Running Scared (19 page)

Like the brooch, the horse was handmade, probably cast through the lost-wax technique, incised with symbols, and undoubtedly Celtic. Unlike the brooch, it was of very early Celtic design, rather than late. The decorations didn’t cover the available surface. Instead, they were concentrated along the barrel of the horse. The major symbol was the wheel of the sun inscribed on both sleek sides of the figurine. Each wheel had three equally spaced smaller wheels etched around its rim. In place of hooves a sun wheel grew at the base of each leg. The effect was both elegant and powerful. Whoever had created the figurine had been an extraordinary artist as well as a skilled craftsman.

He had also lived at least four hundred years before Christ and had been influenced by the culture archaeologists called La Tène, after the site where this particular style of art was first found and studied. The wheels/hooves owed more to a time two hundred years earlier, called Hallstatt after a different archaeological site.

She made sure the hidden, overhead camera had a clear view before she walked back to the waiting men.

“Remarkable” was all she said as she set the horse in its velvet-lined tray. “There’s almost no blurring of the incised design after twenty-five hundred years. It might have been made yesterday.”

She only wished she could believe that it had. A fraud would have been easy to dismiss. But she was very much afraid that the artifact was as real as it was powerful.

“Next?” she asked flippantly.

Smith-White frowned. He had heard that Shane’s curator could be difficult, but this was the first time he’d encountered it personally. Saying nothing, he pulled a third artifact from the aluminum box.

“Another votive figurine,” he said to Shane. “Excellent condition.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Risa asked no one in particular.

Shane cut her a sideways look out of stone green eyes before he took the figurine. This time he was prepared for the searing jolt of recognition and power. His hand didn’t so much as quiver. Even as he admired the astounding complexity of the designs incised on the obviously potent stag, he passed the gold over to Risa. The challenging look in her eyes told him that if he braced her hand again she would dump the artifact in his lap. Smiling slightly, he placed the stag on her palm.

Other than a subtle jerk that only he noticed, she appeared to have no reaction. But the flare of her pupils told him that she had recognized the artifact on some primal level, just as he had.

That realization was as staggering as the densely inscribed designs on the figurine.

She dreamed.

She recognized.

And she was running from it as fast as she could.

Silently he vowed to find out why.

Risa put the stag under the microscope. When the artifact came into focus, she didn’t know whether to celebrate the extraordinary beauty that lay on her palm or to put her head on the table and weep for all that had been lost to time and could never be known again.

“Celtic,” she said huskily. “At least fourth or fifth century a.d. I’m looking at the beginning of the golden age of Celtic art, which culminated in the illuminations of the Book of Kells. The style of designs on this stag are closer to those of the Lindisfarne Gospels, at the beginning of the flowering of the illuminator’s art. It would be the work of a lifetime to decipher the complexities and interconnections of the symbolism on this figurine. And even after that lifetime I would enjoy only a fraction of the understanding, of the sheer emotional and intellectual impact, that someone from that time and place would experience in the stag’s presence. The context has been lost. So much . . . lost.”

Smith-White heard the reverence in Risa’s voice and wondered if he hadn’t made a mistake by showing the stag third instead of last. To him, the armband had been the most spectacular of the lot, which was why he had chosen to show it last. The stag was a nice piece, indeed very fine, but the designs were so intricate that they were dizzying to the modern eye. As far as he was concerned, the armband was much more imposing.

It remained to be seen if Shane’s curator would agree.

After positioning the stag for the ceiling camera, Risa reluctantly returned it to Smith-White.

“Again,” she said to Shane, “I have to point out how unlikely it is that gold work that detailed would retain its crispness through so many centuries.”

“Noted,” he said.

Before that line of discussion could continue, Smith-White pulled out the fourth and final artifact. “This is, quite simply, spectacular.”

Risa wanted to argue, but there was no point.

The piece was incredible.

Shane mentally braced himself to take the armlet. The jolt came hard and deep, then eased. He had felt other instants of recognition with other artifacts, but nothing to match this; it was like grabbing a bare electrical wire.

He stood and walked over to Risa, putting himself between her and Smith-White’s shrewd gray eyes.

“Brace yourself,” he said too softly for the other man to hear.

Warily she took the armlet. A flash of heat, a whirl of time, a rush of light-headedness, and then the present settled into its accustomed place.

Except that the look on Shane’s face told her it had taken her longer to come back than the few seconds of disorientation she remembered experiencing.

She didn’t object when he came with her to the worktable. She put the armband under the microscope and willed herself not to be drawn into its sinuous, potent designs. She told herself she was successful.

The gooseflesh rippling up her arms told her she was lying.

Designed for either muscular biceps or a very thin neck, the heavy gold band was perhaps three fingers wide and incised in such a way that light flowed over it as though the gold was constantly shifting, breathing,
alive
. Without magnification, the background designs had suggested the symmetrical basket-style decoration of the Snettisham hoard, but what caught the eye—and the breath—was the face that stared out at her through the mists of time.

Almond-shaped eyes of blue enamel and jet pupils, eyes that were empty yet all-seeing in an eerie way. High brow fit to wear a crown. Thin shadow line for a nose, no mouth. The face—or perhaps it was a skull—dominated the dense designs it sprang from. The designs themselves were highly abstract, interlaced lines symbolizing geese. A thick-beaked raven bracketed either side of the head/skull.

Raven of death, immortal geese, and man caught between, living through death to eternity.

She would have sworn she hadn’t spoken aloud, but beside her Shane said, “Yes.”

Risa grimly shook off the spell of the art. When she spoke, her tone was neutral. “The artist who created this was aware of every style from Hallstatt through all variations of La Tène and prefigured the avoidance of empty space in a design that became the hallmark of Celtic work as seen in the Book of Kells.”

“Are you saying he was alive in the ninth century a.d.?” Shane asked.

“Or she. I simply use the masculine form for convenience.” Risa made a swift movement of her hand before he could say anything more. “To answer your question, I would have to compare many artifacts, particularly ones that had been found in situ. Otherwise, dating is rather arbitrarily decided upon stylistic details. Unfortunately, styles remain static in one geographic area of the Celtic civilization and surge forward in another, which leads to all kinds of assumptions about age and source of a given artifact that are little more than educated guesses. Highly educated, granted, but still guesses.”

“Could this be sixth century?”

“Are you going to buy it?” she asked very softly.

“What do you think?”

“I think we should talk about provenance.”

“We’ll get to that.”

“Before or after the sale?” she shot back in a furious undertone.

He didn’t answer.

Rather bitterly she turned back to look at the gleaming armband that should have been malevolent but was simply, deeply powerful. Staring at it, she wondered why Shane bothered to pay her at all. Half the time he ignored her. The other half they fought like hell on fire.

The longer everyone avoided the subject of provenance, the more certain she was that she and her boss were about to have their last battle. There was absolutely no way in heaven or hell that these artifacts weren’t stolen. The only question was when and where.

And how many had died along the way.

Las Vegas

November 3

Early afternoon

T
he silence in
Miranda Seton’s house was thick enough to walk on. That was what Cherelle was doing, pacing back and forth, back and forth, living room to kitchen, kitchen to living room, a tense ghost wearing lime green silk.

Tim should have been back by now. If he was coming back.

If you don’t get that armband, don’t come back. Ever.

She had meant it then. She meant it now. But she really wanted that armband. The more she thought about giving away any part of the gold, the more she was afraid that there wouldn’t be enough left to get her where she wanted to be in life.

She didn’t know exactly where that was, but she knew it sure as hell wasn’t
here.

Even dressed in a frayed leopard-patterned tunic over tights and ballet slippers, Miranda Seton was adept at fading into whatever room Cherelle wasn’t occupying. Bit by bit, a few moments at a time, Miranda had managed to do two things since the men left. The first was to put the living room back together. The second was to sip at a teapot full of vodka until the world took on its customary reassuring haze.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough vodka in all of Las Vegas for Tim’s mother to feel good about sharing space with her son’s grim, hard-bitten girlfriend, so Miranda just did her best to be invisible. After a lifetime of practice, she was good at it.

But it annoyed the hell out of her the way Cherelle scattered her things around like some kind of princess born to be waited on. Car keys, lipstick, a comb, a scarf, shoes, mascara brush, crumpled paper towels she had used for napkins, and God knows what else. It was a wonder the silly bitch ever found anything again unless someone followed her around picking up after her.

Finding herself back in the kitchen, Miranda took a healthy hit directly from the teapot spout. As she put the chicken-shaped pot down, she spotted yet another piece of Cherelle’s life scattered on the counter just behind the place where the teapot’s “nest” usually was. There was a wad of tissues there, too, as though Cherelle had been pawing through her huge new backpack/purse looking for something, throwing things right and left in her hurry to get to the bottom of the soft leather bag.

With the vodka streaking courage through her veins, Miranda grabbed the plastic room key and tissues and hurried out to the living room. She nearly ran into Cherelle when the girl turned around with a cat-quickness that startled Miranda. She was used to life lived at a slow and dreamy pace.

“What,” Cherelle snapped, a demand rather than a question.

“I’m tired of picking up your stuff, that’s what.” Miranda held out the evidence. “Look what I found in the kitchen.”

A swipe of Cherelle’s hand sent the electronically coded plastic rectangle and the crushed tissues flying over the back of the couch. The wadded tissues wedged between the wall and the top of the couch. The key kept going to the floor.

“That was dumb,” Miranda said. “How you going to get into your fancy hotel room now? You damn well aren’t staying here.”

“I’ll get there just like I did before, in the employee door by the east parking lot, turn left, employee elevator, fourteenth floor, turn right, six doors down on the right.”

The biting singsong mockery of Cherelle’s voice etched itself on Miranda’s brain. Just like that other voice, the sneering insults that even vodka couldn’t dim, Tim’s father telling her just how worthless she was. Now there would be more words to remember, more echoes of her own uselessness.

“Oh, aren’t we just soooo smart,” Miranda said with false awe. “Too bad it won’t do you any good without the key.”

Before Cherelle had a chance to tell Miranda just where she could shove the key she was so worried about, both women heard the bubbling, farting exhaust of Socks’s purple car pulling up along the curb in front of the house. As one, the two women rushed to the front door. Because Cherelle was bigger and quicker, she got there first and flung the door open.

Socks levered himself out of his low-slung car and swaggered up the walkway to the small house.

Tim was nowhere in sight.

“Chickenshit is probably hiding behind the front seat,” Cherelle muttered.

“What?” Miranda asked.

Cherelle didn’t answer. She was watching Socks approach, seeing all the small changes in him that warned of an unholy cocktail of drugs, testosterone, and adrenaline. Face both tight and flushed, eyes jumping around like spit in a hot skillet, dark splotches of sweat under his armpits.

She hadn’t spent a whole lot of months trading sex for cash, but she had spent long enough to learn how to judge men. Right now Socks was bad news. The worst kind.

Without a word she spun away from the door, grabbed her oversized purse, and headed for the door that led to the garage from the kitchen.

Socks pushed past Miranda so hard she staggered against the couch and went to her knees. He ignored her and lunged after Cherelle. His grasping fingers latched on to her backpack strap. She spun toward him before he could rip the bag out of her hands.

“Hey, where you going so fast?” he said.

“Where’s Tim?” she asked.

Dark eyes jittered. Along with the rank odor of fresh layers of sweat over old, Socks had a feral, jungle smell. It came off him in a wave that made every survival instinct Cherelle had scream at her to get away,
get away now!

But she couldn’t. Not unless she gave up her purse, and with it a few more precious pieces of gold. Tim’s gold, given to her to shut her up.

“He’ll be along,” Socks said roughly. “Had some business to take care of, you know? Man business.”

Now she recognized the smell beneath the sweat. Blood. She looked at the broad male hands that were gripping the straps of her new backpack/purse. No blood under the nails or in the creases of his knuckles. But there were smudges halfway up his arm, like he had rubbed an itch with bloody fingers. Or bloody gloves.

“Man business?” she asked, forcing herself to relax. Or at least to look like it. “You telling me he’s out getting laid?”

“You told him not to come back.” Socks smiled. “He ain’t.”

Her stomach sank. Socks was way too certain about Tim staying away. “So you didn’t get the armband back.”

“What’s the big fuss? You got lots of gold. You got me. Way I figure it, this is your lucky day all around. Where is it?”

Cherelle knew he meant the gold, just as she knew she would probably have to have sex with him in order to get away without a beating. Seemed like no matter how hard she worked, she always ended up under some sweating, grunting, stupid son of a bitch just to survive. Sure as hell he would ruin her new clothes before he was done.

“It’s in a safe place,” she said in a low, husky voice. Then she smiled and leaned closer to the man she would rather have knifed. “You sure Tim won’t be coming back?”

“Yeah, and don’t point the finger at me ‘cuz he’s gone,” Socks said, looking at the lime green button straining between Cherelle’s breasts. “You’re the one who’s so bitchy.”

She forced a sigh that shifted her cleavage.

His breathing hitched. Her body made it hard for him to keep his mind on what he really wanted—the gold. Especially when he could see her nipples clear as headlamps beneath the pale silk. How was a man supposed to think when a braless woman with a good pair of tits shoved them under his nose? He swallowed hard and forced himself to concentrate on something besides finally getting a little of the great ass that Tim had spent so much time bragging about.

“So where is it?” Socks asked hoarsely.

“In my pants, sugah pie, just like always.”

He dragged his glance down to her crotch. It was covered by thin, pale silk that barely concealed what lay beneath. He saw the cushy dark shadow that told him she wasn’t wearing enough underwear to get in a man’s way. He pushed one hand between her thighs and dug in. Hard. “You got a great pussy, but even you can’t put all the gold in there.”

She looked over his thick shoulders to where Miranda stood in the door, watching them with a cynical smile and eyes that were glazed by vodka. As Cherelle undid the button between her breasts, she envied Miranda her drunken haze.

Reality sucked.

“Oh, were you talking about gold?” Cherelle asked, tilting her pelvis toward Socks as though she just loved having him grope her like a steel gorilla.
Take a good feel, asshole. It will be your first and last.
“Like I said, it’s in a safe place.”

Socks grunted. “How safe?”

“All the locks and alarms and guards the Golden Fleece can provide, that’s how safe.”

The sexy purr of her voice and the female heat surrounding his hand made it real hard for Socks to concentrate. Then her nimble fingers had somehow undone his fly and slipped inside to stroke him. Blood rushed from his brain to his crotch. He shook his head like a dog coming out of water.

“Whoa. We got—” The words became a sucked-in rasp of air as she ran her fingernails around him, digging lightly into each dip and crease. “Business,” he finished in a strangled voice.

“Sugah, I’ve got the only business that matters right here in my little ol’ hand.”

Socks gave up trying to think. A hand job was his idea of foreplay. Then, when he was really ready, he would yank off her fancy green pants and hammer in.

Cherelle measured his surrender in the glaze of his eyes and the quickness of his breathing. She judged her moment with all the care and coldness of the sex worker she once had been. Without warning, she dug her nails deep into his dick, twisted, jerked as hard as she could, and slammed her knee up into his crotch.

He managed to deflect most of the knee shot, but not all of it. Whooping for air, staggering, retching, he went to his hands and knees. He wasn’t in any shape to hang on when she yanked her fancy purse free of his fingers and ran out of the house.

Thanks to Miranda the Mouse, Cherelle found that her car keys were handy for once. She grabbed them out of her purse, flung herself into the front seat of her car, and jammed in the ignition key.

By the time Socks pulled himself to his feet, she would be long gone.

Ignored by both the fleeing Cherelle and the wretched Socks, Miranda waited through the man’s cursing and retching by retreating to the living room and watching warily. When the color of his skin was closer to white than green, and sweat no longer stood out on his forehead, she figured that Socks wouldn’t belt her just because she was there and he was hurting. She reached down behind the couch and walked over to him, or at least as close as the kitchen door. If she was wrong about his state of mind, she wanted a head start.

“I’ll kill her,” Socks gasped, leaning against the counter.

Miranda sincerely hoped so. Cherelle was the first woman Tim had stayed with for more than a few months. Her boy deserved better than a hard-edged whore.

“You’ll have to catch her first,” Miranda pointed out. “I can help with that.”

Socks straightened some, winced, and straightened some more. It would be a few days before a woody felt good, but he’d been through worse and still beaten the hell out of the guy who kicked him. “Yeah? How?”

Miranda held out the plastic coded key and recited Cherelle’s mocking description of just how to get to her room at the Golden Fleece.

By the time Socks left, he could recite it too.