Date with the Devil (Crimson Romance)

by Jessica Starre

  “Every one,” the housekeeper said. Victoria glanced up. She’d made the statement with a slight hint of satisfaction in her voice. Why would she be satisfied? She obviously mourned the priest. Why would the loss of the collection, so intimately connected with the priest’s death, satisfy her?

  Or maybe Victoria was wrong. She’d been wrong before.

  Ms. Grossman’s gaze drifted from Victoria to the clock ticking on the wall behind her right shoulder. “Oh, my goodness,” she said, jumping up again. “Time to pick up the boys from school.”

  “You have children?” Victoria asked. Somehow that surprised her. What, did she think you couldn’t have children if you were susceptible to sex and chocolate? Fact was, susceptibility to sex and chocolate led directly to children. Victoria herself hadn’t seemed the type either, she knew, and even so Jasmine had been her universe, the reason she got out of bed in the morning, the reason she’d given up the work and instead got her ribs kicked twice daily at the Phoenix, three times on Wednesdays.

  “Oh, yes,” said Ms. Grossman with the only real warmth she had shown to Victoria throughout the entire interview. “Two boys. Six and eight.”

  Victoria murmured something. After a moment, the conversation having floundered, the housekeeper stood and held her hand out for the folder. Victoria reluctantly surrendered the inventory to her. Their time together clearly over, she and Michael got to their feet. The housekeeper moved them toward the front entrance, pulling open the heavy wooden door as Victoria thanked her for her time. Ms. Grossman made the usual pleasantries and then said, “By the way, who is the beneficiary on the policy?”

  They were almost out the door. Victoria hesitated, then took a gamble. “You’re the beneficiary.”

  Ms. Grossman gave her a horrified look, then fell hard and ugly to the floor.

  • • •

  “Why do you suppose she fainted like that?” Michael asked as they walked down Park to the nearest subway station. He turned to look at Victoria, squinting into the sun. She didn’t meet his eyes, as if looking at him was too painful. He knew the feeling.

  She also didn’t say anything. Her eyes shifted restlessly over the landscape, except for the part that included him. Looking for trouble. Like trouble couldn’t find her all on its own.

  “Maybe she engineered the theft and the priest got killed because of her.” He answered his own question, a habit that had annoyed her before and no doubt annoyed her now. “Finding out that he apparently thought enough of her to name her as the beneficiary on a life insurance policy would be a nasty shock.”

  “Or maybe she was faking,” Victoria said, charging across an intersection without looking for oncoming traffic.

  “What the hell,” he snapped, dodging a squealing taxi and a lumbering garbage truck. She pushed her way into a crowd of chattering tourists festooned with cameras and maps of the subway system.

  “Ah. Lunch,” she said, stopping at a pretzel vendor’s cart. He caught up with her.

  “What the hell?” he repeated.

  “Company,” she said.

  Which meant she’d spotted the tail. He gave a wary glance around, accepting the warm pretzel she handed him. He wasn’t a pretzel aficionado, nor was he particularly hungry, but he bit into it anyway.

  “Is there a point to stopping here?”

  “No,” she said around a mouthful of bread. She took a huge swallow and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin the vendor had handed her. “Everything I do is pointless.”

  He ground his teeth, then rephrased the question. “What is the point?”

  “Amateur or professional?” she asked. “I just wanted to see what he’d do when he knew he was spotted.”

  “And?”

  “He faded the second I crossed the intersection like that.”

  Professional. But of course Michael knew that. He dumped the uneaten half of his pretzel into the trash.

  “Are you sure it was a tail?” he asked.

  She popped the rest of her pretzel into her mouth and chewed, then brushed the salt off her fingers, not dignifying his question with an answer.

  Chapter 7

  The night was dark and warm, and a light breeze riffled through Victoria’s hair as she scooted down the street. She’d left Michael at the hotel after forcibly reminding him that she didn’t need his company while she quizzed a source. Now she wished she hadn’t been so forceful. Having a large, armed FBI agent by your side tended to discourage the less persistent muggers. Not that she couldn’t handle them on her own. Just that she preferred not to handle them at all.

  Broken glass crunched beneath her feet but she had her leather walking shoes on so it didn’t bother her. As long as she didn’t commit any felonies, picking up and leaving trace at a scene wasn’t the end of the world. The breeze stirred up some grit from the street and she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. Goose bumps popped on her bare arms, but that was atmosphere, not weather.

  She stopped in front of a narrow building. A black wrought iron gate covered the entire store front. She put a hand to it: locked. Beneath the bars, she could make out the peeling gilt letters on the window: The Curiosity Shoppe.

  The shop — shoppe, she should say — appeared dark and deserted. She glanced over her shoulder. The nearest streetlight had burned out. She looked back at the shop. She knew the old man didn’t believe in wasting money on exterior lighting on the shop itself.

  Reaching through the grille, she rattled the handle of the front door. Unsurprisingly, it was also locked. Her glance dropped to the worn card on the door listing the hours of business, including the rather grand statement and by appointment. Below that: service entrance in rear.

  She cut through to the alley, trudging through garbage and feral cats to reach the back door. A buzzer located just to the left of the door let out a shrill shriek when she pushed it. As she waited, a trickle of sweat formed between her shoulder blades, ran down the narrow of her back and tickled when it reached the base of her spine. That was weather, not atmosphere. She didn’t even flinch when a rat raced across the toe of her shoe.

  She leaned on the buzzer again, then glanced up and down the alley, peering at shadows — was that a furtive movement or just a trick of the inconsistent light? Finally, she heard the creak of a floorboard behind the door. The peephole, which rested behind a wire screen set in the metal door, slid open. A baleful gray eye glared at her.

  “It’s late,” Dimitar Stanchev grumbled.

  After a moment, she heard the scrape of a bolt being drawn back. Then the door creaked slowly inward. Cue the ax murderer. She slipped inside, nearly tripping over an iron doorstop in the dimness. The old man closed and bolted the door behind her. The shadows thickened. She kept her hands up in a guarded position until she decided she and Stanchev were alone in the shop. Shoppe. Perhaps the ax murderer would show up in the next act.

  The old man shuffled across the worn linoleum floor and flicked on a dim overhead bulb, then gestured for her to follow him. As her eyes adjusted to the murky shadows, she made out the outlines of a long battered counter, tall shelves filled with the promised curiosities, and a protective wire cage in the corner behind which he probably transacted most of his business. If she had his clientele, she’d make it bullet-resistant glass, not wire.

  Stanchev shoved open another door, hinges creaking appropriately for the atmosphere, and led her into a stock room, then upended a crate for her to sit on. He reached up, yanked a cord. The yellow glow of the bulb shed light on the floor directly beneath it but left his face in the gloom. This was probably just as he intended.

  “How is Rosemary?” Stanchev asked, lowering himself onto a stool near a battered metal table and sighing as he took the weight off his slippered feet. The light gleamed off his bald brown head. He didn’t care about Rosemary. He was just making conversation.
r />   “Same as ever,” she said.

  Pleasantries dispensed with, he asked, “You are here why?”

  She told him the story. Not all of it, just the pertinent parts: antique collection missing from an Eastern Orthodox church, possibly the treasure of Constantinople. People murdered in the course of the theft. No doubt he’d already heard about it, but he listened attentively. After she finished, he gave a regretful sigh. “Is nothing I can do for you,” he said, scratching the stubble on his chin.

  “Why not?” she asked. Well, why not? It was The Curiosity Shoppe and she was curious. Was this just the opening volley in a negotiation, or did no really mean no? Sometimes it was hard to tell.

  He rubbed his red, tired eyes and looked at her for a long time. Then he leaned forward and grasped her wrist gently, turning her arm over. With gentle fingers, so as not to alarm her, he pushed her sleeve up, then nodded at the scar.

  “I want nothing to do with this,” he said, releasing her wrist.

  Who could blame him? She wasn’t too excited about it, either. She didn’t know him well enough to have any way of pressuring him — other than offering money for information — and she wasn’t sure what he knew would be worth the time and trouble it would take to extract it.

  He sighed, a deep rumble in his chest. “I will tell you this. No one has seen the treasure since it was stolen from the church. No one.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was significant. If it happened to be true. She waited, but he didn’t say more. She wasn’t surprised. She collected her information piece by piece, slowly and persistently, until she had the answer. Then she grabbed the goods and got the hell out as quickly as she could.

  “Do you know who appraised the piece? Before the collection was stolen?”

  Stanchev eyed her. He knew. Apparently everyone but Victoria knew the name. She supposed if she hadn’t been out of the business so long she would know it, too. Would he say? Did she have an inducement to offer?

  “You are not afraid of crossing … him?” the old man asked, as if refusing to say Vlad’s name would reduce his power.

  “Of course I’m afraid of crossing him,” Victoria said. If Stanchev wasn’t going to mention Vlad’s name, she wasn’t either. “I’m not insane.”

  Stanchev rubbed his chin again and gave her another measuring look. “But you will do it anyway?”

  Her stomach clenched. “If I have to.”

  “And did you have to — before?” He nodded toward the scar on her arm. Did you have to? was one of those kinds of judgment calls that were constantly being litigated in the courts. She rubbed her arm uneasily. Or not always in court.

  She didn’t answer, but he didn’t seem to expect her to.

  “You did not hear this from me,” he said, then leaned forward and gave her the name. It meant nothing to her. Someone new on the scene? Or perhaps he was clean so she’d never had any need to know his name before. Stanchev watched her for a reaction — she wondered what response he expected — and when she had none, he shrugged and got to his feet. Interview over.

  He led her back out to the main room, then unbarred and opened the rear door. He moved aside to let her out into the darkness. As she stepped into the alley, a movement just outside her range of vision made her swing around. A baseball bat came whistling down toward her head. She managed to deflect some of the momentum with a high block but the force of the blow slammed her to the ground. The bat whistled again, catching her in the ribs. The pain splintered through her, tearing her breath away.

  She yelped in outrage, lashed a kick at her attacker’s feet and heard him go down. She climbed to her feet, clutching her side. She focused on the attacker, a rangy man with a baseball cap on backwards. He jumped up from where he’d gone sprawling on the ground. He tossed the bat from hand to hand and grinned at her. She glanced around but saw no one else in the alley. Usually jackals traveled in packs. She watched him warily, keeping her eyes on his eyes, not on the bat.

  The rear door to the pawnshop creaked open a sliver. In the sudden silence, she heard the crack of a shell snapping into a shotgun. Stanchev said nothing, just slid the barrel of the weapon through the barely open door.

  The attacker glanced away to see what was happening. She stepped forward and kicked the bat out of his hand. He spun and darted down the alley. She scooped up the bat and watched him go. She could have followed him but sometimes disengaging was the best self-defense strategy. Besides, her ribs hurt and she didn’t have her Beretta. And there was something else. She eased in a breath, the pain slicing through her, trying to pin it down. The feeling was unfamiliar as it trickled through her. At first she told herself it was just the after-effects of adrenalin. But then she knew better: it was the taste of fear.

  She heard Stanchev shut the door quietly behind her, listened to the snick of the bolt being thrown, and that was almost more unnerving than the attack had been.

  Chapter 8

  Michael heard her come in. It wasn’t that he was listening for her. Or waiting for her. Or worried about her safety because she had a tendency to charge in first and worry about who was going to backstop her later.

  None of those things. He was just keeping an eye out because he couldn’t take the lead — he’d already been warned off by the New York SAC and his own boss. Gerard, the FBI liaison to the NYPD was the only one on staff who returned his calls. Gerard and a contact at Customs he wasn’t sure he could trust.

  He slipped out of his room and across the hall. He raised his hand to knock but paused, hearing a sound from just inside the door. He stopped and listened for a moment.

  Jesus. He let his hand fall to his side. He had seen her angry, and he had seen her happy. Bitter and joyful, hot for him and cold as ice. He had never seen her cry. He sure as hell wasn’t going to start now.

  She was back, and she was alive. That was all he needed to know. She could tell him what she’d found out when she was ready. He did not —

  He heard the chain fall away and then the door swung open.

  “I can hear you breathing,” she commented. “If you’re going for stealth, you need to do better than to stand there sighing.”

  “Wasn’t going for stealth,” he said. Her eyes were wet and her nose was red. Not a good look for her. “I was giving you a moment to control yourself.”

  She lifted a brow like she was surprised he mentioned it, but wasn’t she always bitching about how people never said what they were thinking? She wanted direct, he could bring it.

  He slipped into her hotel room and said, “What happened?”

  “Someone’s trying to discourage me,” she told him, moving away from him, her movements a little slow, her arm wrapped around her ribs in a gesture he knew well, having performed it a time or two himself. Shit. People were already hitting her. That development wasn’t supposed to start until later.

  Yesterday morning — Monday — he’d been in her kitchen toasting bagels. He wished they were there now, in the kitchen, with nothing better to do than review — or replay — the highlights from the night before. The way she kept away from him showed that she wasn’t having fond memories of the kitchen. She was probably hoping he would go back to the Seventh Circle of Hell or wherever she thought he spent his spare time.

  “Have you wrapped them yet?” he asked.

  She nodded toward the desk and he saw the bag from Duane Reade resting there. He shook his head as he dumped elastic bandages out of the bag.

  “Need some help?”

  She considered that. “Yeah,” she said, the syllable costing her, like she was begging for mercy. She didn’t move and he realized she was hurting so much she couldn’t take off her blouse.

  That landed like a punch in his gut. They used to compare their scars, laughing, one-upping each other, yet now he could hardly stand it. He’d dragged her into this, knowing
how long it had been and —

  And he could not be weak. She was doing exactly what he needed her to do.

  “I’ll give you a hand,” he said, keeping his voice impersonal. He unbuttoned her blouse, trying not to actually watch what he was doing. She stared over his shoulder, not meeting his eyes, which was good. He slipped the blouse off her shoulders. She was wearing a plain gray sports bra, which he did not find erotic in the least. He was a Victoria’s Secret man, and she was not and never had been a Victoria’s Secret woman (“You cannot run from a crime scene in a demi-cup.”)

  He reached for the elastic bandage, turned back to her torso, sucking a breath in when he saw the bruise, already an ugly purple. He controlled himself from saying anything, just wrapped her tight, not listening to the hiss of her breath when his hand skimmed across the bruise. He fastened the bandage.

  “Better?” he asked.

  She nodded jerkily, face pale.

  “You got any pain reliever?” he asked. She nodded toward the Duane Reade bag again. He found the aspirin, shook out some capsules, more than the recommended dose but he figured these were extenuating circumstances, handed them to her, then went to the tap for water, but she had already swallowed them dry, which was something you learned how to do in the first week in this line of business.

  He helped her back into the blouse and buttoned it up, keeping his fingers as impersonal as before. See? It was absolutely possible to ignore the heat, to stay away from the temptation, to think in a logical way around her.

  “Thanks,” she said, the word dragging reluctantly from her throat.

  He handed her the glass of water, even though she didn’t need it, and she drank it down, then set the glass on the desk next to the bottle of aspirin. She looked exhausted, and there was a time when he would have suggested she get some sleep, when he would have tucked her in his arms to make sure she did it, but that was a long time ago and everything was different now.