Don’t hold your breath, slick,” April said to Ian. “Morrison’s lawyers are talking about their client the civic hero, who killed a felon that had just killed a defenseless woman and was about to kill another one.”

“Even if I swallow that without choking to death,” Dana said, “what was Morrison doing there in the first place?”

Click.

April smiled coldly. “He said he was worried that Gail would change her mind about going after the gold artifacts. He was there to protect her if she showed up. Then Socks came on the scene and started shooting. Morrison nailed him three times, only to be shot by two trigger-happy yahoos who should have known better.”

Click.

The pen flashed and disappeared into Shane’s pocket. “We have two separate problems,” he said. “Druid gold and a fake laundry. They intersect with me. They intersect with Gail. They also intersect with Morrison. There’s a pattern.”

“What pattern?” April asked acidly. Her tone said
cluster fuck.

“None of what I’ll say can be proved legally, because all the parties are either dead or missing,” Shane said.

Motionless, April waited.

“At some time in the past week, Virgil O’Conner was murdered in Sedona,” Shane said. “Either before, during, or afterward, his Druid gold was stolen by Cherelle, Socks, and/or Tim Seton.”

“Connection?” April said sharply.

“O’Conner believed in channeling,” Risa said. “Cherelle and Tim represented themselves as channels. Also . . . we found three wooden boxes with O’Conner’s name and address in Cherelle’s rented room near Sedona. We believe, but can’t prove, that they came from his home.”

April filed away the name of Virgil O’Conner.

Risa threaded her fingers more deeply through Shane’s. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Cherelle and too much blood.

“The DNA on file for Tim matched the DNA in the blood left on Joey Cline’s floor,” Shane continued.

“How do you know that?” April asked.

He ignored her. His talent for picking apart various official firewalls and looking through computer files wasn’t going to be part of the discussion. In any case, it was Factoid, Rarities Unlimited’s very own computer guru, who had done the hacking. That wasn’t something April needed to know either.

“Take it as a given,” Niall suggested.

April never looked away from Shane. “I’m listening.”

“There were two sets of footprints going through the blood,” Shane said. “Tim Seton left one set. When the police get around to it, I’m betting that Socks will be a match for the other footprints.”

“So?”

“So we have the two of them fencing stolen gold artifacts,” Risa said, “and then killing the fence.”

“Before he died, Cline turned the artifacts to Shapiro,” Shane said.

“Can you prove that?” April asked.

“Cline didn’t keep records, and Shapiro claims his computer ate his homework,” Shane said.

Her black eyes narrowed. “Keep talking.”

“The only real question left is why Morrison waited in a parking lot to blow Socks apart.”

“You’re not buying the white knight bit?” April asked.

“Are you?” Shane asked.

“Not unless I have to.”

“The other question is why a limo hauled Miranda and her shot-to-pieces son off into the night to a place where he could be treated without being reported to the cops.” Shane looked at Ian. “Did you get into her house?”

Ian nodded. “My hat’s off to you, Tannahill. You hit it right the first time.”

“What?” April said, turning on Ian like a tiger. “Spit it out, slick.”

Ian’s smile was all edges and silence.

“I have something you want,” Shane said to April. “You have something I want. That’s the traditional basis for making a deal.”

Without missing a beat she switched gears, turned her back on Ian, and asked, “What do I have that you want?”

“Druid gold.”

“And you have for me . . . ?”

“A pipeline to the Red Phoenix triad that’s better than I ever could be. Interested?”

“Keep talking, you’ll get there.”

Shane looked at Dana.

“Ms. Joy has made deals with many people,” Dana said. “She keeps her end of any bargain she makes.”

“Do we have a deal?” he asked April.

“How did you find out that Uncle had already claimed the gold from Faulkner’s motel room?” April asked idly, but she was thinking at the speed of light.

Shane didn’t answer.

She hadn’t really expected him to. “I’ll see that you get custody of the gold. What’s the pipeline?”

“Gail Silverado will deny it to the last breath, but she finally told me that Rich Morrison is behind the attempt to make me look like a laundry. Morrison is in bed with the Red Phoenix. If you take apart his computers, I’ll bet you find their fingerprints all over the laundry arrangements. I
know
Red Phoenix is the group that hacked into my computer and left damning trails leading to money I never took from offshore accounts I never created.”

There was silence for the space of one breath, two, three.

“Interesting,” April murmured. “If true.”

“Talk to Miranda Seton. She called the Shamrock when her son showed up bleeding on her doorstep.”

“How long have you known that?” April demanded.

“Since I told Ian to go to the Seton house and hit redial,” Shane said. “Seton’s last call was to the Shamrock. Very quickly a black limousine pulled up and hauled her and her son away.”

“Keep talking.”

“Even a cursory background check showed that Miranda is no more a widow than I am,” Shane said. “She hasn’t worked since her son was born and receives regular fat deposits into her account, deposits I’m still trying to trace. I would put money on Morrison being the father of Tim Seton and the source of Miranda’s money. Now, you can blow a perfectly useful pipeline apart trying to prove all the linkages I’ve outlined, or you can use what you don’t need to prove as a twist to turn the ever-heroic Morrison into a patriotic mole snitching off the Red Phoenix to Uncle. And if you need any help in the twist department, you might try Miranda Seton. I’ve got a cast-iron hunch that the lady has something on her former lover.”

For a moment there was only silence and waiting.

Then April’s smile flashed at Shane. “I like the way you think.”

“I’m frightened.”

“In my dreams,” she retorted. “It’s a deal, Tannahill.”

Las Vegas

November 19

Evening

T
he golden dagger’s blade
was as long as Shane’s hand. Ancient symbols that began with the wheel of the sun and ended with the Christian cross marched down the blade. Balanced on her palms, Risa held the gold sheath with its mesmerizing red inlay defining a three-part design. Originally the design had been picked out in pearls, but the soft gold indentations that had once held the gems were all that remained. The dagger was the most modern of the artifacts, for gems came into favor only after the Romans occupied Britain.

“What a pity that pearls are too fragile to survive being buried for centuries,” Risa said.

“Tears of the moon,” Shane said softly. “Whether the ground is wet or dry, they don’t survive the centuries.”

“The good news is that the residue of soil we found embedded in the deeper etched lines of every artifact is the same. All twenty-seven pieces were part of the same hoard.”

“The really good news is that there wasn’t enough soil to place the artifacts exactly, even in the ground around O’Conner’s house.”

Risa’s mouth thinned with reflexive pain. Thinking of O’Conner made her think of his killer—Cherelle Faulkner. Risa didn’t want to believe it even now, but she did. Miranda Seton didn’t have any reason to lie to the feds in order to protect her son. Tim was as dead as Cherelle. As dead as Socks.

If Miranda felt any guilt about blackmailing her former lover into killing Socks, she didn’t show it.

“There were some similarities with a cross-section of British soils,” Shane continued, “but nothing identical by any stretch.”

“And the Brits,” Risa said dryly, “were willing to stretch whatever they could get their hands on. Too bad that silica is such a common part of dirt. It would have been remarkable only if it had been absent from the artifacts.”

“Do you blame them for trying?” Shane asked with a rakish smile. “I sure don’t.”

“Nope. And I’m glad you agreed to loan the artifacts to the British Museum for study.”

“
After
New Year’s Eve.”

Blade slid into sheath with barely a whisper of sound.

As he lifted the sheath from her palm, Risa’s breath caught at the glide of skin over skin. She wondered if she would ever get used to being Shane’s lover. It was as astonishing to her as the fact that she would be married on New Year’s Eve, wearing a Celtic ring as old as Shane’s.

“Do you think Niall will find any close relatives of Virgil O’Conner?” Risa asked huskily.

“I doubt it. He never married. He had no siblings. Not even any half siblings.” Shane placed the dagger and sheath in a display case that had more locks and alarms than met the eye. “Besides, there’s nothing beyond circumstantial proof that he even had the gold in the first place.”

“But we
know
the gold was there, at his house.”

“That’s proof from the gut. Doesn’t work in a court of law.”

“We know Virgil was sent to an air base in Britain during World War Two,” she said. “Niall has his service record.”

Shane nodded and picked up the bent, totemic artifact that Risa said was the equivalent of a bishop’s crosier—the solid gold head of a ceremonial staff. The wood inside the gold was oak. Carbon dating placed it in the fourth century, plus or minus some years.

“And we assume,” Shane said, “that O’Conner dug up the hoard during the chaos after the Allied victory in Europe.”

“He dug it up in Wales. Gut knowledge,” she conceded quickly, “not court of law.”

Smiling, Shane brushed his lips over hers. “Then he shipped it home along with his other stuff in empty ammunition boxes. Nobody was checking incoming soldiers very closely. We were too damn glad to have them back.”

She thought of Cherelle, who was never coming back.

“Don’t, darling,” he said, kissing her again. “You did everything you could for her. You can’t save people from their own mistakes.”

Risa breathed in the warmth of him. “Do you really read minds?”

“Just yours. It’s those telltale eyes. And that mouth. Ought to be a law against it.”

Her smile turned upside down. “Speaking of laws, there ought to be a law against getting away with murder.”

His lips waited a breath from hers. “Morrison?”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t get away with it.”

“Like hell he didn’t,” she retorted. “First he sics good old Socks on Cherelle, and then he kills Socks. Now he’s a bloody hero. Just read the Vegas papers!”

“Morrison’s lawyers would have gotten him off with probation and community service. This way he’s a federal snitch who goes to bed every night sweating at the thought of waking up and seeing April Joy the next day. And someday, not too far down the road, he’ll come face-to-face with the Red Phoenix triad he’s betraying as fast as he can talk. Then he’ll wake up dead.”

Shane’s smile made Risa glad she was his lover rather than his enemy. “In the meantime . . .”

“In the meantime?” she asked.

“We have a wedding to plan.”

She tried not to smile. She didn’t succeed. “I don’t remember officially saying yes.”

“I’m a mind reader, remember?”

She thought of her earlier vision of him as a Celtic warrior wearing blue paint and not much else. “I’ll say yes officially right now, but only if you wear Druid gold down the aisle.”

He looked both amused and wary. “Are we talking blue paint?”

“Blue paint is optional. Clothes aren’t.”

“In that case we’ll invite witnesses.”