"But -- "
"Dammit, Serafin! Let me alone, will you?"
The abruptness of her temper made her feel guilty. Maybe there were things she didn't want to face. Maybe she'd gotten careless and let herself do what she'd never meant to do again -- start to care. About a man who took unnecessary risks out of pure stubbornness, who was going out with an injured shoulder.
"Ellery's going to go his way when this is finished, and I'll go mine," she said. She checked her pockets as she'd watched Yussuf checking his the night she'd slipped in on him. "I don't know why I keep talking to you as if you're an adult."
Serafin grinned.
A knock sounded at the dressing room door. Channing turned with a wave of uneasiness.
"Everything okay this evening?" asked Wilbur, beaming in at her when she answered.
The light from the hall reflected off his balding head. An armload of fragrant red roses engulfed her in sweetness from another world as he passed them to her.
"I -- uh -- thought you might like these. I may get a chance to see your act tonight. If there's not a crisis."
Aware of movement behind her, Channing's peripheral vision tuned in to the end of Serafin's thumb-and-forefinger "okay" sign.
"I'll look for you in the audience," she said, and thanked him, closing the door. She turned to Serafin with a narrow look. "What was that all about?"
"I told him a bunch of roses would probably get him in good with you." Serafin squirmed a little in the face of her silence. "Aw, come on, Channing. He's had a bad day. Some kids who checked out complained of stomachaches when they got home, so the health department's been here inspecting the kitchen. I had to do something for him for letting me hang around so much. And it's for a good cause."
For a good cause. Was that how Ellery rationalized taking risks? There was a job to do, and no one else to do it, and so he would? She almost laughed at the irony. It sounded like Tony.
Holding the roses carefully out from her sleeves, she marched across the room and laid them on her dressing table. She wiped her hands again. A knot that she thought must be disgust or indignation had lodged in her chest. In the paper she'd seen that photograph of the man she realized must be Ellery's brother, bathed in publicity while Ellery was risking his life -- alone -- tonight.
She recalled what Ellery had let slip when he'd shown her his grandfather's watch. That was what drove him -- he had ghosts to slay. She understood it even as she hated it. She, too, had something to prove. To Gramps.
Twenty minutes later she and Serafin went onstage. Henri Ballieu sat waiting, in the second row.
* * *
Ballieu had vomited blood in the lavatory before he came to dinner. It didn't concern him. Victory was too close now. Every moment was bringing it nearer, and everything was planned. He had eaten a hearty dinner to restore his strength. Shish kebab on rice pilaf. A plate of cheeses. Fruit. He could still taste the sweetness of melon dripping across his tongue. He had ordered brandy and sat toying with the snifter without sipping it.
The revelation of the girl who was the product of his nights with Saleha Adawi meant nothing to him. He felt no emotion at all at the link between them. She was a flawed piece of merchandise whose defects, like those of a rifle whose scope was off, must be taken into account. He could predict her now and had proved his superiority. She would do well enough in the small chores left to her. The first show of the evening ended with the last song of a particularly uninteresting singer, and Bailieu applauded.
It had been very easy to watch the magic act. There was something fascinating about the Stuart woman, particularly now that he knew what she was. A dark elusiveness like the shadow of fire seemed to cling to her. As though she might conjure a scarf and snap her fingers under the nose of death itself, Bailieu thought with admiration. The way in which her entire being challenged his excited him. A pity they would not have more time.
Bailieu looked at his watch. Khadija, who was sitting somewhere in the back of the room, would leave now. As soon as the magic act began a second time, he would leave too. His contact had assured him that the U.S. agents would all be occupied -- two of them staying upstairs, one following him to the place of rendezvous, and the Stuart woman in front of her audience. His strategy was simple, yet effective.
When the lights dimmed for the second show, Bailieu reached casually under his watchband and removed the bug. When the magician, in her glittering costume, appeared again, he rose and dropped the listening device in a potted plant, then left the room.
The bug would continue to broadcast sounds of the show in progress. Whoever was listening upstairs would find nothing amiss. The man who followed him probably had no way of monitoring the listening device but would follow in any case, perhaps even hopeful of being led to the film itself.
As Ballieu's car turned out of the entrance to the parking lot, his check of the rearview mirror picked up another car pulling out. It showed no lights. Ballieu grunted his satisfaction.
Everything was in readiness. The snares were ready to spring. He was pleased he'd had the foresight to order the two well-built rifles with infrared scopes. He was about to make his escape with the film a great deal easier.
Sixteen
Channing entered the dressing room, dropped the nesting silver boxes from the last number in her act, and fanned the lapels of her hot jacket. She'd seen Ballieu leave - - had been waiting subconsciously for him to make the move - - and her uneasiness was mounting. His timing had been too careful, waiting till she'd come onstage. She threw down a handful of coins that had been in her pocket. Damn.
She wasn't sure if it was logic or some gut feeling that kept pushing at her. But she was sure she couldn't let Ellery take a chance he didn't have to take. Decision made, she spun and almost collided with Serafin. His arms were laden with a few of her more valuable props. His face went motionless with speculation.
"Serafin - - "
" - - go stick with Wilbur. I know." He was at her heels as she hit the hall. He hurried to keep pace with her. "Sure you don't need me with you?"
His voice held a thread of worry. Berating herself that she'd let her anxiety show, Channing shook her head.
"I don't expect to be too long. I'll just feel better - - "
" - - if I'm not alone. I know. Hey, Wilbur!" he called in the same breath. They had reached the lobby. The assistant manager was checking something at the desk.
"Is there a rock shaped like a cat somewhere around here?" Channing cut in as Wilbur started to speak.
"Oh, you must mean Puma Rock. Out that way, about twenty minutes from here. Nice place to picnic when it's not too hot. Say, would you like to - - "
"How do you get there?"
Poor Wilbur looked crestfallen.
"It's that dead-end road off the main drag. Leads right to it. But you're not going now - - "
"No, just out for a breath of air," said Channing, already at the door. "See you later, Serafin."
She took two more almost normal steps before breaking into a run toward her Jeep. A spare key was fastened under the front bumper, held in place by a catch it would take a Stuart's trained hand to unfasten. Channing felt a seam at her shoulder rip as she stooped for the key. A moment later she was behind the wheel, spinning out toward the main road.
The landscape she passed looked nothing like it had in daytime. A few twisted trees reached up out of desolate barenness. Rock ledges carved by erosion called to mind a dead and abandoned planet. Even the glitter of stars through the clear air didn't soften the sense of waste everywhere as Channing shot by.
Her foot was too hard on the accelerator. She knew it and thanked whatever force guided human affairs that she met no other traffic. Ghosts seemed to be in the Jeep with her. The one that had been Tony and the one that could be Ellery. As different as night and day, she thought: the one who was dead no matter what she did; and the one who was part of the here and now.
She missed the ruts leading off to the right until she had
passed them. Hitting her brakes, she backed up, swung off onto the dead end, and killed her lights. There was no hope of speed now. She crept along over rough terrain, glad for her sturdy Jeep. The track she was following twisted steeply up, and so far there was nothing around that resembled a cat - - or a puma. In the darkness ahead, broken here and there by scrubby growth or a twisted tree, she could barely make out the first shapes of a boulder field.
Suddenly her foot reached for the brake. She could see the outline of a car to the side of the road. Impossible to tell the color, or even the shape, but she thought it must be Ellery's to be this far back.
What if she'd endangered him by coming here? The thought entered her mind for the first time. What if her arrival called attention to him or disrupted whatever meeting was taking place?
Rundell would have been the first to point out the dangers of her impulsiveness, she thought bitterly. Maybe this was a perfect example of why Ellery had been leery of working with her. As she hesitated, hand hovering over the gearshift, torn between instinct and common sense, the darkness ahead split open with the ominous cracks of a shooting gallery.
* * *
Ellery hit the ground and rolled as a dead tree exploded just over his head. One of the particles lodged in his eye. He rolled again, instinctively.
Night scopes, he thought as another volley of shots ricocheted off the rock that was sheltering him. They'd have to be using them to come this close to hitting him. The shots were coming from two directions. He'd walked into a trap.
He crawled on his belly, zigzagging, jerking back, and rolling again as the shots tried to track him. His only hope was to find a rock with a larger overhang or to make his way out, the latter being very unlikely. He'd left the car too far away, figuring Ballieu and whomever he was meeting would be here already and parked closer in. Blinking the speck of wood from his watering eye, he cursed his own failure of judgment.
How the hell had they known he was there? He wore rubber-soled running shoes. He'd moved without making a sound. They had to be watching for him... .
A shot whanged into the rock above him. No time for thinking. He slithered and twisted, the pistol in his right hand useless.
He hit the side of the boulder he'd been aiming for and found its contour smooth to the ground, useless as shelter. If he died here, what would they tell his mother and Reid? That he'd been some low-level State Department researcher? The truth? No matter. Either way he'd go out in his family's eyes with the same reputation he'd always had - - a failure.
Ellery gritted his teeth. He wasn't going to fail. He gathered his muscles for action and leapt toward the shape of a tree.
A half instant later his overtaxed brain gave form to a sound he'd heard but hadn't recognized, a car engine bearing toward him. He saw it just as a volley of shots from above turned in its direction, shattering what sounded like a headlight. It swerved as if one of the tires were hit, but then he realized that the swerving was deliberate. It was coming purposely but erratically into the mouth of the dead end. The fire from above divided between him and the new target.
The passenger's door on the Jeep flew open, and it skidded around in a half circle, almost out of control.
"Ellery!" a voice from inside called sharply.
"Jesus Christ!" he said under his breath.
Channing was following the line of the shots to locate him. She swooped again, and her open door gave him partial cover.
"Here!" he called, gathering himself for the sprint across open ground.
Bullets shattered the glass in the door as he caught hold of it. Channing peeled out almost before he heaved himself in by the back of the seat. He was nearly thrown on top of her. She veered adroitly to elude the rain of shots that hit her right fender.
"You always drive like a drunken bat?" He panted, bracing himself.
"You always take dumb-ass chances?" she shouted back as her wrists whipped the wheel.
But she grinned, her eyes never leaving the road, and Ellery, ducking a shot, knew she was aware he had returned the grin. The night, which thirty seconds ago he'd thought would be his last, seemed suddenly fine.
"Why'd you do it?" he asked as another shot whizzed by. They both flinched.
She concentrated on driving. The gears grated as she tried for a higher speed to get them away from the boulders.
"I've never liked lousy odds."
Ellery found himself letting in all the sensations he'd locked out. Admiration for the sense of right and wrong that drove her. Anticipation of their arguments. Attraction to the set of her mouth and the speed of her mind. The question of whether in a lifetime anyone could figure her out, and whether she'd let anyone get close enough to try.
They were almost out of range of the rifles now, but a final bullet cracked through the Jeep. Channing's head jerked sideways, hitting the driver's window. She slumped, her hands dropping from the wheel.
Ellery grabbed to recover it, wrestling the vehicle a short distance down the rough trail, out of reach of the powerful rifles. He stopped, the most mind-numbing fear he'd ever known in his life pounding through him. The woman who had joked beside him a moment before was motionless, her mesmerizing energy snuffed out. Her hair had escaped the elaborate arrangement she wore onstage. It tangled about her.
Telling himself he shouldn't waste this time, that he should just get the hell back to report what had happened, he touched her chin.
"Channing?"
His voice was rough. His tongue felt swollen. A sense of something lost that might have been his if he'd reached for it glimmered and went out in front of him as he turned her head.
His fingers found the wetness before he saw it. Blood was trickling down from her left temple.
Seventeen
"Damn."
Her voice, thick with irritation, reassured him just as Ellery pushed back her hair. She'd knocked herself out when her head hit the window. The blood was from a cut - - broken glass, maybe.
"You okay?"
He leaned back as she raised a hand to the side of her forehead. He saw her wince. Still seeming a little groggy, she glared at him, then pushed herself erect.
"No. I'll have a lump the size of an egg on my forehead tomorrow. And half the routines I'm using are just the way Gramps did them - - not mine at all!"
Ellery rested his shoulders against the seat, chuckling with relief at the grit that fueled her. The sound of her swearing had been like music. That mumbo jumbo about her routine showed she was still disoriented. He'd bet it also betrayed a professional ego she'd like to deny she had.
"Come on. If we don't get moving, Ballieu's guards could catch up with us again," he said. "Switch places with me." Reaching out, he lifted her across his lap, sliding under her.
They seemed to stall midway through the transfer, pressed face-to-face by the cramped confines of the Jeep's interior. Ellery could feel the warmth of her waist beneath his hands. He could feel her breathing. The change in its rhythm told him she wanted him as much as he suddenly wanted her. Or maybe it wasn't so suddenly, after all. It had been building for days - - since he met her.
One move. That was all it would take from either of them. Only there wasn't time.
With an effort of will equal to any he'd ever made in his life, Ellery eased her into the passenger seat and put the Jeep into gear. It slipped down the dirt road and onto pavement. He switched on its lights.
"You seem to have a headlight gone," he said to break the tension.
"Yes. And a few scratches here and there. Think they'll give me a good price on trade-in?"
Her voice sounded strained.
There was no sign of a car behind them. When he'd been on foot, he'd passed Ballieu's, parked farther in than where he'd left his, but Ballieu and whoever had been with him out there weren't giving chase. The first ugly thoughts about what had happened back in those boulders started to swarm through Ellery's mind.
Beside him, Channing had lapsed into silence. Not because of what had
almost happened between them a few minutes earlier, Ellery thought. She seemed to have put that aside as completely as he had. When he glanced to make sure she hadn't passed out again from the bump to her head, he saw she was frowning. A coin danced back and forth across the back of her closed hand, a restless, shimmering waterfall of motion.
"Those weren't guards back there," she said.
He had turned his attention back to the road. Now he shot a sharper look at her. Her eyes were brooding.
"There's nothing to guard," she said, turning to evaluate his reaction. "No building - - no place for a safe unless it's built into rock. That was a setup."
Reluctantly Ellery nodded.
"Ballieu let us overhear those phone calls deliberately, so we'd spread ourselves thin. He must have found the bug. Your cover's blown."
"I'll convince him I'm working my own game."
"No. I want you and Serafin to clear out tonight."
"It wasn't me he was after, or he wouldn't have scheduled his shooting party so close to the end of my act!"
The vehemence suddenly present in her words made him dread the turn the conversation was going to take. She drew breath carefully.
"Damn it, Ellery, hasn't it occurred to you there's another way Ballieu could have learned about the bug?"
They were nearing the turnoff to Palacio Sol. Ellery slowed the Jeep and eased it toward the entrance, his face averted.
They seemed to think alike sometimes. He'd started to realize it in these few days they'd spent together. She was rational and intelligent, and what she was suggesting confirmed the suspicions that were starting to bite at him.
"It has occurred to you, hasn't it?" she said more softly.
"That someone could have told Ballieu what was in his watch? Somebody we thought was on our side?" Ellery coasted the battered vehicle into a parking place as out-of-the-way as he could find and silenced the engine. "Yeah. It's occurred to me."
Touch of Magic Page 14
