Moving Target (47 page)

“Before or after I keep him from bleeding all over the book?” She had her fingers through the trigger guard, but finding the bloody little safety was—

“Show me your hands!”

Serena spun around, shooting as she turned, hearing Erik’s advice ringing in her memory:
Don’t be girly or coy. Just shoot and keep on shooting.

Her first two bullets were wild, but so were Wallace’s. His injured hand just wasn’t as quick or accurate as it should have been. Ricochets slammed around unpredictably, chewing chips out of stone.

The rest of Serena’s shots weren’t wild. She didn’t count how many times she hit Wallace. She just clenched her teeth and fired until the gun was empty and he was lying sprawled and motionless against a blood-spattered wall.

Distantly she realized that she was still pulling on the trigger and Erik was talking to her.

“It’s over, Serena. Listen to me. You’re all right. He’s not going to get up again.”

Numbly she lowered the gun.

Erik looked at her bleached skin and bleak eyes, and wished he could wipe the past few moments from her memory. But he couldn’t. He knew he should tell her to get Wallace’s gun, but he wasn’t going to do that, either. He didn’t want her to get any closer to the bloody mess than she already was.

Besides, it was a dead certainty that Wallace wasn’t going to be doing any more shooting.

“Look at me, Serena. Not at him. At me.”

She turned toward Erik, took a wrenching breath, then another. The sight of blood pulsing down his right arm shocked her back into control. She went to her knees beside him in a rush.

“You’re bleeding too much,” she said, dropping the gun.

“A little blood always looks like a lot.”

She saw the ruined cloth and gore along his ribs. “If you tell me it’s just a scratch, I’ll shoot you myself.”

“No worries,” he said through his teeth. “It’s not a scratch.”

“I have to stop the bleeding.”

“Pressure.”

Without a thought to its venerable history, she began yanking the scarf off her neck.

“Stand up and get away from him.”

For a shocked instant both Erik and Serena thought the voice was Wallace’s. Then Erik looked past her at the black-dressed figure standing in the doorway, holding a gun on them.

P
aul Carson,” Erik said grimly.

The gun in Paul’s hand was pointed at Serena. It didn’t jerk or waver.

“I’d rather not shoot you,” he said matter-of-factly, “but I haven’t yet decided whether you’re in on the scam with North and Wallace.”

“Wait,” she said. “You don’t understand. There’s no—”

“Move, Serena,” Erik cut in. A pattern had just condensed in his mind. An ugly one.

“But—“ she started to object.

“
Do it
.”

Unwillingly she stood and backed away from Erik. Her steps brought her no closer to Paul. He smiled at her caution.

“Commendable, if a bit late,” Paul said, but he was watching Erik with the eyes of a man who knew who his enemy was. “I see you’re too clever to grab at straws.”

“There’s no scam,” Serena said urgently. “I remembered where the Book of the Learned was and we got it, and then Wallace shot Erik and I—I shot Wallace.”

Paul slanted a speculative glance at her. “Thank you. It saved me the trouble. You surprise me, Serena. You must have more of your grandmother in you than anyone thought. That was one tough old bitch. Like you, she wouldn’t negotiate no matter what the price.”

“So you killed her,” Serena said.

He shrugged. “She was threatening the House of Warrick.”

“The woman in Florida?” Erik asked. “The guru in Sedona? Bert?”

“Of course.” He looked at Serena with pale eyes that felt nothing, saw everything. “Put your hands on top of your head and turn around, and walk backward to me. If you get between me and your boyfriend while you do it, you’re both dead.”

She believed him. He wasn’t like Wallace, pumped up and flushed with adrenaline, wanting an audience. Paul was steady as a stone and every bit as hard.

“I thought fire was more your style,” she said bitterly.

“Whatever keeps the cops guessing,” Paul said. “You have three seconds, Serena. Two.”

She turned around and awkwardly started walking backward.

“Keep you hands on top of your head,” he ordered. “Keep backing up. More. Slowly, Serena. Stop. Good. Move just once and he dies.”

Erik watched like a predator.

Paul didn’t give any opening. He was cool and professional. Deadly.

“Where’s your car?” Erik asked casually.

“In back of a dead man’s shack.”

Erik didn’t have to ask who had died. There was only one house within easy walking range: Jolly’s. “And Wallace’s car? Where did he hide it?”

“In front of the old man’s shack, right where I told him. Right where the police will find it when I notify them.”

“Anonymously, of course,” Erik said. “You don’t want to disturb their fantasy that Wallace worked alone.”

Paul didn’t bother to answer the obvious. Holding the gun on Erik, watching him, Paul reached out with his left hand to search beneath Serena’s jacket for weapons. The first thing his groping fingers found was the scarf dangling loosely around her neck.

He screamed and shoved her away as though he had grabbed burning napalm.

Erik’s left arm moved in a blur. One of Lisbeth’s stone bobbins hurtled across the cabin and buried itself halfway in Paul’s temple. His scream stopped as quickly as it had begun. He toppled backward over Wallace and went down hard. He stayed there.

The stench of gunfire, blood, and death clung to everything.

Erik forced himself to his feet. He thought he would pass out before he picked up Paul’s gun, but he felt a lot better with it in his hand.

“Sit down before you fall down,” Serena said, her voice strained.

“I’m—”

“You’re shot, that’s what you are,” she cut in savagely, “so just shut up and sit down.”

Erik compromised. He shut up.

She whipped the scarf off her neck, folded it into a thick pad, and held it over his ribs where blood was coming out much too fast. Breath hissed through Erik’s teeth as pain tried to send him to his knees. The only thing that kept him upright was the knowledge that Serena wouldn’t be able to get him into the car on her own.

To her surprise, blood discolored the hastily made bandage but didn’t immediately soak through. Gritting her teeth, she pressed harder to slow the hot red flow. She didn’t know how much pain Erik could take without fainting, but she was afraid she was going to find out. She watched him with anxious violet eyes.

Pale, trembling, smeared with ashes and blood—she was the most beautiful thing Erik had ever seen. He started to tell her when Niall spoke from the darkness beyond the ruined walls.

“If you shoot me, boyo, go for the heart. I’ve already got a pisser of a headache.”

Erik’s smile looked more like a feral snarl. “What took you so long?”

Niall stepped into the light of the lantern. He was as pale as Erik and almost as bloody; scalp wounds were worse for bleeding than anything but tongues.

“You look like hell,” Erik said.

“You should see the other guy,” Niall said.

He glanced at the gun in Erik’s hand, recognized it as the one taken by the attacker—Paul or Wallace, from the look of it. Apparently Niall had been slotted to be the bad guy, complete with murder weapon in his dead hand. Sweet. Really sweet.

“Has that gun been fired tonight?” Niall asked as he went to check on Paul and Wallace.

“Not by me.”

Niall grunted. “Good. It’s mine.”

He saw the oddly shaped stone sticking out of Paul’s skull, checked for a pulse, didn’t feel anything conclusive, and started frisking him. When he checked for a sleeve knife, he saw Paul’s hand.

“Christ Jesus,” he muttered. “What did you do to him, hold his hand against the lantern until he confessed?”

Erik and Serena exchanged puzzled looks and said nothing.

Niall collected all the weapons he found and put them across the room. When he was finished, he put his hands around his mouth and hollered, “Come on in, Ian. Dana’s Fuzzy took care of it.”

“I had a partner,” Erik said, giving Serena a bittersweet smile. “I’m not sorry Wallace is dead, but I’m sorry you were the one holding the trigger down.”

Niall gave Serena an approving look. It changed to surprise when he spotted the gleaming gold cover and pools of colored gems on the floor behind her. “I take it that’s the prize.”

“Yeah,” Erik said.

“Sit down before you fall down, boyo.”

“Take your own advice,” Erik retorted. “I’m feeling better every second. It’s not nearly as bad as I thought when the bullet hit. Serena has the bleeding under control.”

Niall walked over and looked at the thick pad of cloth Serena was pressing against Erik’s ribs. “Bet that stings like a bitch,” he said neutrally.

“No bet,” Erik said through his teeth, “but it’s easing up quicker than I expected.”

Niall reached out to the pad. “Here, let me have a—shit!” He snatched back his hand and shook his fingers as though they had been singed. “What’s on that thing, acid? How can you stand it against the wound?”

“What are you talking about?” Erik said. “It feels cool and soothing.”

Niall looked at his fingertips in the lantern light. They appeared normal. Felt normal except for a residual tingle. “Bloody hell.”

Serena heard an echo of laughter in her head and sensed the satisfaction of a weaver whose uncanny skills had lasted into a time when such things were neither known nor thought possible.

“A lure and a weapon,” Erik murmured, remembering. He touched the cloth with new appreciation. “Nifty painkiller, too.”

Ian Lapstrake stepped—or staggered—into the light of the lantern. One side of his head was bleeding freely. So were several cuts on his fingers.

“What happened to you two?” Serena asked, looking from Niall to Lapstrake.

“We had a meeting of the minds,” Lapstrake said roughly.

“Bastard came up behind us when we were still blind and deaf from the helicopter taking off,” Niall explained. “Rang us like bells. Then he taped us up and left us behind a pile of rocks.”

“We’d still be there, if it wasn’t for Niall’s shoelaces,” Lapstrake added, looking at his bloody fingers ruefully. “I was working behind my back, so it took me a little while to figure out where the razor strip began and ended.” He glanced up, pinning Erik with dark eyes that weren’t smiling at all. “Anything else need doing before we call 911?”

Erik understood the real question: Anything you want to hide before the cops get here? “I don’t think we need any stage dressing. It was ambush and self-defense all the way. I’d like to keep Serena out of it, though.”

“Which gun?” Lapstrake asked, looking around.

“Mine, behind us,” Erik said. “Wipe it down and hand it to me, okay?”

“But—” she began.

“You’d be doing me a favor,” Niall said quickly. “Dana is Satan in spiked heels when a client ends up doing our job.”

“I’ll hold on to this,” Erik said as he eased her hand away from the cloth pressed against his ribs. “Go get the Book of the Learned. See if a Learned pattern master can tell us what all the killing was about.”

“Maybe they believed that crap about the secret to eternal life,” Niall offered.

“Wallace might have,” Erik said. “Paul? No way. His kind doesn’t believe in anything.”

“What kind is that?” Niall asked.

“Psychopath.”

Slowly Serena went to the ancient book that had cost so many lives. She wiped her hands on her jeans and frowned at the imperfect results. Then she saw that some of Erik’s blood was already on the cover, darkening the luster of gold. She decided there was nothing she could do to the Book of the Learned that time and man hadn’t already done many times over. With a final swipe of her hands over her jeans, she carefully opened the book.

She couldn’t read the writing on the first loose vellum pages, but she could recognize that it wasn’t the work of Erik the Learned. The calligraphy was less perfect, less patient, somehow more feminine. It wasn’t simple text that met her eyes but what appeared to be a list of names linked to other lists.

Gradually she realized that she was looking at a genealogy. One word appeared again and again, and from it came the next generation to be listed.

She turned the page over. The list continued on the other side. The writing varied in style, individual despite the strict rules of calligraphy. The lines were small, almost cramped in an obvious attempt to use as little of the precious vellum as possible. But still there were pages.

The appearance of the list changed through time as the shape of the letters and the words themselves changed, becoming more recognizable. Fascinated, she watched the language evolve into more modern spelling, a more modern alphabet, Arabic numerals, cursive writing. Then she turned another page and saw a name leap up from it in endless combination.

Serena.

Each woman’s maiden name changed into a married name or simply descended unchanged to the first female child of the next generation. The marriages, births, and deaths of each Serena’s relatives weren’t recorded unless there were no girls born and a collateral line was designated. But one thing didn’t vary: only the firstborn female of any given generation carried Serena as some part of her name.

Ignoring the surnames, Serena whispered the first and middle names of her female ancestors, reading faster and faster until the names blurred into a kind of litany.

Cassandra Serena. Serena Elspeth. Kenna Serena. Serena Elen. Beatrice Serena. Elisabeth Serena. Mary Serena. Serena Margaret. Serena Victoria. Lisbeth Serena. Marilyn Serena. Serena Lyn.

Abruptly she realized that she had read her own name aloud and that of her mother, her grandmother. For the first time she focused on the surnames, her mother’s maiden name, her grandmother’s married name.

Shocked, Serena made a sound that could have been disbelief or pain or both combined.

“Serena?”

She looked up and found Erik watching her with his vivid bird-of-prey eyes.