Hot Rocks

that, and I’d always come up short. But a good man, who might bend the truth when it suits, but keeps his word when he gives it. It settles my mind on a lot of levels knowing that.”
    “I won’t make a promise to you that I can’t keep.”
    “You see, that’s just the right thing to say.”
     
     
     
    While Laine and Max ate pasta in the kitchen, Alex Crew dined on rare steak accompanied by a decent cabernet in the rustic cabin he’d rented in the state park.
    He didn’t care for rustic, but he did appreciate the privacy. His room at the Wayfarer in Angel’s Gap had abruptly become too warm to suit him.
    Maxfield Gannon, he mused, studying Max’s investigator’s license while he ate. Either a free agent out for a bounty, or a private working for the insurance company. Either way, the man was an irritant.
    Killing him would have been a mistake—though he’d spent a tempting and satisfying moment considering it as he’d stood over the unconscious detective, fuming over the interruption.
    But even a yahoo police force such as those fumbling around that pitiful little town would be riled to action by murder. Better for his purposes if they continued to bumble about giving parking tickets and rousting the local youth.
    Better, he mused as he sipped his wine, and easier by far to have taken the irritant’s identification, to have placed an anonymous call. It pleased him to think of this Maxfield Gannon trying to explain to the local law just what he’d been doing inside a closed store at three-thirty in the morning. It should have knotted things up nicely for a space of time. And no doubt it sent a very clear message to Jack O’Hara through his daughter.
    But it was annoying just the same. He hadn’t been able to take the time to search the premises, and he’d had to change his accommodations. That was very inconvenient.
    He took out a small leather-bound notebook and made a list of these additional debits. When he caught up with O’Hara—and of course he would—he wanted to be able to detail all these offenses clearly while he tortured the location of the remaining diamonds out of him.
    The way the list was mounting up, he was going to have to hurt O’Hara quite a bit. It was something to look forward to.
    He could add O’Hara’s daughter and the PI to his payment-due list as well. It was a bonus, in the grand scheme, for a man who equated inflicting pain with power.
    He’d been quick and merciful with Myers, the greedy and idiotic gem buyer he’d employed as an inside man. But then Myers hadn’t done anything more than be stupid enough to believe he was entitled to a quarter of the take. And greedy enough to meet him alone, in a closed construction site, in the middle of the night when promised a bigger cut.
    Really, the man hadn’t deserved to live if you thought about it.
    In any case, he’d been a loose end that required snip-ping. The trail would have led to him eventually. He’d have bragged to someone, or would have thrown money around, squandering it on tasteless cars or women or God knew what that class of people considered desirable.
    He’d blubbered and begged and sobbed like a baby when Crew held the gun to his head. Distasteful display, really, but what could one expect?
    He’d also handed over the key to the mailbox locker where he’d stashed the Raggedy Andy doll with a bag of gems in its belly.
    Genius, really, he had to give O’Hara credit for that little touch. Tucking millions of dollars’ worth of gems into innocuous objects, objects no one would look at twice. So when the alarms went off, the building locked down, the cops swarmed, no one would consider all those pretty stones were still inside, tucked into something as innocent as a child’s doll. Then it was just a matter of retrieving the extraordinary within the ordinary while the search went on elsewhere.
    Yes, he could give Jack credit for that amusing detail, but that didn’t negate all the debits.
    They could hardly be trusted to hold millions of dollars’ worth of gems for the year they’d agreed to. How could he possibly trust thieves to keep their word?
    After all, he’d had no intention of keeping his.
    Besides, he wanted it all. Had always intended to take it all. The others had merely been tools. When a tool had served its purpose, you discarded it. Better, you destroyed it.
    But they’d deceived him, slipped through his fingers and taken half the prize with them. And cost him weeks of time