by Alex Archer
“Yeah...yeah. I’m still here.” Orta’s voice was faint, barely heard above the wind shear that entered the building through the shattered windows.
“Good. You just stay with me, okay?”
“I’m here.” He blinked, and from the way his eyes moved and his pupils dilated, she knew that he couldn’t focus his vision.
Annja remained calm through sheer force of will. She’d been in dangerous situations before, and she’d lost people she’d known. That was always the hard part: losing people whom she felt she should be able to save.
She didn’t want Vincent Orta to die. He was innocent in this. Whatever this turned out to be.
A light flashed from the doorway.
Startled, Annja reached for the machine pistol but didn’t bring it up.
“Ms. Creed, are you still there?” That was the 911 dispatch operator, as collected and as efficient as ever. The phone lay on the ground beside her on speaker mode.
“I am.”
“A team of EMTs are en route to your position. The police are holding them up until they make sure everyone is safe.”
Annja stared into the bright light in the doorway. Whoever was out there was not with the police. “They need to hurry.”
“I understand that, but we want to make certain everyone is safe.”
“I know.”
“Ms. Creed.” The voice from the doorway was calm and deep and had an accent that sounded Caribbean. “My name is Eric Magloire. My employer sent me to help your friend.”
Annja relaxed, but only a little. Once inside, the man could kill them both. She reached for the sword and felt it in the Otherwhere. “Hurry.”
The man stepped through the doorway dressed in Kevlar and carrying a white case with red crosses on it. He moved quickly and dropped to his knees beside Annja and Orta. “What do we have?” His words held calm reassurance, not threat.
“Bullet wound. Looks like a 9 mm. Entry point only. No exit.”
“Very good.” Magloire pressed gloved fingertips to the side of Orta’s neck. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“I know.”
Magloire opened his case and started taking out supplies. “You’re no stranger to bullet wounds?”
“No.”
“Good. You’ve probably saved his life. I’m going to put a compress on the wound, start him on some plasma to replace the blood loss and get him stabilized for the EMTs to move him.”
“Thank you.”
“That’s what I’m here for. If I need assistance, you can help?”
“Of course.”
Magloire smiled. “Good. I’m very good at what I do, Ms. Creed. I will take care of your friend and he will be fine.”
That reassurance lifted a huge weight off Annja’s shoulders. “Do you know if Krauzer is all right?” She wanted to ask about the crystal, but she felt too guilty to do that.
“He’s been recovered. He is fine.”
“What about the people who did this?”
Magloire shook his head as he worked with deft movements, bandaging Orta and starting an IV. “I don’t know. Perhaps you could talk to your friend and keep him with us?”
“Of course.” Annja focused on Orta and leaned down to speak into the man’s ear.
* * *
LAPD DETECTIVE PERRY BISHOP was a no-nonsense kind of guy. He was totally focused when he listened, and when he spoke, he was succinct and to the point.
He sat primly on the other side of the table in the interview room and took notes in addition to recording their session. “These men were after Steven Krauzer, but you don’t know why. Is that correct, Ms. Creed?”
Annja sat in the uncomfortable chair in an orange jail jumpsuit. The detectives had claimed her clothing as evidence. She wrapped her hands around the hot mug of tea that Bishop’s partner had brought to her. “Yes.”
She kept her answer simple and direct. Bishop’s soft approach and his partner’s willingness to sit and be silent let Annja know she was in the hands of professionals who weighed every movement and facial tic.
Detective Leslie Connolly was about Annja’s age but was as controlled and as professional as her partner. Both of the detectives had clip-on holsters that had been left, with their weapons, locked in their desks.
“You can ask me the same questions over and over again or find new ways to ask them, but that’s all I know.” Annja sipped her tea and hoped they believed her. “May I ask questions?”
Bishop shrugged. “Sure.”
“Who were the men who attacked us?”
Bishop shook his head. “We don’t know for certain yet. Two of the men have turned up in international files. They were mercenaries. Why would mercenaries be hunting you, Ms. Creed?”
“If you’ve checked any of the stories and references I’ve given you in the past three hours, you’ll understand that my path has often crossed those of men who traffic in stolen goods.”
“Artifacts.”
“Yes.”
“That you were looking for because of your television show, Chasing History’s Monsters.”
Annja sighed. “Not always.”
“Not always?” Bishop cocked his head slightly.
“Things get complicated.”
“Maybe you could help me understand these complications.”
“In addition to the television show, I also work as an archaeologist and help with certification of authenticity on different objects.”
“But that isn’t what you were doing in Los Angeles.”
“No. I’m consulting on a movie.”
“A movie that Mr. Krauzer is directing.”
“Yes.”
“In particular, you were consulting on the crystal Mr. Krauzer lost.”
The news that Krauzer had lost the piece shocked Annja, as she knew Bishop intended it to. She knotted her hands and leaned a little farther forward in her chair before she caught herself. “He lost the crystal?”
“Yes.”
Annja had already asked if Krauzer was okay and if he was safe. Bishop had told her that the man was, which had made her feel better. Vincent Orta was still in surgery and under police guard.
“The crystal was only one of the pieces that I was brought in to consult on,” Annja said.
“And now it’s missing?” Bishop cocked an eyebrow.
“The last time I saw it, Krauzer had it.”
“Who wants the crystal?” Bishop asked.
“Tonight? I don’t know. You know more about these mercenaries than I do.”
Bishop refolded his hands. “We know a few names, but we also know there was an altercation yesterday morning involving this selfsame crystal between you, Mr. Krauzer and Bernard Molk.”
“Bernard Molk?” Annja thought for a moment. “You mean Barney? The biker who was with Melanie Harp? She stole the crystal off the movie set. He was there when Krauzer went to Melanie’s apartment to get his property back.” She made sure her story got recorded in case there was any blowback from the home invasion.
“Why would Ms. Harp take the crystal?”
“She and Barney were planning on ransoming it back to Krauzer.”
Bishop looked at his partner, who made a note on the pad she kept. “How well do you know Mr. Molk and Ms. Harp?”
Annja shook her head. “I don’t. Including yesterday morning, I’ve met Melanie Harp twice. She didn’t show up at the set, which was why she was let go. I only met Barney the one time.”
Bishop was silent for a moment. “Would it surprise you to know that Mr. Molk was dead?”
For a moment, Annja considered that, wondering if she was being played. “Yeah. That would surprise me.” A chill ghosted down her spine. “Is Barney dead?”
“Yes
, he’s dead. Someone snapped his neck shortly after he was bailed out yesterday. His body was found in his apartment only a short time ago when we sent a car around to bring him back in for questioning.”
“Who did it?”
“We don’t know. Only a short time ago, one of the inmates in the women’s section of the jail stabbed Ms. Harp. She died before help could be given.”
Unease threaded through Annja and she wrapped her arms around herself. “And you don’t know who did that, either?”
“We do. We just don’t know why. From what we can figure out, the woman who killed Ms. Harp had never met her.”
“Why would she kill Melanie?”
Detective Connolly leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table. “The woman lawyered up immediately after killing Ms. Harp. She’s got a high-priced attorney, too. Having him isn’t going to help her. The woman was working on her third strike. She’s not going to leave prison this time. However, killing Melanie Harp—we think—had to have been some part of an arrangement that benefited her.”
“You think someone paid this woman to kill Melanie.” Annja worked to get her brain around that, but she was tired and the fatigue made her thoughts slow.
“We do.” Connolly’s eyes regarded Annja. “What do you think?”
“Killing Melanie doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe you could tell us about the crystal and the manuscript pages Dr. Orta had,” Bishop suggested.
“The crystal is supposed to be the key to a treasure of the Merovingian kings.”
“Who are they?”
“They used to rule the Franks from the mid-fifth century to the late eighth century.”
“The Franks?”
“Yes. What is now France and part of Germany, lands they inherited from the Gauls and later took from the Roman Empire.”
“You’re talking about France,” Connolly said.
“Yes.”
“In the past?”
“Twelve hundred years ago.” Annja frowned at the detectives. “I told you this was going to get complicated.”
11
“So you’re out of jail?” Doug Morrell sounded bored and a little put out.
“For the moment.” Annja ignored the curious stares of the people in the lobby of the Luxe Rodeo Drive Hotel. She was the only one there wearing a bright orange jail jumpsuit. Her clothes had not been returned. The well-dressed man at the concierge desk looked at her twice but said nothing.
“I’ve been calling for hours, since one of the interns let me know the story about your arrest and how you blew up USC was trending on Twitter.”
“I didn’t blow up anything.”
“And you couldn’t return my calls.”
Annja took a deep breath and let it out. “They don’t let you have your phone when you’re arrested. And for the record, I was not under arrest. I was merely detained for questioning as a person of interest.”
“Then you had your phone.”
“I didn’t have a lot of time to call anyone, Doug. And if I needed to make a call, I would have needed a lawyer.”
“I could have gotten you a lawyer.”
“I was hoping I didn’t need one. I’m glad I didn’t.”
“Are you planning on getting arrested again?”
“I didn’t plan to get detained this time.” Annja used her room card to access the elevator to one side of the check-in desk. The people standing there stared at her with concern, and the woman working the computer frowned at her.
“You’ve been in police hands twice in the past twenty-four hours. You know what disappoints me?”
“No.” Annja stared at her reflection in the glossy walls and stainless steel of the elevator. Her hair was blown and hung in straggles. She decided this was probably the worst she’d ever looked outside a dig.
“I barely heard any mention of our show on the news, and the Twitter posts were more about you instead of the show.” Doug did sound disappointed, but a lot of it was put on. “We need all the publicity we can get these days.”
Doug was still worried about the way Chasing History’s Monsters had almost been cut from the network.
“They probably cut it. I mentioned the show.”
“We were mentioned on a crawler a couple times, but who really reads those things? They just get in the way.”
“I wasn’t really the story, Doug. Steven Krauzer was the story, and now you’ve got a lot of dead people soaking up attention.” Annja couldn’t help thinking about the men she’d killed. So far Bishop and Connolly—and the LAPD—were convinced she’d acted in self-defense. Much of that was due to the testimony offered by Krauzer and the mysterious security agency he had called to rescue him.
The elevator stopped on her floor and she waited for the doors to open.
“How much longer are you going to be there?”
“I don’t know. Krauzer’s in a tizzy because his shooting schedule has taken a direct hit.” Annja strode from the elevator toward the hallway where her room was. It would be safer to leave LA, but Bishop and Connolly hadn’t exactly been fans of that, and she hated to leave things undone. The mystery revealed in Orta’s manuscript pages was still unsolved. She wanted to believe it was solvable, but with archaeology, not all the answers turned up and sometimes a guess was the best a person could do.
Annja paused at her door, swiped her room card, listened for the locking mechanism to disengage and stepped inside.
“Have you even been out to the harbor to look for the ghost pirates that are supposed to be there?” Doug was nothing if not dogmatic when it came to the things he wanted.
Annja sighed. “Ducking bullets? Running for my life? Did any of that get through?”
“Sure. You also told me that you didn’t get any of it on film.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“And even if you did, we don’t do cops-and-robbers shows.”
“Not even a haunted prison?”
“Cool! You’re talking about Alcatraz? Alcatraz would be the bomb!”
Annja made sure the door locked behind her, added the second lock and tried to relax. “Doug, I wasn’t in Alcatraz. I’m not going to Alcatraz. I’m going to make myself presentable and I’m going to the hospital to check on Vincent Orta.”
The professor had made it through surgery and was expected to make a full recovery.
“Yeah, yeah, but think about the Alcatraz thing. I’m telling you, that could be something that—”
“Goodbye, Doug. Hanging up now. Don’t call back. For hours. I’ll be catching up on sleep I’ve missed.” Annja broke the connection, dug her power cord out of her backpack and set the phone to charge, then added her tablet PC and camera out of habit. Full power for devices only happened through diligence.
She stripped out of the jumpsuit and wondered what she was supposed to do with it. Bishop and Connolly had let her leave with the garment, but someone was probably accountable for it. She dropped the jumpsuit onto the chair by the king-size bed, grabbed her toiletries and headed into the bathroom. A bath, hot and bubbly, was calling her name.
And sleep. She so needed a few hours of rest.
* * *
“LOOK, SABRE, I’M GLAD you guys rescued me. Really, I am, but—”
Sabre cut Krauzer off midsentence. “I’m pleased that you are satisfied with our efforts, Mr. Krauzer, and trust me when I say you’ve gotten your money’s worth on the service you’ve been paying for.” He shifted in the plush chair and tried to curb his impatience.
They sat in Krauzer’s office on the movie-studio lot. The bungalow had been built back in the 1940s during the heyday of filmmaking, when studios were pushing out around five hundred movies and shorts a year.
The director sat behind a large polishe
d walnut desk. He hadn’t yet changed out of the clothes he’d been wearing all night, despite the fact that the midmorning sun shone through the Viennese blinds. He had already scheduled a couple of interviews with entertainment-news agencies and was planning to do them in his clothing. A makeup person had already been in to touch up his appearance, managing to almost make him look disheveled and heroic.
His office was empty of anything that didn’t reek of his own successes, and framed posters of his hit movies hung on the walls in full-colored glory, crying out for attention.
If Sabre hadn’t wanted to know more about the crystal and the manuscript pages Krauzer had mentioned the professor had, he wouldn’t have been there to listen to all the self-aggrandizement the director favored. Those details about the crystal were missing pieces to the puzzle, and Sabre didn’t want to let them go.
“I just wanted you to know that, and I didn’t want to sound selfish.” Krauzer checked his appearance in the lighted mirror that sat on his desk, brushing at the stubble filling in around his thin beard. “But those guys got my property. I want the elf-witch crystal back.”
“Mr. Krauzer—”
“Don’t call me Mr. Krauzer. Call me Steven. You and me, we’ve been through the war together. We’ve shed blood together.” Krauzer ran his fingers through his hair, mussing it further. He pointed to a slightly darkened spot on his face. “Is this a bullet burn?”
“It looks like dirt.”
“I think it’s a bullet burn.” Krauzer tapped at his face but didn’t touch the mark, probably for fear it would wipe away. “Wow. I came close to taking a bullet right between the eyes.” He grinned. “That should look good on ET. Maybe get me a booking on The Tonight Show.” He frowned. “Of course, that would go better if I was holding my elf-witch crystal at the time, showing people that I’d gotten it back. That would make a statement. Think we can get that done soon?”
Sabre quelled the impulse to yell at the man. Luckily, none of his men had been killed during the firefight or this session would have gone differently. Police officers had been killed, and the LAPD wasn’t thrilled with Krauzer, but they would treat him with kid gloves because he was a mover and a shaker in the city.