“Maybe he left it on for us?” Maddock offered.
“And waste ten cents worth of electricity? Not a chance.”
Bones pulled his Dodge Ram pickup over to the side of the road and parked. They hopped out and moved quickly toward the house. As they drew closer, Maddock spotted a shiny white SUV parked behind a clump of trees a short distance away.
“Do you recognize that car?” He pointed at the SUV.
Bones shook his head. He quickened his pace and Maddock had to double-time it to keep up.
“I’ll take the front door, you take the back.” Maddock keenly felt the absence of his Walther, but he had seen no need to take it along to the fight. He wouldn’t have gotten it past the metal detectors at the casino in any case.
A covered front porch ran across the front of the modest, ranch-style home. Neatly trimmed shrubs and flower beds bursting with life lined the porch on either side of the front steps. Bones’ mom had a green thumb.
Maddock crept up the front steps, careful not to tread on the second, which he knew to be squeaky. By the time he reached the front door he could just make out unfamiliar voices. He moved to the front window and peered through the tiny slit between the drawn curtains.
Two well-dressed men, one a hooked-nose man of Middle-Eastern descent; the other a tall black man with a shaved head, stood over Samuel Bonebrake, Bones’ grandfather. The old man sat in a kitchen chair placed in the middle of the living room, his face a mask of serenity.
“Come on, you obstinate old codger, you are wasting our time,” hook-nose barked. He leaned in close and whispered something in Samuel’s ear.
“Questioning him will get us nowhere, Ahmed. He won’t talk unless we persuade him,” his partner said. He spoke in a light Jamaican accent that would’ve been pleasant to the ear in other circumstances. He looked down at Samuel, smiled, and drew back his fist.
Maddock sprang to the front door and turned the knob.
It was locked.
Twice he heard fist meet flesh. The second time, the old man cried out. Maddock threw his shoulder into the door and it burst open. He heard another crash as Bones forced his way in through the back. The intruders looked up in surprise, but each reacted in an instant.
Before Maddock could close the gap between them, both drew automatic pistols and opened fire. Maddock dove behind the sofa, bullets shredding the upholstery just above his head and tearing into the sheetrock wall.
“Come on, Tyson! Let’s get out of here!” Ahmed shouted. Still firing, the two men ran out the front door.
Maddock sprang to his feet and, for a moment, considered chasing them, but he knew he would be a sitting duck.
“Bones, are you all right?” He turned to see his friend standing beside his grandfather, checking him for injuries.
“I’m fine. Here.” Bones dug into his pocket, took out the keys to his truck, and tossed them to Maddock. “Pistol’s in the writing desk.”
While Bones attended to his grandfather, Maddock yanked open the drawer of the nearby desk and snatched up an old Ruger Single Six Convertible .22 revolver and a few spare bullets. He dashed out the front door just in time to see the SUV roar past the front of the house. From the passenger seat, Ahmed blazed away with his automatic.
Maddock dropped to one knee, bullets whizzing past his head and smacking into the door and wall behind him. He had time for one aimed shot which shattered the SUVs rear window before the vehicle was down the street and out of sight.
He sprinted to Bones’ pickup truck, intending to give chase, but stopped when he drew close. The front right tire was flat, and a quick inspection showed a bullet hole in the sidewall was the culprit. Ahmed was either very lucky or an excellent shot. Either way, any hope of catching the two intruders was now lost.
He tucked the revolver into his belt and stalked back to the house, cursing all the way.
Inside, Bones had moved his grandfather to the sofa. The old man lay stretched out with his head resting on a cushion, holding a bag of ice against his forehead. Blood trickled down the side of his face. Bones looked up when Maddock entered.
“What happened?” Anger burned in his eyes and his body trembled with scarcely contained rage. Maddock was almost glad he hadn’t caught up with the two intruders. He shuddered to think what Bones would’ve done had Maddock somehow managed to detain them.
“They shot out the tire. For what it’s worth, I got the license plate number.”
Bones spat a curse and his grandfather raised a crooked finger.
“No language like that in my house, Uriah,” he rasped.
“Yes, Grandfather.” The irascible Bones was perhaps the most irreverent person Maddock had ever known, but his respect for his elders was absolute.
“I don’t suppose you know who they are or what they wanted?” Maddock asked.
The old man shook his head. “I have never seen them before, but I do know what they wanted.”
Bones frowned. “And what was that?”
“They are looking for our family treasure.”
Chapter 3
“Another late night, Miss Zafrini? Maybe you need to schedule some other sort of nocturnal activities.” Hank flashed a crooked smile over the top of his Maxim magazine and winked.
Dima forced a smile. She knew the middle-aged security guard to be harmless and that his attempts at flirtation were intended to be flattering, yet it galled her that she had to put up with it. She had complained about him before and gotten nowhere. Even now, in the twenty-first century, working at a major university, she was still expected to take his clumsy overtures as complimentary rather than creepy.
“You know me, Hank. Too busy for any of that foolishness.” She hurried out the door before he could make one of his usual comments about her long legs, glossy black hair, big brown eyes, or olive complexion. He had actually reached his peak the previous evening when he assured her that he knew Jordanians were not terrorists. “Freaking redneck,” she muttered as the door slid closed behind her.
Outside, the humidity wrapped around her like a blanket. Even at nine o’clock at night Atlanta was a veritable steam room. Oh well, she’d known what she was getting into when she moved here, but the position in the university’s archaeology department had been too good to pass up. Or so she had thought.
Inside her battered Honda CRV, she blasted the air-conditioning and the new Volbeat album in equal measure and spent the drive home cursing her lazy department head who kept dumping his projects on her so he could spend time “training” his new grad assistant. Rumor had it, tonight’s instruction was taking place at the Marriott Marquis. She had considered tipping off his wife but she had no idea under what name he booked his room. Besides, his marriage wasn’t her problem. She had enough concerns of her own to be getting on with.
By the time she reached her apartment she had tired herself out and a dull feeling of discouragement had settled upon her. Perhaps she should move back home. At least there she’d be around friends and it would get her mother and father off her back.
Passing through the empty lobby, she checked her mailbox and was surprised to see among the circulars and credit card offers a small box with no sender’s name or return address. She wondered what it might be. She never received mail from home, much less packages. Her parents had finally mastered the Internet and now did their pestering through cyberspace.
The box was light; so light, in fact, she wondered if it might be empty. She gave it a shake but heard nothing. Weird.
Her apartment was decorated in a style she liked to call “too busy to care.” The sofa, her lone piece of living room furniture, faced the television set which she hadn’t gotten around to removing from its box. As long as she set it up in time for football season, she would be fine. A single, framed photograph hung on the wall — a family portrait from her teen years. Four faces smiled back at the camera. She didn’t like to look at it, hated to in fact, but she displayed it out of a sense of obligation.