Marked Masters (6 page)

A few seconds later, his prophesy came true.
The Honda resumed its tail, not even trying anymore to pretend it
wasn't interested in us. I looked back and met the gazes of the two
twenty-something males through the Honda's windshield, and though
we all hid behind sunglasses, there was no doubt who the two behind
us thought was the prey in this situation. They were in this for
keeps. I wondered how long the adrenalin and testosterone cocktail
surging through all these alpha males' veins would hold out. And if
we would escape before someone had a stroke. Or worse.

The wind pounded my ears and jazzed my pulse
up several more notches. But it's all fun and games until someone
pulls a gun. A hand snaked out of the passenger window of the
Honda.

"Jack! Gun!" And the first shot screamed
over my head.

The young thug was either a lousy shot or
just trying to scare the shit out of us. As far as I was concerned,
the latter was a fait accompli. It wasn't going to get us to stop,
however. Jack's jaw tightened a little more. His lips looked like
one thin line.

"Hang on," he yelled.

Like I'd even let go if I could.

Still, when he took a kamikaze opportunity
to use an almost nonexistent break in oncoming traffic to zip at
the last second into a tiny, nearly passed mouth of an alley, my
heart practically left my body. Amid the cacophonous crescendo of
angry horns and panicked brakes, I experienced centrifugal force
strong enough to give me an idea what a facelift felt like without
the benefit of anesthesia. I don't know how he kept us vertical. We
did go up on two wheels at one point, and landed hard when my side
again belly flopped to the asphalt. Was there a way to get whiplash
without being hit? If so, just call me the poster girl.

The Mercedes fishtailed dangerously close to
each side of the alley, clipping a Dumpster with the right rear
bumper and nearly sideswiping the concrete facades of the buildings
until Jack fought and regained full control. I had no idea if we
were going the right way down the narrow one-way crevasse, so I
kept my eyelids squeezed shut and prayed. I didn't know the ethics
of praying when breaking the law to save your life, but a second
later Jack shot out the other side and hung another hard left. I
opened my eyes when I felt the sun's heat again hitting my face and
looked to my right to see the light winking across the water of
Biscayne Bay. I started breathing again.

"How in the hell did you keep from hitting
something?" I grabbed my head with both hands. "How did you ever
get onto this busy road, making a left no less, without causing a
pileup?"

"One of us must have a guardian angel." He
grinned.

"Well, I'll admit I closed my eyes and
prayed."

"Me too."

My jaw dropped. "You what?"

"Just kidding." He laughed.

Okay, it may have lightened the moment, but
we both knew we had to get off the grid soon. Jack made three more
quick turns, but since our pursuers had apparently missed their
first opportunity to blast through the alley with us, they either
had to reconnoiter after overshooting the opening or had given up
the chase. I was betting on the former, since the gun convinced me
they were prepared to go to whatever lengths necessary.

"So, who were they?" I asked when Jack
finally slipped the Mercedes into a public parking garage. We
needed a brief bit of privacy to get our pulse rates back down to
nonemergency levels, and this hidey-hole fit our needs of the
moment.

"That's the million-dollar question, I'd
say." He riffled his long fingers around the top of the steering
wheel, almost as if he couldn't believe it was still in one piece.
I understood the feeling. Then he mused, "Couldn't be Moran, since
the pair in the Honda seemed to have no compunction about killing
you."

"Or, I'm not Moran's favorite anymore." I
frowned. Back to the question of why Moran spared me the last time.
And while the location and vehicles were different, I had to admit
there were some similarities between this incident and the shooting
by the motorcyclist in France, as well as our escape under gunfire
on the streets of London. Both were believed to be
Moran-commissioned jobs. Was this incident similar because Moran
was behind it? Or to make us think he was? "It wasn't the Amazon
this time though. Or Weasel and Werewolf."

"No," Jack agreed. "Just two blokes who
looked like every other young man in Miami. Nothing
remarkable."

"Except the gun."

"There is that. Made an impression, I take
it."

"Forty-four Magnums usually do."

"Thank your guardian angel he had that
cannon. He likely wouldn't have missed if he'd been aiming with a
lighter gun." He slipped off his Ray-Bans and pulled out his phone.
"In the meantime, I think we need to add some insurance in case
there were people with videos that could identify us to the
authorities."

"No doubt there were people taking
videos."

"A fact which makes me deliriously happy at
the moment."

"You want us picked up by the cops?"

Jack just smiled and finished his text. When
he hit Send, he turned and said, "Luckily, the U.S. Senator whose
family is in both of our debts after last night's little exercise
is a representative of the whole state of Florida. Not just
Orlando."

Why didn't I think of that?
After
giving myself a mental palm slap, I asked, "So, you're going to
have your buddy get the senator to keep our names off the police
blotters?"

"Yes, and if a video does surface to help
positively identify the guys or the Honda, I want to know that
information too." His phone chimed, and he read the text, then
turned it my way.
On it. Ur covered. Will send DTs gained
l8r.

"Which I'm translating as his promise that
if he gets any details later, you will receive them too."

Jack nodded.

I chewed my lip, thinking. "How did the guys
in the Honda pick us up? This is a new rental car, so no
opportunity for them to add a tracking device. And I didn't notice
them following from the airport. Did you?"

"They could have the car rental agent on
their team. Most rentals are GPS tracked now, especially luxury
models. But that gets complicated since they didn't know which
company we would use. Hell, I didn't even know which company I was
going to use." He shook his head and raised his phone, looking a
moment at the screen. But he returned it to his pocket without
using it again, then said, "My guess is one guy stayed in the car
at Miami International, ready and waiting to move, and the other
went inside and shadowed us from the arrival gate. I imagine our
meeting the suits simply whetted their interest and concerns even
more. As we all left the complex, they likely hung back at enough
of a distance to tail us until they could pick their spot to drive
us off the road to kidnap or hijack or…" His voice went almost to a
whisper. "Or kill us. Who knows?" The volume of his words went up a
smidgeon, but his tone remained deadly. "When they realized we
spotted them, they moved in close and improvised. Almost always a
mistake."

The semi-dark was getting to me, and I
removed my sunglasses to study Jack's face in the forty-watt
lighting. I didn't know what to think, but I had a question I
wanted to ask. "So, were they after both of us? Or just one of
us?"

"What difference does it make?"

"If both," I reasoned, "then it relates to
the project at hand, and it means we're getting closer even if we
don't know exactly what we're getting closer to. If they only
wanted one of us, then it may be something out of one of our pasts.
And if that's the case, we might need to split up, to not only make
sure the other person doesn't get hurt in the crossfire but to be
better at reaching our objective if we become compromised."

Jack didn't say a word. He simply stared at
me for so long I felt my pulse rising again, and not in a good way.
I reached down to the floorboard, trying to break his focus by
moving to retrieve my cell phone. The ploy worked. He slammed the
gearshift into reverse, and we cruised for the exit.

A half hour later, Jack pulled into a side
lot to the prestigious Browning Gallery, a small but world-renowned
terra-cotta landmark with its distinctive 1920s architecture and
gilded Art Deco design touches. In the open spaces around the
gallery, activity bustled as crews set up for an annual art fair
scheduled to open the next day. The gallery was decked out for the
fair and members-only party. Notables from corporate and various
government interests would be on hand for the important event, and
not just Americans. This event had reached the point of being truly
international.

The preparations reminded me of the opening
extravaganza for the gallery's Browning Art Studio that I attended
more than a decade ago, when I was in my teens and my grandfather
still made appearances at such occasions. My heart ached a little
from the memory.

I hoped to look in on the studio before we
left, to see if it had changed much in the interim. I remembered
the space as a fully contained facility, able to meet the needs of
most artists. In the years since that opening event, an
artist-in-residence program was implemented and continued to
receive great buzz.

Despite the banners and party prep going on
in the foyer, my pulse calmed as we moved through the streamlined
décor. The Deco era was probably my favorite, though I loved the
way baroque tastes color so many European buildings. I followed
Jack down the taupe-carpeted hallway that led to the administrative
offices.

"Jack Hawkes, as I live and breathe," a
sultry voice spoke from an open office door. Seconds later, the
scent of Obsession filled our personal space, and the bronzed
figure of Melanie Weems embraced Jack before he could fend her off.
Not that he tried very hard, what with that damned flirty grin and
cocked eyebrow and all.

"Melanie, love, how have you been keeping
yourself?" he asked.

I recognized his tongue-in-cheek tone, but
she obviously never picked up on it. So she complied by running
fingers across his cheek and answering with a low chuckle. She was
nearly as tall as Jack, thanks to killer gold Louboutin heels so
high they hurt my feet just looking at them. This woman and I had a
long history, and it wasn't a good one. Something to do with a
"mean girls" incident she implemented during a college internship
that ultimately got a very good curator fired. Oh, and the
subsequent wardrobe malfunction she experienced at a gala museum
affair a few days later, which she blamed on me but could never
prove.

I'd heard she'd made director at the
Browning but hoped I could avoid her while we were in Miami.
Surely, she wasn't his source…

"Oh, Jack," she breathed the words. "Keeping
myself? You told me once that I was fabulous. Am I not still
fabulous?"

Yeah, her intentions were blatantly obvious,
and unfortunately Jack seemed to have forgotten why we were at the
museum in the first place.

"Melanie…glad you had time in your calendar
for us," he finally said.

She slowly rotated on one heel and pretended
to see me for the first time. But she was trying too hard to hold
her expression. "Us?"

He pulled me closer. "Melanie, I'd like to
introduce you to Laurel Beacham of the Beacham Foundation."

"We've met—" I started.

"Before she had to fall back on getting
hired by her family," Melanie said, cutting off my sentence. I held
my breath and looked bored. I'd been the target of many
backstabbers in my time. I had no problem backing away from this.
She placed a hand on my arm. "So good to see you trying to build
something out of all your family's embarrassment." I subtly moved
my arm away from her hand.

I smiled. "And it's wonderful the museum
could overlook the discrepancies on your resume. They must have
been desperate for a director."

"Wait a minute—"

"Ladies," Jack said. But he looked at me,
shooting a warning glare I read as an order to behave. Maybe he
needed something from her. Well, I would if she would. But I didn't
say that out loud. Instead, I smiled again and took a step back,
pivoting to get a better view of the Picasso hanging behind her
desk. I wished it was a print, but I knew better.

"Love your office, Melanie. Glad things have
worked out so well for you."

No, she didn't believe me. She did, however,
sheath her claws, and that's all I truly hoped for. I turned and
smiled at Jack. "I didn't realize you two knew each other.
Wonderful that you have friends here in Florida, Jack."

"Oh, we're more than friends," Melanie
purred. I think she would have coiled her body around his if it
wouldn't have come off as totally unprofessional. "Remember the
lovely weekend in Austria? Those unbelievable comforters on the
bed, duvets filled with mile-high goose down?"

Oh, for Pete's sake.

"Look," I said, moving farther away with my
words. "You two conduct whatever
business
you need to attend
to. I want to check out the studio while I'm here. Jack, why don't
you come and collect me when you're ready to leave?"

I was still starving, and I wanted to make a
comment about that too. However, I didn't want to try to digest
food if Malicious Melanie joined our little dinner party and did
her best impression of entertaining the troops whenever Jack was
nearby. Gag!

"But, Laurel, I—"

"No, Jack, it's fine. I'll leave you to this
and find my own way to the studio." I turned and sped down the
hallway, calling over my shoulder as I escaped, "I'm pretty sure I
remember where it is. Don't worry about me."

I wanted to laugh. Just too delicious a
revenge to exact on him. Still, if he didn't extricate himself from
the female octopus soon, I refused to get involved. Instead, I
planned on taking to the streets to hunt down a food truck. Where
was this freaking yacht he'd mentioned? Didn't all yachts have
chefs? They'd have to feed me if I boarded the vessel and said I
was Jack's guest, right?