“Who did it?” Niall asked.
“Don’t know yet. The cops took a good photo off the camera data, and his fingerprints are all over the apartment, so we should have an ID pretty quick. I need Lapstrake here by tomorrow morning to help me persuade an artifact trader to tell the truth about where he got the goods.”
“He’ll be there,” Dana said. “He can protect Risa, too.”
“He’ll get real bored on the job,” Shane said.
“Why?”
“I fired her after her attacker got away.”
“You—” Niall began.
“I want her out of the game,” Shane said, talking over Niall. “One of her childhood friends is in this up to her dirty neck, and there are more gold artifacts floating around out there. Until they’re all accounted for, things could get lethal.”
Dana and Niall exchanged looks. Now they knew why Risa had called.
“I’ll be at Rarities by six a.m.,” Shane continued. “I’d appreciate a preliminary report on those four pieces. The gold is coming back to Vegas with me.”
“No need. Lapstrake will fly out with the artifacts and the preliminary report.” Dana paused. Her fingers moved fluidly on the cool desktop, as though playing notes on an imaginary flute. “Do you think Risa’s attacker will be back?”
“Doubt it.”
“Then why did you fire her?” Dana asked quietly.
“I told you. I want her safe, and the only way to keep her safe is to get her off the playing field.”
“What about your big New Year’s show?” Niall asked.
“What about it?”
“Who will be your curator?”
“I’ll worry about it later. Right now all I care about is keeping Risa from getting shot.”
“Ian can do that very efficiently, and we still would have the benefit of her expertise in tracking down the rest of the gold artifacts,” Dana said. “If her childhood friend does indeed have a part in—”
“No.” Shane overrode Dana. “I want Risa out of it. I’ll expect Lapstrake at the casino by seven a.m.”
There was the clear sound of a disconnect.
Niall made a grumbling sound. “Well, I’d better start checking out job possibilities for Risa. I’m sure he gave her a nice severance package, and I’m equally sure she told him to shove it up his arse.”
“Men,” Dana muttered. “What on earth possesses them to make decisions for fully capable women?”
Her partner ignored her. He’d heard her view on the male of the species before. Most of the time he was exempt. But not always.
It made life interesting.
“Well,” Dana said, “looks like Rarities will soon have a full-time consultant on ancient jewelry and Celtic gold artifacts.”
Niall shot her a look from amused blue-green eyes. “You’re putting her back on the Celtic gold?”
“Of course. Our motto is ‘Buy, Sell, Appraise, Protect.’ We exist for the artifacts, not for the clients. Someone out there has some extraordinary pieces of human history and art hidden away. We’re going to find them and return them to their rightful guardian. Risa is our best hope of doing it before some brainless piece of shit melts down the gold and crawls back into the sewers to hide.”
“Shane will be pissed off when he finds Risa back in the game.”
Dana smiled like a cat. “Yes, I rather think he will. It will do him good to be reminded just what money can and cannot buy.”
“What about the danger to Risa?”
Dana gave Niall the kind of look that said he was no longer exempt from her jaundiced view of men. “Did she ask to be packed in cotton and put on a high, safe shelf?”
He had the losing end of this argument and knew it. “Let’s get out of here before the phone—”
It was already ringing. Swearing, he hit the ID button. “It’s Risa.”
“I’ll take it,” Dana said, nudging him aside with a well-rounded hip so that she could reach the speaker button “Hello, Risa. Dana here. How would you like to go to work for Rarities full-time?”
“Took the words right out of my mouth. I’ll pack tonight and be there tomorrow morning.”
“No need to relocate yet.”
“I’d rather, if it’s all the same to you.”
“It isn’t.”
Niall winced. Dana could be tactful when she wanted to be. This wasn’t one of those times.
“Okay,” Risa said. “Where do you want me?”
“Stay where you are until Ian Lapstrake gets there. Remember him?”
“Tall, dark, moves well, smarter than he lets on.”
“You remember him.” Dana smiled slightly, knowing that Shane wouldn’t like having Ian underfoot with Risa around. “He’s your bodyguard until—”
“I don’t need one,” Risa interrupted.
“If you work for Rarities, you take orders from Dana and me,” Niall said. “We say you need a bodyguard. Subject closed.”
There was a pause. “Right. I need a bodyguard. Like hell, but I promise not to kill him. Then what?”
Dana’s smile was like a stiletto sliding out of a sheath, thin and deadly. “Then you find your childhood friend and get the rest of the Druid gold.”
Chapter 37
Las Vegas
November 3
Evening
Rich Morrison’s office took up half the top floor of the Shamrock’s tall needle of a building. Two stories below, a rooftop swimming pool and garden lured the high rollers and whales who took advantage of the VIP spa. Men from several countries lounged like beached albino sea lions around the glittering turquoise water. Showgirls—minus feathers—served drinks, canapés, and themselves to anyone who was interested.
Rich certainly wasn’t, not even as a voyeur. He was a lot more interested in the conversation he and John Firenze had had a few hours ago. Stolen gold and murder. Thanks to a blind tip, the police had found a pawnbroker called Joey Cline faceup on his workroom floor, along with a lot of merchandise that had made the cops’ eyes bug out.
Then there was the matter of the second man’s blood on the workroom floor. Rich wondered when the cops would tumble to that. If they had already, nothing about it was appearing on the twenty-four-hour news channel.
Rich’s intercom buzzed, cutting across his thoughts. He stabbed the button. “Yes?”
“Ms. Silverado is here for your dinner appointment.”
“Send her in.”
He stood up just as the outer door opened and Gail swept into his spacious office. She looked edible in a pantsuit the color and airiness of meringue. An assistant shut the door behind Gail and vanished like the discreet nonentity he was. A very well paid nonentity. Rich wasn’t stupid or stingy when it came to people who could cause him trouble. He didn’t want them to be bribed by a few hundred dollars waved under their noses.
“Stunning,” Rich said, holding out both hands to Gail. “As always.”
Smiling, she gave him her fingers while they exchanged a cool kiss on the cheek.
“I’d tell you how handsome you are,” she said, pulling back and winking at him, “but you said something about an urgent matter regarding techno-thieves.”
“Apparently someone forgot to warn the Golden Fleece. They hit Tannahill for several big jackpots recently.”
“Gosh, how do you suppose that happened,” Gail said without inflection. “We’ll have to go over the notification protocol again. Can’t have things falling through the cracks, can we?”
Rich’s smile almost reached his eyes. “It’s a shame we’re so much alike, Silver,” he said, calling her by her old nickname. “We would have made a great team. But as it is, we’d—”
“Kill each other before dawn,” she finished. “We’re too smart to go partners. Just like I’m too smart to buy the line about rushing over here to find out about techno-thieves in the Golden Fleece.”
“You want to sweep the office before we talk?”
She shook her head. “You’re not t
he kind of idiot or egomaniac that records every word for future generations to swoon over. You know that kind of record keeping is like having a loaded gun in your bedside table—chances are better you’ll get shot with your own weapon than you’ll manage to take down a burglar.”
“Or as my mother used to say, once the shit hits the fan, everybody gets dirty.”
Gail laughed. “I could have used a mother like that.” She strolled over and looked down at the pool. “Poor bastards.”
“The whales?”
“The girls. They think they’re going to land a rich one.”
“You did.”
“Several times,” Gail agreed. “But not by serving drinks with my titties hanging out. I used my head more than my body.” She turned back to him. “What’s up?”
“Has anyone approached you with a number of Celtic gold artifacts for sale?”
“No.”
Rich was watching closely. He saw nothing to indicate a lie. “Then Tannahill probably has them by now.”
“Are they hot?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“How did he get them?” Gail asked.
“That’s the problem. I don’t know.”
“That’ll make it tough to tie a big red bow on his cock.” She narrowed her cool hazel eyes. “How do you know he has the gold? And don’t bother with the ‘little birdie’ crap. I didn’t come here for a bedtime story.”
“One of the thieves told Firenze.”
“Carl? Why didn’t he—”
“John, not Carl. Otherwise you would have called me and we’d be holding this conversation in your office, because neither one of us trusts phones worth a damn.”
Her sleek eyebrows raised. “Only a fool expects phone conversations to be private.”
He smiled.
She waited for him to start talking again. As she waited, each breath she took made light shift and shine over the breasts filling out the tailored white silk suit. She could tell he was looking at her and enjoying the view. She also could tell he wasn’t going to do anything about it.
Too bad. Men were so much easier to control once you got hold of their dumb handles.
“As far as I can tell, some small-time stickup artist got lucky,” Rich said. “He scored at least twenty, maybe more, Celtic gold artifacts.”
Gail’s rosy lips pursed in a soundless whistle.
“He and a buddy pawned four of the pieces to Joey Cline.”
“Never heard of him.”
“You wouldn’t. He’s at the bottom of the food chain. You feed at the top.”
“So do you.”
“But I never forget there’s a bottom.” Rich watched his words sink in, saw the faint frown between her big hazel eyes, and congratulated himself for getting under her pampered skin. “Cline turned over the merchandise to J. E. Shapiro.”
“Shapiro. Shapiro . . .” She tilted her head. “That name doesn’t chime either.”
“Another pawnbroker who’s pretty low on the food chain.”
“Then it would be too low to have access to Shane.”
“Probably. That’s why I called you.”
“Sorry to disappoint you. I gave up slumming before I was old enough to drink.”
Rich ignored her. “J. E. Shapiro isn’t answering calls, so for now it’s a dead end. He probably heard about Cline’s murder and—”
“Murder! You didn’t say anything about that.”
He shrugged. “What’s one pawnbroker more or less? Vegas is full of them, like maggots on a carcass.”
“Shit. Murder brings too much heat.”
“Not if we can connect Tannahill to it. Then it would be just the right amount of heat.”
Gail grimaced. “I’m not wild about tagging Shane for a murder he didn’t commit.”
“What makes you think he didn’t commit it?”
“If he whacked somebody, you’d never find the body. That’s one very, very smart man.” She moved closer to the wall of glass and looked out at the sprawling, loud, grasping desert city that had made her fortune. But the world had changed since then. Las Vegas had changed.
She had changed.
Like the world and the city, she was older. A lot older. She didn’t have it in her to start all over again if Wildest Dream stopped being a cash cow. And it would happen. Her profits were declining. Not steeply, but with the slow, steady bleeding that screamed of future disaster when massive remodeling was required to keep the casino/hotel up-to-date. Too many new casinos. Too many megaentertainment complexes. Not enough tourists to keep everybody fat.
Damn it, Shane. Why couldn’t you see how perfect we would have been together? We could have fucking owned this place.
But Shane couldn’t see.
Rich Morrison could.
Life’s a bitch and then you die.
She turned toward Rich, smiled, and wondered which one of them would survive their partnership.
Chapter 38
Las Vegas
November 4
Morning
Shane stood in Risa’s office, growing more frustrated by the moment. “The apartment and office are yours for as long as you want them,” he said impatiently. Again. “It was all in the severance package.”
“Haven’t read it.” Risa didn’t look up from the desk she was emptying as rapidly as possible into one of Cherelle’s battered suitcases.
“Then you don’t know that you have a year with full pay and benefits to find a new job.”
“Don’t need it.”
“Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
The warning in his voice made Risa grateful that her hands were busy. Shane didn’t lose his temper often, but he was closing in on it right now. Part of her was bitterly pleased to know she could upset him that much. The part of her with brains wished she hadn’t fallen asleep at 4:00 a.m. and not awakened until 8:00. Maybe then she could have cleaned out her office before her ex-boss discovered that not only was she leaving her job, as soon as possible she was leaving the casino, the city, and most of all Shane Tannahill.
“Risa.”
The yearning in his voice had her looking up before she knew what she was doing. Then it was too late. The heat and shadows in his green eyes took the ground out from under her feet.
“It’s the only way to protect you,” he said simply.
“Did I ask for protection?”
He hesitated. “No.”
“If the positions were reversed, how would you feel?”
He opened his mouth, closed it, frowned. “I’m a man.”
“I’m a woman. So what? Do you defend yourself with your dick? Zippers at dawn?” Still in her chair, she bent over and went back to cleaning out her files. “I’ve been taking care of myself since first grade.”
“Against a murderer?”
“Bozo? He never left a mark on me.”
“A bottom feeder called Joey Cline was murdered in his pawnshop yesterday.”
Risa stopped stuffing journals into the suitcase. Her head snapped up. “Does he deal in stolen antiquities?”
“Probably.”
“Did he have more gold pieces?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know he was connected to the Druid gold?”
“Call it a hunch.”
“Call it baloney and serve it with mayo.” Journals slapped together as she slammed them into the suitcase. “Excuse me, I’m in a hurry. I’m supposed to meet someone at the airport.”
She stood up. Too late she realized that Shane had moved in. He was so close to her now that her mouth was all but tasting the green nylon windbreaker he wore.
“You’re not leaving here without an armed guard,” he said.
“No worries,” Ian Lapstrake said from the doorway. “I caught an early flight.”
Shane spun around with a lethal quickness that startled Risa. What shocked her even more was the gun that had appeared in his fist.
Ian smiled and held his hands in plain sight.
“Hey, Shane. Long time no see.”
“You sneak up on me again and you won’t see anything for a long time, period.” The gun disappeared beneath Shane’s windbreaker. “What are you doing here?”
“Protecting Rarities Unlimited’s newest employee,” Ian said.
“Who?” Shane asked.
Ian glanced at Risa. “Didn’t tell him, did you?”
“You’ve heard of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’?” Risa said. “He didn’t, and I didn’t.”
“Beautiful,” Ian said, watching the other man warily. No wonder Dana had been smiling when she gave him the assignment. Shane was looking mean and territorial, and Risa was mad enough to slip a knife into a man where it would do the most good. “You’ll both be happy to know that, despite Risa’s sexy mouth and never-quits body, I don’t date fellow employees.”
“I’m devastated,” Risa said indifferently. “Especially considering your great shoulders and trust-me smile.”
Ian snickered.
She went back to packing journals.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t throw your great shoulders and trust-me smile out of my casino,” Shane said to Ian.
“Simple. Until I find out what the hell is going on, Risa is safer here than she will be anywhere else except headquarters in L.A.”
“So take her to L.A.”
“In case it has escaped your notice,” Risa said without looking up, “I’m not a package to be picked up and dropped off when the whim takes you. I’m an adult fully capable of taking care of herself.”
“Works for me,” Ian said easily. “I’m going to have my hands full finding the rest of the Druid gold for Dana.”
“I’ll find it for her,” Shane said.
“Not alone, you won’t,” Ian said. “Or do you think Risa’s childhood friend will take one look at you, swoon, and spill all the golden secrets on your manly chest?”
“Money makes a lot of people talk. I have a lot of money.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.” Ian looked at Risa. “Do you have your friend’s address in Sedona?”
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