Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

with the Christian cross marched down the blade. Balanced on her palms, Risa held the gold sheath with its mesmerizing red inlay defining a three-part design. Originally the design had been picked out in pearls, but the soft gold indentations that had once held the gems were all that remained. The dagger was the most modern of the artifacts, for gems came into favor only after the Romans occupied Britain.
    “What a pity that pearls are too fragile to survive being buried for centuries,” Risa said.
    “Tears of the moon,” Shane said softly. “Whether the ground is wet or dry, they don’t survive the centuries.”
    “The good news is that the residue of soil we found embedded in the deeper etched lines of every artifact is the same. All twenty-seven pieces were part of the same hoard.”
    “The really good news is that there wasn’t enough soil to place the artifacts exactly, even in the ground around O’Conner’s house.”
    Risa’s mouth thinned with reflexive pain. Thinking of O’Conner made her think of his killer—Cherelle Faulkner. Risa didn’t want to believe it even now, but she did. Miranda Seton didn’t have any reason to lie to the feds in order to protect her son. Tim was as dead as Cherelle. As dead as Socks.
    If Miranda felt any guilt about blackmailing her former lover into killing Socks, she didn’t show it.
    “There were some similarities with a cross-section of British soils,” Shane continued, “but nothing identical by any stretch.”
    “And the Brits,” Risa said dryly, “were willing to stretch whatever they could get their hands on. Too bad that silica is such a common part of dirt. It would have been remarkable only if it had been absent from the artifacts.”
    “Do you blame them for trying?” Shane asked with a rakish smile. “I sure don’t.”
    “Nope. And I’m glad you agreed to loan the artifacts to the British Museum for study.”
    “ After New Year’s Eve.”
    Blade slid into sheath with barely a whisper of sound.
    As he lifted the sheath from her palm, Risa’s breath caught at the glide of skin over skin. She wondered if she would ever get used to being Shane’s lover. It was as astonishing to her as the fact that she would be married on New Year’s Eve, wearing a Celtic ring as old as Shane’s.
    “Do you think Niall will find any close relatives of Virgil O’Conner?” Risa asked huskily.
    “I doubt it. He never married. He had no siblings. Not even any half siblings.” Shane placed the dagger and sheath in a display case that had more locks and alarms than met the eye. “Besides, there’s nothing beyond circumstantial proof that he even had the gold in the first place.”
    “But we know the gold was there, at his house.”
    “That’s proof from the gut. Doesn’t work in a court of law.”
    “We know Virgil was sent to an air base in Britain during World War Two,” she said. “Niall has his service record.”
    Shane nodded and picked up the bent, totemic artifact that Risa said was the equivalent of a bishop’s crosier—the solid gold head of a ceremonial staff. The wood inside the gold was oak. Carbon dating placed it in the fourth century, plus or minus some years.
    “And we assume,” Shane said, “that O’Conner dug up the hoard during the chaos after the Allied victory in Europe.”
    “He dug it up in Wales. Gut knowledge,” she conceded quickly, “not court of law.”
    Smiling, Shane brushed his lips over hers. “Then he shipped it home along with his other stuff in empty ammunition boxes. Nobody was checking incoming soldiers very closely. We were too damn glad to have them back.”
    She thought of Cherelle, who was never coming back.
    “Don’t, darling,” he said, kissing her again. “You did everything you could for her. You can’t save people from their own mistakes.”
    Risa breathed in the warmth of him. “Do you really read minds?”
    “Just yours. It’s those telltale eyes. And that mouth. Ought to be a law against it.”
    Her smile turned upside down. “Speaking of laws, there ought to be a law against getting away with murder.”
    His lips waited a breath from hers. “Morrison?”
    “Yes.”
    “He didn’t get away with it.”
    “Like hell he didn’t,” she retorted. “First he sics good old Socks on Cherelle, and then he kills Socks. Now he’s a bloody hero. Just read the Vegas papers!”
    “Morrison’s lawyers would have gotten him off with probation and community service. This way he’s a