by Ann Macela
She had to admit, Alton Finster knew how to throw a party. On this early summer night, his Chicago Gold Coast mansion was wall-to-wall with the rich and famous and their wannabes. The charity for which the auction gala was being held would rake in a bundle.
Holding her long skirt carefully so she wouldn’t trip, she hurried down the stairs and turned right into the darkened corridor. The guards were on their rounds, and she had only a short time to accomplish her task.
A little buzz of excitement—and anxiety—skittered along her nerves. Her first solo assignment as a Sword! She would accomplish her task, whatever it took.
The carved oak door was locked, of course, but an adaperio spell opened it. After another glance around, she slipped inside. She locked the door manually and leaned against it while she studied the room.
Only a lamp over the portrait of Otto Finster on the left-hand wall and a small green-shaded one on the desk illuminated the high-ceilinged study, leaving the bookshelves and corners shrouded in shadows. The elder Finster glared at her from his frame, his hooded eyes seeming to follow her movements. The man had been an unscrupulous scoundrel in business, a ruthless robber baron like his fathers before him. His craggy face with its bushy eyebrows and fierce expression confirmed his determination and implacability.
“You old warlock,” Irenee muttered at the portrait, “What do you think of your grandson and the uses to which he’s putting your treasure? Or, were you the source of the item we’re after? I wouldn’t put it past you.” She scanned the room. No sign of what she was looking for, of course.
“Deprendo incantamentum.” She cast a “discover spell” over the room. A faint glow outlined the edge of the oriental rug in the corner to her right. She stepped onto the hardwood in the corner, knelt, and laid her purse on the floor. If anyone had noticed how much larger it was than a regular evening purse, no one had said a word. Let them think she was out of fashion. What did it matter?
Now to see if she’d found the right place, where the spell-sensitive spy they’d inserted into the event catering staff had reported picking up emanations of powerful casting. She knelt and lifted the rug by its tasseled edge.
The hidden safe pulsed faintly with protective enchantments—stay-away and do-not-touch as well as lock-tight, according to her discover spell. To gauge their strength, Irenee held her hand close to the glow remaining from her first spell. She shook her head in disgust when she realized they offered only minimal protection, the kind that would deter only a non-practitioner burglar. Alton must be an idiot to think a simple spell would keep out a Sword.
All practitioners knew certain extremely sensitive Defenders could pick up the vibrations set off when someone used an evil magic item unless the spell caster took elaborate precautions with shielding. True, the vibes Glynnis Fraser, their evil-sensitive expert, felt were faint, but clearly the signature of an ancient, extremely powerful focus for casting. Maybe Alton believed he had been sufficiently protected when he cast spells using the item and had no idea the Defenders were after him. After all, it had taken time—three weeks altogether—to track down the source of the evil. He might believe he was in the clear.
She doubted Alton even knew she was a Sword. The Defenders didn’t announce their membership; neither did they keep it a secret. Surely he would have reacted differently to her if he thought she was after him or his treasure. No, his reaction when he greeted her upstairs had been his usual cordial self—exactly as it had been at all the other society functions where they ran into each other.
Irenee, however, had to control herself firmly when they met. Evil people, practitioner or not, gave off an aura, almost a miasma, of wrongness Defenders could identify. Where Alton hadn’t before, he certainly did now. His recently acquired emanation raised the question of how long he had been using the item. Finding that answer, however, was not her goal.
Her task was clear: bring back the item to her team and help them destroy it. When she succeeded, she would be a Sword in every sense of the word, and also able to hold her head up as an accomplished member of the Sabel family.
She was stretching to lay the carpet back away from the safe, when faint noises came from the door into the hall—a scratching, a click, and the doorknob turning. Someone was picking the lock.
“Damn,” she breathed while she let the rug drop over the safe and intensified her don’t-notice-me spell to full invisibility. She could see the shimmer as light bent around her, and she smiled with satisfaction. She wouldn’t be seen even if somebody looked directly at her.
The door opened slowly, only a crack, just far enough for a figure to slip through.
A tall, dark, curly-haired man in a tuxedo entered quickly and locked the door behind him. Although from her corner and in the darkness, she couldn’t get a good look at his face, she didn’t think she knew him. He stared at the portrait for a long moment before striding over to it. After tugging at the sides, he swung the picture on its hinges, revealing a black safe door.
A lighted bank of eight red zeros marched across its front. The man pulled a rectangular box out of his pocket and held it to the door. Two green lights on its side blinked alternately while numbers flashed through a complicated sequence.
Irenee smiled to herself. Primitive technology, compared to her magic.
In a few seconds, the green lights stayed on, the zeros had changed to a set of numbers, and the man twisted the handle to open the safe door. He searched through its contents—some papers; a small pistol; a few small, possibly jewelry, boxes—but he must not have found what he wanted because he put it all back. She heard him curse before closing the safe and the portrait.
His hand still on the frame, he suddenly froze for a few seconds, then whipped around.
And looked right into her eyes.
He could see her.
How was that possible?
Irenee stood as he approached, the V of his white tuxedo shirt gleaming in the dim light. Who was this man who clearly saw right through her spells? How did he do it?
He wasn’t a warlock. If he was, he wouldn’t have used the gadget to open the safe—or not without checking for enchantments. He certainly hadn’t cast a discover spell to find her or she would have felt it. Besides, she knew every practitioner capable of recognizing, by sight or otherwise, that she was in the room.
Was he a thief? Who would dare to steal from Alton? No common criminal would trifle with the Finster security forces. Those who tried were usually beaten to a pulp. Corporate espionage? Maybe. What would he expect to find here?
Despite his lock-picking entry, the man wasn’t evil. Not a whiff of corruption radiated from him.
If he wasn’t a thief, and he wasn’t evil, what was he? What was he after? Whatever it was, she knew its likely location—in the safe under her feet.
She was running out of time. The auction would be starting, and the guards would be making another round. She had to get rid of him. If she helped him find his objective, he might leave her alone—after all, he was here as secretly as she was. As a last resort, if he objected, she could always stun him and make her escape.
Although ... she really hoped she didn’t have to do that. The man intrigued her for reasons she couldn’t identify—or were her own reactions surprising her?
As she looked at him, a pulse of excitement ran down her backbone, and she was suddenly filled with a sense of well-being and ... joy? Her magic center under her breastbone fluttered.
By sheer force of will, she succeeded in quelling her peculiar response to this stranger, who was moving silently and lithely, staring into her eyes as if he meant to mesmerize her, his prey. She cancelled her invisibility spell. It obviously wasn’t working. He couldn’t hurt her, she told herself. She was a Sword.
As he walked around the desk and headed toward the woman, Jim Tylan could still feel the tingling in the back of his head from what he called his “hunch mechanism.” That physical response always meant something important or dangerous was abo
ut to happen. Why hadn’t it alerted him when he walked in the room? He’d probably been so focused on the wall safe, he—and it—simply didn’t notice her crouched in the corner.
He mentally cursed when he stopped before her. It was bad enough he hadn’t found Finster’s clandestine financial records, even though his informant said they were in a safe in the study. No one, however, was supposed to know he was executing a secret search warrant under Homeland Security and Department of Justice auspices. Now he had to deal with a witness.
A witness with a glow, both around her and in the rug in front of her.
The radiance cloaking her abruptly vanished when he came within two feet of her. He sent her one of his most accusatory cop glares. She only returned a distinctly puzzled look with no hint of guilt at being caught inside a locked private room.
“Who are you, and what are you doing here?” he asked in a low voice. He’d seen no one in the hall, but the last thing he needed was for someone to hear them and come in.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” she returned in the same tone.
“What business is it of yours?”
“I think I can help you.”
“How?”
“You’re standing on it.” She pointed to the carpet.
“What?” He glanced down. The rug still glowed.
“Step back,” she ordered, crouching to lift the rug’s corner.
He understood then, knelt, and pulled the carpet back himself. A safe was set into a depression under a clear cover level with the floor. “Why is it shining? Why were you glowing?”
She gave him no answer, only shook her head, as if she didn’t understand a word he was saying.
He turned his attention to the safe. When he reached for the cover, she put out a hand to stop him. As they touched, a jolt of heat raced up his arm and through his body. They both jerked back, so she must have felt it, too. Despite the shock, he somehow managed to keep a poker face. What the hell was going on here?
“Let me,” she told him. She held her hands over the safe for several seconds, and the glow diminished until it disappeared altogether. She removed the cover, turned the handle, and opened the door. A tiny light came on inside the opening.
Together they peered into the foot-square compartment. The contents consisted of three manila envelopes, a black plastic four-inch-square box, a red leather-bound paperback-sized book, and a red drawstring bag embroidered with symbols. The bag glowed—probably the gold embroidery reflecting the dim light.
She picked up the black box and held it out to him. “Is this what you’re looking for? Or one of the envelopes?”
Jim stared at her for a moment. Nothing was making any sense. What had happened to the glow around the safe? How did she know what he wanted? Who was she?
The cop in him immediately categorized her: five-foot-seven or eight, dark red hair, dark eyes—too little light to tell the exact color—slim, dressed in a dark blue or black dress. Then the man in him took over. She was gorgeous, curves in the right places, skin almost luminescent. Her wavy, shoulder-length hair made his fingers itch to touch and find out if it was as silky as it looked. She smelled good, and he inhaled deeply as her scent wound its way to him—and through him. Her full mouth was made for kissing—an idea that caused him to lick his lips in anticipation.
She nudged his hand with the box and brought him back to business.
“Yes,” he replied, took the box, and opened it. Success. The two small flash drives inside had to contain the data his informant described. He took his specially constructed PDA out of his pocket, plugged in one of the drives, and hit the buttons for copying.
While the machine worked, he watched the woman pick up the book and look at a few pages, a puzzled look on her face. She put it and the bag in her purse, her slightly glowing purse, took out an envelope, and laid it in the safe. Was she a thief who left a receipt?
His gadget signaled completion of the copy, and he began the process for the second drive.
“Who are you?” he asked again. “What are you after?” He put his hand on hers, as if the physical connection would gain him answers. It only raised more questions when the jolt went to his toes this time, after making a couple of stops, one behind his solar plexus and the other lower down. He tried to ignore both the itch in his middle and the hardening in his loins.
She frowned. “Nobody and nothing that concerns you,” she answered as his PDA clicked again. “We need to hurry. The auction begins in three minutes, I must be there, and I have to reset the alarms on the safe.”
He restored the second drive to its box and handed it to her. She replaced it in the safe and, after she closed its door, said, “You’d better leave while I do it. The guard is due on his rounds, and it wouldn’t do for both of us to be caught here.”
He didn’t like it, but he acquiesced. He rose. “I’ll see you outside.”
He silently unlocked the door and checked the hall. It was empty. He looked back at her, and she was putting the cover on the safe. He stepped into the hall and took up a position close to the stairs where he could see her when she came out. They had some talking to do.
CHAPTER TWO
Ten minutes later, Jim lounged inside the wide doorway leading into the gold-and-white ballroom, where chairs had been set up auditorium-style. His plan to wait for her had been interrupted when a guard had come along, tried the study door and found it locked, then looked pointedly at him. He’d had no choice except to come upstairs.
Damn the woman. His quarry came in a side door in the middle of the left-hand wall. She took a seat on the end of a row, one obviously being saved for her by a short, balding older man who stood and gave her a peck on the cheek. Okay, at least he knew where she was.
He turned his attention to the front of the room where Alton Finster was standing by a lectern on a small stage elevated between large round columns. The man certainly didn’t look to be in his early fifties. He was a good-looking SOB, dark-blond hair going gray at the temples, his body showing he exercised regularly. He gave the impression of being in control, both of himself and of Finster Shipping, a global company of trucks, ships, and planes. He came over to Jim’s mystery woman, leaned over, and said something. They and the balding man all laughed.
Jim stopped himself from growling. What was the redhead to Finster? Why this rush of anger at the sight of them laughing together? He thought about taking the open seat behind her. They couldn’t talk in the middle of the audience, however, and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. No, he’d grab her on the way out.
Finster left the redhead and spoke to a man who had come in the side door. Jim recognized him—Bruce Ubell, Finster’s cousin. A “person of interest” in their investigation. Tall like Finster, but Finster was solid, and Ubell was skinny. Where Finster stood out in a crowd, Jim doubted anybody would notice Ubell with his thinning light brown hair and ordinary looks. Just the kind of face eyewitnesses would have trouble describing. No distinguishing marks or features.
A few in the agency questioned which cousin was running the show. Most put their money on Finster. Seeing them together, however, Jim wasn’t so sure. Ubell’s body language said he was in charge. Jim studied them for about thirty seconds and turned his head when both men scanned the audience. He felt his hunch mechanism tickle again, but he couldn’t tell whose gaze had crossed him. Whichever it was, that one was the boss. His hunches were never wrong.
He looked at the redhead again, talking animatedly to the guy next to her. Nothing from his hunch apparatus. Sometimes he thought he had wiggling antennae attached to the mechanism. Neither was fidgeting or tingling. He idly rubbed an itch under his breastbone and turned his attention back to the cousins.
Ubell exited, and Finster walked back to the lectern, picked up a microphone, and spoke some words of welcome, encouraging everyone to bid lavishly during the auction for the good cause. He turned the proceedings over to an auctioneer and stood by the side of the room. As th
e auction progressed, he gently heckled the bidders to give more and applauded the winners for their generosity.
Jim studied his “complication” while she bid on several items. She appeared to be as innocent as everybody else, but he noticed she kept a firm grasp on her purse with the mysterious book and bag in it. Who was this woman? Too bad he couldn’t ask Finster directly. He surveyed the crowd again. Somebody in the bunch of society types ought to know her.
Spotting an ambassador whose life he’d saved several years ago, Jim worked his way around the crowd to the man. Bill Anderson was delighted to see him and happy to provide information.
“She’s Irenee Sabel,” Anderson said. He pronounced the name I-ree-nee. “Sabel Industries, the big conglomerate run by her mother and her brother. Father’s Hugh Sabel, the economics genius who left academia to ‘dabble’ in the stock market, where he made millions. The whole family keeps a low profile. Very old money. Irenee’s an event planner, puts together fancy shindigs, although I don’t think she handled this one. She’s definitely in the background, keeps her name off letterheads and her picture out of the papers. Hasn’t been in the business long, and already has a good reputation.” He shot a glance at Jim. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”
“Yes, sir, she is.” Let the ambassador think he was attracted to Sabel as a woman. The fiction obscured his true objective. “Who’s the guy sitting next to her?”
“Dylan Hampton. Does something in a medical field, I believe. They’re related somehow. As far as I know, she’s never been linked with a boyfriend.” Anderson smiled faintly. “Your coast is clear.”
Grinning like Anderson had given him the best possible news, Jim shook the man’s hand. “Thanks for the information, sir. I’d appreciate your keeping our conversation confidential.”
Anderson grinned back and winked. “Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.”