Midnight in Ruby Bayou

For my wonderful daughter

Heather Maxwell

who gave me Faith's music
and told me about the “house of wine” of the South.

They brought me rubies from the mine,
And held them to the sun . . .

Tides that should warm each neighbouring life
Are lock'd in sparkling stone.
But fire to thaw that ruddy snow,
To break enchanted ice,
And give love's scarlet tides to flow,—
When shall that sun arise?

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

EPIGRAPH   They brought me rubies from the mine,
And held them to the sun . . .

PROLOGUE   The public areas were above the thieves, buildings three and four stories high. . .

1
         Owen Walker lived in a bare-bones efficiency apartment overlooking Pioneer Square. . .

2
        The river Neva was opaque white, the same color as the wind screaming sideways. . .

3
        “Can somebody get that? Summer wants to help me chop dill,” Archer yelled. . .

4
        “A million bucks for thirteen rubies?” Walker's nearly black eyebrows rose skeptically.

5
        Faith looked up as the shop doorbell buzzed. She had wondered who would. . .

6
        The medium-size high-rise overlooking Elliot Bay's wind-harried water. . .

7
        “Let me know if this Ivanovitch comes back,” Walker said after a moment.

8
        That night Walker sat in front of his computer with a pizza dripping grease in one hand. . .

9
        Faith had been in the rented Jeep Cherokee twenty minutes before. . .

10
        She awoke to terror. Steel fingers dug into her throat, choking her.

11
        After four hours on duty, Walker was thinking about the Low Country joys of cold beer. . .

12
        Faith stalked into Cap'n Jack's. The smell—fish and hot oil—rolled over her. . .

13
        The man in the black leather jacket grabbed Faith's hair in one hand and waved a knife. . .

14
        As soon as Walker heard the thunder of water into the big tub, he switched from random. . .

15
        “Hurry up, Faith. Archer isn't feeling real patient right now.”

16
        Faith laughed, then shook her head slightly when the server offered her more wine.

17
        After the expo awards were handed out, dozens of customers and designers prowled. . .

18
        The jewelry show closed at noon of the third day, which gave the exhibitors. . .

19
        Jefferson Montegeau was worried, and nothing his father said was making him feel better.

20
        Walker kicked aside the luggage and caught the woman before she hit the floor.

21
        “I don't think our guests want to hear about Grandfather Montegeau,” Jeff said.

22
        When Faith emerged from the library with an empty aluminum case, Jeff was waiting. . .

23
        Jeff got up as quietly as he could, but Mel made an unhappy sound. . .

24
        Walker slipped back into the house as secretly as he had left it.

25
        The veterinarian had come and gone, but the patrol deputies were busy breaking up a family. . .

26
        When Walker returned to the house, he found Faith leaning against the railing. . .

27
        “If your assistant interrupts you one more time, boss, I'm going to do something fatal to him. . .”

28
        Faith hesitated, trying to remember which path she had taken down from the house.

29
        Davis Montegeau drove the dirt road to Ruby Bayou with the blind stubbornness. . .

30
        Walker walked over to shut the heavy library door. He came back across the room. . .

31
        Two hours later, April Joy showed up on the shabby front porch of the Ruby Bayou. . .

32
        Walker paced in the garden until he was out of patience.

33
        Faith paced the sitting room between their two bedrooms.

34
        The figure that hurried down the path at the back of the house. . .

35
        Walker saw instantly that the Russian was in control.

HARPERCOLLINS E-BOOK EXTRA:
DONOVANS IV: A CONVERSATION WITH ELIZABETH LOWELL

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BOOKS BY ELIZABETH LOWELL

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ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

T
he public areas were above the thieves, buildings three and four stories high that held centuries of art and artifacts collected by rulers whose whim was the very breath of life for their subjects. There was room after room filled with extraordinary sculptures, ancient icons and immense tapestries, paintings to make angels weep and saints envious, quantities of gold and silver and gemstones beyond the ability of even man's deepest avarice to comprehend.

In the darkest hours of the early January night, there was only time and the scrape of guards' worn boots over marble that had once known only the polished arrogance of royalty. The smallest sounds echoed down the long, magnificent corridors with their gilt and vaulted ceilings supported by columns as tall as ancient gods.

Even the hundreds of public rooms weren't enough to display all three million items in the treasure trove. The lesser items, or those out of fashion at the moment, were stored in basement warrens where gleaming marble gave way to crumbling plaster and rat-gnawed wood. Dust lay like dirty snow on every surface. The bureaucrats who had once listed and catalogued the imperial collections were long gone, dismissed by a civilian government that could barely keep its soldiers in bullets.

Three women and two men moved briskly down the narrow subterranean hallways. Caught in the glow of flashlights, human breath came out in white bursts. In front of the museum, the river Neva was frozen. So was everything else in St. Petersburg that couldn't afford or steal electricity. Away from the public areas where foreign diplomats, dignitaries, and tourists gaped at royal treasures, the buildings were in disrepair. The world-class pieces of art—the Rubenses and da Vincis and Rembrandts—were well maintained. The rest of the czars' treasures had to be as hardy as the Russian people themselves to survive.

One of the thieves unlocked a large room and flipped on the switch by the door. Nothing happened. Someone cursed, but no one was surprised. Everyone in the city stole lightbulbs for their own use.

Using a flashlight held by her partner, the dark-haired woman went to work on a huge, decades-old safe. The tumblers were balky. The door squealed like a dying pig when she opened it.

She was not worried by the metallic scream. Even if the guards above heard it, they would keep on making their rounds through warm, empty halls and imperial rooms. The guards weren't paid well enough to investigate odd sounds. No smart urban citizen poked around in the dark looking for trouble. Enough came in the normal course of life.

Working in whispers, the thieves began pulling open lockers and drawers. Occasionally someone would grunt or draw in a breath at a particularly spectacular piece of jewelry. If their hands lingered, the dark-haired woman spoke curtly. She had her orders: Take only the modest pieces, the forgotten ones, the nameless baubles that were uninspired gifts from long-dead aristocrats or merchants or foreign officials seeking favor with the czars. These were the pieces that were listed on royal inventories as “brooch, pearls with red center stone” or “stomacher, blue stones with diamond surrounds.” None of these pieces were valued enough to be documented in the imperial portraits upstairs. None of them appeared in photographs of imperial jewelry. They were blessedly anonymous.

But ah, the temptation to take one of the less modest, more dangerous pieces. The itch to hold an emerald as big as a hen's egg, to feel two hundred carats of sapphires set in a medieval buckle, to slip a handful of diamond bracelets into a pocket, to ease a twenty-carat ruby ring into the hidden compartment behind your belt . . .

It had happened more than once in the past. A swift movement beyond the reach of the flashlight, the sudden weight of wealth tucked against a thigh or belly. Amid all the kilos of glitter, who would miss an ounce or two?