Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

To her relief the object felt only of cool gold and weight, none of the disturbing power that she sometimes felt with an artifact—and never more unnervingly than she had in Wales, amid standing stones, even though no artifacts had been there. But she didn’t like thinking about that and the currents of awareness that sometimes reached out to her, telling her she was different.
    With a long breath she forced herself to concentrate on the here and now rather than a lost childhood and an eerie oak grove in Wales.
    The torc’s circle was divided into three equal arcs. The outer curve of each arc was decorated by a spoked wheel balanced on the center of the arc. Each wheel was itself divided into thirds by three equally spaced gold knobs.
    “Classic three-part design,” Risa said. “The Celts loved their trinity long before Christian times.” Carefully she lifted the torc from its nest. “From the weight, it’s solid. Whether this is pure gold or sheet gold wrapped over iron, I can’t tell visually. If it’s a wrap, it’s a thick one. I see nothing but gold.”
    Dana spoke softly into the microphone buttoned to her collar. “Research?”
    “Iron core,” said the ceiling grille. “Verified by Rarities.”
    “Excellent.” Risa all but purred.
    “Wouldn’t it be more valuable as pure gold?” Niall asked.
    “As metals go, pure gold is very soft,” she said absently. “You can shape it any way you want without much trouble, but it gets out of shape just as easily. Worse, it might not stop a surprise sword blow from the back, which was probably the original reason torcs were worn. The fact that this is gold wrapped around iron makes it more likely that the torc was a badge of royalty or very high status that was actually worn by a woman or a pencil-necked man. Beautiful. Just beautiful.” With sensitive fingertips she traced the whole of the circle. “Mmm. Yes. Here it is. And here.”
    Shane watched her fingertips and thought of her tongue. Irritably he pulled his mind back to the gold object instead of his increasing, damned inconvenient lust for his curator.
    Risa looked at Dana. “I will assume a mortise-and-tenon joint at each end of this arc.”
    “English, please,” Shane said.
    The edge to his voice made Risa’s eyes narrow. “Think of it as innie meets outie.”
    Niall snickered.
    Risa turned back to Dana. “That kind of joint was known and used in the Iron Age. It would allow one arc in this torc to be removed so that the remaining two-thirds of the ring could slip—or be pushed—around the neck. Then the arc would be replaced, the torc squeezed shut at the joints, and God help whoever wanted to take it off.”
    “Sounds uncomfortable,” Shane said.
    “Status usually is.”
    He gave Risa an amused, approving look. Her combination of pragmatism and razor intelligence interested him as much as anything else about her, including her lush body.
    And that worried him. Affairs weren’t based on intelligence and pragmatism. They were fast, greedy, and hot. Anything where intelligence crept in was a relationship.
    Bad idea.
    He wasn’t any good at relationships. The only ones he had were with family, and they could best be described as mutual combat in his father’s case, mutual sadness in his mother’s case, and mutual frustration all around.
    If only you would try, you and your father could get along. Just try, Shane. Try. Please. For me.
    His mother’s often-repeated plea echoed like an unhappy ghost through Shane’s memories. He ignored it with the ease of a lifetime’s practice. Not even for his mother would he put up with his father’s corrosive arrogance. End of argument. End of family life.
    Beginning of Shane’s true education.
    There was nothing like being broke on the streets to teach a man all the things he hadn’t learned while getting a master’s degree in business at Stanford University.
    “As for age,” Risa continued, running her fingertips lightly along the cool, ancient gold, “I know of at least one torc that is similar in execution and style to this. It came from Marne, France, and dates back to the fourth century b.c.”
    “Provisional estimate of worth?” Dana asked.
    “With good—very good—provenance, I would start asking at three hundred thousand dollars and hope to make considerably more. Up to five hundred thousand. Maybe even higher. Depends on whether it’s a public auction, which tends to drive up prices just by the competitive nature of