Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

cast shadows; he wanted to kiss them. The casual cutoff jeans and faded red T-shirt looked as soft as butter; he wanted to touch them. Despite the curves of breasts and hips, there was a suppleness to each movement she made that looked like muscle tone to him; he wanted to test it with his hands. The economy and ease of her motions told him she was doing familiar tasks; he wanted to be that familiar with her body.
    The fact that she didn’t even look in his direction told him she wasn’t interested.
    Damn.
    Considering that he’d been enough of a gentleman and a scholar to keep his hands off her when he wanted her so much his palmsitched, it rankled him to get the silent treatment. It was just professional irritation, of course. He needed her help.
    And if he told himself that often enough, he might believe it.
    “What’s that?” he finally asked, pointing.
    “A dop.” She didn’t look up.
    “No. Not the rod, the machine.”
    “It’s a transfer fixture.”
    “What does it transfer?”
    Kate gave him a brief, sidelong glance. “What’s this? Twenty questions?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I don’t want to play.” Not the truth, but better than saying that the heat in his blue eyes made her clothes feel too tight. She picked up a special torch. “Go away. I’ve got work to do.”
    “So do I.”
    “Then go do it.”
    “I am.” Before she could say anything, Sam kept talking. “Look, right now I’m Joe Schmuck walking in the mall with the old lady and three whiny kids. I see a corner store full of glitter and I know I’m in trouble. Our anniversary is coming up and I’ve been hearing that ‘diamonds are forever’ so I go in and buy her fifty bucks’ worth of flash and I walk out. That’s all I know about the gem trade—what I see in a mall case and on TV ads.”
    Kate completed the transfer of the stone she was working on, set down the small, handheld torch she had used on the dop wax, and looked at him directly for the first time. The heat was still there. Damped down, but still burning.
    So was she.
    “And this matters to me how?” she asked sardonically.
    “I don’t want to be Joe Schmuck,” Sam said. “I want to know what happens before all the shiny stuff gets into the jewelry case. Where did the stone come from? Who transported them? Who worked them? Who mined them? But most of all I want to know who died and who lied so there could be stores full of flash and glitter.”
    She put the stick of dop wax aside and looked away from Sam. It was that or lean close enough to taste him. “You’re serious.”
    “As hell. I keep thinking I’m missing something because all I know is cops and robbers. I need some insight into the gem business as a whole, not just the moments of obvious danger when small, anonymous, valuable goods are wrapped up and transferred from point A to point B by a courier.”
    Kate removed the big clip she used to keep her hair out of her eyes while she was working. She shook her head and sighed in relief. The clip was good at its job, but it wasn’t vegan. It had a real taste for flesh.
    “I’m not an expert on the whole business,” she said, rubbing her unhappy scalp. “Just the cutting end of it.”
    “You know more than I do about the rest. That’s all an expert is. Someone who knows more than I do.”
    She smiled slightly. “Okay. ‘Who died and who lied…’ ”
    Sam watched her intently. She was fiddling with another machine, a piece of equipment she called a lap or something like it. Observation had told him she used it for cutting or polishing a stone. But she wasn’t working on anything now.
    He’d finally managed to distract her.
    Professionally, of course.
    “No matter the state of civilization in gem countries like Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Venezuela, Russia, South Africa, or whatever and wherever in the world you are,” Kate said slowly, “most colored stones come from wild places where the twenty-first century is barely a rumor. Men on the moon? Forget it. Never happened. Skinny miners crouch in hand-dug holes in the jungle or crawl through slanting, unstable tunnels that are just barely big enough to take the width of a miner’s shoulders. If you’re above ground, insects and standing water make your life miserable. If you’re below ground, standing water and cave-ins take your miserable life. Is that what you want to know? The age-old connection between death and gems?”
    “It’s a start.” Sam looked away from the