Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

printer?”
    “I’ll just put it on my handheld data log.”
    While Sam gave Mecklin the URL, he looked over at Kate. Nobody was crowding her. “Soon as you get the info, go back to Little Miami and get a sketch of the person who sold it to Seguro.”
    The other agent hooted. “I don’t think this asshole’s eyes ever got above her tits.”
    “Try anyway. Sweat him if you have to. I want a description. And I want his full background and anything you have on his cousins. Connections past, present, and assumed. Rap sheets. Everything. Got it?”
    “When?”
    “Yesterday. Day before would have been better. Or do you want to hear it from my SSA and SAC?”
    “Shit. There goes the party.”
    “Is your house on the way to Little Miami?”
    “Yeah. So what?”
    “So you have to change clothes and pick your toes or whatever. Show up at the party long enough to keep your balls and make your kid smile. Then download that photo and get your ass back to work. I want to have breakfast with that sketch.”
    Sam punched out. He looked at the remaining two messages. He’d already figured out why Mario had called, and whatever Doug had to say, Sam still didn’t want to hear it.
    Expressionless, Sam let the gossip drift around him and wished he was in Miami, questioning Seguro Jimenez about the blonde with rocket-ship tits.

Chapter 39
    Scottsdale
    Friday
    5:20 P.M .
    “Are you sure you can stand another one?” Kate asked Sam. “We could wait and be the first on the floor tomorrow when the whole show opens.”
    He shrugged and drank some more bad hotel coffee. “I’ll survive another one. At least the word got out real quick that you have a good eye for sapphires.”
    “Nobody gossips like folks in the gem business.” Kate looked at her list and stuffed it back in her purse. “Branson will have to wait for tomorrow, assuming his courier finally arrives. I’ve saved the best sapphire dealer for last. Colored Gem Specialties International. They cater to the collector market rather than the investor. They’re the ones whose A-list has every collector in the world who can drop a million on a nice piece of goods. The rough for the Seven Sins probably came from them. If the stones had been finished when they hit the market, CGSI would have been the most likely to buy and sell them.”
    “Saved it for last, huh?” Sam said. “Did you want to give the gossips enough time to make the grapevine hum?”
    “Yes.”
    He leaned closer and said too softly for anyone to overhear, “Always thinking. You’d make a good agent.”
    “I make a better cutter. No committees, no meetings, no nastygrams. I just put a piece of rough on a dop and set up the angle that meets the lap. Repeat until stone is finished.”
    “If it was that easy, everyone would do it.”
    “Everyone does. Especially the retired grandparents.”
    “Yeah? How can you make a living then?”
    “I didn’t say everyone did it well .”
    Grinning, Sam left his coffee and a tip on the hotel café table and followed Kate to the elevator. He was getting good at that—following her. Any man who wanted a female to walk one step behind him wouldn’t last longer than a few minutes with Kate Chandler.
    Just one more of the things he really liked about her.
    Another was remembering her in the elevator, the way the top of his head came off with a simple kiss, the way she wrapped around him like he was the only thing in the world worth having.
    Deep-six that memory. File it under Mistake—Big and Stupid. Forget it.
    Yeah, right. Just like he’d forget the sideways, remembering kind of glance Kate gave him the second time today that they’d found themselves alone in an elevator. Their eyes had only met for an instant, but it had been enough. Too much. Working with a woody was distracting.
    Work. Yeah. Work. That’s what he should be thinking about. For instance, as her bodyguard for the day, he should be the first one through doors.
    The doors to the elevator closed.
    They were alone again.
    “Much as I like following you—” he said.
    “This damn wig—” she said.
    They both stopped.
    Kate wondered if Sam was as desperate to find a sexually neutral topic as she was.
    “—as your ‘bodyguard’ for the previews,” he said, “I should be checking out places before I let you through the door.”
    “Oh. Right.” Hurriedly, she tried to think of something else to say. Something impersonal.
    “What makes you think Colored Gem Specialists International