Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

Paid cash. Up front. No hassle, no bouncing checks, no credit card trail. She wished they had fifty more like him. Hell, even five. With that and a little luck in Vegas, a girl could do as well as her childhood pal Risa already had.
    Thinking of Risa made Cherelle slide back toward the good old days, when two smart Arkansas orphans had stuck it to the—
    The phone was still ringing.
    She shook off the last of her half-sleeping memories, pulled her vortex persona around her like invisible robes, and picked up the receiver. When she spoke, her voice was hushed and gentle.
    “Good morning, Virgil. I sense that you’re having a difficult time.”
    “Gotta see you.”
    “Let me check my—”
    “No,” he interrupted. “Now, Lady Faulkner. It’s gotta be now. While it’s still dark. That gold is killing me.”
    She barely bit back the gutter words that were doing back flips on her tongue. “Gold, hmmm? Did you fall asleep over the pictures in one of your old books again?”
    “Got things better than any damn book. You come quick. You’ll see.”
    “Virgil . . .” It’s the middle of the fucking night, you moron . She clenched her jaw, swiped hair out of her eyes, and said carefully, “All right, I’ll come, but I’ll have to ask for double the usual fee. I’m sorry, but that’s the—”
    “If you get here before dawn, I’ll give you four hundred,” he cut in.
    “Cash?”
    “Yeah.” It was all the money he had left, but he wasn’t worried. If this appointment didn’t do the trick, he didn’t think there would be any others. “But you gotta get here fast.”
    Cherelle swallowed. “I’ll be with you before dawn. Peace and prosperity, Virgil.”
    Before the client could answer, she dumped the phone in its cradle and shook her partner hard enough to make his blond-streaked hair fly. “Up and at ’em, pretty boy. Virgil has four big ol’ bills waiting for us.”
    Tim opened one beautiful blue eye. “Who do we have to kill?”
    “Ha, ha. You can’t even step on a cockroach. You have to have your jailhouse buddy do it for you.”
    The other blue eye opened. He smiled like a china angel. “It gets done, don’t it?”
    With a sound of disgust she dropped his shoulders and finished crawling over him to get out of bed. “Haul that sexy butt out of the sheets. We have to be at Virgil’s before dawn.”
    “Socks won’t like it if we aren’t here when—”
    “Socks can fuck himself.”
    “Hey, you’re always down on my buddy.”
    “I never went down on him, not even when he offered me a hundred.”
    Snickering, Tim stretched. He liked jabbing at his lover. It was his way of getting even for not being half as smart as she was. Neither was Socks, for all his bragging. Next to Cherelle, they were both stupid. But that was okay.
    Thinking was a pain in the ass.
    So he left thinking to Cherelle unless it was more up his buddy’s alley, like fencing the occasional TV or DVD player. He didn’t tell Cherelle about that part of it. She would shit a brick if she knew Socks was burgling some of their clients. Not all of them. Hell, even he could figure out that would be stupid. Just a few of them when they left for the winter, the ones that had so many TVs they wouldn’t miss one or two.
    Anyway, it was Cherelle’s fault. If she wasn’t so tight with cash, he wouldn’t have to moonlight with Socks. But she had a bug up her ass about saving enough money to get a place somewhere that nobody knew them and they wouldn’t have to be looking over their shoulder all the time. That took money, and that meant he was lucky to see a fifty from her once a week so that he could have a few beers with Socks and—
    “Timothy Seton, get your ass out of that bed!”
    “Bitch, bitch, bitch,” he said, but he made sure she didn’t hear. “I’m up, I’m up!” Then he looked down at his early-morning woody and laughed. “Sure enough, I am. How about it?”
    She gave him a look that took the lead right out of his pencil.
    Rather wistfully he glanced down at his deflating glory. Oh, well. There was more where that came from. And if she didn’t want it when it came around again, there were others that did.
    Whistling, he headed for the shower that Cherelle had finally cleaned last week. About time, too. There had been enough crud on the floor to tickle his feet.

Chapter 5
    Las Vegas
    Halloween night
    T he lobby of the Wildest Dream hotel/shopping/theater/gambling complex was decked out like a