Date with the Devil (Crimson Romance)

by Jessica Starre

  “I tell him it will all come to him anyway,” she said, proffering the check. Victoria stared at it for a moment, at the tiny apartment, the worn carpeting, the broken down furnishings. The poor old lady was delusional. “Take it!” she said. “Take it, take it! Then he can come back home.”

  “Okay,” Victoria said, and took the check.

  • • •

  As she walked back from the subway stop, she became aware of the familiar tension between her shoulder blades and she glanced behind her. Did she have a tail? There were a few pedestrians but then that wasn’t unusual in New York. Context was everything in self-defense, as she told her students all the time.

  She ducked into a Thai restaurant, the fragrant smell making her stomach growl in anticipation of a meal she wasn’t about to have. She took a folded paper menu from the holder on the hostess stand and headed back into the evening. This time she was sure. The man across the street had been staring at the display in an electronics store window while she’d gone into the restaurant. Who’d sent him? She turned and walked back into the restaurant. The hostess had come back from seating patrons and looked up at her with an expectant smile. Victoria didn’t say anything but went quickly through the dining area, ignoring the hostess’s startled protest, and out the back way, into the alley.

  She circled around the block. The man had stopped again. Now he was staring at the window of a lingerie shop, with occasional glances in the direction of the Thai restaurant. Didn’t he know he’d been made?

  She eyed her surroundings. Daylight, and a few pedestrians in the area, but if she did it fast enough, she could get away with it.

  She charged up behind him, slamming into him full force. He staggered forward.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, acting flustered, grabbing him with her hands. He swung around but then she had the Beretta jammed against his crotch, which made any man think twice before doing anything.

  “Christ,” he muttered.

  “You okay?” she asked, patting him down. He was carrying a piece, which she tucked into her waistband. She grabbed his wallet, then stepped back and kicked him hard in the balls. It was very satisfying. To his credit, he didn’t fall to his knees and whimper, he just bent over and clutched himself while she took off in the opposite direction.

  He’d been carrying a Sig Sauer, just like Michael. She tossed it into the nearest dumpster. She hit the subway and as the train pulled out of the station, she flipped open his wallet.

  Well, great. She’d just assaulted a U.S. Customs agent, and stolen his money.

  Chapter 18

  “She did what?” Michael demanded.

  “I understand they’re still trying to extract his balls from his throat,” Gerard said, locking the hotel room door behind him. He pulled a chair up to the bed.

  “Dammit. I told them —” He stopped. The pain meds were making him light-headed and stupid.

  Gerard waited but Michael didn’t finish the thought, so Gerard finished it for him. “To have someone keep an eye on her?”

  “Yeah,” Michael said. “I was hoping to keep her out of trouble.”

  “Yeah,” Gerard said, very obviously avoiding the good luck with that he clearly wanted to say.

  His friend in Customs would probably pull the tail. He’d only done it as a favor. Michael dragged a hand through his hair. He was running out of people to ask favors of. At least Gerard didn’t mind being hit up. And he damn well shouldn’t —

  It was Monday morning and the sun was shining through a chink in the drawn curtains. Last Monday morning, he’d been toasting bagels in Victoria’s kitchen. The Monday before, she’d been a distant memory. Next Monday, they’d both probably be in prison. Or dead. At least he wasn’t stuck in a rut.

  • • •

  Victoria took the check that Donald’s mother had given her to a branch of the bank listed on the front of the check. She didn’t seriously think it was any good, or that the bank teller would tell her anything about the old lady and her family, but she had to try.

  “Yes?” the teller asked as she handed the check over.

  “This is in payment of a debt. I just want to be sure that there are sufficient funds in the account to cover it.”

  “Certainly.” He glanced at the check and smiled. “Mrs. Young is a long time customer,” he said. “I’m quite sure she has sufficient funds to cover this. But let me verify.” He tapped keys in his computer. “Yes, indeed. Would you like to cash it?”

  “Please certify it,” she said. “The money doesn’t belong to me.”

  • • •

  She headed back to the hotel immediately, going directly to the room she and Michael were sharing. She barely had the door shut behind her before she pulled the certified check out of her pocket and waved it at him, telling him what had happened, except the part about the Customs agent.

  “It’s good,” she said when she’d finished. “She’s got the money.”

  Michael sat up slowly, in stages, wincing as the movement disturbed his injured leg. She plopped down on the bed next to him and showed him the certified check. Her state of excitement was so great she didn’t see what she’d done until she looked down and realized she was in bed with Michael. But then she met his mocking gaze and she had too much pride to move to safety. Notwithstanding the fact that she told her students to never let pride get in the way of effective self-defense.

  “So Donald probably didn’t kill the priest to get his hands on the collection in order to turn it into cash. His mother has more than enough money.”

  “But obviously he doesn’t like to get money from her.”

  “Maybe not, but do you really think he killed three people — or five, depending — just so he didn’t have to ask his mom for help?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably not. What now?”

  She drew a deep breath. “I think we have to look at Kevin.”

  Michael nodded slowly. “He won’t cooperate.”

  “Then I’ll have to be devious.”

  “Uh huh,” Michael said.

  She hesitated, then said, “Before I go charging in after him, you’re going to have to tell me what you know.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and somehow instead of looking wounded and pathetic against the pillows, he seemed friendly and available. She kinda liked him that way, without all the snappy comebacks. He seemed sort of warm and real. She could just climb on top —

  She. Could. Not.

  “Sometime this week would be helpful,” she said.

  He closed his eyes, but she knew that meant surrender, not naptime. “I know that the lead investigator —”

  “You mean the agent who was killed at the beginning of all this?”

  “Yes. Alexis was involved in the case from the start. When the first Byzantine object — the candlestick — was brought in for appraisal, Alexis was alerted. She was part of the arts and antiquities investigation team,” he said. So was Michael, of course. That was how they’d gotten acquainted all those years ago. The FBI team worked closely with the U.S. Customs art recovery team, which was why she was supposed to have made it through Customs without getting stopped after their Athens recovery. “Alexis knew that once word got out about the Byzantine candlestick — and it would — the collectors like Vlad would be on the prowl.”

  “Uh huh,” she said.

  “So when the murders happened, she angled to get named lead investigator. Since she’d been in on the ground floor, she was assigned to the case.”

  “Okay,” she said. “What else?”

  “She believed that — let’s call him The Collector, since she wasn’t sure who it was — The Collector tracked down the person who’d brought the Byzantine candlestick in for appraisal.”

  “How would The Collector have found out about that?” sh
e asked, using Michael’s code name for Vlad. “I thought the dealer who appraised the candlestick couldn’t help you.”

  “The FBI isn’t Vlad,” Michael pointed out, which was so very true. “Alexis believed that the person who brought the candlestick in for appraisal was not the legitimate owner of the collection.”

  That seemed logical. Otherwise why the subterfuge? The person who had brought the candlestick in had used a fake name and the FBI hadn’t been able to track him down. If he legitimately owned the piece, what did he have to hide?

  “And?”

  “And so he — let’s call him The Thief — he learns that the candlestick and therefore the entire collection has immense value. Which is what he wanted to know before he did anything with it.”

  “Sure. And then?”

  “Then perhaps The Collector offered The Thief an incentive to steal the collection and turn it over to him. The Thief went for the collection, something went wrong and three people died. Later, Alexis got killed. I think she had a good idea who The Thief was, and he got spooked and killed her.”

  “Uh huh,” Victoria said. So much for she was killed in an accident.

  “I’m just guessing,” he said.

  “Uh huh,” she said again. It was a simple story. The best lies usually were.

  When he was quiet for a long time, she looked over and saw his eyes were closed. Some of the tension had smoothed away from his face so she didn’t say anything to disturb him. It all seemed to work out neatly. Kevin, the Altar Society volunteer, taking a piece of the antique collection to the appraiser, maybe just to see what it was worth. He was curious. Vlad getting wind of it, offering Kevin a tremendous finder’s fee for the collection. Kevin stealing it, having to kill three people, perhaps unexpectedly, to do it. Then something happening before Vlad got the treasure. Maybe Kevin got scared. He’d murdered people. So Vlad needed a lever. He needed Victoria. It was a good story. She wondered if any part of it were true.

  Then Michael opened his eyes and looked at her. Sapphire blue, direct and clear. She felt like a mouse under the gaze of the cobra. He reached out and touched her hair. She sucked her breath in but didn’t say anything, didn’t move. His eyes glittered like crystal. It didn’t matter that he’d just been shot; he was contemplating carnal thoughts. He could be dying of thirst in the Sahara desert and if he saw a good-looking woman he wouldn’t be thinking, bring me water.

  He propped himself up on his elbow and leaned closer. She could smell the spicy cologne he wore, and feel the warm heat of him. “So now what?” he asked, tracing a feather light figure eight against the back of her hand, which made it very difficult for her to concentrate.

  “You’re the law enforcement official,” she said, trying to decide whether she should snatch her hand away or not. Well, she should. She knew that. But would she? Inquiring minds wanted to know.

  “I can’t operate in an official capacity.”

  “I’m not interested in proving anything.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “You just want to recover the goods.”

  “That’s why you hired me,” she said. “Although let it be said I would have been perfectly happy if you’d found some other recovery specialist.”

  “You’re the only one I know.”

  “You need to get out more.”

  “No,” he said, and he was the one who took his hand away. “I’m pretty sure one of you is enough.”

  Chapter 19

  “Hit it hard and fast,” Michael advised. He knew he was acting stupid, like she’d never done this before. “I wish you weren’t going in alone.”

  Victoria didn’t respond. She had always gone in alone. He knew that. He had to get a grip. He had started this thing. He couldn’t let his nerve fail him now.

  How much of the story did she buy? He searched her face, looking for answers that weren’t there.

  She picked up a small apparatus that resembled a crossbow, which she could use to fire a line across a distance, supposing she needed to traverse between two buildings from the 30th floor. If she ended up having to traverse between two buildings at the 30th floor, he was pretty sure she was going to kick his balls afterwards. She checked the scope and put it in her backpack. She coiled a nylon filament line and tucked it next to the crossbow. A slender titanium hook and a few other odds and ends had earlier disappeared into the backpack. Like Dora the Explorer, he thought, but had the very good sense not to say.

  She tucked her hair under a baseball cap and put on a plain black t-shirt with her jeans. She slipped on dark walking shoes, the better to blend in with the night. Then she called Connie and got Kevin’s address and phone number. Kevin’s apartment was just a few blocks from Connie’s, but a considerable step down the socioeconomic ladder.

  “I’ll be right outside,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want to arrange backup? Byofsky must know someone.” He knew he was no use as a backup now. He could hardly stand up. If she didn’t go for lining up the Russian, he’d get Gerard —

  “I don’t want witnesses,” she said.

  “Jesus,” Michael said, putting his hand over his heart. “This is a recovery, not a hit.”

  She glanced up briefly from her inventory of the backpack. “Give me a break,” she said. “I operate with callous disregard for property rights, not human life.”

  “Be careful,” he said with a ghost of a smile on his lips.

  “If I were a careful person, I wouldn’t be doing this in the first place,” she said. Impatient, the way she always was just before she went in.

  “Yeah,” he said. He reached out and touched her cheek, the silkiness of her skin against his palm so familiar. He tilted her chin up. “Look, Victoria. When I came to you, I had one objective on my mind. I was blind to everything else. I didn’t understand what I was asking you to do. But I understand now.” It was as close as he could come to saying he’d made a plan he wasn’t telling her about.

  “Uh huh,” she said, pulling away from him and lifting the backpack over her shoulder.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he said. “I was wrong to bring you back like this. I shouldn’t have — I was just — desperate.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But I never started a project I didn’t finish. One way or the other.”

  • • •

  Michael leaned against a brick building opposite Kevin’s, looking like a derelict trying to avoid getting rousted. At least Victoria thought that was the role he was playing. She didn’t expect him to be of much use since it was physically exerting to hunt down treasure that people have been murdered over. It was practically easier to earn a living the regular way.

  She flipped open her cell phone and called Kevin’s number. When Connie had given it to her, he’d told her Kevin would be at the church tonight at an Altar Society meeting, barring illness or some sort of emergency. He’d meant to save her the effort of trying to reach Kevin when he wouldn’t be home but instead had given her the best time to break into the man’s apartment. What were friends for.

  After ten rings with no answer, she stowed the cell phone away. Presumably Kevin was out as Connie had predicted. She checked for traffic and crossed the street.

  The building had no doorman. The outside door yielded easily to a set of picks and some muscle, both of which she happened to have on her. Up the steps, skipping the self-service elevator, in case it had a camera. No one challenged her. The hallway was clear as she got out on Kevin’s floor. She took a look at his apartment door but it was metal with two sets of deadbolts so she bypassed it and went up to the roof as she’d planned.

  Once there, she strapped her climbing harness on and secured the hook and line around a heavy ventilation pipe. She pulled on leather work gloves and climbed over the side of the building. Clinging awkwardly to the line — rappelling was not an activity she enj
oyed every day — she started walking down the side of the building, counting floors as she went, glad she’d kept her 150-pushups-a-day habit. At Kevin’s kitchen window, she punched the glass out of one pane with her gloved fist, then reached in and unlocked the window. She forced the sash up, unhooked herself from the line and shimmied inside the apartment. The number of people who secured their doors with police locks only to leave their windows unprotected never ceased to amaze her.

  She started opening drawers and cupboards in the kitchen. She didn’t know exactly what she was looking for but she suspected there’d be something. Maybe the weapon Kevin had used to shoot Elene and her son and the priest. Maybe a bloodstained rag, or a convenient letter to his mother: Dear Ma, today I killed three people and stole a priceless collection of Byzantine artifacts. Or maybe she’d even stumble on the artifacts themselves, or some object that would lead her to them, like the key to a storage unit and a handy receipt indicating location and unit number.

  But a quick search of the small apartment turned up nothing. The collection was big enough that if he had it here, it would have to be held in a fairly obvious place, like the back of a closet or under the bed. But it wasn’t. Of course, there was always that storage unit somewhere. Or maybe he’d shipped it off to a co-conspirator.

  Since she wasn’t going to get lucky and find the artifacts here, she was going to have to settle for evidence of where he’d stashed the collection. She started a more thorough search, still moving quickly. She began with the kitchen because it was small and had few potential hiding places. She checked the floor for areas where the vinyl flooring might have been pulled up and then tacked back down; she unscrewed the light fixture, cutting her finger in the process; she checked the baseboards for signs that a board had been pulled loose and then nailed back again. Nothing.