Date with the Devil (Crimson Romance)

by Jessica Starre

  Then she systematically tossed the living room. Again, not much to search. She plumped the sofa pillows carefully, looked under the sofa, checked behind the entertainment system, paged through the handful of books on a shelf.

  She passed into the bedroom, which looked more promising because there was more junk in it. She checked the chest of drawers, looking behind it and feeling under it, running her hand beneath the drawers and physically pulling them out to check for hidden items. She moved more hurriedly now. Half an hour had elapsed and she still had plenty to do. She checked behind the dresser mirror, trying to remember all of the dodges.

  She moved to the desk in the corner and rummaged through the drawers. She picked the center lock successfully if not skillfully and found $300 but no smoking gun. She took the money for her troubles, tucking it in her pocket and shutting the drawer. Then she thought about it for a moment and put the money back.

  Then her gaze fell on the bedside table. She crossed the carpet in two steps and grabbed open the drawer. A leather bound journal had been stuffed inside along with what appeared to be an entire box of used Kleenexes. She picked up the journal, dislodging a small silver box that had been tucked behind it. More slowly now, she set aside the journal and pulled the box out of the drawer. A reliquary. What relic did it contain? A lock of Simonis’ hair, a small bone from her hand?

  “What the hell are you doing?” a voice demanded. She shoved the object in her pocket — reflexes, not petty thievery — and whirled around to see Kevin standing in the doorway to the bedroom. He had a Glock out, pointed at her chest. She knew what he had done to Father Theoctisus, Elene Angelus, and one small child. She didn’t make any sudden moves.

  Kevin crossed the room in a few long strides, then hit her across the face with the back of his free hand, just like she’d done to Vlad. Keeping the pistol steady, he said, “Put your hands on top of your head.”

  She did as he told her. He took her Beretta out of the shoulder holster and tucked it in his waistband. He yanked on her wrist to pull her toward the door but then she had the stiletto out of the ankle sheath and she sliced up, raking it along his abdomen. He screamed and stumbled away. She wrenched her arm free and bolted for the kitchen. She jumped through the window, grabbing the line that still dangled from the roof. She climbed up the side of the building as fast as she could. Her instincts were to go down but it was harder to shoot someone when you were aiming up at them.

  She got to the roof and heaved herself over, then pulled the line up after her. Kevin hadn’t followed her up — probably didn’t have the upper body strength — and for a moment she congratulated herself on a brilliant plan. Then the door to the roof smashed open not twelve feet from where she crouched and Kevin hurled himself forward.

  Scrambling to her feet, she ducked behind an enormous air conditioning unit just as he squeezed off a round from the Glock. The bullet pinged harmlessly through the sheet metal — he was aiming too high — and she scooted around to the other side to keep an eye on him. He squeezed off a flurry of shots that banged against the unit, tearing through the metal, the shots too high to hit her. For someone who’d managed to murder three people in cold blood, he seemed to have nerves that affected his aim. Thank God.

  She sprinted a few yards to a brick-enclosed exhaust unit, hoping it would offer more protection than the flimsy sheet metal of the air conditioning unit, throwing herself to the ground to make a smaller target. The air heaved in her lungs and her heart pounded. She could hear the scrape of his shoes as Kevin drew nearer. She thought about flinging herself off the roof — broken neck, hail of bullets, which did she prefer? — when she heard the metallic clang of the door to the roof being thrown open again. Then the flat spit of a Sig. She heard different footsteps moving toward her, and when Gerard reached down to give her a hand up, for a dizzying, disbelieving moment she almost kicked him in the balls because he wasn’t who he was supposed to be. She blew a breath out and controlled herself. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Michael thought someone might have to save your ass sometime,” he said, picking up the spent casing and putting it in his pocket. He tucked the Sig in the small of his back. His face was grim.

  A moment later, she heard more footsteps. There was Michael now, a step behind. Gerard nodded at Michael and slipped off away through the door. She heard his shoes ringing on the stairs.

  She was okay, and then the backlash set in and her whole body started to shake. “I am really glad you sent him,” she said, and Michael must have heard something in her voice because he put his arm around her. She buried her head against his shoulder.

  “I thought I was dead,” she said. “I’ve been out of it too long.”

  “You did fine,” he said, and he said it without emotion. Pulling herself together, she stepped away from him. Whatever he was wrestling with, it stood between them. It wasn’t the only thing that did.

  She looked down at Kevin’s body, which apparently both Gerard and Michael had every intention of leaving on the roof, unexplained and unmourned.

  She said, “The first FBI investigator. Alexis. You owed her this, right?”

  He didn’t pretend not to understand her. “Yes,” he said.

  “To you, she was?” The reason he had been warned off the case.

  “She was my wife.”

  The word was like a fist in her gut. Wife. The world went a little dizzy around the edges and she couldn’t quite breathe. Maybe she hadn’t wanted him but that didn’t mean he was entitled to find someone new. Although it explained where he’d been for the past seven years.

  “She and I were separated,” he said, even though she hadn’t asked and he was never forthcoming. “She moved out of our house months ago. She said I kept waiting for you to come back.” He stopped and then he looked away from her and then he said slowly, as if it were painful to do, like pulling hooks from his flesh, “I always thought you would.”

  She made a sound of annoyance. She still didn’t get it. She didn’t understand him. She didn’t understand anything. She said, “You trusted me to do this project, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Why would you think you could trust me? After what you did?”

  “After what I did?” he said, and he moved closer to her, so he could see her face in the faint light. “What, exactly, are you blaming me for?”

  “Athens. When I was stopped by Customs. Just after Jasmine died.”

  The tears blurred her vision. He pressed her face against his shoulder, stroking her hair. Then she had his Sig out and she jammed it hard against the underside of his jaw. He let his arms fall away and made no sudden movements.

  “We were in Athens together,” she said, stepping back a little without letting up on the pressure of the pistol against his skin. “You knew what I was doing there. You were the only one who knew what I was doing there. We were supposed to be a team. Goddammit. You were supposed to make sure I got through okay.”

  “You think I tipped off Customs?” he said and his outrage was a living thing. “That has pissed me off for seven years. That you could think that. Was I ever the kind of man who could do a thing like that to you?”

  “Who else could have tipped them off?” she asked, but her voice felt very small. Then she remembered and a surge of courage rushed through her veins. “At my trial, the Customs agent said —”

  “He said an FBI agent tipped him off. I am not the only FBI agent in the world.”

  She knew that, of course. But he was the only one she had ever thought about, the only one who had ever mattered to her.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder why I disappeared without even saying goodbye?”

  “I thought you would come back,” she whispered. “The way you always did.”

  “I couldn’t. I was in a Turkish prison, Victoria.”

  “What?” sh
e faltered. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why the hell do you think? I was in prison. In Turkey. It took a long time for the Bureau to get me out. And a long time for them to debrief me and figure out what had happened. I went after you as soon as I could, but you wouldn’t see me. You wouldn’t hear me or let me explain. I pulled strings, you shook loose early but when you got out you walked away. You just walked away from me.”

  He sounded angry but she was just bewildered. He was telling her everything she believed about his betrayal wasn’t true.

  “Then — who?” she asked.

  “Figure it out,” he said, then without waiting for her to do so: “Someone in the Bureau who knew what we were doing betrayed us. Both of us, Victoria. How could you think I would do a thing like that? I loved you. I would never have walked away from you.”

  “What?”

  “We were betrayed by someone in the Bureau.”

  “Not that,” she said, feeling dazed. She still kept the Sig jammed against his jaw. She was not a complete fool: she was dealing with Michael. “What else. You said something else.”

  He narrowed his eyes and spat it out: “I said I loved you.”

  She couldn’t help the triumphant smile that crossed her lips.

  “You’ll notice I used the past tense,” he added.

  “Oh?” she said. “Yeah, of course. I wasn’t expecting a declaration of undying love. I was just surprised is all. You never struck me as the vulnerable type.”

  “Vulnerable, hell,” he said. Then he put his palm on the side of her neck, like he always did, and leaned down and kissed her hard. Intense and intimate and infinite, like he owned her soul and had no intention of giving it back again.

  Chapter 20

  “Have you got a flashlight in there?”

  They’d finished looking through Kevin’s apartment, not finding anything they were looking for. She dug the Maglite out of her backpack.

  “On the roof,” Michael said. He knew his limp was more pronounced now but he was determined and she didn’t challenge him. She didn’t ask what he expected to find up there, just followed him up the stairs. When they’d reached the rooftop, he swept the light across the area, letting it land on the air conditioning unit.

  “I saw him go in the building,” he said. He pushed away the memory of seeing Kevin walk into the building and knowing he was going to be too slow to take him, knowing Gerard would have to do what he couldn’t but not knowing if Gerard were up to it. “I heard everything while I was trying to get the fuck up the stairs.” He kept his voice steady. “I heard him hit this. I kept thinking one of the shots was going to kill you.” The flashlight shook and he said, “I didn’t hear the Beretta.”

  She put her hand on his arm. “Kevin kept aiming high.”

  It took them twenty minutes to unscrew the back panel from the air conditioning unit. Wedged inside was a large, heavy wooden crate.

  • • •

  Pain burned like fire across his thigh as they dragged the crate into the hotel room.

  “I need a crow bar,” Victoria said, like Michael might have one stashed under the mattress. But even without adequate tools, she managed to get the lid off the crate, though apparently not without sacrificing several fingernails in the process, a fact she bitched about at great length while he swallowed pain pills and lowered himself to the bed. As long as he didn’t start bleeding again, everything would be okay. That was what he told himself and he believed it. A man had to believe in something.

  He watched from the bed as she pulled away packing straw and bubble wrap. Catching her breath, she held a candlestick up to the light. She rocked back on her heels. Then she got slowly to her feet. She walked over to the bed and tossed the candlestick onto his chest. He jerked at the impact.

  “Ow?” The candlestick rolled and he grabbed it, looked at it. Then he looked at her and struggled to a sitting position.

  “It’s Baroque, Mephistopheles,” she said. “Care to tell me what the hell is going on?”

  Michael turned the candlestick over in his hands, the pain clearing from his mind, his thoughts going hard and calculating.

  “It’s not Byzantine.”

  “No,” she said. “Where’s the Byzantine treasure? Where did this come from? It’s not worth a fraction of the treasure of Constantinople.”

  He shook his head, ran a hand over his face. “Someone got there first.”

  She pulled the chair across the carpet, next to the bed, and sat down with a thump. “Okay,” she said. “But I still don’t get it. Some rival finds out where the stolen Byzantine pieces are hidden. So in exchange, he substitutes Baroque pieces for the Byzantine ones? Why?”

  “Because we can’t prove this isn’t the treasure the church owned.”

  “What?” she asked, not very patiently.

  “Because,” he said slowly, “this is supposed to end it. We recovered the artifacts. The perp is dead. Case closed.”

  “What about the inventory?” she asked. The written inventory described the Byzantine treasure, not a Baroque collection.

  “‘Footed silver chalice with red stones encircling rim,’” he quoted. “That doesn’t prove anything. If you look in that crate, I bet you’ll find a silver chalice in there with red stones on it.”

  “What about the appraiser? The one who first identified that candlestick as Byzantine?”

  He shrugged. “Where’s the proof that the candlestick he saw came from the church? He never identified the man who brought it in. And if you pressed him, he’d probably be reluctant to certify that the piece was Byzantine, without the opportunity to examine it again and get a confirming opinion from another expert or two. I mean, he’d never go to the witness stand over it. Why should he?”

  “So what does that mean?”

  “Go back to Kevin bringing the candlestick in for appraisal. The dealer doesn’t identify him despite his photo being in a lineup. Could be plenty of reasons for that — the appraiser didn’t pay close attention at the time of the transaction, Kevin wore a disguise, whatever. Kevin doesn’t have any distinguishing characteristics, so there’s not a lot to remember about him.”

  “Okay. Say it was Kevin.”

  “Right. So his original plan was to substitute the Baroque pieces for the Byzantine pieces at the church, at the time of the theft. The Byzantine collection wouldn’t be used again until Christmas. But it would seem to the casual eye that the collection was still there. It would be months before the substitution was finally discovered. At that point, where would anyone start looking to find the Byzantine pieces?”

  “But the pieces weren’t substituted after all, because something went wrong and Kevin ended up killing three people. So where’s the Byzantine treasure?” she asked. Michael bit back a smile. As always, that was the compelling part for her. Then the smile faded as he remembered it was compelling not just because she liked priceless valuables, but because Vlad had given them a timeline and they were running out of time.

  “We’re missing a piece,” he said.

  “Have to be,” she agreed. “What are we missing?” It was what he always did, running through the likely scenarios, comparing them to the facts they had, making wild deductions only to have her shoot them down, while he paced and ran his fingers through his hair until it stood up in agitated spikes and she did crunches and pushups because it aggravated her to speculate on anything.

  And that would point her in the direction she needed to go for the recovery, and she’d do it and then he’d restore the objects to their appropriate place and get accolades. She’d get a finder’s fee, an insurance company reward, a payment from the snitch fund. But he never did the projects just for the accolades. And she never did them just for the fee.

  “Do you remember the last time this happened?” she asked.
/>   “I don’t remember anything like this ever happening before,” he said.

  “When we didn’t recover what we expected to recover,” she clarified.

  “Athens,” he said. He closed his eyes again. He was on a tightrope here. She was very close to the truth. Would she see it? And if she did, how would she respond?

  And where the hell was the Byzantine treasure?

  “We were getting back that jewelry collection. And I found three pieces. Three of the least important pieces.” And she had gone to prison for them. The larger collection had remained missing.

  “You have to remember I never saw what you recovered,” he said. “I was — preoccupied by other matters when you went in. But the prosecuting attorney thought you knew where the rest of the collection was.”

  “So did the Customs agent,” she said. “But how do you know that? You weren’t at the trial.”

  “I read the transcript.”

  “You read the transcript?” she asked. “Why?”

  “Because Customs only recovered three pieces from you. I knew there were supposed to be more.”

  “You thought I’d stolen them?” she asked, her voice incredulous. “You believed I’d hidden them away for my own purposes? Thanks a lot.”

  He turned his head to look her in the eye.

  “You don’t have to say it,” she muttered.

  “You thought I betrayed you,” he reminded her, ignoring her request. “You thought I let you take the fall. Let’s just say our lack of trust in one another was mutual.”

  She cleared her throat. That was a discussion for another time. Or maybe never. “Why didn’t you try to get the missing pieces back from me?” she asked. “If you believed I had them.”

  “Because after I thought about it for a while, I realized you wouldn’t have done that. I knew you well enough to know that you wouldn’t have done that on a project that involved me.”

  “I like how you phrase that. Like I might have cheated anyone else. Do you really think I wouldn’t dare to cross you?”