by Lee, Rachel
“Did you get fired?”
“I wish. Naw, I fell, broke my back in two places. So here I sit, getting older and fatter, and I just don’t see getting to the top of my profession.” He laughed again. “This is the top.”
Gil had to laugh with him. But he had another question he wanted to ask, ever since Wiggins had mentioned that Eddy never kept him waiting.
“So,” he said when Wiggins’s laughter eased. “Some of these guys keep you waiting, huh?”
He wanted to kick himself almost as soon as he spoke, because Wiggins’s face suddenly shuttered.
“No big deal,” the guard said flatly. “Sometimes somebody’ll get here late. Could happen to any one of us. Traffic, whatever.”
“How late?” Gil persisted. He couldn’t make it any worse now.
“A few minutes.”
“How many? Ten, fifteen?”
“A few.”
And that was the end of it. But Gil made a mental note to have Tebbins check more closely on the guard who had relieved Eddy. Something about the way Wiggins had mentioned the tardiness originally suggested that he was bugged by at least one person’s lateness. Someone who maybe did it almost all the time.
A flicker of movement in the corner of Gil’s eye caught his attention, and he turned to look at the monitors. Nothing. “Is anyone in the building except the four of us?”
Wiggins shook his head. “Just us ducks.”
“I thought I saw something move on one of these monitors.” He pointed.
“I didn’t see anything. These things can be jumpy, you know. Sometimes you get a little glitch and one of the pictures will roll a bit, or flicker. Probably all you saw.”
“Maybe.” But he was staring at the loading-dock feeds anyway. “Are the exit doors alarmed?”
“All except the front ones, yeah. Doesn’t much matter. Nobody can open them from the outside.”
“Can the alarms be turned off?”
“Yeah. Naturally. They’re code doors.”
“Code doors?”
“Fire-code doors. Somebody pushes one of them suckers open, and the fire alarms go off. You gotta be able to silence them. You’d be surprised how many jokers think it’s fun to do that.”
Actually, Gil wouldn’t, but he didn’t say so. At that moment the lobby doors opened and Tebbins arrived, trailing Dinah Hudson and two scraggly-looking guys, both carrying laptops, in T-shirts and shorts, one of them pasty pale. It was unusual in Florida to see anyone that pale unless he was sick. You didn’t have to sunbathe on the beach to get a tan; all you had to do was walk to your car across a mall parking lot every now and then.
So the guy was a mole. Probably spent his weekdays in a windowless room at the security firm, and the rest of his time glued to computer games.
He rose from his stool. “Thanks for all the help, Mr. Wiggins.”
“Sure. Anytime.” But the invitation was cautious.
Out in the lobby, the first words out of Tebbins’s mouth were an apology. “Sorry we’re late,” he said. “There was a severe accident on 275, and Dinah and her crew were stuck behind it. They called to let me know they were going to be late.” He shrugged. “I checked on it, and I figured they’d be tied up there for a couple of hours. I had to go rescue them.”
The pasty guy spoke. “It’s kind of cool to have the cops escort you past all those stuck cars.” He grinned. “How many times did we get flipped off, Dinah?”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t counting. I don’t pay attention to that stuff.” She waved a hand. “These are my two best techs, Turk and Boomer.” Turk was the pale one. “No, that’s not their real names but they won’t answer to anything else. Turk’s the software wiz, and Boomer does the hardware.”
Nancy looked the two over. “Why Turk and Boomer?”
Boomer answered. “Because he’s a software turkey, and I…” He shrugged. “Let’s just say that when I first started, I made a few things go boom.”
Turk chortled. “Man, that was totally awesome. We had sparks and smoke-downs going everywhere. I wish I’d brought the marshmallows.”
“Ignore them,” Dinah said. “Unlike most people, they learn from their mistakes. Give them a problem, and they’re bulldogs. Smart bulldogs.”
Turk looked at Boomer. “You wanna be bull or dog?”
“You’re full of more bull than I am. Me, I’m a hound dog. Just give me the scent, baby.” He tipped his head back and howled like a wolf baying at the moon.
Dinah rolled her eyes, but Anna and Nancy both laughed. Gil and Tebbins exchanged looks but otherwise didn’t react.
Dinah looked at the women. “Which one of you is Nancy?”
“I am,” Nancy said. With Turk and Boomer in the room, she no longer looked so outrageous in her strange outfit.
“I should have guessed,” Dinah said with a small, humorless smile. “I’m going to tell you right now that we don’t have any back doors. That’s strictly forbidden. It would compromise our systems.”
Nancy smiled tightly. “It may be forbidden, but I know my colleagues.”
Boomer spoke. “Aww, take it easy, gals. Dinah, you know it’s possible. Turk and me set the whole thing up for you, but we’re not the only ones who actually work on it. Something could get slipped by us.”
Dinah looked disapprovingly at him. “You guys are supposed to prevent that.”
“Mostly we do. The guys who work under us know we’ve got our eyeballs on ‘em and their work. But I don’t believe in impossibilities. I never have. What about you, Turk?”
“It could happen,” Turk said with a shrug. “Not likely, but definitely possible.”
“And more possible with a system like this,” Boomer observed. “I’ve been working on it since the theft, and I haven’t found anything yet, but this is a customized, complex system. It might have shortfalls we haven’t even figured out yet.” He looked at Nancy and nearly leered. “A fresh pair of eyes could be useful.”
“Eyes are all you’re going to get,” Nancy said with a toss of her head. “Eyes and my brains.”
They moved then to the room that held the brains for the system. Tebbins arched a brow when he found the door unlocked. “Why isn’t this room locked?”
“It should be,” Dinah said. “But museum personnel have the key, too.”
“But it’s not necessary, dude,” Turk said. “Anybody fiddles with the equipment, we get an alarm.”
“Apparently not,” Tebbins said drily, motioning every one in before him.
Gil drew him aside. “I saw something funny on the security monitors just before you arrived. I think I’ll take a stroll around.”
“Avoid the exhibits. The motion detectors should be on.”
“It was from the loading-dock area.”
“Want some backup?”
Gil shook his head. “Not necessary. The guard thinks I just saw a screen flicker. He says it happens all the time.”
“Okay. Send up a flare if you need me.”
As he walked away, Gil heard Turk say, “It could have been solar flares, man. Didn’t you hear how they messed up a bunch of radio stations earlier this week?”
“Right,” Boomer answered. “Like the guy could count on that.”
“Hey, it was just a suggestion.”
Shaking his head, Gil moved away, into the silent depths of the museum.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Around a corner their voices faded away. Around another corner, and Gil could have believed he was alone in the building.
Except he didn’t feel like it. Crazy as it sounded, he had the sense that there was something else present. Or someone else, other than the people in the equipment room and the guard.
The back of his neck started prickling as he moved along silent corridors, and a weight grew between his shoulder blades. Something or someone was aware of him.
He caught the thought, turned it around in his head as he reached the lobby again. Something? He’d been in creepy situations before, wh
ere he was looking for an armed perp in the dark of some deserted building, but the word something had never entered his head.
He wanted to shake his head, brush it off, but he couldn’t quite do it. There was something different about the feeling he was getting, and he couldn’t quite define it. Something larger than the nastiness of the average murderer or thief.
Reality check time, he told himself. This case was affecting him in ways he didn’t like, and had never experienced before. Take Anna. He’d never been anywhere near this attracted to a suspect before, and certainly not to the extent that she was invading his dreams.
It wasn’t that he didn’t sometimes become involved. There had been some juveniles he’d really felt for and had tried to help. There’d been some battered spouses he’d gotten really angry for. It wasn’t that he didn’t give a damn about the people he ran into in the course of his work.
But not like this.
And now weird fancies about something? Definitely time for a reality check.
Ignoring the feeling, he marched himself over to the security booth and told Wiggins he was going to the loading dock.
“Hold on just a minute,” Wiggins said. “No point in having the motion detectors start screaming.”
He reached for the key ring on his belt and pulled it. A retractable cord extended, allowing him to slip a key into a slot. Then he punched a code into his keyboard.
“Okay,” he said. “They’re off.”
“So you have to have both a code and a key?”
“You bet. And they’ll call me anyway, asking about the turnoff. Pretty good system, huh?”
Gil nodded, although he had a few doubts about that, for obvious reasons.
“How many people have the key?” He supposed Tebbins had asked that question, but if so, he hadn’t passed the information on to Gil.
“Just the desk guard. We hand off at change of shift.”
“Nobody else?”
“I suppose the security company does.”
“And how do you know the codes?”
“Each guard has his own code. And the different sections of the system are numbered, so it’s a combination. A mixed-up combination. Not likely anyone could guess.”
Not that it matters, Gil thought. There was no record of a turnoff the night of the robbery.
“Thanks,” he said, and headed back into the depths of the building.
Once he got out of the lobby, the feeling started to return. The sense of not being alone. The sense of being watched. There was no one around, though, and nobody could move as fast as he was going without making some noise.
Nobody was following him. But maybe someone was evading him?
He could feel the adrenaline beginning to pump into his blood, heightening his senses, calming his brain. The cold air that trickled down his neck from overhead vents felt like ice. Every shadow seemed darker and more ominous. He could hear the echo of his steps off the walls, even though his shoes were soft-soled.
Reaching under his jacket, he pulled out his gun. Its weight was reassuring in his hand. Only twice in his career had he needed to fire it other than on the shooting range, and he hoped that didn’t change now.
The large metal doors marked SHIPPING/RECEIVING were unlocked. He hadn’t asked for a key, and Wiggins hadn’t offered him one, which probably meant the doors were kept unlocked most of the time. Which also meant that folks around the museum were relying too damn much on the electronic security. He needed to check into that.
Cautiously he pushed the door open and waited. No sound. Nothing moved. He stepped into the cavernous room and listened to the door swing shut behind him, closing with a thud.
The room was two stories high with a freight elevator that went up to an oversize garage door on the second floor. It smelled of wood, stale sweat, damp concrete, and oil. Stacked everywhere were wooden packing crates and smaller metal shipping containers. The left side of the room had large signs painted on the wall, all of them saying the same thing: RECEIVING.
The right side was labeled SHIPPING, and a smaller cordoned off area was marked EMPTY CONTAINERS. It at once looked both organized and disorganized. He figured there were one, at most two people, who actually knew what was going on in the area to the last detail.
It was also a great hiding place, and his neck was prickling like mad. He could sense someone else’s presence the way a dog could scent a trail hours after the animal had passed, and his eyes were noting each and every nook and cranny that could conceal his prey. Or his hunter.
Someone was hiding from him. Someone who was dangerous. Lifting his gun to the ready, he began to move along the stacks of boxes, figuring that when he got close enough, he’d flush his quarry. He mentally cursed the whiff of his own jacket against his slacks, certain that if he could hear it, the other presence could, too.
He figured Wiggins was watching him. The guard had probably also figured out that something was going on by the way Gil was moving and holding his gun. Almost as good as a backup.
But part of him was still refusing to believe there was someone in here. What would be the point? Nothing was happening, and nothing would happen until tomorrow. With all the surveillance and motion detectors in this room, it just didn’t add up. He wouldn’t be able to steal anything, or learn anything while hiding around here.
So maybe he wasn’t really hiding. Maybe he’d come in just ahead of Gil. Maybe he’d been slipping just ahead as Gil walked through the building.
Why?
The thoughts that occurred to him weren’t pleasant. In fact, they began to make him feel as if he were the stalkee rather than the stalker.
Gripping his pistol tighter, he started to check behind crates.
Wiggins, watching from the relative comfort of the security booth, was beginning to think the cop was a crazy man. There couldn’t be anyone or anything that moved in that room. Until he’d turned off the motion detectors, nobody could’ve gotten in or out without setting them off. Hell, two weeks ago a mouse had set the damn things off. It wasn’t supposed to be able to, of course, but apparently the rodent had done something just so, and had interrupted the beam just enough.
That had been a bit of fun.
But today? No. Not possible.
So why the hell was that cop creeping around like he was sure someone was in the room? Maybe because he was?
The idea unsettled Wiggins, who began to think about what he maybe ought to do. Get more help? Go help the guy himself? But he wasn’t supposed to leave his station except on his regular checks, and the rest of the day guards weren’t due in for another twenty minutes.
But that sounded like overkill anyway. There was nobody in that room except the cop, and just because he was skulking around like he thought there was didn’t mean it was time to call in the Marines.
So he sat there watching and feeling his own uneasiness grow.
Anna, who’d been hovering in the background while her sister talked of arcane things such as subroutines and objects with Turk and Boomer, felt herself growing more and more nervous.
“What’s taking Gil so long?” she finally asked Tebbins.
He glanced at his watch. “I don’t know. I’ll give him another five, then go looking.”
“Maybe I’ll go talk to the guard.”
Tebbins hesitated. “You sure you want to be walking those corridors alone? There’s no surveillance on them.”
She was simultaneously aware that it might well be foolhardy to wander around and equally aware that if anything at all happened, she wanted to be under Tebbins’s eagle eye so he couldn’t blame her for it.
But her thoughts kept straying to Gil.
“You know,” Tebbins murmured to her, “I never asked you what scenario this guy might be playing out if he really believes in the curse.”
A shiver passed down her spine. Only through strenuous effort had she managed to keep herself focused on the theft as a theft, and the links to the curse as some kind of taunting. She re
ally did not want to believe that someone out there believed in the curse and was using it in some twisted way. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I guess it would depend on how he saw his own role.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know. Maybe as an avenger?”
“For the tomb desecration?”
“Maybe. Or maybe just because we have the dagger here. Maybe he thinks we’re desecrating it by putting it on display.”
“Hmm. What else?”
She shrugged. “Beats me. I suppose, given the things that have been in the paper, that he might see himself as carrying out the final stages of the curse.”
“Final stages?”
“Sure. If this guy figures my father was responsible for the tomb’s discovery, he might figure that Nancy and I are cursed, too. Unto the second generation, the legend says. I told you that, didn’t I?”
He looked away, watching the three heads bent together over the console, at the stacks of videotapes in the automatic cartridge changers, at Dinah Hudson, who seemed to be viewing the whole process with disapproval, although from time to time she made a suggestion.
“So,” he said slowly, “imagine that he thinks the latter. That makes both you and your sister the objects, right?”
“Right.” Anna felt a great weight settle in her. “Nance and I have discussed that.”
“It would have been nice if you’d discussed it with me.” His sharp eyes settled on her, and he gave his moustache an almost sensuous stroke.
Her temper flared just a little. “It would be a whole lot easier to discuss things with you if I didn’t feel you were twisting everything I say to match your belief in my guilt.”
“I don’t believe in your guilt. But I’d be a fool to ignore the large number of coincidences and possibilities that seem to hover around you.”
“I suppose. Well, you’ll have your answer after he cuts out my heart.”
Tebbins was plainly shocked. “You don’t mean that seriously!”
Anna herself was startled by what she’d just blurted. Not once had she even considered such a thing. It must have popped out of her deepest subconscious. But she didn’t want Tebbins to know that. She didn’t want him to think her capable of wild statements. “Why not? If this guy is really wrapped up in the curse, there’s a chance he believes in the old ways. And if he does, the most appropriate thing he could do would be to cut out our living hearts and make an offering of them.”