Twelve Shades of Midnight:

by Liliana Hart

  He watched her back, and from the tilt of her head and the way her hand swiped at her face, he suspected she was wiping away tears. Jana had sent her into the throes of a bitter breakup, when that was the furthest thing from Rhys’s mind.

  He broke, unable to play along with Jana’s coldhearted method for sending Sienna on her way. Sonofabitch. He jerked open the SUV door. “Sienna!”

  She kept walking. Marching forward without looking back. He jogged after her, catching up to her just outside the terminal door. “Wait!”

  She stopped but didn’t turn around. He reached her and pulled her around to face him. As he’d guessed, her eyes were full of unshed tears. “It’s the mask, Sienna. It’s driving you away again. Making you hurt and angry so you’ll go. Jana’s trying to protect you.”

  She angrily wiped at her eyes. “I don’t believe you.”

  “You honestly believe I’m that much of a bastard that I’d suddenly announce I want you to leave because I’m done with you? Forgetting the entire context of the conversation, the fact that you might be safer if you leave?”

  Her brow furrowed. He was getting through the haze of emotions spun by the mask, but she hadn’t pulled out yet. Damn, Jana knew Sienna’s insecurities well—but then, she’d had months to get to know her. She probably knew every one of Sienna’s triggers, and Rhys had created an opening with his careless words. Jana seized them and dug a deep pit in Sienna’s heart. He couldn’t fault her for doing it to save Sienna, but he also couldn’t let Sienna leave like this. He’d have to convince her to leave some other way.

  He cupped her face between his hands. “Sienna, I think I’m falling in love with you. It’s crazy fast, I know, and we’ve had a whole lot of crazy these last few days, but at least this is good crazy. I want you to fly home because I care about you. The idea of anything happening to you drives me nuts. I want you safe. Period.”

  He studied her face during his declaration. She showed not even a flicker of joy. “You think you’re falling in love with me,” she said. “I find that hard to believe when the mask is so good at manipulating emotions.”

  He released her and stepped back. “Now you’re pissing me off. Don’t you dare tell me the mask is just manipulating me. You’re the one Jana manipulates emotionally. Not me. All she did for me was invite me into your dream. But everything that’s happened between us—both in the dream and out of it—has been real for me.”

  “I think—” She stopped abruptly, and Rhys died a thousand deaths while he waited for her to finish. “I’m terrified this won’t be real for you, because I don’t think I’ll ever be able to recover from losing you.”

  He pulled her against his chest. “Sweetheart, you aren’t going to lose me.” But even as he said the words, his hands flashed with burning pain again, and he feared more than anything, he would lose her.

  She whimpered, and he released her so he could take her hands. A bright, angry red swath spread up her fingers, over her wrists. Her chest, neck, and face all rivaled a fire engine in shade. He glanced around. Jana had sent them here by manipulating Sienna, and now that they were stopped outside the terminal, she was sending them another message. “You need to leave, Sienna. Jana sent you in this direction. She hasn’t let us down yet.”

  “Leaving won’t change the future. I can’t escape what’s coming.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I don’t know. I just do.”

  “Well, I don’t believe it.” He couldn’t communicate with Jana like she could, but he knew in his gut Jana had sent them here for a reason. “Please, sweetheart. For me, will you go?”

  She nodded.

  Relief flooded him. “Let’s get you a flight, then.”

  They stepped inside the tiny terminal, slightly larger than an auto-parts store and with the same smell of rubber and oil. He took Sienna’s hand to lead her to the one and only ticket counter.

  She came to a dead stop, tugging his hand, forcing him to do the same. She leaned in to him and whispered, “Jana didn’t manipulate me so I’d leave. She manipulated me so we’d end up here, in the terminal, now. Do you see the box the woman in the shipping line is holding?”

  He glanced toward the shipping counter at the other end of the room, and shock rippled through him.

  The box. The one that held the mask. A carved piece of artwork in and of itself, it was distinctive.

  The box was here, clutched in the arms of a short woman who glanced furtively around the small terminal. Adrenaline coursed through Sienna. Was the mask inside?

  “Are there others like it?” Rhys asked.

  “No. A year ago, I had a project for a Seattle-area tribe and thought I might find human remains in the collection. My company commissioned the box, just in case. Handling of tribal remains is tricky, and it’s always good to be prepared. I didn’t end up needing it for that client. When the mask started haunting me, I tried several different museum containers for it. Nothing muted the strange vibration I felt whenever I touched it, so I tried the cedar box, and the tension in the mask eased immediately. Do you think that woman has the mask?”

  “Let’s go ask her,” Rhys said.

  “We can’t—”

  He smiled. “Yes, you can. We reported the mask stolen, including the box. You own the box, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “That woman has something that belongs to you, which was stolen yesterday. And you and I both know it’s connected with a murder.” He walked with confidence across the room. Sienna had to admit, she was so jumbled with what she could and couldn’t admit to anyone other than Rhys—and now Chuck—that she’d lost sight of the fact that they could question this woman as easily as they’d questioned Archie.

  The box was hers.

  The woman, however, wasn’t exactly cooperative. When Rhys began questioning her, she turned defensive and complained. Loudly. Security entered the fray, and she insisted Rhys was harassing her.

  It took several minutes and pictures of the box Sienna had on her cell phone to convince the guard to call the police, all while the woman howled that she was shipping her father’s remains to the lower forty-eight for a military honors burial ceremony scheduled for tomorrow, and this delay would mean the dearly departed would be late for his own funeral.

  Officer Tourney showed up, very unhappy to see Rhys and Sienna, and he muttered several unflattering things not quite under his breath. It appeared he didn’t appreciate Rhys pulling strings to get the FBI involved, and Sienna guessed Tourney had already been scolded for his shoddy investigating of the break-in at Chuck’s and the shooting. Not to mention that if he’d picked up Helvig for questioning as Rhys had requested, the man might not have been murdered.

  All Sienna cared about was the fact that Rhys had put enough pressure on Tourney that the man had to intervene now—especially with Sienna’s photos of the box and the fact that they’d reported the theft by the book.

  Now Tourney said in a strained voice, “Sorry, ma’am, but I’m going to have to take possession of the box until we sort this out.”

  He reached for it, but the woman jerked away. The heavy lines on her face deepened as she struggled with the heft of the container. She coughed, the guttural, morning cough of a long-time smoker, then said, “It’s mine. I paid an Eskimo to carve it for me.”

  This told Sienna she probably wasn’t local. Most people here used the term Iñupiat.

  Tourney frowned, probably noticing the same thing, and said, “Can you provide paperwork to prove you legally own it and commissioned its construction?”

  The woman glared at him as she struggled under the weight of the box. “Of course not. I traded with an old carver in Itqaklut for it. I forget his name. Henry, Harry… started with an H. No receipt.”

  “Officer, as I commissioned the construction of that box for my business, I can easily prove it’s mine. I can call an associate in Washington, and she’ll fax the paperwork to you, along with more photos.”

  The woman
cursed loudly. “I need to mail this box, now. Today. I’m done with this bullshit.” She turned, still clutching the box, and headed to the shipping counter.

  “I can’t let you do that, ma’am.”

  “This is harassment! I have rights.”

  “Ma’am, why don’t you remove the contents of the box and ship it in a different container? They have cardboard boxes here.”

  “You want me to send my uncle south in cardboard? That’s desecration.”

  Uncle? Hadn’t she said father? “It’s also desecration to steal an ancient shaman’s mask from the tribe,” Sienna said softly.

  “Mask? What mask? You keep mentioning a mask, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Ma’am. Just open the box and remove the contents. If somehow you’ve been wronged, and the box belongs to you, it will be returned. Right now, the evidence favors Ms. Aubrey’s claim.”

  The woman stood in the center of the narrow terminal, her lined face pinched with anger. Sienna wondered if she was connected to the Pelligrews or had found the box on the street at the Midnight Sun Festival. Finders keepers didn’t apply with stolen goods, no matter how much the woman wanted to believe that, and she hadn’t made it easy on herself by piling on lies about having commissioned the box.

  “Ma’am, will you open the box? It would solve a lot of problems if you could just show us the mask isn’t inside.”

  “It’s my box. I have rights.”

  From the arrivals side of the terminal, a man in a suit, along with a small entourage, entered the building. He scanned the room, and Sienna nudged Rhys. “Looks like the feds have arrived.”

  One corner of Rhys’s mouth kicked up when he turned and saw the group. “Agent Upton?” he called out.

  The man nodded and approached, the three people with him following a pace behind.

  The woman holding the box said, “Agent?”

  “He’s FBI, ma’am,” Rhys answered with a cunning smile.

  Her eyes widened as the officials neared. She dropped the box and bolted for the exit.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The heavy wooden box cracked open upon hitting the floor, and a mother lode of artifacts spilled out. Tools made of bone, stone, and wood. Awls and adzes, a small maul, projectile points that ranged in size from tiny darts to a large spearhead. An obsidian blade shattered on the hard floor. Given the heft of the stone artifacts, no wonder the box had appeared too heavy to be holding ashes.

  Officer Tourney chased after the fleeing woman, while the FBI agent and his party stayed behind to talk to Rhys. The woman had a sizable head start in the commotion, and Sienna wondered if Tourney would give the chase his all.

  After introductions were completed and the situation explained, FBI Agent Matt Upton turned to her. “Ms. Aubrey, can you identify these artifacts?”

  “It shouldn’t be too hard to match them to the accession numbers the tribe assigned. It looks like most are labeled. My guess is this is an assortment of artifacts the Pelligrew brothers stole before they learned that some artifacts are more valuable than others. With the possible exception of the spearhead and maul, they probably couldn’t get a good price for these items.”

  “You’re certain the box is the one you stored the mask in?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. The mask is probably worth a thousand times what these artifacts would be worth on the black market. The thieves might have ditched the box because it’s so large compared to the mask, which is roughly the size of a human face. While the box”—she gestured to the rectangular container—“is cumbersome. I needed special permission to bring it on my flights as a carry-on because it’s a little too big for a rolling bag.”

  Sienna and Rhys ended up returning with the FBI agent and his crime scene investigators to the tribal storage facility, where a quick check of the inventory numbers proved the artifacts recovered at the airport had indeed been stolen from the tribe.

  The agent’s team set to work on documenting and dismantling the shelf in the back, and to no one’s surprise, they found an opening into the net manufacturer’s shop. A simple phone call and a warrant was issued for the Pelligrew brothers. The charge was artifact theft for now, but odds were money laundering, racketeering, and murder would be added during the course of the investigation. They had much evidence to gather, starting with a full search of the net manufacturing shop to make sure the charges would stick.

  Agent Upton called Archie as a courtesy, but with the hole cut in the wall, they already had a warrant to search his shop.

  Officer Tourney had caught and arrested the woman at the airport, and she revealed she was in town for the Midnight Sun Festival. Early that morning, when she’d stepped outside her motel room to smoke, she’d seen a man in a pickup truck pull up next to the motel’s Dumpster and drop the box inside. Curious as to why someone would discard something so beautiful, she’d fished it out. Discovering it was full of artifacts, she decided to ship it home.

  Her description of the driver fit Doug Pelligrew, and the truck was likely the Pelligrews’ Ford.

  Agent Upton speculated that the Pelligrews were opportunists: they’d seen an opening to steal artifacts and seized it. But they’d started with items they couldn’t unload, and once they learned what collectors would buy, they started cherry-picking the collection. At some point, they’d formed an alliance with Adam Helvig, and the brothers became players in the illicit artifact trade.

  It had all come apart for Helvig when Sienna started asking questions about the mask.

  Sienna and Rhys settled in the storage facility office, going over the catalogue printout, matching items that had been recovered to their log entry, while the federal investigators searched the facility and the net shop. When this task was done, Rhys told her he wanted to take her back to the airport and send her home. He still didn’t know about the flames that had licked at her face, or the cold burn, which she knew in her gut couldn’t be avoided.

  Pain was coming. As was fire. Leaving wouldn’t change a thing.

  Agent Upton appeared in the doorway. “Vaughan, I’ve read your background file. Am I correct in remembering you were an explosive ordnance disposal specialist in the army?”

  Rhys stiffened. “Yes.”

  “I need you to take a look at something. Ms. Aubrey, you need to evacuate the building. Now.”

  “Get in the car,” Rhys said. “Drive to the power plant and wait. I won’t be able to think if I’m worried about you. You have to get out of the blast zone.” Rhys fully intended to ask Agent Upton to handcuff her and drag her away if she refused. She hadn’t told him, but he was certain the mild burn he experienced had been horrible for her.

  Her beautiful eyes were full of fear. “I’m scared, Rhys.”

  “Don’t worry about me, sweetheart.” He waved his hands in front of her. “Check it out, two tours in Iraq, and I still have all my fingers.”

  “I can’t believe you’re joking about this.”

  If she only knew the morbid humor that had gotten his team through those two nightmare tours. Eventually, she’d learn all of his facets, but if they wanted to have a future, right now she needed to leave. He kissed her, hard, then pushed her toward Chuck’s SUV.

  She lifted the handle, then turned and said, “I–I—” Her face took on a determined look as she straightened her spine and gripped his shirt, pulling him down so she could press a fast kiss to his lips. “I love you,” she said firmly.

  He smiled and felt at least one of the knots in his belly uncoil. “I love you too. Now get the hell out of here.”

  She nodded. “I’ll wait by the power plant. Call my cell as soon as you’re safe.”

  “Will do.”

  In less than a minute, she was a safe distance from the building, and Rhys turned to Agent Upton. “Did you find wire cutters in the net shop?”

  Upton nodded and handed him a canvas bag that clanked with an assortment of tools.

  “Thanks. Let’s see what we’ve got.”r />
  Sienna turned the car so she could see the building, and threw it in Park, leaving the engine running. Strange to realize that this was the farthest distance she’d been from Rhys since they’d met, and she felt like part of her was missing.

  That must be why she didn’t feel right. Uneasy. Something was off. Images of flames teased the edges of her vision. The flames were coming. The mask would burn. But Jana seemed to be telling her there was nothing she or Rhys could do to stop it.

  She wished the large bay door on the net shop had been rolled up so she could see inside. As it was, all she could see was the windowless, low, gray concrete industrial building. Silent in the late afternoon.

  A scraping sound from behind her made her nerves jump. Probably a critter of some sort, slithering in the muskeg next to the plant. She reached for the switch on the power windows to roll them up.

  Something cold and metal pressed against her temple. “That was a sweet good-bye you said to that asshole lawyer,” a man whispered with a low sneer. “Too bad that’ll be the last time you ever see him, ’cause your lover boy is going to blow up any second.”

  A cold burn flushed her entire body, and her vision dimmed. All she could see were the flames.

  No. No. No.

  “I’d love to stay and watch the fireworks, but I’m afraid we’ve got someplace we need to be. So you, sweetheart, are going to put this car in gear and drive. As long as you do what I say, I won’t blow your brains out.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rhys stared at the explosive package and swore. It had been planted in the back storage room of the net shop. Buried under old tools and netting material, it had been well disguised. He’d hoped the Pelligrews were closer to the amateur end of the bomb-making spectrum, but clearly, one of the boys had training. Rhys wondered if Nick or Doug had served in Iraq, or if they were Internet taught.

  From the construction, his guess was white supremacist survivalists. It had the signature of boys with time on their hands and a whole lot of hate in their hearts, not the spartan lethal efficiency of insurgents.