Peggy Nicholson - An Angel In Stone

“Most certainly,” she called, knowing he’d have forgotten by the time the bill came. Or if he didn’t, why, by then she’d be rich; her debts would be nothing. She let the phone ring four times, then five, as she drummed her fingers on the desktop.

When the man answered, she brightened. “Hello. It is me again,” she began—then frowned as the voice kept on speaking. Ah, an answering machine!

“It is me again,” she repeated, after the signal. “Lia, who has your—”

“Hello!” broke in a man’s voice, rusty with sleep. “Missy, is that you? Hang on. I’m here. Just let me—” He seemed to fumble with something, then said, “Well, you’re sure some night owl.”

An owl? What was that? “It is night,” she agreed. “And you ask me to call, so here I am. I need to know. Do you want to buy the watch?”

He cleared his throat. “You got my letter? I mailed it to that post office box number you gave me. Did you read it yet?”

“Yes, I’m reading it now, tonight. And I need to know.”

“Well, if you got the letter, then now you do know. That watch isn’t even real gold, just gold-plated brass. But like I said, if you could tell me a bit about where my granddaddy died, then I could pay you maybe a hundred bucks, all told.”

“I say to you last time we speak. My price is ten thousand dollars, for your ancestor’s watch.”

“Now look, you little island monk—!” He paused, muttered something under his breath, then laughed. But the laugh had sharp edges. “Look, Missy, maybe I could give you a hundred-fifty for your trouble, if you—”

Lia snorted. “I have two other bidders who will give me more than that.”

“What? You showed it to somebody else? Shit! Now what would you go and do that for? Nobody’d want it but my family!”

“Ohhh, you think so?” Smiling, she wound a lock of hair round and round her gloved forefinger. “One lady, she will give me ten thousand for this watch. And there is a man—a very rich and handsome man—who will give me twelve.” At least Kincade surely would tomorrow night, once he’d seen how she looked in her blue model’s dress that she’d found at the consignment store.

“So my price must go up, if you wish to bid. The price is now…fifteen thousand dollars.” Her face went all hot; her eyes went misty, as she thought of so much money. Picturing what she’d do with all those excellent dollars, she waited till he’d finished cursing. “You like to buy?” she said when he’d wound down to hard-breathing silence.

“Shit,” he said softly. “Well…it wouldn’t be easy, raising that kind of nut. You said there’s some sort of map drawn on the inside of the cover?”

Her smile widened. He was like a little bird that had hopped to her palm for sugar. If the fingers were quick…“Yes, it has a map. But if you are a poor man, without much money to buy the watch of your ancestor, well, I can sell the map to one of these others. I will make a copy of the map and sell it. Then I will scratch out the map on the watch, and you may buy it without, most reasonably.”

“No!”

She clapped a palm to her mouth to smother the giggles. Oh, little bird, you are in my cage now! “No?” she said innocently. “You want the map?”

“Uh, err, I don’t want you messing with that watch. However my granddaddy fixed it, that’s the way I want it. Shit, girl, it’s an heirloom! His souvenir of the war.”

Oh, little lying bird. How you sing! They all wanted the map most desperately. Lia couldn’t hide the laughter in her voice, but now there was no need to. He was caged. “So. You want the watch—and you want the map.”

“That’s right. That’s exactly right. But at a reasonable price. No more dickin’ around.”

Whatever that meant. “Very reasonable,” she purred. “My price has gone up. Watch with no map is fifteen thousand dollars. Watch with map is eighteen thousand.”

He roared like a gored water buffalo. Like a lovely silver jet taking off from the Singapore airport. When she was rich, she’d fly on a jet to Paris. First-class ticket.

But now this fool had given her an idea that would make her even richer. Before she sold the watch to Szabo, she would copy its map—and sell one copy to the pale-haired lady who was much too old for Kincade. Why, that one must be almost thirty!

And Lia would sell a second copy of the map to Kincade.

Or perhaps she’d give him his copy as a wedding gift, if he offered to marry her. Once he saw her in her blue dress…

“Look,” Szabo growled. “You still there?”

“I sit here, waiting most patiently.”

“Yeah, right. Well, listen, you can be patient for another day or two, can’t you? Don’t be in such a rush. I’ll raise the eighteen thousand, but it’ll take me a couple of days. Meantime, don’t you sell it to anybody else—and don’t you show it to anybody. Do that for me, then in two days, I promise. You’ll get what’s comin’ to you.”

Yes! That was precisely what she wanted. Just what she deserved. After all her dreams, all her hard work to make them happen, at last it was coming.

Szabo cradled the phone, then leaned across the bed to look at the caller id on his new answering machine. “Gotcha.” Area code 212. That was New York City.

He stood, stretched, then hauled his old army duffel bag out of the closet; he’d packed it days ago. Figure a two-hour drive to Raleigh, then catch the morning flight.

When he got to New York, he’d go to a library, find a backward directory, which showed the address when you looked up the phone number. Dropping by a drugstore for a roll of duct tape and a pack of single-edge razorblades wouldn’t take but a few minutes.

By early evening latest, he’d be knocking on the bitch’s door.

“One of these days you’re going to tell me you were a guy in your last life,” Raine murmured drowsily, her fingers ruffling through silky-soft fur. Otto, the portly orange tomcat from the apartment below, had a suspicious fondness for jumping her, every time he caught her in bed. Stretched out full length on her chest, with his nose snuggled under her chin, he rumbled in unabashed contentment. He’d tiptoed up the fire escape, then in through her open window this morning and she’d woken to a familiar twenty-two pounds settling into place. “You know, I’ve had maybe four hours sleep. Surely a cat can appreciate that that’s not quite—”

She broke off as the bedside phone rang. Managing to reach it without dislodging her passenger, she yawned and said, “That…was fast.”

She’d phoned, then faxed Trey at headquarters when she got in last night. Out in Grand Junction, Colorado, the rising sun would have yet to clear the Rockies. Knowing Trey, he hadn’t slept since she roused him.

“I’ve just scratched the surface so far.” Trey’s gravelly voice echoed the cat’s rumble—about two octaves lower. “But I’ve got a few things of interest.”

Trey was the Expediter of Ashaway All. The still and ingenious center around which Raine and her siblings whirled. The man who arranged, and the man who obtained. He was an ex-SEAL—and maybe ex-merc, though he’d never admit it—with useful connections in the weirdest backwaters of the world.

A dozen years ago he’d come limping into their lives on his one good leg plus a whole lot of attitude, and he’d soon made himself indispensable to the firm and to the family. There wasn’t one of the Ashaway women who hadn’t sworn at one point or another that she’d die if he didn’t love her—and there wasn’t one who could claim she’d ever been properly kissed by the man.

But they all would have gone to the wall for Trey, and he for them. He was big brother and stand-in father, since John Ashaway’s accident. Keeper of their darkest secrets and their most excruciating bloopers. Teaser and mentor and coach. And he got them whatever they needed, whenever they needed it; he was their expediter. “Whatcha…got?” she asked on another yawn.