Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

not be much, but the travel can’t be beat. It keeps me young.”
    “You ever miss the DEA?”
    Kirby narrowed his eyes and looked at the moisture beading on the gin-and-tonic glass. “Sometimes. A badge opens more doors than a handful of papers. But I can’t say I miss living undercover with twenty-two-year-old assholes holding more cash than a working stiff like me would make in a lifetime. That really used to piss me off, especially around April fifteenth.”
    “Tax time.” Sizemore shook his head and picked up the fresh beer the bartender had put in front of him. “Yeah, I hear you.”
    “How about you?” Kirby asked. “Do you miss the bad old days?”
    “What’s to miss? I still work closely with the Bureau, but I can do things as a civilian that would get me bounced if I was carrying FBIcreds. Best part is I don’t have to worry about fancy lawyers fucking up my fieldwork.”
    Kirby grinned. “Neither do I.” He clinked glass against bottle. “To life without badges.”
    “I’ll drink to that.”

Chapter 17
    Glendale
    Wednesday
    12:05 A.M .
    Sam leaned against the kitchen doorway, sipping coffee and listening to Kate’s half of the conversation. He’d guessed after the first few moments that it was good old honorary Uncle Gavin calling to tell Kate that the Feds were sniffing after her.
    “No, really, it’s all right,” she said for the third time. “I’d have done the same thing.” Before Lee disappeared, but not after. “Sure. Give Missy a kiss for me when you get home. And stop worrying. I’m fine.”
    She hung up and gave Sam a look that could have been amused or irritated or both. Underneath those emotions was the sadness that had begun five months ago and the fear that had started with the blind phone call threatening death unless she stopped asking questions.
    She hadn’t stopped, but she’d been a lot more careful about who and what she asked.
    “Have fun listening?” she said.
    “Yeah. It was a stitch and a half. I take it Gavin Greenfield lay awake thinking about our chat and finally just had to call you.”
    “He’s a good, decent man.”
    “Damn few of us left,” Sam said, watching her over the rim of his mug. “What relation is he to Lee Mandel?”
    “Gavin is Lee’s godfather.”
    “Are they close?”
    “Not for the last five months.” Kate clenched her hands together, then forced herself to let go. “You recognized Lee’s name.”
    Sam didn’t hesitate. He’d already decided what he’d tell her and what he wouldn’t. Not that there was much to tell. The Bureau grapevine had already tagged the McCloud case as a career disaster that no one wanted to touch, much less request the file and go on record as having read all about it. Sam had done his best to duck that whole aspect of the crime strike force’s brief—he was afraid Kennedy would tie the McCloud case to Sam’s career and sink him without a trace.
    “Lee Mandel,” Sam said, “is a courier who went missing with a package that cost Mandel Inc.’s insurer seven figures to make good.”
    Lee was also the final straw that had set the crime strike force into being a few months later. Arthur McCloud, the man who’d lost the sapphires, was a friend of the governor of Florida and a brother-in-law of the president of the United States, but Sam didn’t figure Kate needed to know that. Neither did she need to know that the McCloud case had been a woofer for everyone involved. Once Kennedy had seen where it was going, he delegated the case to the Miami office and ran away like the politically savvy coyote he was. By then, the crime strike force had developed a momentum of its own independent of McCloud.
    Thank God.
    Not that the president’s wife didn’t make inquiries from time to time, scaring the hell out of the Bureau director. It would have been funny if the director hadn’t passed the fear down the line as fast as he could. Even the name McCloud could make grown men turn pale.
    “What’s your connection to Mandel Inc.?” Sam asked.
    Kate didn’t answer. She was too busy telling herself that Sam wasn’t the kind of man that appealed to her. He was too cold, too controlled, just one more federal robot mucking up her life. Yes, he was intelligent, but she needed more than that. She demanded a sense of humor in a man. She doubted if Sam had one worth mentioning.
    He gave her a long look. “Anything that’s public knowledge about you—and a lot that isn’t—will be mine before the