by C. M. Palov
Dear Lord, help me make this right.
Boyd didn’t want to let down the colonel. He owed everything he had to Colonel Stan MacFarlane. Sometimes, when his mind wandered, he liked to imagine that the colonel was the father he never had but always wanted. Stern, but fair. Righteous. A man who’d never hit you unless he had just cause.
Like a soothing balm, the gently falling snow cooled his brow, its big fluffy flakes sticking to his eyelashes, his lips, the tip of his nose. It put him in mind of the first time he’d ever seen the snow fall from the sky during a tour of duty in Japan. A backwater kid from Pascagoula, Mississippi, he’d only seen winter snow on celluloid. He well remembered standing there, a bad-ass, two-hundred-thirty-pound jarhead, sorely tempted to lie down, flap his arms and legs like an epileptic, and make angels in the snow. Come to think of it, it’d been snowing the day he made his first kill. A Jap with an attitude had accused him of stiffing on the sake bill and had followed him into the alley, attacking him from behind while he took a piss. He killed the slant-eyed shitbird with a backward jab of the elbow, ramming his nose all the way into his skull. A ruby-red bloodstain on virgin white snow. It had been a beautiful sight. Like a silk-clad whore spreading her legs for a li’l game of peekaboo.
Reinvigorated, the blood pumping through his veins fast and furious, Boyd straightened his shoulders as he strode past the black Jeep Wrangler. The colonel said that God was a fine one for testing the faithful. Maybe that’s what all this fiddle fucking was about—he was being tested.
If that was the case, bring it on!
He was up to the challenge.
Sticking the key in the trunk of the Crown Vic, he opened it and removed a drawstring pouch. Inside the ditty bag were two spare cell phones, coiled wire, duct tape, and a small block of C-4. Everything he needed to make things right.
CHAPTER 19
Glancing at the plate glass doors that fronted the Seventh Street museum exit, Edie figured the headline story on the local newscast would be “Gunman Goes Berserk Inside the National Gallery of Art.” Particularly since the Channel 9 and Channel 4 news vans had just pulled up outside the museum and a bevy of technicians were hurriedly unloading their camera equipment.
As she continued to observe the action on the other side of the exit door, it appeared that a great many people were unloading equipment from the back of official-looking vehicles. EMTs unloading stretchers. Firefighters unloading axes and water hoses. D.C. police unloading orange traffic cones. The museum had become a scene of industrious purpose—patrons exiting one door, first responders entering through another.
Still seated in the wheelchair, she sat quietly as Caedmon rolled her over to a large Chinese vase set inside a wall niche.
“Time for milady to exit her carriage.”
Edie hurriedly extricated herself from the wheelchair, her legs so wobbly she unthinkingly grabbed the Qing dynasty vase to keep from falling.
Caedmon wrapped an arm around her shoulders, gently removing her hand from the priceless objet d’art. “Steady as she goes,” he whispered in her ear. “Deep breaths will slow your heart rate. Leastways, it always works for me.”
She nodded her thanks, surprised by the admission. Though she barely knew him, Caedmon Aisquith seemed to have been born with the proverbial stiff upper lip. No deep breaths required.
“Given the well-orchestrated attack, we must assume that our adversaries will attempt to track our movements via electronic transactions.” Removing his billfold from his pants pocket, Caedmon peered into the worn brown leather. “I’m afraid that my assets are somewhat paltry. Seventy-five dollars U.S. and three hundred euros. How much do you have?” he bluntly inquired.
The question caught Edie off guard. Her eyes suspiciously narrowing, she said, “I have three thousand dollars. What’s it to you?”
“I say! You must have cleaned out your bank account.”
“In a manner of speaking,” she mumbled, unwilling to elaborate.
“Very well, then. I suggest we assume two aliases, Mister and Missus Smythe-Jones, or some such rot, and check into a hotel.”
“The two of us? In a hotel?” Edie had given no thought as to what would happen once they left the museum, having assumed they’d go their separate ways. She’d come to the National Gallery of Art only to warn him of the danger, not to hook up with him.
Although she supposed there might be some truth in the old adage about safety in numbers.
“Yes, a hotel,” Caedmon reiterated. “I don’t know about you, but I’m in dire need of a soft bed and a stiff drink.”
“Bed and booze. Okay, I’m in.”
Caedmon motioned to the throng of people lined up to exit the museum. “Shall we join the multitude?”
As they approached the line of people being searched by museum guards, Edie surveyed the crowd of museum goers, most of whom were excitedly chatting about what they’d seen, what they knew, or what they’d heard.
She nudged Caedmon in the arm. “Did you hear what that man just—” She stopped suddenly, catching sight of a familiar face out of the corner of her eye.
It was the dirty cop she’d seen in the alley behind the Hopkins Museum.
“To your left! It’s the killer’s cop buddy!” she hissed out of the corner of her mouth.
Without so much as turning his head, Caedmon swerved his gaze to the left. “The bloke with sandy blond hair?” When she nodded, he said, “Did he catch sight of you at the Hopkins?”
“No. But they have my driver’s license photo. They know what I look like.”
“Right.”
An absentminded look on his face, Caedmon patted his breast pocket, giving every appearance of a man searching for a pen or a pair of reading glasses. It took a moment for Edie to realize that he was very carefully casing the joint, his eyes moving from left to right and back again.
“In a few seconds there’s going to be a frightful stampede toward the door,” he said in a low voice, taking her firmly by the upper arm as he spoke. “Be ready to run for your life.”
Edie nodded, knowing he spoke literally, not figuratively.
“Good God!” Caedmon suddenly boomed in a loud, forceful tone of voice. “There’s the gunman! That man standing by the elevator doors!”
At hearing Caedmon’s commanding voice—which sounded an awful lot like a trained Shakespearean actor bellowing about kingdoms and horses—every head in the lobby abruptly turned.
A second of shocked silence ensued.
Then, in a tremendous burst of explosive energy, the façade of order gave way, there being utter disorder in the ranks.
Like rats jumping ship, the museum patrons closest to the plate glass doors rushed outside. All four museum guards and every policeman in sight charged in the opposite direction toward the elevators.
That being their cue, Edie and Caedmon ran to the door, elbowing their way to the head of the pack.
Several seconds later, they burst free of the building.
“Hurry!” Caedmon ordered, taking her by the hand as he descended the portico steps that fronted the museum. “I suspect we fooled everyone save the man searching for us. What is that across the street?” He pointed beyond the traffic jam of news vans and patrol cars to the grove of leafless trees on the other side of Seventh Street.
“That’s the outdoor sculpture garden.”
“And in this direction?” He pointed toward Constitution Avenue.
“Federal Triangle.”
“Am I correct in thinking there’s a tube station near at hand?”
“There’s a subway station a couple of blocks away. On the other side of the Archives.”
“Right.” Still holding her by the hand, Caedmon scurried past a coterie of beat cops attempting to hold back curious onlookers with a flimsy strand of yellow crime scene tape.
“In case you’ve forgotten, my Jeep is parked—”
“Not now!”
Knowing their first prerogative was to escape the sandy-hai
red cop she’d seen in the lobby, Edie held her tongue. They could hash out the specifics of the escape plan once they were free and clear of the museum.
Breaking into a run, they crossed Seventh Street, Caedmon leading the way to the sculpture garden. Through the sparse foliage Edie saw a steel sculpture on the right and a bronze sculpture on the left. Ahead of them was an outdoor skating rink, where a trio of skaters gracefully glided across the smooth ice, blissfully ignorant of the pandemonium on the other side of the street.
Still leading the way, Caedmon skirted to the right of the rink, turned right yet again, then made a sharp left. For a man unfamiliar with the city, he was doing an excellent job of maneuvering them through the garden maze.
It wasn’t until they emerged onto Constitution Avenue, some two blocks from the Seventh Street museum exit, that Caedmon slowed his pace.
Her lungs burning with the frigid December air, Edie came to a grinding halt, unable to catch her breath. When Caedmon put a steadying hand on her shoulder, she instinctively hurled herself at his chest.
“That c-cop would have killed—If you hadn’t—We would be—” She burrowed her head into his shoulder, fear causing her thoughts to incoherently smash together.
Caedmon wrapped his arms around her. “Ssshh. It’s all right. We’re out of danger,” he murmured, his breath warm against her cheek.
It took a good half minute before her breathing returned to something approximating normal. Self-conscious of the fact that she’d thrown herself at him, Edie pulled free from Caedmon’s embrace.
“Better?” he solicitously inquired. Other than the fact that his eyes had turned an iridescent shade of cobalt blue, he showed no outward sign of exertion.
Doing a good imitation of a bobble-head doll, she warily nodded. Warily because she could hear the blare of sirens in the near distance. A police net was being thrown around the National Gallery of Art. If the net was extended, they might yet be ensnared.
She glanced at her watch. Unbelievably, no more than fifteen minutes had passed since the three shots had been fired in the museum concourse. The expanse of lapsed time seemed both longer and shorter, as though time had sped up and slowed down all at once.
“I don’t know about you, but I feel like I just got sucked into a killer cyclone, with houses, cows, and farm fences spinning all around me.”
“I feel much the same.” One side of his mouth quirked upward. “Certainly, this was not how I envisioned spending my afternoon.”
“I hear you.” Still embarrassed by her earlier show of weakness, she wiped several wet flakes from her eyelashes. The snow had slowed to a desultory smatter, its wispy flakes blowing on a cold westerly wind.
From where they stood, the National Archives kitty-corner to them, they had an excellent view in either direction of Constitution Avenue. Spread along the famous thoroughfare were familiar citadels of sanity—hot dog vendors, concession stands, T-shirt-packed kiosks. Tiny punctuation marks haphazardly placed between ponderous block-style buildings.
Deciding to take charge, Edie turned to the right, intending to backtrack to her parked vehicle.
She’d taken no more than a step when Caedmon grabbed her by the elbow, preventing her from taking that all-important second step.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“We discussed this already. I’m going to the Jeep. Are you in or are you out?”
“Though there are advantages to having a vehicle at our disposal, there are certain disadvantages that must be considered.”
Desperate to get back to the Jeep, that being the quickest means of escaping the madness, she straightened her shoulders. No easy feat given that she was bundled in a leather jacket and an oversized trench coat. “On the count of three: rock, paper, scissors.”
His copper-colored brows drew together in the middle. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. Since there’s just the two of us, we can’t put it to a vote. So, instead, we’ll use rock, paper, scissors to decide. You guys do that in England, don’t you?”
“I am familiar with the hand game. In fact, it was invented in the mid-eighteenth century by the Comte de Rochambeau as a means to settle—”
Edie held up a hand, stopping him in mid-discourse.
“More information than I need to know.” Sick and tired of being the follower rather than the leader, she met his gaze head-on. “On three.”
In unison, they each moved a balled right fist through the air.
CHAPTER 20
A cold wet rain fell upon the heath.
A line straight out of a Victorian novel, Caedmon moodily thought as he pulled back the drawn hotel curtain. Except it wasn’t a heath; it was an asphalt car park bounded by eight-foot-high brick walls and a twelve-story office building directly opposite.
“My, my, what a posh life we lead,” he muttered, releasing the rubber-backed curtain and stepping away from the window. Since paper beat rock, they’d left Washington via the subway, checking into a Holiday Inn across the river in Arlington, Virginia. That was two hours ago and he was still trying to muddle his way through the calamitous chain of events that had landed him in this monochromatic hotel room with its uninspiring view.
He glanced at his companion. Edie Miller was coiled in a ball on one of the double beds, her mouth slack, her eyes unfocused. His gaze lingered a few impolite moments; Caedmon thought she looked like a dahlia curled in the frost.
In dire need of a refreshing punch, he strolled over to the serving counter, the room equipped with a coffeepot, a microwave oven, and a diminutive refrigerator. He uncapped a green bottle, having purchased Tanqueray and tonic at the wine and spirits shop down the street.
“What are you doing?” A drowsy expression on her face, Edie lifted her head from the pillow.
“I thought I’d mix myself a G&T.”
The dahlia instantly revived. “Make mine a double.”
Tumbler in hand, he walked over to the bed. As though mocking their dismal plight, the ice cubes merrily clinked against the sides of the glass. “Sorry, but the bartender is fresh out of limes,” he said, handing her the half-full tumbler.
Swinging her bare feet over the side of the bed, Edie unlimbered into a seated position, the tumbler clasped between her hands. “The AWOL lime is the least of our worries.”
“Indeed.”
Safe for the moment, Caedmon suspected that they were being hunted by a very determined adversary. And though the adversary had possession of the prize, the Stones of Fire having been stolen from the Hopkins Museum, their enemy was very keen to erase all traces of the theft.
But why?
The question had been plaguing him for the last two hours. Neither he nor Edie Miller could identify Jonathan Padgham’s killer. Nor did they know the current location of the bejeweled breastplate.
So why launch a bloodthirsty manhunt?
The manhunt implied that their foe did not want it made public that after several thousand years, the fabled Stones of Fire had been rediscovered. If true, it spoke to motive. Clearly, their foe had an ulterior purpose for stealing the breastplate, one that had nothing to do with plunder and profit.
Lost in thought, he belatedly realized he’d depleted his glass.
Careful, old boy. You’ve already slain that dragon.
Needing to pace himself, Caedmon set his tumbler on the dresser. Drink was a tempting mistress, one that beckoned when he least expected it.
Bare feet still dangling over the side of bed, Edie looked at him, her expression forthrightly quizzical. At a loss for words, he returned the stare, enjoying the sight of long brown curls framing her face and shoulders in a riotous halo. Admiring a woman’s attributes was one of those simple pleasures that made a man momentarily forget stress and strife; he lowered his gaze. Like chapel hatpegs, her nipples were visibly prominent through the thin fabric of her silk pullover, Edie having removed her bulky jumper.
“Is something the matter?”
Caught
with his hand in the biscuit tin, Caedmon quickly glanced at the telly on the other side of the room. His cheeks warm with color, he picked up his depleted G&T and made a big to-do of swirling the ice cubes clustered in the bottom of the glass.
Damn the woman for being so keenly observant. And so blunt in expressing those keen observations.
A sudden knock at the door sparked their joint attention.
“You don’t think . . . ?”
“No, I do not,” he replied, striding toward the locked door. A quick glance in the peephole confirmed what he already knew—the bellhop had arrived. A fortuitous interruption, the room awash with sexual tension.
Come now. What did you expect, checking into a hotel room with a lovely American woman?
Unlocking the door, he greeted the bellhop with a courteous nod as the young man handed him a paper bag emblazoned with the Holiday Inn logo. Before taking custody of the bag, Caedmon reached into his trouser pocket and removed several crumpled notes. The exchange made, he closed and locked the door.
Awkwardly smiling, still conscious of the earlier misstep, he hefted the white bag in the air. “I come bearing gifts, compliments of the establishment.”
Edie patted the mattress. “Sit yourself over here and let’s see what’s in the gift sack.”
Uncertain what to make of the invitation, he obediently complied. He knew that in the aftermath of a bum-clenching terror, each person acted differently. Some turned to alcohol, some turned to drugs, and a good many turned to sex. Caedmon preferred the first, had never been interested in the second, and wasn’t altogether certain how he felt about the latter. While he found Edie Miller attractive, he in no way wanted to take advantage of the situation.
He dumped the contents of the bag onto the bed. “One tube of toothpaste, two toothbrushes, hand lotion, shaving cream, razor, and, alas, only one comb. I’m afraid we’ll have to share.”
“I’m kinda getting used to sharing.”
Caedmon assumed the offhand remark had to do with the fact that the room had been paid with a soggy hundred-dollar bill that had come from her “spinach fund.” Concerned that their electronic transactions would be monitored, he had imposed a moratorium on all credit cards. Certain his room at the Churchill would also be monitored, he phoned his hotel and asked that they gather his belongings and put them in storage until such time as he could collect them. He’d also rung up his publicist, informing her that he was catching a late-night flight back to Paris. If asked, she would lead the inquisitors astray.