Heartbreak Hero

by Frances Housden

  That was how the mere came to the notice of Paul Savage.

  The museum was high on the philanthropist’s list of charitable donations, topped only by places like the San Francisco opera house and the Savage Art Gallery, which his great-grandfather had endowed in the thirties. He was old money and never let anyone forget it. And the words borderline Mafia were never spoken aloud. At least, not to his face. Which meant her refusal to sell him the mere could make life downright hazardous. And now that she’d had time to think it over, Savage could be connected to the man who’d hijacked her case.

  As Ngaire touched the greenstone, she felt it pulse with life. Then again, it might simply be the rush of blood through her veins. She shrugged off the eerie feeling of icy fingers counting the notches in her spine. Soon you’ll think you hear spooky music, she chided herself. It was one thing to believe the greenstone could become darkened with blood, another to imbue it with a heartbeat.

  The original leather thong was still looped through the hole carved in the handle. Slipping her hand through the narrow strip, Ngaire lifted the paddle-shaped artifact above the desk from its resting place on the silken shawl and repeated its name. “Te Ruahiki.” She named the warrior chieftain, the Rangatira, whose spirit was said to have entered the mere on his death.

  For a deadly weapon, the greenstone mere had a deceptive beauty, its sharp polished edges pale and almost see-through. It was as if all the light in the room had been sucked into the translucent green jade to produce an otherworldly glow. As if it knew that after all its years away from Aotearoa, New Zealand, it had come home.

  And the theme tune from Jaws would start playing any second now. Get a grip, girl.

  She saw Bennett’s jaw drop as if that would prevent him blinking his surprise. “A greenstone mere.”

  “And not any ordinary one,” Manu Pomare said reverently as he got to his feet. “That’s inanga greenstone. Look at the hours of work in it, and the intricate carving on the handle. I’ve never seen another like it.”

  As if fascinated, he reached out to touch, his gaze sliding from the mere to Ngaire as she swung it away from his hand.

  His voice firmed. “How on earth did this come into your possession? There’s been a ban on exporting Maori artifacts for more than twenty years. The only ones to leave the country have either been stolen or smuggled out.”

  “Whoa! Back up there. I’m no thief! No smuggler, either, unless you count bringing Te Ruahiki back home where it belongs. I do have letters of provenance, also one from William Ruawai, the chief of my grandmother’s subtribe.

  “She was the last of her family and living in Auckland during the war when she met my grandfather, a GI, and part of the American contingent in New Zealand. After they married, naturally she took Te Ruahiki with her to the States. That would have been 1946, long before the law came into force.”

  Bennett and the female officer crowded the desk. Ngaire’s shoulder ached from holding out the mere, but she hoped the sight would do more to further her cause than laying it down. “Can you understand why I wanted to reveal it in private? William warned me that some people will do anything to get their hands on it.”

  Paul Savage included. The man had become obsessed with owning the Te Ruahiki. Obsessed, it seemed, with being forewarned of his death. She remembered the gleam in his eyes the last time he’d made her an offer, thinking she’d never refuse such a large sum.

  He’d been wrong.

  Wrapping the mere inside the silk scarf once again, she eyed the others in the room one by one. “Apart from William Ruawai, there are only four people in New Zealand who know what I’m carrying, and they’re all in this room.”

  Thirty minutes had passed since Ngaire had been led away. Thirty minutes of talking and persuading them she wasn’t running a black-market scam, until finally a call to William Ruawai in the South Island had secured the release of herself and the mere.

  Thirty minutes, time enough for all the other passengers on her flight to be in Auckland by now. No, she was wrong. One still remained.

  A rush of overwhelming tiredness had replaced the excitement she’d felt on her arrival at Auckland. There was much more to the mere’s return to the land of her ancestors than she could have explained and still hoped to be believed.

  Maybe one person in that cold gray office would have believed her life depended on the trip she would make to the South Island. Yeah, for all his modern haircut and clothes, Manu Pomare would fit right into a painting of a Maori warrior. All that was missing was the moko, the face tattoo.

  He would know about breaking a tapu, and the curse it could bring down on a family. But would he believe that if her quest wasn’t successful then she only had six more weeks to live?

  Ngaire didn’t know whether to be pleased or worried as she saw Kel approach. Her first reaction had been a slight lifting of her spirits at the sight of a face she knew, followed by the lead-weighted anxiety of wondering if Paul Savage had sent Kel to follow her. Yet, slow starter or not, he had tackled the thief.

  A laugh, half hysterical, half foolish, forced its way through lips dry from talking her way out of a tense situation. It had made her see spooks where there couldn’t possibly be any.

  It was hardly logical to blame Kel for her problems, yet she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that everything in her world had been working perfectly until she’d laid eyes on him.

  She turned her face away, pretending she hadn’t noticed him, hadn’t noticed the supple grace of his stride, or that he looked remarkably fit and cheerful for someone who’d sat in the same cramped seats as herself for more than six hours.

  Weakening, she let her eyes draw back to him. Darn, he was still coming her way. The air left her lungs in one short, sharp huff. Disapproval, or a way of releasing the tingling feeling inside her? She couldn’t make up her mind.

  Kel was an outstandingly attractive guy. Some woman’s dream man. “Handsome is as handsome does.” The thought produced a picture of him hesitating as her case disappeared, rather than his sexy smile. Why couldn’t she shake the feeling he had let her down even before they met?

  The glint in his eye told her she would have to be rude to get rid of him. But she couldn’t very well say “Beat it! I need time to get my mind round the assumption that one of my ancestors is alive and well, if only in spirit, and I’m carrying him inside my case.”

  The feeling of having a stopwatch running down the seconds of her life wasn’t quite as new. She’d learned to live with it, which might qualify as an oxymoron when what had really happened was that she’d discovered she’d likely die with it.

  “So, Ngaire, we meet again,” he said, stopping less than three feet away, not quite invading her space but hovering on the outskirts.

  Again, his crooked smile tugged at a memory, a bittersweet one that hinted at the refrain, long ago and far away. She refused to let it affect her. Refused to let hope surface where there was nothing to sustain it, except tiredness and a feeling of being alone and vulnerable. So she answered, “What I’m wondering is, why? I thought you’d have taken off ages ago. Were there no shuttles into the city?”

  “It was a question of having to check in with my travel agent. All my arrangements were made in such a rush that I didn’t know which hotel she’d booked. Just one of the drawbacks of acting on the spur of the moment.”

  “So you’re all fixed up now?”

  “Yeah, but I was hoping to catch you before I took off. What took you so long?”

  His teeth cut a white slash in his features. Another time, another place, that smile would have made her toes curl. But too quickly it disappeared as he came out with “They catch you trying to smuggle something into the country?”

  Ngaire felt heat flame in her face as her sense of humor took a nosedive. His joke struck closer to the mark than was comfortable. “Just a small problem with my declaration form. I put a cross in the wrong place and the customs guy took some convincing of it. This is my first overseas
trip and some of those questions are pretty ambiguous.”

  “Your first? I’d never have guessed.” His gaze skimmed her body, breaching the space she’d thought protected her. “You look pretty experienced to me.”

  Thanks for the nudge. Kel was so hot a woman was apt to lose her perspective. She shrugged. “A jerk’s a jerk no matter where you find him.”

  Let him make what he would of that remark.

  Ngaire accompanied the statement with a stare that should have made him back off, but he was obviously too full of his own appeal to take the hint.

  “Tell me about it. In my line I must have met them all.”

  “And what is your line?” Apart from hitting on strange women in airports. Tiredness, it seemed, had caught up with her again, making her feel disgruntled.

  “I’m a sales rep for a software company.”

  “Well, nice to meet you, Kel, but I’m not in the market for software.” Or soft looks. Or anything else he was selling, even if his eyes did look like melting chocolate and she was a chocoholic from way back. From this moment on, she was a recovering one.

  “No problem. I’m on leave at the moment. Taking a vacation around my old stomping grounds before I head back to Australia. I cover the Pacific Rim and Southeast Asia.”

  “Did you know Australia has twenty-five different varieties of fleas? More than any other country in the world.”

  “No, I didn’t. It’s not something I’ve personally had to deal with. Now, snakes on the other hand—”

  “Don’t get me started on those.” She shivered. “Nasty things, thank heavens there are none in New Zealand.” Only two-legged ones. “Just as well, because the way I feel at the moment, the only thing that could make me run is the sound of a hot shower.”

  “How about having dinner with me after your shower?”

  Kel must be good at his job. Tenacity was a big requirement for a sales rep. She’d thought she’d made herself pretty plain without being in-your-face rude. “I don’t think so. The only place I’m going after my shower is bed. And no, I don’t want company.”

  “Too bad, I know all the best places…for dinner, that is.”

  Despite her weakened condition she averted her gaze from Kel’s melting eyes and too sexy mouth and caught sight of a shuttle pulling up outside the terminal. “That’s my ride, I’ve got to run.”

  “I’d better give you back your rose-colored glasses, then. You’re starting to sound as if you need them.”

  She gasped with delight as he dangled the pink shades in front of her. She’d thought they were gone for good.

  Guilt dropped into her conscience, cold and heavy and weighing on her. Her shoulders jinked slightly from side to side, as if that would shift the blame. It didn’t.

  “It was kind of you to wait. I’m sorry if I seemed less than sociable, but you know how it is. It’s been a long day. All I want to do is find my hotel.”

  “No worries, you didn’t offend me. Which hotel are you in?”

  “The Hilton.” Ngaire felt uncomfortable saying the name. Every time she did, it sounded too much like boasting for a girl who lived in the blurred area where Chinatown and North Beach merged. But it was all part of her prize, and she wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the teeth even if they were gold plated.

  “The Hilton? Great! That’s where I’m staying.” He looked over his shoulder at the shuttle just starting to fill up outside. “I can ride along with you. It’ll be fun.”

  Too frazzled to disagree, Ngaire simply went with the flow as his laptop case changed hands and he took her elbow to accompany her to their transport. Her heartbeat kept time with the wheels of her suitcase as it clicked, clicked, clicked across the tiled floor. Now, what were the odds that they’d both be booked into the Hilton? Neither of them looked to be of the platinum-card variety. But then, looks could be deceiving.

  Garnet Chaly eased his slim backside into the chair, a hand on each arm as if it might rock under him. The illusion brought about by the fact that all he could see below him was water. The Waitemata Harbour that the Auckland Hilton perched over.

  Running a hand through silver hair just long enough for studied elegance, he leaned back in the chair. Surveying the hotel room, Chaly rubbed his thumb against his fingertips with a shivery whisper of skin against skin that he found soothing. Outside the window, the lowering sun had turned the sea silver, as if the Hilton had ordered it to match its decor of pale gray, blond wood and white. Luxurious, yet minimalist, like a sleek ocean-going yacht. The company was doing Jellic well this time around.

  Chaly crossed his ankle over one knee and twitched the cuff of his black pants level with his socks as he heard the click of a keycard sliding through the slot in the door.

  As it swung open, Kel filled the gap between the doorjambs, silhouetted against the light from the corridor, but there was no mistaking the high-bridged nose or the cheekbones that made his Dalmatian heritage unmistakable.

  Instead of looking into the room, he faced right and gave a wave, not turning until after he heard the sound of a door closing nearby. Shifting sideways, he eased the bag over his shoulder and into the room. He was a big bugger, rough around the edges when he needed to be, but tonight he looked like a beach bum. “Aloha, Kel. Where’s the luau?”

  Kel’s suit carrier hit the stand provided. “I know, the shirt needs changing, but I didn’t want the target out of sight for however long it took. One of many drawbacks to working without a partner. Have you fixed me up with a new one?”

  Kel threw him a swift, hopeful glance as he placed his laptop bag on the writing desk. Its spindly metal legs barely looked able to support its top, never mind all the gear Chaly knew his agent would be carrying.

  “None available. Training new agents takes time, and Gordie Tan was the third casualty in as many months. There’s been a lot of negligence doing the rounds, watch it’s not catching.”

  Hands fisted on his hips, Kel prowled toward the window and stared at the water. Without turning he said, “I bet that just cuts you up.”

  “All my agents are important. Without them the South Pacific would be the hellhole it became after Cook navigated these waters. Meanwhile we all have to pick up the slack, you included. That said, I’m only a call away if you need me.”

  Hiding his face couldn’t disguise the emotion choking Kel. Chaly’s fingertips moved faster against his thumb. Damn Jellic, a perpetual do-gooder. He’d always been a sentimental fool. Hell, the only reason he’d joined GDE was to right all the perceived wrongs his father had done. Chaly knew all about Jellic’s father. A man who’d driven off the top of a cliff rather than face the consequences of being a bent cop caught dealing drugs.

  His sister was similarly maimed by their family history. He’d heard that Jo McQuaid Stanhope and her brand-new husband, a millionaire, had started digging around in the past, trying to prove the father innocent. Idealists, they never could be happy with just the money.

  With the sea and the islands of the gulf blocking in the rest of the window frame, Kel worried at the stubble on his chin as if considering an apology for his rudeness. Too easy. No way was Chaly going to give him a chance to back down or pull out. Knowing Jellic the way he did, he solved his problem by going for the jugular.

  “If you can’t handle the pressure, say so now and I’ll take the job on myself. I hear the target’s built. Maybe I could get myself some of that.”

  Chaly’s silky sarcasm relieved the tension. He resisted giving away his thoughts by shaking his head. Hell, he could take on Jellic’s job, no sweat. But Kel could never do his until he learned how to spell dispensable.

  “I never said I couldn’t cope, but a bloody bus tour! How crappy is that? Do you know where they take you to on those tours? The Waitomo Caves, for God’s sake! Walks through the rain forest. She could ditch the papers anyplace and we’d never find them. It’s obvious now she’s only carrying the formula, because they checked her out at customs and didn’t find anything.” />
  The satisfaction of getting his way stuttered to a halt. “You’re sure they didn’t find anything?”

  “She’s here, isn’t she? Right next door.” Kel started unzipping the bag holding his laptop. “Ngaire said it was only because she’d marked the wrong square on her declaration form.”

  “Ngaire?”

  “You didn’t really think I’d been wasting my time?” Quickly opening his laptop case, Kel palmed a small device from one of the pockets, then walked to the dividing door separating his room from the one next door. He opened it quietly, attaching the electronic gadget to the other door, listened for a moment, then tried the handle. “Locked. She’s having a shower. I’ll check out her gear later.”

  “Don’t get caught. If she knows we’re on to her we might as well pack up now, as we’ll never know her contact or the drug cartel behind them.” For the first time since Jellic arrived Chaly felt a need to stand, get on the same level.

  “You trying to teach me to suck eggs?”

  “Sure, and spiders have wings. I’m just reminding you of the importance of this mission. If kiss-and-tell reaches Asia, we’ll never be able to halt its production.”

  “How can you be sure this is the only copy of the formula?”

  “I’m sure. Dead sure, and that’s all you need to know. Whoever knows the formula can hold the world at ransom. You know how easy it is to slip ecstasy into someone’s drink, do it with kiss-and-tell and they’ll be paying for it the rest of their life. It’s either that or death.”

  “Then let me go in there now and search her luggage.”

  “Do you really think it’s that easy? No country in the world will prosecute her for carrying a piece of paper with a formula written on it. We have to strike at the optimum moment and take out her contact. I doubt if he’ll be as clean as she appears to be. We need to know who we’re up against. There hasn’t been a whisper of the outfit’s name on the streets, only some scuttlebutt about the drug. And there’s always someone who thinks he can take a rumor and turn it into a profit, so you might not be the only one with an eye to the main chance where Ms. McKay’s concerned. It has to be one of the triads. But which one?