That left only the waiter who was trying to retrieve the bottle, and unfortunately it left him free. He grabbed for it once more.
Mariella cried, “Stop him!” as Gabriel ran past her.
The waiter scooped up the bottle and turned with a satisfied smirk on his face. The expression didn’t last long because in the next second Gabriel’s fist crashed into his face.
As the man teetered, Gabriel got his first good look at him. He was big, well over six feet tall, with massive shoulders that strained the seams of the uniform jacket. He hadn’t gotten those shoulders carrying trays of champagne, nor was waitering likely to be how he’d acquired his broken nose or the network of scars along both cheeks and around his eyes.
The punch had momentum and all of Gabriel’s weight and strength behind it. Despite being bigger and heavier than Gabriel, the man reeled from the impact. His hands went up in the air…
And the whiskey bottle flew out of his grip, turning over and over as it soared high and then came crashing down to shatter on the marble floor in an explosion of glass and liquid.
Mariella Montez had just seen several men beaten and several more shot, and she’d watched it all without showing any abnormal distress, any grief. But now, as she saw the glass shatter and its contents lost, she screamed, a low, plaintive wail, as if her heart had been ripped out.
Chapter 2
It was such a soul-rending cry that Gabriel had to turn and look at her. She had clapped her hands to her face and her eyes were wide with horror. Before he could ask her for an explanation, Gabriel heard the scuff of shoe leather behind him.
The punch Gabriel landed as he spun would have knocked most men out cold, but not this red-jacketed plug-ugly. The man was still upright, swinging a long, brawny arm in a backhanded swipe that smashed into Gabriel’s jaw. Gabriel staggered but managed to stay on his feet.
He yelled, “Michael, no!” as his younger brother came running up and jumped onto the big man’s back.
The phony waiter grunted and turned in place with Michael clinging to him, then brushed Michael off like a horse swatting away a fly. As Michael fell backward with his arms windmilling, he crashed into Gabriel. Their legs tangled and both of them went down.
That gave the waiter enough time to grab Mariella, throw her over his shoulder, and start galloping toward one of the rear exits. The other waiters covered hisretreat with blazing automatics. Gabriel scrambled up but couldn’t give chase. Flying lead forced him to grab Michael and duck behind one of the thick pillars as slugs pitted it.
He risked a glance around the pillar when he heard Mariella scream. She was pounding her fists against her captor’s back as he ran, but he didn’t seem to feel the blows.
Gabriel grimaced and wished again that he’d brought a gun with him tonight. He would have risked a shot at the son of a bitch’s legs to bring him down.
As it was, all he could do was pull his head back while bullets chipped splinters of plaster from the pillar next to his ear. His last sight of Mariella came as she was carried, still struggling, through the rear exit.
“The back!” a cop yelled from the front of the Great Hall. “Somebody cover the back!” Other cops were pouring into the room finally, and Gabriel saw two of them salute, turn on their heels and run out again, no doubt headed for the back.
But they would get there too late, Gabriel knew. Despite all the chaos, the waiters had sliced through the scene with brisk efficiency, like sharks through a school of minnows. Whoever and what ever else they were, they were professionals. Chances were their getaway was already arranged and they would be gone before any of the police could reach the back of the huge museum building.
Gabriel turned to Michael and said, “What the hell were you thinking, jumping on that guy?”
“I had to do something.”
“You do plenty,” Gabriel said. “Leave the jumping on people to me.”
“What was that he was after, anyway? It was rolling and spinning around so much I never got a good look at it.”
“I did,” Gabriel said. “It was a whiskey bottle.”
“A bottle of whiskey!”
Gabriel shook his head. “That’s not what I said. Come on.”
The shooting had stopped. Police officers and fire department paramedics were spreading out through the hall to check on the people who were injured.
Gabriel frowned as he scanned the room. He didn’t see any of the red-jacketed figures they’d taken down during the fray. The phony waiters had taken their wounded with them.
Michael still wasn’t too steady on his feet, so Gabriel kept one hand under his brother’s arm as he led him toward the spot where the bottle had shattered. He knelt, touched a couple of fingers to the wet spot on the floor, and then smelled them.
“That’s not whiskey,” he said. Not that he’d thought it had been—whatever had been in the bottle hadn’t been dark enough to be whiskey. “Doesn’t smell like any other kind of booze, either.”
He wet his fingers with the residue again and licked them, causing Michael to exclaim, “For God’s sake, Gabriel, don’t do that!”
Gabriel looked up. “Why not?”
“It could be some sort of toxin!”
Gabriel waited a moment, then shook his head. “Not a fast-acting one anyway.” He tasted it again. “It has no flavor at all.” He bent forward, sniffed at the spot directly. “No smell. No color. It’s not oily, not viscous. As far as I can tell, it’s water. Plain water.”
“Some poisons are flavorless and odorless.”
Gabriel nodded. “And not oily, sure. But so’s water, and I think that’s what this was a bottle of.”
Michael raised a hand to the cut on his head, winced as he touched it. “Why all that fuss over a whiskey bottle filled with…?”
“Water?”
“They went to a lot of trouble to get it away from Miss Montez.”
“Damned if I know.”
“You guys freeze!”
The brothers looked up at a beefy NYPD cop with a thick mustache dangling down over his upper lip. He had a service revolver leveled at them.
“Perfect timing, officer,” Gabriel said. “If you’ve got a key to the barn door, feel free to lock it.”
“Huh?”
“The horse.” Gabriel made a shooing gesture with one hand. “Gone.”
The cop turned to Michael. “What’s he talkin’ about?”
Michael gave Gabriel a look, then said, “Officer, we’re not armed, and we didn’t have anything to do with what happened here. We were guests at the reception. In fact, our Foundation was co host of the reception.”
The cop nodded toward the pieces of broken glass scattered across the floor. “What’s that you were monkeyin’ with?”
“That bottle appears to be what the gunmen were trying to obtain,” Michael said. “Along with a woman named Mariella Montez, who has been abducted.”
“Who’s this Montez?”
Gabriel said, “A young woman. About so tall—” Gabriel gestured with one hand. “Black hair. Busty. One of those phony waiters carried her off just before you got here.”
The cop sighed wearily. “Oh, Lord. That’s kidnappin’. Means we’ll have the damn FBI to deal with, too. Hey, stop that!”
Gabriel had taken a pen from his pocket and was using it to turn one of the larger pieces of broken glass over. “Look,” he said to Michael. “Most of the label is still intact.”
Michael leaned over and put his hands on his knees, squinting to study the label. The cop bent over beside him. “Old Pinebark,” Michael read. “Brewed in…Dobie’s Mill, Florida.” He looked at Gabriel and shook his head. “I’ve never heard of it.”