by Jayne Castle
She froze, unable to make a decision. She watched the figure on the other side of the street the way a baby rabbit watches a snake.
She never heard the killer come out of the shadows behind her. A sweaty, masculine hand clamped across her mouth. A sharp blade pricked her throat. She heard a clatter of metal on the sidewalk and realized that she had just dropped her only weapon, the keys.
“Quiet or you die now,” a hoarse voice muttered in her ear. “Be a shame if we didn’t have time to play.”
She was going to die, anyway, she thought. She had nothing to lose. She dropped her purse and tried to struggle but it was useless. The man had an arm around her throat. He dragged her into the alley, choking her. She reached up and managed to rake her fingernails across the back of his hand. She would not survive the night but she could damn well collect some of the bastard’s DNA for the cops.
“I warned you, bitch. I’m really going to take my time with you. I want to hear you beg.”
She could not breathe and the hand across her mouth made it impossible to scream. To think that her fallback had always been the plan to yell for help from the gym.
The alley was drenched in night but there was another kind of darkness enveloping her. With luck she would suffocate from the pressure of his arm on her throat before he could use the knife, she thought. She’d worked in the trauma center at Harborview. She knew what knives could do.
A figure loomed at the entrance of the alley, silhouetted by the weak streetlight behind him. She knew it was the man she had seen in the doorway across the street. Two killers working as a team? She had sunk so far into panic and despair that she wondered if she was hallucinating.
“Let her go,” the newcomer said, coming down the alley. His voice promised death as clearly as the knife at her throat.
Her captor stopped. “Get out of here or I’ll slit her throat. I swear I will.”
“Too late.” The stranger walked forward. He was not rushing in, but there was something lethal and relentless about his approach; a predator who knows the prey is trapped. “You’re already dead.”
She felt something then, something she could not explain. It was as if she was caught in the center of an electrical storm. Currents of energy flooded her senses.
“No,” her captor shouted. “She’s mine.”
And then he was screaming, horror and shock mingling in a nerve-shattering shriek.
“Get away from me,” he shouted.
Suddenly she was free; falling. She landed with a jolt on the damp pavement. The man with the knife reeled back and fetched up against the alley wall.
The unnerving energy evaporated as swiftly and mysteriously as it had appeared.
The killer came away from the wall as though he had been released from a cage.
“No,” he hissed, madness and rage vibrating in the single word.
He lurched toward the other man. Light glinted on the knife he still clutched.
More energy shivered in a heavy wave through the alley.
The killer screamed again, a shrill, sharp screech that ended with stunning abruptness. He dropped the knife, clutched at his chest, and dropped to the pavement.
The dark figure loomed over the killer for a moment. She saw him lean down and realized that he was checking for a pulse. She knew that he would not find one. She recognized death when she saw it.
The man straightened and turned toward her. Fear held her immobile. There was something wrong with his face. It was too dark to make out his features but she thought she could see a smoldering energy in the dark spheres where his eyes should have been.
Another wave of panic slammed through her, bringing with it a fresh dose of adrenaline. She scrambled to her feet and fled toward the street, knowing, even as she ran, that it was hopeless. The creature with the burning eyes would cut her down as easily as he had the killer with the knife.
But the monster did not pursue her. A block away she finally stopped to catch her breath. When she looked back she saw nothing. The street was empty.
She had always hoped that if the worst happened on the way home she might get some help from the men in the gym. But in the end it was a demon that had saved her.
Chapter 1
DREAMLIGHT GLOWED FAINTLY ON THE SMALL STATUE of the Egyptian queen. The prints were murky and thickly layered. A lot of people had handled the object over the decades but none of the prints went back any further than the late eighteen hundreds, Chloe Harper concluded. Certainly none dated from the Eighteenth Dynasty.
“I’m afraid it’s a fake.” She lowered her senses, turned away from the small statue, and looked at Bernard Paddon. “A very fine fake, but a fake nonetheless.”
“Damn it, are you absolutely certain?” Paddon’s bushy silver brows scrunched together. His face reddened in annoyance and disbelief. “I bought it from Crofton. He’s always been reliable.”
The Paddon collection of antiquities put a lot of big city museums to shame but it was not open to the public. Paddon was a secretive, obsessive collector who hoarded his treasures in a vault like some cranky troll guarding his gold. He dealt almost exclusively in the notoriously gray world of the underground antiquities market, preferring to avoid the troublesome paperwork, customs requirements, and other assorted legal authorizations required to buy and sell in the aboveground, more legitimate end of the trade.
He was, in fact, just the sort of client that Harper Investigations liked to cultivate, the kind that paid the bills. She did not relish having to tell him that his statue was a fake. On the other hand, the client she was representing in this deal would no doubt be suitably grateful.
Paddon had inherited a large number of the Egyptian, Roman, and Greek artifacts in the vault from his father, a wealthy industrialist who had built the family fortune in a very different era. Bernard was now in his seventies. Sadly, while he had continued the family traditions of collecting, he had not done such a great job when it came to investing. The result was that these days he was reduced to selling items from his collection in order to finance new acquisitions. He had been counting on the sale of the statue to pay for some other relic he craved.
Chloe was very careful never to get involved with the actual financial end of the transactions. That was an excellent way to draw the attention not only of the police and Interpol but, in her case, the extremely irritating self-appointed psychic cops from Jones & Jones.
Her job, as she saw it, was to track down items of interest and then put buyers and sellers in touch with each other. She collected a fee for her service and then she got the heck out of Dodge, as Aunt Phyllis put it.
She glanced over her shoulder at the statue. “Nineteenth century, I’d say. Victorian era. It was a period of remarkably brilliant fakes.”
“Stop calling it a fake,” Paddon sputtered. “I know fakes when I see them.”
“Don’t feel bad, sir. A lot of major institutions like the British Museum and the Met, not to mention a host of serious collectors such as yourself, have been deceived by fakes and forgeries from that era.”
“Don’t feel bad? I paid a fortune for that statue. The provenance is pristine.”
“I’m sure Crofton will refund your money. As you say, he has a very good reputation. He was no doubt taken in, as well. It’s safe to say that piece has been floating around undetected since the eighteen-eighties.” Actually, she was sure of it. “But under the circumstances, I really can’t advise my client to buy it.”
Paddon’s expression would have been better suited to a bulldog. “Just look at those exquisite hieroglyphs.”
“Yes, they are very well done.”
“Because they were done in the Eighteenth Dynasty,” Paddon gritted. “I’m going to get a second opinion.”
“Of course. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way.” She picked up her black leather satchel. “No need to show me out.”
She went briskly toward the door.
“Hold on, here.” Paddon rushed after her. “Ar
e you going to tell your client about this?”
“Well, he is paying me for my expert opinion.”
“I can come up with any number of experts who will give him a different opinion, including Crofton.”
“I’m sure you can.” She did not doubt that. The little statue had passed for the real thing since it had been created. Along the way any number of experts had probably declared it to be an original.
“This is your way of negotiating for an additional fee from me, isn’t it, Miss Harper?” Paddon snorted. “I have no problem with that. What number did you have in mind? If it’s reasonable I’m sure we can come to some agreement.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Paddon. I don’t work that way. That sort of arrangement would be very damaging to my professional reputation.”
“You call yourself a professional? You’re nothing but a two-bit private investigator who happens to dabble in the antiquities market. If I’d known that you were so un-knowledgeable I would never have agreed to let you examine the piece. Furthermore, you can bet I’ll never hire you to consult for me.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, of course, but maybe you should consider one thing.”
“What’s that?” he called after her.
She paused in the doorway and looked back at him. “If you ever did hire me you could rest assured that you would be getting an honest appraisal. You would know for certain that I could not be bought.”
She did not wait for a response. She walked out of the gallery and went down the hall to the foyer of the large house. A woman in a housekeeper’s uniform handed her the still-damp trench coat and floppy brimmed hat.
Chloe put on the coat. The trench was a gift from her aunt Phyllis. Phyllis had spent her working years in Hol lywood. She claimed she knew how private investigators were supposed to dress because she’d known so many stars who played those kinds of roles. Chloe wasn’t so sure about the style statement but she liked the convenience of the numerous pockets in the coat.
Outside on the front steps she paused to pull the hat down low over her eyes. It was raining again and although it was only a quarter to five, it was almost full dark. This was the Pacific Northwest and it was early December. Darkness and rain came with the territory at this time of year. Some people considered it atmospheric. They didn’t mind the short days because they knew that a kind of karmic balance would kick in come summer when there would be daylight until nearly ten o’clock at night.
Those who weren’t into the yin-yang thing went out and bought special light boxes designed to treat the depressive condition known as SAD, seasonal affective disorder.
She was okay with darkness and rain. But maybe that was because of her talent for reading dreamlight. Dreams and darkness went together.
She went down the steps and crossed the vast, circular drive to where her small, nondescript car was parked. The dog sitting patiently in the passenger seat watched her intently as she came toward him. She knew that he had been fixated on the front door of the house, waiting for her to reappear, since she had vanished inside forty minutes ago. The dog’s name was Hector and he had abandonment issues.
When she opened the car door he got excited, just as if she had been gone for a week. She rubbed his ears and let him lick her hand.
“Mr. Paddon is not a happy man, Hector.” The greeting ritual finished, she got behind the wheel. “I don’t think we’ll be seeing him as a client of Harper Investigations anytime soon.”
Hector was not interested in clients. Satisfied that she was back, he resumed his customary position, riding shotgun in the passenger seat.
She fired up the engine. She had told Paddon the truth about the little Egyptian queen. It was a fake and it had been floating around in the private market since the Victorian period. She was certain of that for three reasons, none of which she could explain to Paddon. The first reason was that her talent allowed her to date objects quite accurately. Reason number two was that she came from a long line of art and antiquities experts. She had been raised in the business.
Reason number three was also straightforward. She had recognized the workmanship and the telltale dreamlight the moment she saw the statue.
“You can’t rat out your own several times great-grandfather, Hector, even if he has been dead since the first quarter of the twentieth century. Family is family.”
Norwood Harper had been a master. His work was on display in some of the finest museums in the Western world, albeit not under his own name. And now one of his most charmingly brilliant fakes was sitting in Paddon’s private collection.
It wasn’t the first time she had stumbled onto a Harper fake. Her extensive family tree boasted a number of branches that specialized in fakes, forgeries and assorted art frauds. Other limbs featured individuals with a remarkable talent for deception, illusion and sleight of hand. Her relatives all had what could only be described as a true talent for less-than-legal activities.
Her own paranormal ability had taken a different and far less marketable form. She had inherited the ability to read dreamlight from Aunt Phyllis’s side of the tree. There were few practical applications—although Phyllis had managed to make it pay very well—and one really huge downside. Because of that downside, the odds were overwhelming that she would never marry.
Sex wasn’t the problem. But over the course of the past year or two she had begun to lose interest in it. Perhaps that was because she had finally accepted that she would never have a relationship that lasted longer than a few months. Somehow, that realization had removed what little pleasure was left in short-term affairs. In the wake of the fiasco with Fletcher Monroe a few months ago, she had settled into celibacy with a sense of enormous relief.
“There is a kind of freedom in the celibate lifestyle,” she explained to Hector.
Hector twitched his ears but otherwise showed no interest in the subject.
She left the street of elegant homes on Queen Anne Hill and drove back downtown through the rain, heading toward her office and apartment in Pioneer Square.
