Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

know if Rarities has anything new to tell us.”
    Risa walked behind Shane down the trail toward the empty cabin. Too empty. “Can we put out an anonymous tip so that the police start looking for Virgil O’Conner?”
    “Right after I call the local hospitals. If possible, I’d like to talk to him before the cops do.”
    Not far down from the cliff, Shane heard things sneaking through the brush in the same place he’d noticed them before. This time there wasn’t any itching on his neck to distract him. He switched on the penlight and raked its beam through the brush.
    Three sets of gleaming eyes flashed and then vanished in a scrabble of claws over rocks and sun-hardened dirt.
    “Wait here,” he said to Risa.
    “With those eyes watching me? No thanks.”
    “Then stay close enough to share the light.” He reached around behind his back and pulled the gun. “I’ll need it to find a way through the brush.”
    Holding the penlight and the gun so that both swept over the brush simultaneously, Shane started off the trail. Risa followed close enough to touch his back.
    The wind shifted.
    The smell of death clogged the air, telling Shane that the resident wildlife had been enjoying a not-so-fresh kill. Grimly he moved the penlight in ever-widening arcs. The edge of the beam picked up a worn boot, shredded clothes, and remains only a coroner could look at without gagging.
    Swiftly Shane turned around and blocked Risa’s view of Mother Nature at work.
    “Time to go back,” he said.
    She swallowed hard. “O’Conner?”
    “Let’s just say I won’t be calling any hospitals. As soon as we’re well away from here, I’ll call the cops like a good little anonymous citizen.”
    “I’m glad I know you don’t want that gold enough to murder for it.”
    “Why?” Shane asked.
    “Every time someone has died lately, they’ve taken with them one more link in the chain leading back to the true owner of the Druid gold.”
    “Leave it to a curator to worry about provenance.”
    “Somebody has to worry.”
    “Oh, I am. I’m worried about the fact that too many people who touched this gold ended up dead.”
    “Cherelle hasn’t.” I hope.
    “I wouldn’t announce that to the cops,” Shane said.
    “Why?”
    “It could tag her as the murderer.”
    “I’m voting for Bozo,” Risa said instantly. “Or Tim.”
    “You don’t think Cherelle can kill?”
    Risa didn’t answer.
    Shane didn’t ask again. He just followed her down the rise, away from the smell of death.

Chapter 53
    Las Vegas
    November 4
    Night
    R ich Morrison and Gail Silverado looked at the six gold artifacts from every angle. Both of them wore exam gloves. So did John Firenze, even though he’d done nothing more than set the gold out on pages of casino letterhead on his desk.
    “What do you think?” Firenze asked when he got tired of listening to silence punctuated by the soft beep of his computers when new e-mail arrived. “Is it real?”
    Rich looked at Gail.
    She didn’t notice. She was holding a heavy gold ring whose exterior and interior were incised with letters or symbols from a language she couldn’t read.
    But she knew someone who could.
    “Shane has a ring like this,” she said, savoring the weight of gold in her palm. “At least the outside is like it. He never takes it off, so I don’t know about the inside.”
    “Where did you get this stuff?” Rich asked.
    Firenze shifted uncomfortably. “It just came to me.”
    “Try again,” Rich suggested.
    “A guy—”
    “Try harder.”
    Firenze looked at Rich’s eyes. They were as cold as his voice. He wanted answers, and he was going to keep pushing until he got them. Firenze was just irritated enough at the world in general and his stupid nephew in particular to push back. Besides, no matter how worthless Cesar was, he was still blood. Firenze’s mother would make life living hell for him if he implicated her grandson in a lousy pawnbroker’s murder.
    “Why do you care?” Firenze said. “I’m not asking you to buy the fucking stuff. I’m just giving you a chance to set up Tannahill. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
    There was a tight silence, a muffled curse. Rich looked back at the gold. He wanted Tannahill, sure.
    But that wasn’t all he wanted.
    “I want to be sure the goods are hot,” Rich said.
    “Be sure.”
    Gail’s lips quirked at Firenze’s retort, but she didn’t let Rich see it. He was in a pisser of a mood. Even the thought of nailing