Never Trust A Lady

swearword, followed by an outraged, “What the hell is she doing?”

“You mind letting me in on whatever the hell it is she’s doing?” Hawk almost bellowed, ignoring a blast from a trucker’s horn as he ran the stop sign and made a hard right at the junction with the main road into Cooper’s Mill.

The FBI agent’s reply was lost in the squeal of tires.

“Say again?”

“I said, she’s asking about the paintings. How much did you tell her, Hawkins? Does she know what she’s doing? Is she out of her mind?”

“No, she’s just got one of her own,” he said grimly, slowing reluctantly for the traffic light opposite a Burger King. “Where are you? I’m coming into town now.”

“Uh, white van, city engineer’s markings, on the square across from the courthouse. There’s a loading zone next to it, you can park there. And Hawkins-for God’s sake, keep a low profile,. The last thing we want to do-”

But the light had just turned green, and Hawk was already hanging up on him.

“I don’t know…I just can’t make up my mind.” Jane propped the two paintings-one a rather dark landscape of horses grazing in a meadow, the other a vase full of overblown roses, complete with fallen petals-side by side against Connie’s big leather-topped desk and stood back to study them. They weren’t noticeably improved by distance. “The floral would do for the living room-it could do with some brightening, I think-but for the kitchen nook…you know, what I was really looking for was…” What? What am I looking for, exactly? And will I know it when I see it? “Something…”

And then she saw it, half-hidden behind the desk, the painting of a sailing ship foundering in a sickly green sea. And it was as if someone had flicked a switch in her mind, illuminating a video screen. A memory. “Something with boats,” she cried, swooping upon the painting, snatching it up and whirling away with it in triumph. “Yes-like this one.”

Connie, who had been leaning against a dining-room table set with an enormous set of Franciscan dinnerware, idly clicking her little jeweled pen and watching Jane’s search over the tops of her half glasses, straightened suddenly. “That ugly thing? In a kitchen? No, Jane, realty-that’s not for you, dear.”

“Not for you, dear.” Connie had been holding this painting, Jane remembered, when she’d said those words at the auction. But-funny, she hadn’t thought anything about it at the time-she’d been holding it so that Jane could see it, facing out, as if it had been the back of the painting she’d been looking at. Staring at it, studying it intently, with her glasses perched on the end of her nose.

“Oh, but…don’t you see?” Jane said with almost desperate brightness. “Those windows in the breakfast nook look right out over the lake. Something with boats… water…” She was babbling again, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “This really isn’t that bad, you know that? The colors would go, kind of…I mean, my kitchen is blue and yellow, and blue and yellow do make green. And with all the plants…”

The words ceased as if she’d suddenly run out of air. She’d never seen Connie look like that before-eyes cold and hard as stone. She felt cold herself, just from their touch, as if something evil had brushed against her.

This is it, she thought. And then, Oh, God…it’s true.

Outside on the square, in a panel truck with city engineer’s markings, Hawk stared at the bluish gray images on the video monitor screen and felt himself go cold.

“My God,” he whispered, “that’s it.”

Campbell turned from the monitor long enough to throw him a glance over his shoulder. “That’s what?”

“That’s the one-Jarek Singh’s painting.” He broke off, swearing softly. “If only I hadn’t been late to that damn auction… if I’d seen it, I’d have known.”

“What the hell are you talking about? How could you? None of us had ever seen the damn thing.”

“Seascapes-damn.” He turned angrily, looking for pacing room in the confined space and finding none. “I should have known that’s what it would be. They were all over Singh’s place in Cairo. You live in the middle of a desert, you put pictures of water on your walls, right?” He jerked back to the monitor. “What’s she doing now?”

Campbell handed him a set of headphones. “Here-listen for yourself.”

Hawk grabbed them and pressed one side against his ear, never taking his eyes from the tiny, blue-gray figures on the screen…

“I’m so sorry, dear, I’m afraid I already have a buyer for that one.” Connie’s voice was as polite and impersonal as a shop clerk’s.

“A b-buyer?” Jane’s mind seemed to have short-cimuited; she couldn’t think what to do next, could only stand there with the painting clutched in her hands, foolishly stammering.

The air in the antiques shop seemed to have thickened, become a tangible substance that clogged her breathing and wrapped itself around her like spider’s silk. It seemed to shimmer as she watched Connie move through it, slowly, like someone wading through waist-deep water…to the front of the shop…watched her take a leisurely look through the front window.

“My, what a lot of people there are in town this morning,” Connie commented as she swam slowly back toward Jane. “Have you noticed, dear? Court must be in session.”

Dazedly, she shook her head, then nodded. She couldn’t seem to hear properly; there was a ringing in her ears, like the keen of a high-tension power line.

Hawk wondered why the tension wasn’t blowing the top of his head off. “Why the hell didn’t your people take her?” he yelled. “Someone must have had a clear shot.”

Campbell turned on him like a desert dervish. “We can’t take her out until we know what she’s done with the disk, dammit! What if she’s already gotten rid of it? What if she’s stashed it? We kill her, and we’re never gonna find out where it is, or who’s got it. It’s like a freakin’ time bomb, is that what you want?”

For a long moment Hawk stared at the FBI agent, while helpless fury darkened his vision and the pounding of his blood drowned sound and thought. “She’s going to kill her,” he heard himself say, as if from a great distance. “You know that, don’t you?”

And it could happen at any minute…any second. Right before his eyes. He would see it playing out like a television show on the monitor screen…see the gun in the woman’s hand, see the neat black hole appear in Jane’s forehead…the third eye, robbing the others of all light and joy and life…and there would be nothing he could do to stop it. Nothing…

As he’d watched that lovely April afternoon, watched through the eye of his camera lens… watched his wife and son whirl past on the merry-go-round, laughing and waving…watched it all disappear in an instant. a single instant of fire and thunder and blood that would live in his memory forever…

“I don’t see any sign of a gun,” Campbell said. He was back at the monitor, staring intently at the screen. “Don’t think she’s got one on her. In the desk, maybe?”

“Maybe…” Hawk leaned over the agent’s shoulder so he could see better. “What’s that she’s got in her hand? She keeps playing with it.”

“That?” The FBI man pointed. “Looks like a pen.”

“A pen?” Hawk frowned. Campbell turned around to look at him. He was absently rubbing his thigh…

“Now then, Jane,” Connie said almost gaily, “give us the painting…there’s a good girl.” She advanced, hands outstretched.

Jane took an involuntary step backward. And instantly saw something flare, something smoky and dark, like a guttering candle flame, behind Connie’s eyes.

“She’s not helpless,” Campbell muttered, watching the monitor as if hypnotized. “She could probably take her. Jeez, you saw what she did to me.”

Hawk growled, “That was different. She was prepared for you.” He could feel the FBI man turn to look at him, but didn’t take his eyes from the monitor screen as he grimly added, “She’s never met evil before…”

Like a bird mesmerized by a cobra. Jane watched Connie’s hand reach toward her, moving slowly through that strangely viscous, thrumming space. And all the while, screened from the other woman’s view by the painting she held in her left hand, clutched against her chest, her right hand was moving too, reaching behind her, under her jacket, to grasp something hard that nestled there, tucked in the waistband of her slacks, snug against the small of her back…

With a final lunge, Connie grabbed the painting and wrested it from her grasp. But not before Jane had managed to slip her fingers under the loosened edge of the brown-paper backing. It tore away with barely a sound.