Gift of Gold

delicacy about her, a look of freshness that I find appealing. I have a feeling she will respond well to the stimulus of pain.”
    “I’ll kill you if you so much as touch her,” Jonas promised softly.
    Kincaid’s smile widened. “Brave words for a man who is about to become a ghost.” He signaled to the gunman. “Get rid of him. Don’t use the gun unless it’s absolutely necessary. I would prefer the death to look like an accident. You know what to do.”
    Tresslar nodded. “Yeah,” he said laconically. “I know what to do. But I didn’t get a chance to check the painting, Kincaid.”
    “I’ll take care of it later. Right now your priority is to get rid of him before he can cause any further trouble.” Kincaid opened the back door and went inside the house without a backward glance.
    “Well, that’s that,” Tresslar announced. “Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. Let’s go.”
    Jonas gave him a thoughtful look. “Where, exactly, are we going?”
    “To a place along the top of the cliffs where the fence is supposed to be broken. Kincaid described it to me. You, my friend, are going to have an accident. You’d had a few drinks, took a little walk outside to get some fresh air, and got too close to the edge of the cliffs. Real sad.” He lifted the nose of the gun. “Move.”
    Jonas turned and went slowly down the porch steps. The cold rain drenched his face and hair within seconds but the cloak provided some protection for the rest of him. The only consolation was that the gunman was getting equally wet. The spongy ground made a good excuse for slow progress toward the cliffs.
    “I said move, Quarrel. I haven’t got all night.”
    Jonas deliberately stumbled in the mud but Tresslar made no attempt to get close enough to pull his victim back to his feet. He merely hefted the weapon with increasing impatience.
    Jonas got back to his feet on his own. As he did so he slid the knife he had retrieved from its hip sheath into the gathered sleeve of his shirt. Then he undid the fastening of the cloak, as if he intended to discard its doubtful protection.
    “Leave the fancy little coat alone. It goes over the cliff with you,” Tresslar said.
    It didn’t take long to reach the cliff edge. Not nearly as long as Jonas would have liked. There was no time to create a distraction or come up with a brilliant plan of action for disarming Tresslar.
    One thing was certain: whatever happened at the top of the cliffs was going to be messy and totally lacking in finesse.
    “All right, this is the place.” Tresslar swung the flashlight’s beam along the broken railing at the edge of the cliffs. The unconnected posts jutted out of the wet ground at an odd angle.
    Jonas swung around to face Tresslar, the edge of the cloak gripped in one fist in what he hoped looked like the white-knuckled grasp of a very nervous man. “You expecting me to jump? If so, you’re in for a long wait.”
    “You want a helping hand? Glad to oblige.” Tresslar reached out and picked up one of the pieces of broken fence railing. Without any warning, he heaved it heavily toward Jonas.
    Under ordinary circumstances, a man would have instinctively stepped back to avoid the length of splintered wood aimed at his head. But a step backward in this case would be a step into the sea.
    Jonas realized what was happening as he saw Tresslar’s aim move, but even so he was vaguely surprised at how difficult it was to stifle the instinct to get out of the way.
    Jonas tightened his grasp on the edge of the cloak and swung around in a small, stumbling circle that could have been mistaken for an attempt at scrambling to evade the piece of wood.
    It took Tresslar a couple of seconds to realize that Jonas hadn’t flinched backward but had only turned around. By then it was too late. The cloak was swinging in a wide arc at the end of Jonas’s arm. The heavy, wet length of it struck Tresslar’s hand just as the broken length of wood thudded against Jonas’s shoulder.
    For an instant Jonas saw the psychic corridor in his mind and he wanted to scream in rage. The last thing he needed now was that kind of distraction. An image started to materialize, the picture of a man falling to his death over the cliffs. He was reaching desperately for the fence post and it was breaking free in his grasp. A frozen scream shaped the man’s mouth.
    Jonas saw no one else in the quick, strobelike image, but he knew instinctively that the victim had been pushed. He