Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

thought that was the real reason my first mother abandoned me, because I was different. And that finding out about my difference killed my adopted mother.”
    “Did you dream that? Is that how you knew?”
    She paused, then, “No. I don’t dream about myself. Just . . . things. Antiquities. And not all the time or all antiquities. Just special ones. Very special.”
    “Like Wales.”
    “Yes,” she said in a voice as soft as the wind. “Like Wales.”
    “Is it the place or the ritual use of the artifacts associated with them that calls to you?”
    “I don’t know. I’m not sure they can be separated.” She rubbed her arms and turned away from him, toward the night. “I really don’t want to go into this. Ever since I figured out that most people didn’t react like me, I’ve done my best to ignore it.”
    “It hasn’t gone away, has it?”
    Angrily she spun back toward him. “What do you want from me?”
    “The feeling that I’m not entirely alone in this. I’ve spent my life feeling like odd man out of the human race.”
    “Okay. Fine. I’m odd woman out. Feel better?”
    “Two odds make an even.” He grinned. “That makes us normal.”
    She stared at him, then laughed. “Fuzzy formulas, huh?”
    “Works for me.” He pulled her close, kissed her hard, and looked down into her moon-drenched face. “So do you. Wait here.”
    Risa was still tasting him and at the same time trying to follow his so-called thought processes when she realized that he was opening Virgil O’Conner’s front door.
    “You can’t just—” she began.
    But he already had.
    “—walk in,” she finished.
    With his fingers still wrapped in his nylon wind shell, Shane felt around on the wall until he found a switch. Against the pouring white power of moonlight, the sixty-watt bulb in the overhead fixture looked like a round yellow candle flame. It was enough to show a couch with a pillow and a rumpled blanket, a scattering of thick books lying open on an old dining table, and an unlighted room beyond.
    The only sound was that of something small and nocturnal that had been disturbed by the sudden light and was racing back toward darkness on tiny clawed feet. The air hinted of old food, more a suggestion than a smell. The feel of the place was indefinably empty. Not the ripe emptiness of recent death, but the thin sense of abandonment that comes without human life.
    “Nobody home but the mice,” Shane said, stepping into the light.
    Risa’s breath caught as she saw the gleam of something metallic in his hand. A gun.
    Despite his comforting words, Shane checked out the dark room just off the main living area before he holstered his weapon at the small of his back once more.
    The little room was like the rest of the house. Nobody home.
    Shielding his hand with his jacket, he flipped on the light switch. The bedroom was no more than eight feet by eight feet, just enough space for a narrow bed, a chest of drawers, and a series of pegs on the wall that served as a closet. The area was messy, but not with the wild disorder of a place that has been searched. This was more the normal carelessness of a man who lived alone and didn’t care if dirty clothes gathered dust bunnies in the corner until washday, whenever that might be.
    Rubbing the back of his neck, Shane looked around again. He didn’t know what was nibbling at him; he only knew that something was. Feeling like an idiot, he pulled out a penlight, knelt, and looked under the bed. All he saw were marks in the dust, as though something had been dragged out. Maybe a suitcase. It would explain the fact that no one was home and the only wheels around were on a bicycle.
    He wished he could believe the nice, logical explanation. He couldn’t. He found himself sweeping the area underneath the bed with his light again and again. He knew something was there.
    He just couldn’t see it.
    “Shane?”
    Something in Risa’s voice brought him to his feet in a rush that didn’t end until he was in the living room near her. “What is it?”
    “The books.”
    “Did you touch them?” he asked more sharply than he meant to.
    “I didn’t have to. Look.”
    He glanced over the top of her head to a book that was open on a table a few feet away. Then he narrowed his eyes and walked closer. A beautiful photo of the Snettisham torc took up one page. The opposite page showed a series of gold brooches.
    “I’m trying to believe it’s a coincidence,” Risa said.
    “Having