“If you kids can stop haggling long enough to grab your gear,” Riley cut in from the pilot’s seat, “we’re coming up on your search location now.” There was little to be gleaned from his voice to know if he was for or against the idea of keeping the missing gems.
“Set us down where you can,” Joe Marcus said, turning all business once again. I cursed long and silently behind a bland expression. If he knew who had gone to Parker, and why, then I was probably blown from the start. No wonder Riley had tried to shake me off the skid of the Bell on the very first day.
The Aussie made another deceptively casual landing and was in the air again as soon as we’d jumped down into the rubble. He hovered through our standard radio checks, then moved off with a jaunty wave through the canopy.
I returned the salute and watched him surf the rooftops until the Bell disappeared from view. As the thrum of the rotors began to fade into the distance I started to turn back to Joe Marcus. And as I did so I heard the unmistakable harsh metallic click of the slide being racked back to chamber the first round into the breech of a semiautomatic.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I completed my turn very slowly and found Joe Marcus with that big Colt .45 in his hands again. The only thing that kept my heartrate from going stratospheric was the fact the gun wasn’t pointing at me.
Marcus was wearing a loose shirt over khaki cargoes but I hadn’t picked up any sense that he was armed. Which meant either he was really good, or I was slipping. And as before I knew that he didn’t carry just for show — he was more than capable of using.
The SIG sat snug in the small of my back under my own shirt. I knew I could get to it quickly but not quickly enough.
“You expecting to repel boarders?” I asked with a calm I did not feel.
He stared at me for a moment with no humour in his face. I fought to keep my shoulders easy and my hands relaxed by my sides. Then he tucked the Colt away under his shirt again and moved past me.
“No point in carrying a weapon that isn’t ready to shoot,” he said. He paused, found me still frozen. “You coming or what?”
“‘What’, probably,” I muttered and followed him.
We picked our way over the rubble until we turned into the street where Lemon had found Santiago Rojas. Another building had partially come down during the night. We were getting perhaps half a dozen aftershocks a day, some worse than others. Unless they threatened to throw me off my feet I tended to ignore them. How quickly we learn to be blasé.
“So, if we’re searching for something specific why didn’t you bring Hope along?”
Marcus stepped across an eighteen-inch gap in the road surface without apparent concern.
“It’s not exactly Lemon’s specialty,” he said.
“Oh I don’t know. Hope reckons once that dog’s had a sniff of just about anything she can find it again.”
“Yeah, well, they both do enough to earn their keep,” Marcus said with a flick of irritation in his voice. “And maybe I don’t want to expose the kid to danger unnecessarily.”
“She’s an adult, as she’s only too ready to point out. She’s capable of making her own choices.” I thought of the gems I’d seen Hope inspecting in the privacy of her room and added silently, however poor some of those choices might be.
He hesitated and a dark flicker crossed his features. “In many ways she’s still a child. And she’s on my team — my responsibility.”
That hesitation made me curious. Time to push it again, gun or no gun.
“So, do you take responsibility for her actions too?”
Joe Marcus stopped then, turned to look back at me with his head tilted in a manner I was coming to know well. For a moment I thought I might be getting somewhere.
“Might be easier if we split up,” he said then. “Keep your radio on. If you find anything, call me.”
“Likewise.”
“Of course.”
I watched him walk away, hopping nimbly over tumbled blockwork and daggers of broken glass still fettered to their twisted wooden frames.
“Yeah,” I said quietly, “I bet you will…”
I headed for the nearest cross-street, a wider main road that bisected the tourist district. From there I cut down the service road running behind Rojas’s jewellery store. In the mouth of the narrow street I halted, trying to get a feel for my quarry’s train of thought.
The main road would have been a faster escape route for our gem thief but it was also more exposed. If I’d been him I would have stuck to the alleyways until I was well clear, but if he had enough bottle he could have shed his mask and gloves, disguised his booty in a brightly coloured shopping bag and strolled away like any other tourist. A studied lack of urgency would have proved very effective camouflage.
And this was a man, after all, who had robbed a high-end jewellery store, alone in broad daylight. Surely he must have known that as soon as he was out of the door Rojas would be straight on the phone to the cops — whatever his relationship with Peck might have been.
Ah.
Unless, of course, the unlucky Frenchman was not the only person the robber had been intending to leave behind him dead.
Logic told me the man was long gone but that didn’t stop me from reaching very quietly under the back of my shirt and easing the pistol grip of the SIG into my palm. It said something about what my life had become that I always felt better with a gun in my hand.
Maybe that was one of the many things that had driven Sean away.
I shook my head as if to dispel flies. Now was not the time. When is?
Besides, the unknown robber was not the only person who might have a reason for wanting me out of the way.
I approached the shadowed service road in the same way I would a live-firing Close Quarter Battle range, moving quiet and cautious. I put my feet down with great care, making sure each step was solid before I trusted my weight to it, just in case I had to launch for cover. I led with the gun in both hands, my right forefinger close but off the trigger. Aware of their precarious nature I avoided hugging the buildings too much, instead spending as much time with my eyes on possible hiding places as searching the ground.
Nobody leapt out at me and I found nothing.
I had almost reached the end and was already mentally tossing a coin for right or left when the radio came to life in my earpiece.
“Charlie, you read me?”
I settled the SIG into my right hand and reached for the transmit button with my left.
“I’m here, Joe. Go ahead.”
His next transmission was indistinct. I halted, frowning, thumbed up the volume on my handset.
“Say again?”
“I asked if you were due east of our insertion point?” His voice came over louder this time but I got the impression he was speaking softly.
I took a few paces forward so I was just out of the service road and glanced up at the sun, shielding my eyes. After some quick ready reckoning of direction I hit transmit again, swinging round as I did so. After the relative gloom of the service road it was uncomfortably bright out there.
“Negative. More like southwest.”
“In that case—”
He never got to finish whatever he’d been about to say. At that moment a high-pitched whine zinged past my ear. The brickwork within a couple of feet of where I’d been standing disintegrated with a sharp, vicious crack.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I twisted on the balls of my feet and threw myself sideways, back toward the relative safety of the service road entrance. Another round followed the first. If I hadn’t moved instantly, that one would have been right on target.