Hawke leaped behind an enormous tea tree to avoid the hail of bullets now flitting past his head at the speed of sound and landing with an anticlimactic thud in the ground around him.
Straight ahead he watched another man join the first on the balcony. He wondered which was Johnny Chan and which the hired help. To his right, Scarlet was taking cover behind a low wall and returning fire at the men with her Beretta while Lexi sprinted behind Chan’s glistening SUV in the driveway.
He used the cover of the border plants to inch forward out of the view of the men in the house. Scarlet moved forward and went to the right where she hooked up with Lexi before both moved out around the side of the house. They were giving the men two fronts to fight, and he guessed this wasn’t going to be the hardest battle he’d ever fought.
He watched a particularly savage exchange of fire between one of the men and Scarlet which ended with the man taking three bullets in his chest and collapsing in agony over the balcony railing. He landed with a terrible thud on the pavement below.
“Damn it, Cairo!” Hawke said under his breath. “What if that was Chan?”
The other man didn’t react to the death of his colleague, and wasted no time in emptying his magazine in the direction of Scarlet Sloane.
Hawke took advantage of the moment to run forward and secure a position under the front porch. He snatched up the fallen man’s pistol and tried the door — locked. Next move was to pick up one of the plant pots and smash the window to the right of the doorway. Then he was inside.
With the sound of Scarlet and Lexi engaging the man on the balcony in a desperate firefight, Hawke moved up the stairs three steps at a time. On the upper landing he turned left and headed toward the front of the property where Balcony Man was firing at his team and occasionally dodging behind a plaster archway for cover. His footsteps masked by the sound of the gunfire, Hawke stuffed his gun in his belt and moved quickly behind the man, grabbing him by the throat with his left hand while disarming him with the other. A second later he drew the gun and held it at the man’s temple.
“Game’s Over, Chan.”
The man struggled in Hawke’s choke-hold. “Who the hell are you people?”
“Think of us as art restorers.”
“What?”
“You have some art and we’re going to restore it — to the rightful owners.” Hawke leaned over the balcony and shouted to the others to join him.
Chan began sweating. “I don’t know what you mean!”
Hawke sighed. “It’s better you talk now, because in about thirty seconds your worst nightmare is going to walk through that door.”
“I don't understand…”
About thirty seconds later Chan’s worst nightmare walked through the door.
The art thief looked at the svelte figures of Scarlet and Lexi as they walked casually into his office. “This is my worst nightmare? Looks more like a dream.”
“It’s no dream, kitten,” Scarlet said and kicked him swiftly in the balls.
Chan doubled over in agony and collapsed to the floor in a heap.
“I see you still favor the direct approach,” Hawke said.
Lexi glared at Scarlet. “Hey, not fair! I wanted to do that.”
“So go ahead,” Scarlet purred. “It’s not like I kicked them back up inside or anything… yet.”
Chan’s eyes widened and he gulped in fear. He glanced up at Hawke, tears in his eyes. “Don’t let her anywhere near me, please! You’re a man, you understand, right?”
Hawke crouched down and adopted a fake-buddy air, just two old pals in the pub. “What did we say about nightmares, Johnny?”
“Okay, okay… What do you want?”
“Like I said, you stole a piece of art recently from Hong Kong and its owners would very much like it back.”
“I don’t know what…” Chan stopped talking and put his hands between his legs as Scarlet took a step towards him. “All right! It’s in there.”
“Where?”
Chan flicked his head to a door on the far side of the office. “It’s there in the safe room. The first shelf on the right.”
Hawke glanced from Chan to the safe and moved forward. Scanning for booby-traps as he went, he stepped into the safe room and took a thin metal box from the shelf.
Back in the study he opened the box and they all peered inside.
They had found the Xi Shi Portrait.
CHAPTER NINE
Scarlet spoke first, and with undisguised contempt. “Is that it?”
“What do you mean?” Lexi said. “It’s beautiful.”
Hawke held the tiny portrait in his hands. It was much smaller than he had expected, and less colorful as well, but there was a certain beauty in its depiction of Xi Shi. She was sitting on a riverbank beside a peach tree in a pale blue dress, now faded by the centuries, and staring at herself in the water.
“So what have we got, Joe?” Scarlet said, and peered over Hawke’s shoulder to take a closer look at the portrait while Lexi strapped Johnny Chan into his leather chair and taped his mouth shut.
“We don’t want him telling his boss that we’ve got the portrait,” she said matter-of-factly, and shrugged her shoulders.
“But what’s so damned special about this particular picture?” Scarlet said. “I just don’t get it.” She took the portrait from Hawke and turned it over in her hands. “Makes you wish we had a vase to smash.”
“I don’t understand,” Lexi said, confused.
“A long story,” said Hawke. “Perhaps another time…”
Hawke took the picture back and studied it in close detail. He already knew it was a job for Ryan, and decided the quicker they got it back to the hotel the better.
“I want Ryan to take a look at this thing,” he said at last. “But first we have some loose ends to tie up here.”
Hawke stepped over Chan and tore the duct tape off his mouth.
“Who commissioned you to steal this portrait?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Chan said.
“How much did you get paid?”
Chan was silent.
Without warning, Hawke punched him hard in the face, breaking his nose. Scarlet rolled her eyes. Lexi winced.
Chan screamed and spat blood onto his polished floorboards. “You’re crazy, man! Why would you do that?”
“He’s not very good with words,” Lexi said.
“Lets his fists do the talking,” said Scarlet.
“Once again, and then I’ll reintroduce you to Cairo Sloane’s persuasive talents. “Who commissioned you to steal this picture, and where is Lea Donovan?”
“Seriously, I am very professional,” Chan said. “I never reveal the names of my clients. If I did, I would be out of business in a day and I have never even heard the name Lea Donovan in my life!”
“And you’ll be out of this world in less than a minute if you don’t overlook your touching little client-confidentiality agreement right now… Cairo?”
Scarlet purred with delight. “I thought you’d never ask.”
She stepped forward and pointed Chan’s Colt in his groin. The thief’s eyebrows went to the moon and his eyes widened like saucers.
“Okay, maybe just this once I could bend the rules a little, just for you, you understand?” He tried to grin through the fear, his eyes crawling from the muzzle of the Colt and up Scarlet’s arm to her calm, smirking face.
“I want a name, Johnny,” Hawke said. “ A name, and the location of Lea Donovan, right fucking now.” His meaty fist hovered menacingly at a solid punching-distance above Chan’s bloodied face, his arm coiled like a spring.
“Please, I beg of you just one thing,” Chan said, his voice breaking with renewed fear. “When — or more likely if — you get close to this man, please don’t tell him where you got his name. He will kill me in a heartbeat, and when I say kill, I don’t mean shoot me like you want to shoot me, I mean he will torture me to death in the most terrible way you can imagine.”