Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

stones—but I thought of you immediately.”
    Sam hoped that what he was thinking of Carter didn’t show. As far as Sam was concerned, Carter was slick as snot and twice as useless. Once the man had learned that Sam was the striking redhead’s bodyguard rather than her husband, lover, or date, Carter had started putting moves on her. Sam didn’t have to be a trained investigator to figure out what was on the oily bastard’s mind.
    It wasn’t business.
    Kate felt Sam’s eyes drilling holes in her back. She was divided between a purely feline pleasure in his irritation and a desire to tell him to have a little faith in her taste in men. Or maybe Sam thought she was too stupid to notice the indentation on Carter’s left hand ring finger where a wedding band had worn a groove into his flesh. Whether the ring had been freshly removed for play or freshly divorced, Kate didn’t care. Either one spelled Big Trouble for any woman smart enough to read the signs.
    Carter led Kate to the side of the room where samples of rough gems were laid out in groups according to kind rather than color. These specimens weren’t boxed. They simply had an electronic tagglued to an inconspicuous part of the rough, where the common stone matrix showed through the valuable gem material.
    She looked at the rough and then at the employee who was hovering nearby. “May I?”
    “But of course.” He hurried forward. “Would you like a loupe?”
    “No thanks, I brought several.”
    Kate pulled a 10x loupe from her big purse and examined the piece of intense yellow sapphire that had come from one of East Africa’s mines. No matter how many ways she turned and changed the lighting on the stone, some of the beautiful hazing that was the hallmark of untreated sapphire glowed in the gem. Unlike Asian sapphires, the yellows and oranges of East Africa didn’t have to be heated to deepen the natural color.
    There were flaws in the rough, but none that would interfere with cutting a stone that would end up between thirty and forty carats, depending on the skill of the cutter. At thirty carats finished, the price on the rough was about break-even for the cutter. At forty carats, there was a good profit.
    “Microscope, please,” Kate said.
    Sam kept an eye on the room while she examined the rough more closely. Carter hovered like a vulture expecting a juicy meal. The rest of the people glanced at Kate, but nobody stared or seemed to watch her any more than any good-looking woman was watched in a roomful of men. The men were here for business; if they’d wanted a meat market, they’d be down in the bar or bribing the bellmen.
    What a putz, Sam thought as he watched Carter hover over Kate. Almost touching her, but not quite. Nothing to call him on. No excuse to step all over his shiny Italian shoes.
    “…a flat tire, of all things,” a man’s voice said behind Sam. “Can you believe it? The price we pay for couriers and the cheap bastards don’t even rent good cars for a delivery.”
    “Branson and Sons will pay for it,” the man’s companion said. His eyes were on a long table of finished gems. “They’re losing the best action. We’ve had a day to look over everyone’s goods, we’ve madeour choices, and if Branson doesn’t get his act together, there won’t be any money left at this show for him.”
    “Yeah, especially as everyone knows that the best of Branson’s stuff was already clouted.”
    “Yeah? Do you know anybody who hasn’t been hit?”
    “Not me. Not for two years.” The man’s knuckles rapped against a nearby wood table for good luck.
    Sam listened as he kept watching Carter with part of his attention. If the putz got any closer to Kate, he’d be touching her.
    “…believe the price he asked?”
    Sam glanced over. Two more men were making their way slowly down the long table of cut gems.
    “Oh, I believe it,” the second man said. “A big piece of finished kunzite, great color and clarity, and the brilliance. Wow. That took one hell of a fine cutter to pull it off. Kunzite is even more temperamental than emeralds.”
    “But he wouldn’t even consider looking through my inventory for a possible swap.”
    “Try him after the show. If he’s still got the stone, he might feel more like trading.”
    Sam listened and watched as people drifted by in pursuit of a deal that would leave them better off than they’d been before they walked into the room. Nothing unusual about that. Just human nature, impure