Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

Merit’s kid. His only kid. Ain’t no way in heaven or hell that America’s premier billionaire would let his kid go to jail, even if they supposedly haven’t spoken for years. Unless yelling at your son in public that he’ll come crawling on his hands and knees, begging to be taken back in the family, counts as conversation.”
    Rich smiled thinly. That threat had made headlines around the world and fodder for tabloids and gossip news on Father’s Day, when everyone dusted off the clip of Merit cussing his son out in public.
    “Well, shit,” Henkle said, frowning. “If Shane has all that money, why did he bankrupt the Blue Mare on his way to making a few million? He could have bought Daddy’s casino outright for what Merit keeps in his safe at home.”
    “Shane walked away from his family money,” Rich said, rubbing his scalp beneath the itchy wig. “Apparently the price of putting up with Bastard Merit was just too high. But some things breed true. Tannahill got a full helping of his father’s business genius and a good share of the hard-ass, too.”
    “That’s the rest of the reason why hot gold artifacts aren’t enough to bring Shane down,” Gail said. “He’s not going to run away and hide from some bad press. All the publicity would probably just increase traffic through the Golden Fleece. Tourists love to think they’re rubbing elbows with real live crooks. Hell, most of the people downstairs swilling free champagne believe we’re all part of the Mob.”
    “Still, getting caught dirty would take a lot of the shine off Tannahill’s Golden Boy image,” Pinsky argued. “The press will shit on him instead of sucking up.”
    “He’ll survive,” she said flatly.
    Rich nodded his agreement that bad press alone wouldn’t get Tannahill out of their hair.
    “You talked about a one-two punch,” Firenze said to Rich. “What’s the knockout?”
    “Between us screwing up his big gold show and sticking him with some hot goods,” Rich said, “Tannahill will be too busy to notice what’s really happening.”
    “Yeah? What’s that?”
    “That’s what he’ll be saying when the feds swoop down and indict him for money laundering.”
    Gail shook her head. “He doesn’t.”
    Rich smiled like the shark he was. “And I’m not a hippie. But if it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck, it’s fair game during hunting season.”
    She looked at Rich with new interest. “I’m listening.”
    So were the rest of them.

Chapter 7
    Sedona
    Halloween night
    H eadlights jerked and bobbed. The ten-year-old Ford Bronco was making heavy work of the unpaved road. The ruts wound up a dry ravine that fed water into Beaver Creek when there was enough rain. There hadn’t been lately. Runoff from autumn storms had barely slicked the streambed with mud.
    As though squeezed out by the weight of the harvest moon, shadows flowed from every rock and hollow. Sycamores loomed up out of the night like white-skinned ghosts. A stone became a huge tooth poking through the sun-hardened dirt of the road.
    “Watch it!” Tim shouted.
    Cherelle was already swinging the wheel to miss the ragged rock. She had been up old man O’Conner’s “driveway” often enough in the last six months that she had every stone and rut memorized.
    Even so, the Bronco lurched and swayed hard enough to snap Tim’s teeth together.
    “Chrissake,” Tim complained. “Slow down.”
    “He said four hundred if we got there before dawn.”
    “We’ll be dead before then,” Tim muttered, thinking his voice was too low for Cherelle to hear.
    She heard it anyway. “Look, get it through that beautiful thick head of yours that we need money. The printer is yelling at us to pay for the pamphlets and business cards he ran off for us. Our credit cards are maxed, and no one is mailing us any new ones. The tires on this piece of shit are bald. The rent is overdue. We have a quarter tank of gas.”
    Tim made yada-yada-yada sounds.
    “Virgil has money,” Cherelle continued. “Cash in hand. If he wants us before dawn, we get there before dawn.”
    Tim yawned widely. “Y’know, lately you’re sure pissy when you get into your channel role. Lighten up.”
    She wished she could. But she couldn’t. It had gotten so that every time she pulled on her white channeling outfit with its long filmy shirt and skirt, her palms got cold and her heart started to beat too fast, like when she used to boost stuff from the convenience store back home as a