Moving Target

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Are you ready to tear up your contract over this?” Niall asked.

  “Consider it fucking confetti. You can bring in someone else, but don’t hold your breath expecting Serena’s cooperation. She trusts me like an old friend. A very old one.”

  It was just how old that didn’t bear thinking about.

  “There’s more to this than the manuscript, isn’t there?” Niall said finally.

  “Yes. I just wish I knew what.”

  “Find out, boyo. The plane will be waiting when you get back from your sunrise jaunt. And leave your communications unit on GPS so we’ll know where to find the body.”

  “Does that mean I’m not fired?”

  “As long as you don’t die before I can kill you myself.”

  Niall broke the connection before Erik could.

  With a disgusted word, Erik looked at his watch. He had a little time before he began the wild-goose chase. Enough time to scan Serena’s sheets into the computer and forward them to Rarities.

  While he was at it, he would take a closer look at the gather marks. There was something about them that tantalized him. There was a pattern he had sensed without realizing it, a pattern that went beyond the natural development of an artist’s style through all the years it took him to complete the Book of the Learned. At least that was the way Erik remembered it.

  As for which Erik was remembering, he really didn’t want to know.

  Chapter 42

  PALM SPRINGS

  SATURDAY PREDAWN

  Serena couldn’t ignore the watery noises any longer. She blinked groggily, trying to figure out where she was. When she remembered, she sat up in a rush.

  Mr. Picky flexed his claws, hanging on to the blanket and the warm body beneath.

  “Erik?” she called out, wincing and coaxing the cat to retract his claws. “Where are you?”

  “Well, praise the Lord,” Erik answered from the adjoining bathroom. “She’s alive after all.” He came to the doorway and looked over at her with eyes that gleamed like gold coins. “I was beginning to wonder if I’d killed you the fourth time. Or was it the fifth?”

  He was freshly showered and shaved, wearing jeans, flannel shirt, and a lightweight jacket. Looking at him made her heart turn over with memories and new need.

  “Want to try again?” she asked before she thought better of it.

  “Hell, yes.”

  She waited. He didn’t do anything more than look at her like a man who was remembering just how good she tasted.

  “Unfortunately,” he said, “you’re going to need your strength for something else.”

  “What about you? What do you need?”

  “You know damn well what I need, but for now I’ll settle for my hiking boots.”

  “Hiking boots,” she muttered beneath her breath, realizing for the first time that he was wearing socks but no shoes. “Of all the things to need before the sun comes up. I suppose the macho dawn raider is going to Braille his way over a mountain instead of sleeping in like any sane person would after a night like we— Let go of me, Picky!”

  “What? I can’t hear you,” Erik said, but the hidden laughter in his voice suggested he could. “Better get up, honey. The sun won’t stay down forever.”

  “I’ll get up as soon as I get this wretched black hair ball off my stomach.”

  This time Erik didn’t bother to swallow his laughter. Obviously Serena wasn’t a morning person. She looked as grumpy as Picky at being disturbed. Not that Erik would have minded crawling into bed with her. In fact, if she stayed there about ten more seconds, he might do just that.

  Serena shoved cat and covers aside and surged out of bed before Erik’s evil twin brother could take over again. She stalked toward him, too sleepy to be embarrassed about being naked but for the scarf that slid over her skin.

  Erik took a hissing breath through his teeth. Hair a wildfire around her arms and shoulders, skin like pale cream satin, breasts tipped with pure pink, and another fire burning between her thighs.

  “Damn, but you’re beautiful,” he said hoarsely.

  She gave him a look of stark disbelief and grabbed her nightgown off the back of the desk chair. The “gown” was a man’s size XXL brushed-silk shirt in a rich shade of teal blue. As a sultry sexual tease, her shirt was a nonstarter. But for comfort and softness against her skin, it beat any expensive lingerie she had ever owned.

  He almost groaned at the sight of her wrapped in loose yet clingy folds of silk, her hair a waterfall of fire over her breasts, a fey scarf peeking out from beneath her hair.

  With both hands she swiped her hair away from her face. Her braid had come loose during the night, which meant that her hair looked like it had been combed by a hurricane.

  Hurricane Erik, to be precise.

  “If I’d known you were a dawn raider,” she said distinctly, staring up at him, “I’d have gone to bed earlier.”

  “We’ll try that tonight.”

  “Going to sleep earlier?” she muttered.

  “No. Going to bed earlier.”

  She smiled despite the morning grouchies. Now that she was awake enough to know the difference, she felt really good. A little stiff here and there, but humming with energy and at peace with the world. Even her scarf seemed especially soft and springy.

  “You look smug,” he said.

  “I feel smug.” She stretched.

  Erik looked away and told himself all the reasons why he couldn’t take her back to bed. Or on the floor. Or anywhere. The relentless, reckless surge of his own body surprised him. After last night, all through the night, he should have been as hard to raise as the dead.

  No such luck.

  “Where’s the portfolio?” he asked roughly.

  “Bottom drawer of the big dresser, where Picky can’t get to it and sharpen his already lethal claws.”

  Erik looked as horrified as he felt. “He wouldn’t.”

  “You never had a cat, did you?”

  “He would.”

  “If he thought of it, yes. As the supposedly smarter of our dynamic duo, it’s up to me to see that Picky doesn’t get an opportunity to do things he shouldn’t do.”

  Erik looked at the yarns scattered around, and smiled as he remembered how unexpectedly soft a pile of yarn had felt under his naked back. “What about your weaving stuff? Doesn’t Picky go after it?”

  “We had some issues about it at first,” Serena said dryly.

  “I’ll bet. Who won?”

  “We both did. Picky decided he’d rather stay away from my yarns and looms, and be allowed in the house than be a full-time outside cat.” She yawned, grabbed her hair in both hands, twisted it into a loose knot at the nape of her neck, wrapped the scarf around everything, and tied it at the top of her head. She was beginning to take the material’s flexibility and usefulness for granted, as though it was simply another part of her body. “Are you through studying the sheets? Is that why you need the portfolio?”

  “I haven’t begun to study them. Your illuminated pages are in the climate-controlled safe along with some other things,” he said. One of which wasn’t the gun. Not anymore. The bloody thing was in a holster at the small of his back, right next to the Rarities communications unit. “I’m going to use the empty portfolio as bait.”

  The cool anticipation in his eyes took away the last of Serena’s sleepy fog. “Bait?”

  “Get dressed, honey. We’re going for a hike.”

  What he didn’t say was that she was part of the bait. At least he was afraid she was. That was why he wasn’t going to leave her in his home by herself, no matter how fancy his security system was. A system was only as good as the speed and quality of the response it got when it sounded the alarm. Without him, the security system was simply a very expensive way to startle unwanted visitors.

  Not that he didn’t trust Lapstrake to keep Serena safe.

  All right, maybe he didn’t. Not entirely. Reading those files had made him realize that Serena’s
grandmother hadn’t been paranoid. She had just known more than he did about what was at stake.

  “A hike?” Serena repeated. “You’re kidding.” Then she took another look at his eyes. “You’re not kidding.”

  “Right the second time.”

  Despite the presence of Lapstrake parked down the street, watching the watcher, Erik didn’t want Serena out of his sight. Even if it had been Niall himself on duty out on the street, Erik wouldn’t have left Serena behind. It wasn’t that he distrusted Niall. He didn’t. Hell, he would leave his sisters to be guarded by Niall—or Lapstrake, if it came to that.

  But not Serena.

  It wasn’t rational. It wasn’t normal. And it wasn’t something Erik could fight in himself. It simply was. He had a grim certainty that something final would happen if he and Serena were divided again.

  Nothing had been rational since he had seen Serena’s eyes, the violet eyes of the sorceress in pages a thousand years old come to life. He didn’t need Niall to tell him that he was being unreasonable. He knew it, accepted it, and it changed nothing. He wasn’t going to be separated from her.

  End of argument.

  “What if I don’t want to go for a hike?” Serena asked, turning away.

  “I’ll sympathize every third step.”

  “Be still my beating heart.” She flipped open her suitcase, looked at him with unreadable violet eyes, and said, “While I shower and get dressed, take Picky out to a nice sandy spot in your yard. It’s the only type of cat box he recognizes.”

  “What if he runs off?”

  “He never has, and he travels with me when I have to go to L.A. or San Francisco. He knows just what a highway rest stop is for.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Erik grabbed the sleepy black fur ball, tucked it under his arm, and headed for the backyard. Picky made a sound that could have been questioning or threatening. Erik chose to believe the former.

  “Son, I’m taking you to a sandpile you won’t believe. Best you’ll have until you go to that Great Cat Box in the sky.”

  Chapter 43

  NEAR PALM SPRINGS

  SATURDAY DAWN

  Erik, wait! I’ve got a rock in my shoe.”

  Pausing, he looked back at Serena as he had every few steps since they had started up the steep, dry trail that led away from the equally steep, equally dry dirt road that had dead-ended at the trailhead. The air was crisp, scented with chaparral, and so clear that everything had a knife edge, even the dawn. The first tiny curve of the sun was above the eastern horizon just enough so that long fingers of red and dark gold light speared across the desert. Down on the flats streetlights still glittered and café signs flashed in cold neon rainbows, coaxing sleepy people in for a cup of coffee and a handful of sugared grease.

  Below Erik and Serena, perhaps two hundred yards down the mountain, a man-shaped shadow followed them, pausing when they paused, moving when they moved. Unlike them, he didn’t use flashlights to find his way. That told Erik the man was using some kind of night-vision glasses, which was why Erik was tempted to spear him with an occasional blast of “random” flashlight. Through amplifying glasses, even a distant flashlight could be blinding.

  But he didn’t give in to temptation because he didn’t want to discourage their tail. “Bad Billy” was more used to city surveillance than country chases. He didn’t instinctively take advantage of natural cover, the night shadows or the pools of strengthening light, or the terrain itself. Not that he was stupid. He wasn’t. He hung back in open places where his dark figure might be spotted against the lighter landscape, and he closed in whenever he thought he could get away with it.

  Erik was certain that the portfolio itself hadn’t been out of Bad Billy’s sight for more than a minute at a time. That would change just as soon as they got over the ridge. That was when Wallace would start to get nervous and rush things. That was when even a very cautious man made mistakes.

  Somehow, he didn’t think Bad Billy was overly cautious.

  Erik went to Serena and gripped her high up on her left arm. “Brace yourself on me and get rid of the rock in your shoe.”

  As soon as he was close enough, she began to speak in a very soft voice—he had already told her not to whisper, because whispers carried much farther than a low, murmuring sound.

  “Is he still following us?” Serena asked, fiddling with her shoe like she was fishing out a rock.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hell. How much farther do we have to walk?”

  “I thought you liked to hike.”

  “Not when some stranger’s eyes are boring into my back.”

  Erik didn’t argue. His neck itched something fierce. “In another quarter mile there’s a good place for an ambush.”

  She stiffened. “You said you were going to be careful!”

  “Keep your voice down,” he murmured. “Laying an ambush is a very careful business.”

  “But—”

  “Let’s go,” he cut in impatiently. “He’ll have to take off the glasses soon, no matter how much he dials them down. Then it will be our turn. And I don’t want it to be too light.”

  He led off at a brisk pace. She followed no more than two steps behind. The portfolio poked out of his rucksack like a quarter panel of plywood. When she had pointed out that it would be invisible in the darkness, so how would their shadow know they had it, Erik had said three words to her: night-vision lenses.

  Serena was sorry she had asked. After that, with every step she took, she had wondered if the man was staring at her close-up and damned personal while she struggled along the trail in her cutoff jeans, sweatshirt, and running shoes. And scarf, of course. It was the only thing that had kept her from freezing. At first she had been so cold she was sure their shadow could count her goose bumps with his high-tech glasses. But after a mile on the steep trail, she had warmed up. Soon she would be hot. Wherever full sunlight touched, the temperature went up about ten degrees.

  For the last half mile they had been out in the open, scrambling up the steep shoulder of a ridge. She was thinking about pulling off her sweatshirt and tying it around her hips. Maybe then her skin wouldn’t crawl every time she thought about the goggle-eyed stranger staring at her butt.

  Instead, she moved her scarf until the ends of it trailed down her back. Not much as concealment went, but it made her feel better anyway. Right now, she would take all the feel-good she could get. She liked to hike, but she usually stuck to a trail. Apparently Erik didn’t, or else he was following the kind of trail only a mountain goat could love.

  As she scrambled upward toward the last nearly vertical pitch, pebbles turned like marbles under her feet. She skidded, grabbed a shrub that smelled like cedar, and caught her balance. At least the greenery at this altitude didn’t have thorns. The first time she had tripped, she had nearly gone facefirst into some cactus.

  He looked back when he heard a low curse. “Need a hand?”

  “I’ve got two, thanks.”

  He smiled, but for the benefit of Bad Billy—who was hanging back farther and farther, either as a precaution against the growing light or because his feet hurt—Erik said clearly, “We’ll make better time on the other side of the ridge. The cave is only a mile from there. And stop worrying, honey. The pages will be safe there until we find out what’s going on.”

  “They better be.” There wasn’t any cave and she knew it.

  “Trust me.”

  “I can’t believe you said that.”

  Erik laughed.

  After a moment, so did she. Despite the early hour and the man following them, the beauty of the dawn kept sneaking up on her. The air was crisp yet silky. The scents were subtle yet heady—heat stored overnight in the biggest rocks, midnight cold in the shadows, plants that were both brittle and resinous, clean dust that was finer than powdered sugar, a feeling of space and time everlasting. Ahead, black-velvet mountains condensed out of the night in endless geometries. Sunlight was a living thing: shifting,
changing, making the delicate tracks of a lizard leap out in sharp relief against the dust. The wind was alive, too, rising with the sun, breathing over the land in a long, remembering sigh.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Erik murmured.

  She nodded and stroked the scarf that snuggled so comfortingly against the pulse in her neck. “Sunrise in the desert makes me think of a tapestry that weaves together light and time and life. And death. Death is always there, just beyond life, defining it.” She willed herself not to look at the man following them. “G’mom loved sunrise. She would weave through the night just to see the first light of dawn falling on her loom. She called it God’s illumination, more precious than gold.”

  “So she was a ‘dawn raider’?”

  Serena didn’t have to turn to see Erik’s smile. She could hear it in his voice. “More like a night raider. My grandmother loved the darkness, loved the silence.”

  “You don’t.”

  She yawned. “Once in a while it’s great. But I love all the thousands of colors sunlight brings. I love the burning heat of the sun in summer and the patience of hidden seeds waiting for the rains to come. I love the birdsongs and the flight of a butterfly and a horizon that’s a hundred miles away in all directions.”

  “You love the desert, period.” His fingertip traced her smile, touched her scarf, slid it aside to feel the pulse of her life quicken at his caress. He wanted to do more, much more, but it wasn’t the time or the place. “Let’s go. The sooner I have a talk with that clown down the hill, the quicker we can start looking for the rest of the Book of the Learned.”

  The rising sun slanted across his face, turning his eyes to golden crystal, so vivid that they stopped her breath. “The rest of it?” she said huskily. “Are you talking about the pages G’mom lost?”

  “And, I hope, the pages she didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that note she left you.” He had been thinking about the pages, too, and he kept coming back to a single conclusion that he couldn’t prove and couldn’t ignore. He lowered his voice still more, leaning down until his lips were brushing Serena’s ear. “She was trying to tell you that she’d lost some pages, but that she still had most of the book.”