Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

gold before Shane Tannahill can.”
    “Depends on the gold.”
    “You can see for yourself tonight. Seventeen pieces.”
    “Will Shane be there?”
    “His curator will be.” Cherelle smiled and rolled the word on her tongue again. “This meeting is just for chicks.”
    “Who else?”
    “Just the two of you. And me.”
    “Who are you?” Gail said, her tone irritated and interested at the same time.
    “Someone who has a suitcase full of fancy Celtic gold. Minimum bid is one million cash, used bills.”
    Gail laughed. “Well, you don’t lack balls. Give me a number. I’ll call you after I check with my bank.”
    “I’ll call you in an hour. Be there or Tannahill gets it all.”

Chapter 59
    Las Vegas
    November 5
    Afternoon
    R ich Morrison opened the office door himself and gave Gail a kiss on her softly powdered cheek.
    “Lovely of you to come by with a surprise for my wife,” he said for the benefit of his executive assistant, who was fading back into the wallpaper in the adjoining office.
    “You only celebrate this kind of occasion once,” Gail said easily, kissing his cheek in turn.
    The door shut with an expensive-sounding click behind her.
    “Bet half of Vegas thinks we’re having an affair,” she said, tossing the gold-foiled box of candy onto the nearest chair.
    “Half of Vegas would be right. The other half.”
    Laughing, she stepped back. “A woman called about twenty minutes ago. She has seventeen pieces of Celtic gold to sell to me or Shane Tannahill. Wants one million. Cash. Used bills.”
    Rich’s eyebrows lifted. “Interesting. She give a name?”
    “What do you think?”
    “No.”
    “I can go five hundred thousand without setting off alarms from my investors,” Gail said, “but no more. Shane can go the whole way twice and give me change. You want him bad enough to spend half a million of your own money?”
    “Yes.”
    “That fast, huh? Don’t even have to call your money men?”
    “They’re waiting to wash eight hundred million a year through here. We skim ten percent for the service. You’re good at numbers. You do the math.”
    “Okay, half a million is chump change for them. But not for me. I’ll need the money by tonight.”
    “Early or late?”
    “She didn’t say. She’ll call back with the particulars.”
    “I’ll send someone as soon as the money is packed. Used bills, I trust?”
    “It’s all I’d be comfortable with.”
    He smiled. “You’ll have the money in two hours, maximum. Anything else?”
    She gave him a sideways glance from under her thick lashes. “What do you have?”
    “More than you have time to enjoy.” Then he smiled wryly. “Hell, Silver. It’s too late for us now.”
    “Haven’t you heard? Take a pill and turn into a teenager.”
    “New wives aren’t that easy to find.”
    “Especially ones with the kind of political connections you need.”
    “Especially not them,” he agreed.
    “You going to be our next governor?”
    “I’d prefer a position with more power.”
    “Senator?”
    He shook his head.
    “C’mon, Rich. You’re not going for president, are you?”
    “I like Nevada too well. I think I’d make a very good head of the Gaming Control Board, don’t you?”
    She whistled. “Can you take the background check?”
    “Of course.”
    “Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse . . .” Gail snickered, then laughed aloud.
    She was still chuckling when she shut the office door behind her.

Chapter 60
    Las Vegas
    November 5
    Afternoon
    D own the center of the table, resting on what looked like unused Halloween napkins, six gold artifacts lay, gleaming condensations of time and human dreams. Shane felt their presence like a sigh just below the level of hearing, a breath moving softly over his skin.
    Minus handcuffs, he and the artifacts waited in an anonymous room in an anonymous government building two miles and worlds away from the Golden Fleece. The furniture was turn-of-the-century waiting room—steel frames, worn battleship-gray seat cushions, metal conference table, a water dispenser in the corner, a plastic wastebasket half full of paper coffee cups. No rug, no telephone, no computer, and no windows.
    Two people who had declined to give him a name or a badge number had taken turns trying to get him to agree to handing over the four pieces of gold already in his possession on the grounds that they, too, clearly had been stolen from the same source as the six he’d been arrested for buying this