She reached out and grabbed his arm to forestall, she was sure, another off-color comment. She had always thought it a corny cliché of romance novels, which she knew she shouldn’t read but sometimes couldn’t help herself, but his eyes did burn into hers. For a wild moment she thought he was going to kiss her right there, right in front of all the passers-by who were glancing curiously at the scene being played out before them.
Then he said, “Let go of my arm. It’s going numb.”
The Angel released him, flushing again with embarrassment. Once again her cursed body had shamed her. If she had hurt this agent of The Hand. If her clumsiness had damaged him—
Billy Ray flexed his hand to get the feeling back in his fingers. He smiled at her.
“That’s quite the grip you’ve got,” he said.
The Angel backed away, confused by his lightning-quick mood swings. “We must go,” she said. “We have a job to do.”
“Maybe,” Ray allowed. “If by ‘The Hand,’ you mean Leo Barnett.”
The Angel started, barely suppressing her urge to clamp a hand over his mouth. She looked wildly about to see if anyone had heard him blurt out his ridiculous indiscretion. “You’re not supposed to say his name,” she informed Ray in a ferocious whisper.
“What, Barnett’s?” he asked innocently.
“Shhhhh!”
“All right, all right,” Ray said, laughing. “Let’s go somewhere where we can talk about this job we’re supposed to do together.”
“Where?” The Angel asked suspiciously.
“I suppose the coffee shop would do,” Ray said with a tinge of disappointment in his voice. “Although a room—”
”The coffee shop,” the Angel said definitively.
“All right,” Ray agreed, easily enough. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“The Midnight Angel,” she told him.
“Angel,” Ray repeated, nodding. “Cool. It fits you.”
“Not ‘Angel,’” she corrected. “The Angel.”
Ray frowned. “Whatever,” he said as they moved off together through the lobby. “I’m not going to call you ‘The.’”
New York City: The Waldorf-Astoria
Though it had been decades since he’d last seen it, the Waldorf-Astoria’s lobby was much as John Nighthawk remembered. Intimate lighting caressed dark wainscoting, potted palms, marble accents, and expensive carpets, as well as a huge bronze clock that dominated the room like an art deco behemoth. Nine feet in height and two tons in weight, its marble and mahogany base was topped by a bronze Statue of Liberty that gleamed in the twilight-lit lobby as if it had just been polished. Other statues incorporated into the ornate clock included Queen Victoria, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and Ulysses S. Grant. It looked like a bastard to dust.
As I know well, Nighthawk thought. He had dusted and polished it himself often enough, ages ago in another lifetime before the Takisian virus had changed him and all the world.
The woman he’d been sent to meet was in a dark corner of the lobby, wraith-like in a vintage dress that made it look as if she’d been waiting for a dinner date for the last seventy-five years or so. The only thing that ruined the effect was her over-sized handbag. A small clutch purse would have gone much better with her black beaded dress and pert hat crowned by a single egret feather. Her ensemble brought back memories of the nineteen-twenties to Nighthawk. Some of them were fond.
Up close, she looked impossibly young in the uncertain light. Her brown eyes were as large and innocent as a doe’s. Her long, wavy hair cascaded down to the middle of her back like a golden waterfall. Nighthawk knew her real name, her background, and her ace abilities. But he called her the name she preferred, the name she’d taken from the bit of antique jewelry she wore on a black silk ribbon choker around her slender, elegant neck.
“Miss Cameo?” he asked.
“Cameo will do,” she replied.
Nighthawk nodded. “Mr. Contarini sent me to escort you to his tower suite,” he said. Contarini hadn’t resorted to a fictitious name for this business, but he wanted Cameo kept in the dark about his relationship with the Church. Nighthawk paused, glancing around their corner of the lobby. “I thought that you were going to bring a bodyguard with you?” he asked.
“That’s right,” the young ace said. “I did.”
“Where is he?”
Cameo held out her handbag. Nighthawk took it from her and looked inside. Among the usual trove of feminine paraphernalia was a battered old fedora.
“A hat?” Nighthawk said.
Cameo nodded. “How perceptive of you.”
He handed the purse back to her. He knew all about Cameo and her hat. He had researched her thoroughly before entering in negotiations with her on the behalf of the Cardinal. However, he didn’t think it prudent to let her know that he knew.
“Don’t sass your elders, missy,” he said briefly. “If you’ll come this way.”
Cameo accepted his rebuke in silence. They went to the elevator bank and took one nearly to the top of the Waldorf’s Tower block, the suite on the forty-first floor where Contarini always stayed when he was in New York City. Nighthawk led her to the apartment, opened the door with his key, and took her through the anteroom, a couple of sitting rooms and living rooms, to arrive at last in a spacious library.
Glassed-in ceiling-to-floor bookcases covered two adjacent walls. Most of the glossy black bookshelves now housed vintage bric-a-brac of various sorts, though some books and folios were still on the shelves. A comfortable-looking sofa and matching love seat ranged against the two other walls. The rest of the furniture consisted of a black wood desk which matched the bookshelves, and scattered leather chairs and floor lamps. The ancient reliquary that Grubbs had given his life to obtain was on a low coffee table in front of the sofa. The Cardinal waited on the sofa with an aura of impatience clinging to him like a wet swimsuit. He was incognito, wearing a six thousand dollar Armani suite with suave elegance. Usher stood silently at one end of the sofa. Magda, looking as disapproving as always, at the other.
Contarini didn’t bother to rise as Nighthawk and Cameo entered the room.
“I am Romulus Contarini,” he announced in his deep actor’s voice. His English was colored by a slight Italian accent that only made it sound more lyrical than English usually does. His handsome lips were pursed as he gazed at Cameo, as if he didn’t approve of her obvious youth, or perhaps of her, herself, in general. Nighthawk knew that the Cardinal didn’t like wild carders, though he was not averse to using them to further his schemes.
Cameo nodded. “Mr. Contarini. Nice to finally see you face to face after so many chats on the telephone.”
She glanced at Usher and Magda, but Contarini didn’t bother to introduce them.
“Nice to see you,” he said, coming down slightly on the last word. “I’m glad that you weren’t foolish enough to take the down payment we had deposited in your account, and...” He paused, as if groping for a word.
Cameo’s eyebrows rose. “And abscond with it?”
Contarini inclined his silver-haired head.
“Are we not both business people, Mr. Contarini?” Cameo asked. “We both have reputations to maintain. I trusted you enough to come to this—” Cameo paused for a moment as she glanced around the sumptuously furnished room “—elegant but rather private meeting place to channel an unknown object for a fee of two hundred thousand dollars. If I trusted you enough to accept your offer, surely you trusted me enough to fulfill my part of the bargain.”