An Angel in Stone

by Peggy Nicholson

  Could this be her watcher? If he had golden eyes, the mask’s exaggerated brow ridge shadowed their color. Raine studied the man’s shoulders. They didn’t seem quite as deliciously wide as she remembered. But how else to account for that aura of leashed danger she’d sensed, each time she’d met Amber Eyes’s gaze? At some instinctive level she’d known the man was a predator.

  “Keep your hands on your head and kneel,” Clinton rasped. “You there.” He aimed his gun to Raine’s right—at Trenton. The linebacker towered over Mrs. Lowell, who looked as if she’d erupt any second. “Help the old bag down. Yeah, like that—now hands up! Move it, folks. A little cooperation and we’ll be out of here in no time. Just sit tight till the taxman gets to you, then give him everything you’ve got—your wallet, your jewels, your phone. And meanwhile, shut up over there!”

  A hysterical sobbing was instantly hushed.

  Jerk. Bully. Raine studied the distance from herself to the dais. Her knife was balanced for throwing, but Clinton stood beyond her outer limit of accuracy. Besides, kneeling on the hem of her ankle-length gown, she couldn’t reach her weapon discreetly. Make a note for Shoba. Next dress needs a side zipper for instant access.

  But as for now…Could she really let these creeps take her opals? The necklace wasn’t worth a tenth of Mrs. Lowell’s sapphires, but Raine’s mother had helped her dig up its first stone when she was eight. It was one of the last things her mother had ever touched on this earth. How can I give it up?

  Her eyes ranged over the crowd. Who else feels the same? Trenton? But no, the big man dropped his ruby tie tack in the bag he’d been handed, while Jimmy Carter covered him with his gun. Next he helped Mrs. Lowell unhook her necklace. Trenton might be deadly on the five-yard line, but he played games; he didn’t play for keeps.

  Eames? The curator’s shoulders were hunched high around his ears. His elbows trembled like a fledgling’s bony wings. No help there.

  A woman somewhere behind Raine pleaded that she couldn’t get it off! She couldn’t! A squeal of pain and Bush’s coarse chuckle ended the dispute.

  “If you can’t remove your rings, ladies and gentlemen, that’s no problem,” soothed the man on the dais. “Jimmy Carter has the bolt cutters, if you need assistance.”

  Joke, Raine told herself desperately. Maybe.

  All right, if she couldn’t reach her knife, what did she have? John Ashaway had taught all his children self defense. Then when Trey had joined the firm, he’d honed their combat skills to an ex-SEAL’s satisfaction. Think. What would Trey do? The envelope she still gripped between two fingers was too small to roll into a weapon. She wore high wedge sandals, easy to run in, but without stilletto heels.

  To her right came a muffled groan. Raine turned in time to see a blood-soaked man wobble, sag—his eyes rolled back in his head. His neighbor cursed and caught him—lowered him gently to the floor, to lie in a spreading, dark puddle.

  The wounded one was the man who’d tried to phone for help, and his Samaritan—“Oh!” Raine cried aloud. Amber Eyes! So he wasn’t one of these brutes—wasn’t Clinton. Sorry! she apologized mentally.

  He glared past her at the man on the dais. “This guy’s bleeding to death. Better let me take him out to the—”

  “Shut up!” Clinton took aim on his forehead. “Hands back on your head!”

  “Look, you don’t want him dead, either. At least let me—”

  Clinton swung—blew the head off the baby Barosaurus—then turned his gun back on Amber Eyes. “Want the same? Keep talking.”

  O-kay, that was the last straw. Though the Barosaurus was a casting whose head could be replaced, Raine doubted that Clinton knew it. For all this thug knew, he’d just smashed an irreplaceable fossil. A creature that had survived a hundred and forty million years to whisper its tale of mystery and awe: Behold! Dragons once walked this earth!

  Any eight-year-old dinosaur expert could appreciate what a fabulous thing we’ve got here! But as for you, you know-nothing, money-grubbing Visigoth? That’s it. You and your sadistic buddies are going down.

  And if she had an ally in the room, it was Amber Eyes. Trading glare for glare with the gunman, he knelt, bloodstained hands clasped on his head. The muscles in his craggy jaw jumped as he gritted his teeth. Even at a distance Raine could see his eyes darkening, like the lion’s as it readies to spring.

  But wait for me. Jimmy Carter would reach Amber Eyes in another minute, and Bush was just now collecting Eames’s gold Rolex with an appreciative chuckle. Wait! Raine turned to beam her message.

  And somehow Amber Eyes felt her gaze. As their eyes connected, his brows twitched. His scowl eased to a rueful grimace—he shaped her a kiss.

  Got it! She ran the tip of her tongue along her upper lip, saw his grin start to flash—she turned to find George Bush looming above her.

  “Hey, sweetcakes! Nice necklace.” His masked eyes oozed over her. “Nice…everything. Wanna hop in my sack?”

  “Best weapon you’ve got is you’re a woman. They’ll always underestimate you,” Trey whispered down the years. “Use what you’ve got.”

  And “carpe diem!” added her father. “Seize the day, the instant, seize the carp.”

  Gut him.

  Raine’s wineglass wobbled in her trembling hands—tipped. Champagne splashed over the opals; it poured down the front of her dress.

  “OH!” she cried, in a stricken baby-doll voice. She wiped frantically at the drenched silk. “Oh, would you just look at—!” Her hand froze. She’d brushed the center slit aside. Her right breast thrust impudently through the gap, its nipple taut with adrenaline, flesh moistly glistening.

  “Oh, baby!” chortled George, lurching closer. He stuffed his jewel bag under the elbow of his gun hand, to free up the other.

  “Wuh oh!” she said in a ditzy half whisper. Tipping her head back, Raine shook her hair out on her bare shoulders.

  She rounded her lips to a carnal “oh”, then circled them with her tongue. “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t…” She heaved a shuddering breath, almost a shimmy. “D-don’t you dare—”

  In a graceful half swoon, she collapsed backward to the floor. The hand holding her flute hit the marble above her head. Glass tinkled as its fragile bowl shattered. “Don’t—” she whimpered “—touch…me.” She swung her legs to one side, then down, so she lay helplessly at full length, open and inviting. “Oh, don’t!”

  Tell a man what to do and he’ll do the opposite every time. With a crude guffaw, Bush dropped to one knee beside her.

  “Leave her alone!” shouted someone. It sounded like Amber Eyes.

  “You put your filthy lips on me and I…I swear I’ll just die!” Raine drawled, southern belle in distress. Come on, George, lift your mask.

  “Oh-ho, sugarbabe!” At her subliminal dare, his reaching fingers paused—then swerved to peel the rubber up and hook it above his big nose. Leaving only his greedy eyes masked.

  “Picture every move before you make it,” whispered Trey at the back of her mind.

  “Bush, get your ass back to business!” yelled Clinton from the dais.

  “I’ll give you the biz, cupcake!” George swore, reaching for her with a blissful grin.

  He had flaring hairy nostrils, and—thank God—he’d worn a tie. Raine half sat to meet him. “Ohhhh,” she moaned, her skin crawling as he palmed her breast.

  Her left fingers hooked over his tie to pull their bodies closer, while with her right—she slipped the broken stem of her wineglass up his left nostril. An inch.

  Then a second inch, gently. Deftly.

  “Awgggh!” George gurgled. He’d gone stiff as a board. Behind his mask, his eyes showed a frantic ring of watering white.

  ” Now that I’ve got your attention?” crooned Raine against his cheek. “Make another sound, and I’ll shove this halfway through your tiny brain.”

  “Get off her, you asshole!” Clinton yelled. “Save it for later!” From his vantage point, he was witnessing an assault
, not a counterattack. Like most of his sex, he assumed a man on top was a man in control.

  “For shame!” scolded a nearby woman.

  “Somebody stop him!’ cried another.

  Here came the hard part. “Now ni-ice and eaaasy, George, give me the gun,” Raine purred. Crunching her stomach muscles to stay in a half sit, she let go his tie. To discourage any bright ideas—she twiddled her glass spear, a quarter turn.

  He let out a piggy squeal.

  “Shhhh…Hush. Don’t move.” Her left hand walked up his right wrist. “Good. We don’t want me to slip, do we? No…there…thank you, I’ve got it.”

  Pity she wasn’t a better shot, left-handed. Go for the trunk, she reminded herself as she aimed under George’s arm and squeezed the trigger.

  Clinton yelled, clapped a hand to his thigh—and stumbled backward over the baby Barosaurus. Bones crackled and flew. A gun barked across the room. A hundred people surged to their feet and stampeded screaming for the exits.

  “G’night, George.” Raine tapped the gun across his skull, precisely where Trey had taught her. Sweet dreams, minimal damage, he’d promised, and Raine could testify at least to the first half. She barely had time to withdraw her glass dagger as George collapsed with a weary moan.

  “Offa me, loser!” As she wriggled out from under, she looked for Clinton. His gun, had he dropped it? But people were crawling across the dais, falling over each other and scrambling to their feet; she couldn’t spot him. Somebody blundered into a hind leg of the mama Barosaurus and Raine cringed, arms wrapped around her skull. If five stories of fossil came tumbling down!

  The dino creaked overhead. Its forty-foot neck swayed perilously—then held. Raine’s heart settled back into her chest as she turned. Clinton, Clinton, come on! Surely somebody had nabbed him?

  There was old Mrs. Lowell—walking, mind you, toward the exit, her back stiff with outrage. And there, Joel was all right; he stood astride the wounded man, protecting him from a trampling, yelling for a doctor. And—

  Ah! The relief she felt made her hum in surprise. Amber Eyes rose lithely from a crouch; he’d been hog-tying Jimmy. Using both their ties, apparently. And why was it that a sexy man always became instantly twice as sexy when he stripped off his tie? Plus now his dark hair was irresistibly tousled. And that fiery okay, who’s next? glint in his eyes as he scanned the room. And the way he held Jimmy’s gun with a casual readiness along his thigh as he turned…Add up the whole package and you got just, “Rrrrowrrr,” Raine growled happily to herself—as their eyes connected.

  With a slow sinful smile, he gave her a thumb’s-up. Then his gaze dropped—his grin widened. He stroked a forefinger down his chest.

  What did he—? She glanced down. Oh! The blood boiling to her face, Raine rearranged her bodice. She looked up again with a laughing shrug. Hey, it worked, didn’t it?

  “Rainy!” called a voice with aching urgency.

  Chapter 4

  Raine whirled—to see that someone had opened the western doors. Framed in the gap, a couple staggered. That was Trenton in the lead, and behind him, jabbing him in the kidney with a gun—

  “Oh, rats!” If only she’d aimed higher! Clinton’s pantleg clung wetly to his skin. His right shoe had tracked a trail of bloody prints across the hall. “Stop or I’ll—!”

  He glanced back with a rubbery grin. “Sure, bitch, go ahead! You get two for one!” Shoving Trenton around the corner, he limped into the darkness.

  “Bastard!” she swore, stalking after him. From this angle her bullets would punch right through him and into his hostage.

  Weaving around couples too stunned to run, stepping over a downed body, Raine reached the doorway—then yelped as an arm hooked around her waist. It yanked her back against muscled resilience, a delectable fragrance of bay rum and overheated male. She jabbed an elbow into a stomach soft as a chunk of granite. “Le’go, dammit, that’s a friend of mine!”

  “Not so fast, Ashaway. You spoiled Clinton’s party. The man may hold a grudge.” Amber Eyes released her and sank to a crouch. He reached for an elegant red Prada pump that some woman had lost, held it around the corner—a shot sang out of the dark. He stood and showed her the sole, neatly drilled. “And he can shoot. Any idea where they’re headed?”

  “The terrace!” she guessed. “Twenty yards to the right down this corridor, then he’ll turn left.”

  “Give him a minute to limp to the corner. And then?”

  “About eighty yards down another hallway, they’ll come to the northwest entrance.” Then out across a raised terrace, down some steps to the level of the park that surrounded the museum—and then whoever knew? Could a getaway car be waiting at the rear of the building?

  “You winged him good. If we don’t push him, he might just bleed himself stupid and sleepy. Lie down for a nap.”

  “Or he might keep moving, then shoot Trenton out of spite! Or keep him for a consolation prize.” The linebacker earned millions every year. If Clinton held him for ransom…“No way I’m risking that.” Raine gathered her gown up to midthigh and knotted the silk to keep it there.

  “Umm…no?” Amber Eyes looked up from her legs. “Then give them thirty seconds more.” He switched his gun to his left hand and held out his right. “Meanwhile, it’s Kincade. Or Cade if you like things simple.”

  “Who doesn’t?” She ducked under his arm and out, darting across the darkened hallway. If he thought owning a penis automatically put him in charge, he’d better think again. Flattened against the opposite wall, she peered toward the distant corner. “Damn, they’re moving fast!” she muttered as Cade flattened himself gallantly in front of her. “And don’t block my gun hand!”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he laughed, as they jogged shoulder to shoulder for the turn. They charged around it together—two targets halved the risk—just as a gun roared. Glass shattered somewhere ahead. “Guess the exit was locked.”

  At the far end of this cross corridor, the plate-glass doors burst open. By the time they reached them, Trenton and his captor were staggering across the terrace, disappearing down the first set of stairs that led to the park. Clinton was using his hostage for support; he’d yanked the tails of the linebacker’s tie over his shoulders, then wrapped them around a forearm. No wonder they were making such time; Trenton moved like a runaway freight train, towing his tormentor toward an unseen goalpost.

  “Dammit, he’ll wreck his poor knee again!” she panted as they clattered down stairs, across a stone landing, then more stairs. Down another flight. Sirens wailed and whooped through the night; the lights in the penthouses on West 81st Street gleamed above the swaying treetops.

  “Least of his worries and—hey—’bout time. Here comes the cavalry!” With a thunder of hooves across the grass, a mounted policeman came riding, circling around from the front of the museum.

  “Gun!” Raine cried. “He’s got a—!”

  Locked on his fleeing target, the rider wasn’t listening. “Police!” he yelled. “Halt or I’ll—”

  The fugitives stopped, swung obediently toward the command. Clinton raised his arm.

  Blam!

  As his rider yanked on the reins, the horse reared—then settled back to earth, snorting and sidestepping. With a befuddled frown, the cop slipped gradually from his saddle. Just as Raine reached him, he hit the ground.

  “Put some pressure on that,” Cade growled, jogging past.

  “Jeez, you’re bossy!” Raine glared after him, then beyond, where Trenton and the gunman were staggering out through the park’s iron fence onto Columbus Avenue. Traffic screeched to a halt as they lumbered across.

  “What happened? What happened? Is he all right?” Dragged by a leashed and yapping poodle, an elderly couple hurried across the park.

  “Put pressure on anything that bleeds! You’ll find an ambulance out front.” Raine rose and walked toward the snorting horse, fingers outstretched. “Good fella, good boy. Come here, sweetheart.”

  The b
ay rolled his eyes and leaned back on his haunches, but he’d been trained to stand when the reins were dropped. He shook his black mane as she rubbed his neck.

  “Easy, sweetie.” Raine gathered the reins, glanced down at her gown. Ought to just rip some legroom, but this was Shoba’s best yet, a keeper. She scrunched its hem up to her crotch, then stepped into the stirrup. “Okay, big boy, wanna collect some payback?”

  They plunged through a gap in the avenue traffic, then clattered up onto the far sidewalk. Cade stood, his raised gun by his lean cheek as he peered around the corner of a coffee shop and up West 80th Street. “Where’s he headed?” she called.

  “Beats me! The subway stop at Broadway?”

  “Okay, whatever. Just distract him.”

  Cade stared after her as she cantered south down the Columbus Ave. sidewalk, indignant yells marking her progress as pedestrians bolted for the doorways or gutter. “Me, distract him!” Cade wasn’t the one wearing a red silk thong with red high heels. “And where the heck are you off to?” He shrugged, glanced west around the corner—and winced as another bullet smacked the stone just above his head. That was, what, Clinton’s fifth shot? But did he have a nine-round automatic like the SIG-Sauer that Cade had taken off Jimmy—or a fifteen?

  “Whatever.” He dashed for the nearest parked car.

  A third of the way up the one-way street, Clinton had stopped an oncoming SUV.

  “Great.” If he hijacked some wheels they hadn’t a prayer of catching—But no; the driver took one look at the gesturing gunman and jammed it into reverse. “Good for you!” Cade sprinted up the sidewalk, then ducked down. Both curbs were lined with parked cars, providing plenty of cover.

  Meanwhile, midstreet, Clinton was losing his cool. “You gas-guzzling son of a bitch, get back here!” he screamed, wasting a shot that blew out a headlight.