Elizabeth Lowell - Blue Smoke and Murder

Zach dragged her through the connecting doorway. Silently he eased the door shut. He led her into the far bathroom and turned on the shower, but didn’t get into it.

“Okay,” she said, drawing a deep breath. “I need a friend in Vegas I can trust with the paintings.”

“You’ll have one. Male or female?”

“Female. But this guy doesn’t play nice. His friends are probably the same.”

“No worries.” Zach grinned. “We have some very competent females at St. Kilda Consulting. The paintings are going straight into Shane Tannahill’s casino vault.”

“I won’t get away with that on my end,” Jill said. “I’ll have to have six real paintings for the show-and-tell.”

Zach wanted to argue but didn’t. He could already hear Grace. We can’t prove anything unless the paintings are real, the money is real, and the exchange is made.

That was the downside of employing judges. They had such firm ideas about what would and would not fly in court.

“And I’ll have to be alone,” Jill said tightly.

“No way. Forget it.”

She didn’t like it, but she didn’t see any way around it.

Sometimes rapids couldn’t be finessed. They had to be ridden.

“I’m not going to waste time arguing about this,” Jill said. “Where’s your phone?”

“Why do you need it?”

“I’m calling Grace Silva Faroe. Then I’m going back next door and firing St. Kilda over my sat phone.”

SAN DIEGO

SEPTEMBER 17

12:41 A.M.

Faroe picked up the phone, listened, and glanced toward the rocking chair where Grace was nursing Annalise.

“She’s busy,” Faroe said. “Talk to me.”

“Who is it?” Grace asked.

“Jill, on Zach’s phone.”

“I can lactate and think at the same time,” Grace said, holding out her hand for the phone.

Faroe got out of bed and walked over to Grace. Naked.

“Get some pants on,” she said, trying to ignore the eye-level view as she reached for the phone. “I’m going blind.”

He smiled. “The phone is on speaker, amada.”

“Hello, Jill,” Grace said, taking the phone and telling herself she was too old to blush. “Are you calling me from a shower for the usual reason?”

“Um, what’s the usual reason?” Jill asked.

“Bugs,” Zach said into the phone.

“Right. Bugs,” Jill said. “My sat phone is in the other room and the door is closed, but Zach is being paranoid.”

“Cautious,” Zach said.

“Am I necessary to this conversation?” Grace asked.

Faroe reached for the phone.

Grace handed him the baby to burp.

“Let Zach summarize,” Faroe said. “Then everyone can argue.”

“The opposition called Jill’s sat phone about five minutes ago,” Zach said. “She’s supposed to fire St. Kilda, leave half the paintings with a friend in Vegas, drive north alone with half the paintings, and wait for the nice arsonist/shooter to call again and give her a meeting place to exchange paintings and information on the other six paintings with said nice arsonist/shooter for two million, cash.”

“Bullshit,” Faroe said.

“Took the word right out of my mouth,” Zach said.

“Thank you for your input,” Grace said ironically. “Does anyone have a better plan for getting our hands on Mr. Nice before he burns down or shoots up the whole world?”

Silence.

Followed by a baby’s lusty burp.

“Ah, intelligence at last,” Grace said. “Shooter Mary is practicing with the military outside of Las Vegas. She’ll be the contact, assuming Mr. Nice is so stupid as to show up and ask for the second half of the paintings.”

With that, Grace handed Faroe the phone, picked up another phone, and punched in Mary’s cell number.

“Who’s Shooter Mary?” Jill asked.

“Our long-arms specialist,” Faroe said. He smiled thinly. “She fights real good up close and personal, too.”

“She’s put me in the dirt a few times,” Zach agreed. “But I still don’t want Jill to go alone in the car.”

“Nobody wants her to go alone,” Faroe said. “That isn’t the point.”

“You won’t do her any good riding in the trunk,” Grace said clearly. “And you can be sure she’ll be vetted for company along the way before anything else happens.”

Zach made a growling sound of frustration that told everyone what they already knew-he’d lost the battle.

But not the war.

“I have a plan,” Zach said.

“I’m listening,” Faroe said.

“First, we’ve got to get Jill a BlackBerry,” Zach said. “She can text-message me without tipping off the dude listening to the bug.”

“Done,” Faroe said.

“Second, get me a Cessna Skymaster and a really good pilot,” Zach said.

“How soon?” Faroe asked.

“In time to keep up with Jill when she leaves tomorrow at, say, an hour or so before noon. It might be later, but I want to have everything in place well before she leaves.”

Faroe grunted. “I’ll get back to you.”

“No Skymaster, no op,” Zach said flatly. “I’ll tie Jill up and take her into the desert until the auction is over.”

“I’ll get the Skymaster if we have to steal it,” Faroe said. “Then what? Cold convoy?”

“Yes. I’ll have her six o’clock, ten thousand feet up, pretty much invisible to anything but radar. The Skymaster can float along almost as slow as she can drive, and it has enough range to go from Vegas to stateline.”

“What will you do if Jill gets into trouble along a lonely stretch of Nevada road?” Faroe asked. “Parachute down?”

“That’s where the good pilot comes in,” Zach said. “I need one who is used to taking off and landing on short strips, like the ones in the Middle East.”

“Not a problem. We have more than one good pilot on tap.”

“I’ll need some chase cars and a motor home on the road, behind Jill or in front,” Zach said. “Bodies with guns.”

“Mary can help with that,” Grace said. “The men she’s training with right now are technically civilians. They’d love the exercise.”

“We’ll see,” Faroe said. “Men with guns aren’t that hard to find.”

“Smart ones are,” Grace said.

“Agreed,” Faroe said. “Assuming it goes down the way Zach outlined, are you sure this is what you want, Jill? You’re going to be bait and you’re going to be alone. Are you okay with that?”

“Okay? As in happy-happy? No,” Jill said. “But being alone is the only way to get the job done, so that’s how I’m going to do it.”

“You could take the paintings and disappear,” Faroe said. “I’m betting that it’s the auction driving this. Once it’s over, you’ll be safe.”

“So will the man who shot Garland Frost and probably killed my great-aunt,” Jill said. “That’s not good enough. I don’t want this wacko loose to kill other innocent people when I could have stopped him. I can’t live with that.”

Faroe wanted to argue, but didn’t. He felt the same way himself. So he tried a different approach. “You do realize that the caller could be setting you up to take a fall as an extortionist?”

“That’s what I told her,” Zach said.

“How can it be extortion when the paintings are real?” Jill asked impatiently.

“I didn’t say it was extortion,” Faroe said, “only that it could be made to look like a shakedown long enough for the local law to arrest you and keep you away from the auction.”

“That’s what I’d do,” Zach said.

“So would I,” Faroe said before Jill could speak. “Tal Crawford of Crawford International is the biggest Bigfoot expected in the Vegas auction. If he’s behind your problems, you’ll be bucking the local law as well as your bug artist. CI has its hooks into law enforcement in Nevada. Crawford is a big man in the state. We know the governor is kindly disposed toward him to the tune of a couple hundred thousand in campaign contributions. That could easily mean that the state police would rather listen to Crawford’s version of events than yours.”

“Were they legal contributions?” Zach asked.

“Grace vetted the filings. There’s nothing improper about them.”

“Too bad,” Zach said.

“Yeah.”

“So Crawford is clean?” Zach asked.

Faroe smiled thinly. “He hasn’t buried any bodies where St. Kilda can dig them up. Yet. His lawyers are the best money can buy.”

“Ditto the politicians,” Zach said sarcastically.

“We don’t have time to play Oh, Ain’t It Awful,” Jill said. “I’m supposed to call Faroe on my sat phone and fire St. Kilda. What’s my new girlfriend’s name again?”

“Mary,” Faroe said.

“Mary what?”

“When you’re near the bug, just call her Mary,” Faroe said.

“Good,” Grace agreed. “I’m briefing her as I listen to you waste time.”

“Let Mary take Jill’s place,” Zach said.

“Too risky,” Jill said instantly. “Whoever is tracking us must know what I look like.”

Zach hissed a word but didn’t disagree. There were pictures of Jill scattered all over the public record.

Faroe said something too low to catch. He knew just how Zach felt.

“Last chance, Jill,” Faroe said. “Are you certain you want to put yourself in danger over this?”

“Yes,” Jill said. “Besides, if things get dicey, Zach will be only a few minutes away, right?”

And it only takes a few seconds to kill someone.

Everyone knew it, but no one said it aloud.

HOLLYWOOD

SEPTEMBER 17

1:04 A.M.

Score listened to the bug on Jill Breck’s sat phone and laughed out loud. St. Kilda didn’t like being fired.

“Listen, Joe,” the Breck woman said for the third time. “This just isn’t working. You’re spending all kinds of money and not getting anywhere. I want the paintings back as soon as possible. And it better be possible by tomorrow morning.”

“Going off alone at this stage isn’t smart,” Faroe said.

“And staying with St. Kilda is dumb. My paintings. My choice.”

Silence, then a sigh. “Whatever you say, Ms. Breck. When you sign off on the paintings tomorrow morning, your relationship with St. Kilda is at an end.”

“Good. And don’t bother calling me, hoping to change my mind. I’m going downstairs to try my luck at the tables.”

The connection ended.

Smiling, Score leaned back in his chair and mentally reviewed the players and their positions on the chessboard of the op. He loved an op like this. Any mope with a gun could kill someone, but it was the mental game that separated the players from the wannabes.

Score was a player.

Now that St. Kilda was off the board, arranging the downfall of the clever Ms. Breck would be a pure pleasure.

LAS VEGAS

SEPTEMBER 17

2:15 A.M.

Jill lay with Zach, sweat gleaming, pleasure burning. With whispered words and interlocked bodies, they climbed a long slope of sensation to the cliff at the top of the world. Then they went over, free-falling through fire, landing in a tangle of sheets and one another.

When they no longer trembled and breathed brokenly, he kissed her with a gentleness that made her eyes sting.

“You have to go,” he said in a low voice. “Now.”

Her body tightened around him. “We have hours yet.”

“You need to sleep or you won’t be ready for whatever happens.”

“I can run on less sleep than this.”

“If you don’t leave now,” Zach said, “I’ll keep you here and to hell with the op.”

Jill stared into his eyes and knew that he meant it. Temptation went through her in a shivering wave that had nothing to do with passion. Then she closed her eyes and untangled from him slowly, reluctantly.

“Tell me that after tomorrow,” she said as she eased to her feet.

Zach started to tell her that tomorrow was an expectation, not a guarantee. The look on her face said she already knew that.

“After tomorrow,” he said.

His words could have been a warning, an agreement, or a vow. She didn’t know which.

She did know better than to ask.

Quietly she walked from their shared room to the empty one. She closed the connecting door very softly. Her sat phone was right where she’d left it, drowned by a flock of large, fluffy pillows.