Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

morning.
    Other than noting to himself that the Rarities search for the source of the gold artifacts was attracting all kinds of sharks, Shane ignored the questions—and the questioners—until they gave up and left. They were only place-holders until the real power arrived. He knew it even if they didn’t.
    Finally, too late, a pattern had become very clear to Shane. Now all that remained was to figure out what his losses were and then cut them without having to give up the gold.
    His lawyers were somewhere in the building raising hell with everyone who might have the power to get Shane released. Other lawyers were on the phone raising hell with lawyers in Washington, D.C., who would in turn raise hell with whatever government officials might get the job done.
    Because no charges had been filed, it was hard for Shane’s lawyers to get any action. According to the only paperwork available, he had come to the building “voluntarily.” If that meant he’d agreed to come to the building and talk to government-issue employees instead of being formally booked, locked in a cell, and communicating with his lawyers through a speaker in a glass wall, then Shane had indeed volunteered to be a temporary guest of Uncle Sam.
    The door opened. A petite woman with black hair, measuring black eyes, and the absolute confidence of a tiger walked into the room. And like a tiger, she was as deadly as she was beautiful. She shut the door behind her. Though she wasn’t wearing a name tag, he knew who she was.
    “Hello, April Joy,” Shane said. “I was wondering if you would show up personally.”
    April gave him a tiger-measuring-prey look that said he would wish she had stayed on the West Coast. Crossing her arms over her chest, she leaned against the door and simply stared at him for the space of a slow ten count.
    “It would have been much easier on all of us if you’d agreed to work with me the first time you were contacted,” she said.
    “About the gold?” He knew what her answer would be, but he needed to hear the words. He had overlooked too much in his obsession with the upcoming Druid Gold show.
    And with Risa.
    April dismissed the gold with a wave of her elegant hand. “The Red Phoenix laundry is all I care about.”
    Bingo.
    With his fingertip Shane touched the gold ring in the center of the table. The outer runes called upon gods more Nordic than Welsh to protect the wearer. The inner symbols were purely Celtic, speaking silently of gods who bent to listen to the Druid king. His own ring had ogham symbols on the outside, Celtic on the inside. He would have bet his life that both rings had once belonged to people who had the power of earthly gods.
    “The two agents who took turns on me cared about the gold,” Shane pointed out.
    “Their problem. I don’t care except inasmuch as the Brits are leaning on D.C. to repatriate it. If Uncle decides to pass the bad cess down the line to my department, you’ll hear about it from me until hell won’t have it.”
    He half smiled. “I don’t doubt it.”
    “Then why are you being such a prick?”
    He gave her the other half of the smile in a flash of white that did nothing to soften the stone green of his eyes. “I learned it at my daddy’s knee.”
    “If you think being Bastard Merit’s kid will get you out of this, think again. You’re swimming alone in the shit. When we made a courtesy call, he said you were fair game and he didn’t even want to hear about it.”
    “That’s my daddy.”
    April tilted her head to the side. In her years working for various departments of the floating alphabet soup that was Uncle’s way of sliding under Congress’s radar, she had taken apart some dudes who thought they were the toughest men ever to swing their balls when they walked. Before she finished with them, they were boys looking for Mama. She liked to think it would be that easy with Shane Tannahill.
    Experience told her it wouldn’t.
    She looked at her watch, muttered a few carefully selected phrases in Cantonese, and decided to save everybody some time. She looked at the gold, then at Shane. “Are you working for Rarities on this one?”
    “I’m self-employed.”
    Black eyes narrowed. “Okay, tough guy. Is Rarities working for you on the gold?”
    “Why do you care?”
    “If you were a tenth as dirty as your reputation, Dana Gaynor wouldn’t touch you with fire tongs. When it comes to her core customers, she is one very picky bitch.”
    This time