Running Scared

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “No.”

  “Telephone number?”

  “No.”

  “License plate?”

  “No.”

  “Make and model of car?”

  “No.”

  “Whoopee. I always did like a challenge.” Ian reached into his denim jacket, pulled out the communications unit that Rarities gave to all high-level employees, and keyed in a number on the cell phone. “Research? Lapstrake. You have anything on Cherelle Faulkner yet?”

  “We’ve only been working on it a little more than a day, and—”

  “You’ve had it for a day?” Ian shot a look at Shane.

  “—we already sent a brief to Tannahill on Sheridan and Faulkner, as you would know if you ever checked your e-mail.”

  The last words were said in a rising tone. Ian’s refusal to waste time on bureaucratic junk like e-mails was legend at Rarities. It was just like Dana and Niall to let him find out for himself.

  More interesting yet was the fact that Shane had ordered an investigation of Risa along with Cherelle Faulkner. Ian wondered if Risa knew. It would explain why she was so furious with her boss. Ex-boss. Come to think of it, getting fired was enough reason to steam her.

  “So give me the good parts,” Ian said into the phone.

  “Sheridan was easy,” the voice on the unit continued. “She fills out forms with real information. The Faulkner woman lives on the edge where bureaucrats don’t go. She hasn’t changed her driver’s license, home address, or car registration since Johnson Creek, Arkansas.”

  “Most recent being?”

  “Tannahill has it. That’s where you are now, isn’t it? Vegas?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. I don’t know if he feels like sharing.”

  “Shit. Why not?” Shane said, understanding the half of the conversation he hadn’t heard. “You can have both profiles, Risa’s and Cherelle’s.”

  Then he waited for the explosion when Risa put two and two together and discovered he had put in a recent request for a complete Rarities background on Cherelle.

  And on Risa.

  The narrowing of her eyes and the flattening of her lush mouth told him that she’d made the connection very quickly. If she’d only been mad, he could have accepted it. But there had been a flash of raw hurt in her brilliant blue eyes before she lowered her head and resumed emptying out the bottom drawer of her office files.

  He went and sat on his heels in front of her. “In my place what would you have done?” he asked quietly. “Someone from your childhood appears, someone who isn’t anything like you, someone you don’t want me to know about. Someone, in fact, that you hide from me.”

  Risa tilted back her head, furious with him but most of all furious with herself for the tears burning her eyes, her throat. “So you sicced Rarities on her. On me.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t trust me.”

  “Risa—”

  She made a sharp gesture with her hand to stop his words. “Never mind. Why should you trust me? I didn’t trust you enough to tell you who Cherelle was because she was where I came from, where I could have stayed, where she . . .” Risa swallowed and fought against the tears that wanted to fall.

  The back of Shane’s fingers caressed her cheek once, lightly. “I was wrong. Your past isn’t any of my business. All that matters to me is where you are now. Unless I had badly misjudged you because I wanted you so much, Cherelle didn’t belong in your ‘now.’ That’s why I called in Rarities. I didn’t trust myself. And that’s a first.”

  He stood and met Ian’s dark, wryly sympathetic glance. “Unless research has something new, the data is in my office,” Shane said.

  “Anything since you sent the files to Tannahill?” Ian said into the cell phone. “Right. If and when you do, we want it yesterday. Yeah, same to you, sweetheart.”

  He switched off and put the communicator back on his belt. The supple leather straps of a shoulder holster gleamed briefly, then vanished beneath the denim jacket again.

  “So Rarities flew you in,” Shane said, seeing the harness.

  “The longer Dana looked at your Druid gold, the more she wanted to find the rest of it. She said there was something both otherworldly and all too real about the art.”

  “Did you bring my four pieces with you?” Shane asked.

  “You requested them, the lab wept and screamed, and I brought them. It would have been easier if you’d stuck with pictures for show-and-tell and questioning strangers.”

  Shane didn’t accept the opening to explain why he had insisted the gold be returned.

  Risa did. “Pictures don’t have the same . . . feeling.”

  If Ian noticed that her voice was unusually husky, he didn’t comment. “That’s exactly what Shane said to Dana.”

  She glanced quickly at Shane, then away. Being reminded of how much they thought alike wasn’t what she needed right now. “Where are they?” she asked Ian.

  “With security downstairs. I refused to open the locks on the box, and they refused to let me upstairs until I did.”

  “How far did the Rarities lab get with them?” Shane asked.

  “Dana put everything in your Rarities computer file. Said you could bloody well hack your way into it.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Ian shook his head. “One of these days you’re going to push Niall too far.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Shane said. “He’s got more than a decade on me, and he hasn’t slowed down a bit.”

  “You still work out with him?”

  Shane smiled ruefully. “Every chance he gets. He just loves thumping on me.”

  “And here I thought he liked coming to Vegas to gamble.” Ian laughed. “Getting thrashed on a semiregular basis will do you good.”

  “That’s what Niall says.”

  Beneath black, lowered eyelashes, Ian glanced at Risa. Her eyes no longer looked on the brink of overflowing. Her hands were steady as they shuffled journals into the suitcase. But then her hands had been steady when she was fighting tears.

  “According to Dana,” Ian said to Risa, “our first priority is finding Cherelle Faulkner, because we’re assuming she has the rest of the gold.”

  Risa nodded.

  Shane didn’t. “Our first priority is Risa’s safety.”

  Ian’s smile was all teeth. “Look, you don’t like my orders, yell at Dana. In the meantime get the hell out of my way.”

  “No.”

  Ian sighed. It had been worth a try. “Niall said you would jump salty. So here’s the fallback position. You work with me. That way Risa will be twice as safe.”

  Shane nodded. “The first thing you and I need to do is rattle William Covington’s cage. According to the written provenance, he’s the one who supposedly bought the gold pieces from a descendant of the original finder.”

  “What about me?” Risa asked with false calm.

  “You stay here,” Shane said.

  “Because it’s safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bullshit. I was attacked here, remember? I’d be better off somewhere else. With two charming and manly bodyguards by my side, for instance. Lacking that, I’ll settle for you and Ian Lapstrake.”

  Ian snickered.

  Shane started to argue.

  “Get over it,” Ian advised, turning toward the door.

  “That sounds like Dana,” Shane retorted.

  “Straight from her mouth to your ear.” Ian smiled and winked at Risa. “Damn, but I love seeing Shane tangled up like a mere mortal. Does my peon’s heart good.”

  “I don’t want you to go,” Shane said to Risa.

  “Get over it.” She smiled. “Besides, I’m the one who just remembered the name of the motel Cherelle was staying in.”

  “What is it?” Shane and Ian said together.

  “I’ll drive you there” was her only answer.

  Shane started to object, saw both the determination and the shadows in Risa’s beautiful eyes, and shut up.<
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  “It gets easier with practice,” Ian said quietly as they followed Risa out of the room.

  “Says who?” Shane muttered.

  “Niall. And if he can learn, anyone can.”

  Chapter 39

  Las Vegas

  November 4

  Morning

  The nurse poked his head around one of the wide hospital-style doors that were about the only sign that Timothy Seton wasn’t staying at a small, expensive hotel. The Bateman-Molonari Clinic of Cosmetic Surgery was nothing if not exclusive. Discreet, too. Especially when their normal fee was tripled.

  Miranda Seton would have preferred a real hospital, but as Tim’s father had curtly explained, real hospitals had to report real bullet wounds to real cops.

  “Your son just woke up,” the nurse said in a hushed voice to Miranda. “You can talk to him as soon as the doctor leaves, but only for a few moments.”

  Miranda whispered a prayer of thanksgiving to a God she had stopped believing in when she found herself pregnant by a man she hadn’t known was married. A man who not only could kill, but did. Her thin, almost frail hands clutched each other, pale but for the bleeding cuticles she picked at absently, constantly.

  As soon as the nurse left, she opened her handbag, took a stiff drink from what was left of a pint bottle of vodka, and stuffed an industrial-strength mint into her mouth. Fortified, she pushed herself to her feet and hurried down the lime green carpet to Tim’s room. Perfectly framed pictures of perfectly sculpted faces smiled perfectly down at her from the cream-colored walls.

  The door was numbered in brass, like that of a hotel room. And like a hotel room, its décor was both inviting and subdued, with framed Impressionist prints, soft colors, and lots of cushions on the furniture. The only jarring note was the patient laid out on pale rose sheets with monitors, machines, and tubes attached to parts of his body that Miranda didn’t want to think about.

  He looked worse than he had when covered in blood.

  She wanted to rush to the bed and cuddle him, but she didn’t. Her orders were quite specific: find out who had shot Tim. As soon as she did, there would be suitable vengeance.

  “Oh, Timmy,” she said in a strangled voice.

  He grunted and kept his eyes shut. The last thing he needed right now was his mother fluttering around him like a wounded moth.

  “Who did this to you? Cherelle?”

  His eyelids flickered open, then settled at half-mast. Even the room’s filtered, soothing light was more than he wanted right now. Speaking was an effort, but he managed. If he could send any trouble his old buddy’s way, he would be happy to do it.

  “Socks,” Tim said painfully.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t bring any with me. Are your feet cold? Maybe one of the nurses will have a heating pad or something.”

  Slowly, wearily, Tim moved his head from side to side. “Shot me.”

  She hesitated. “Socks? Your friend shot you?”

  “. . . yeah.”

  “Why?”

  Tim let out a thready breath, then another one. He wasn’t real sure of the answer. “Dunno.” He paused, swallowed, “Gold, I guess.”

  “What gold?”

  He ignored the question. It was too much effort to explain. The only thing that was worth the pain of talking was sending some bad luck down on Socks. “His name—Cesar.”

  “Another man?”

  “Socks.” The word was a desperate exhalation.

  “You mean that Socks’s real name is Cesar?”

  A groan that might have been yes was Tim’s only answer. Then another groan. “I killed him.”

  “Socks?”

  “Cline. Don’t want prison. Never.”

  “Don’t worry, Timmy. Your father will take care of you. He loves you.”

  Tim would have laughed, but he was trying to find a place on his body that didn’t hurt. He was still trying when black closed around him again. He welcomed it like a lover.

  Miranda picked at her cuticles and looked down at her frighteningly pale son.

  Soon there was a light knock followed immediately by the door opening. The nurse looked in. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Seton, but the doctor wants your son to rest as much as possible. Please come with me. Dr. Wells can answer your questions.”

  She started to object, saw that Tim had slid back into unconsciousness, and sighed. “How long before I can visit him again?”

  “Several hours at least.” The nurse’s broad, hairy hand gently gripped Miranda’s elbow as he steered her out of the room. “Dr. Wells is waiting. There will be plenty of time for all your questions before your son wakes up again.”

  And, the nurse thought cynically, plenty of time for the worried mother to slip out and buy more booze and mints. From what he’d seen on the clinic’s discreet surveillance cameras, she was about at the end of her bottle.

  Not that the nurse really cared. He was used to alcoholics and their games. When the Bateman-Molonari Clinic wasn’t tucking up sagging skin, it was drying out and feeding up rich patrons so that they could go forth and drink themselves back into a coma. Between vanity and booze, the clinic always had a waiting list. Still, he couldn’t help feeling sorry for the lady. The patient might wake up a few more times, maybe even have a real lucid spell . . . but that would be it.

  The lady’s son was dying.

  Chapter 40

  Las Vegas

  November 4

  Morning

  Ian pulled his car up near Shane in the cracked parking lot of the Jackpot Motel. He noticed that Shane was doing the same thing Ian had been since they left the casino—looking over his shoulder.

  “Where is he?” Shane asked as Ian walked over.

  “Who?” asked Risa.

  “The guy who followed us,” Shane said.

  “The blonde in the red car?” she asked.

  Shane gave her a quick look. He hadn’t thought she noticed.

  The look she gave back to him said that there were a lot of things about her that he hadn’t noticed, and number one of all was that she could take care of herself.

  “That’s the one,” Ian agreed, drawing their attention to him. “He’s half a block down.”

  “You get his plate?” Shane asked.

  “Already called it in to Rarities.”

  “If they can’t access Nevada’s state license bureau in a hurry, I can.”

  “Yeah, Niall said something about you learning to be a world-class hacker at your daddy’s knee.”

  Risa said, “I’m not listening to this. I haven’t just heard my boss—my ex-boss—say that he can hack into government computers. Think of the blackmail possibilities. But I’m not listening.”

  “Good call,” Shane said. “Let’s go.”

  Armed with photos taken from the security cameras of Cherelle and “Bozo,” the three of them walked into the Jackpot Motel’s office door. The office reeked of smoke and the contents of an overflowing ashtray the size of a soup plate. The woman behind the fake wood counter looked old enough to have kids on Social Security. She was wearing a scoop-front, thigh-length orange sweater and black tights. Her hair was improbably black. Her face looked like it had been slept in for eighty years.

  “Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” Risa said, “but I’m trying to find my friend, Cherelle Faulkner.” As she spoke, Ian slid a photo onto the counter. “She was staying here a few days ago and might not have checked out yet.”

  “You lose your friends often?” the woman asked in a raspy voice.

  Risa smiled from the teeth out. “No. But Cherelle is a little careless about things like checking out and paying bills. So I kind of go along behind her and see that nobody ends up short. How much did she owe you?”

  The woman glanced briefly at the photo. Then she lit a cigarillo and took a long, considering pull on it while she studied the three people in front of her. None of them looked down on their luck, and one of them looked vaguely familiar, like someone she might have seen on TV. She took an
other long nicotine hit while she decided how much money she could charge for information about the slut in the red sweater. Exhaling, she thought about going for a hundred. Two, if she played it right. Then she could kick back with the nickel slots downtown until her butt went numb and her hand ached too much to hit the play button again.

  As smoke streamed around Risa, she wondered if holding her breath would do any good. In the end she went for breathing through her mouth. It didn’t make the air any better, but it didn’t insult her nose as much.

  “A hundred,” the woman said.

  Ian made a disgusted sound.

  Shane reached for his wallet. Two fifties appeared in his fingers. He put one of the bills on the counter.

  With startling speed one fifty disappeared into the woman’s wrinkled cleavage. She watched Shane with watery, demanding eyes.

  He kept the second bill out of her reach.

  “She checked out a couple days ago,” the woman said.

  “Did she say where she was going?” Risa asked.

  The woman hooted. “We weren’t pals, dearie.”

  “Did she leave anything behind?”

  “Dirty linen and fast-food trash.”

  “Room number?” Shane asked.

  “Five. Check it if you want.”

  The fact that she was so willing to let them into the room told them there probably wasn’t anything worth seeing.

  “Later maybe,” Ian said. “Was she driving a Ford Bronco, about ten years old, Arkansas plates?”

  The woman shrugged and watched the fifty that Shane held just out of her reach.

  “You’re supposed to write down a vehicle and license when people register,” Shane reminded her.

  “Yeah, it was a Bronco. Didn’t notice the plates.”

  “What about him?” Risa asked, putting Bozo’s picture on the counter.

  “Our deal was for her,” the woman said.

  Shane got out a third fifty, but he didn’t give it—or the second fifty—to the woman. “This covers everything.”

  She drew smoke in and then shared it with her visitors in a coughing exhalation. “You cops?”