Never Trust A Lady

Connie glanced down at it, then back at Jane, her lips curving in a regretful little smile.

“Dear Jane,” she said with a sigh, “I really do wish you hadn’t done that.”

“There,” Hawk said, straightening on an explosive breath. “What’d I tell you? There’s the damn disk. What are you waiting for? Get in there-now.”

Campbell’s breath gusted angrily as he straightened, staring down at the screen. “We go in there now, we put Carlysle at risk. She won’t hesitate to use her as a hostage-you know that as well as I do.” Campbell was rubbing unconsciously at the back of his neck. Hawk could see his own tension in the rigid set of the FBI man’s shoulders, his own frustration reflected in the angry black eyes.

“What about your snipers? Hasn’t anybody got a clear shot?” He watched the screen as if he were drowning and it held his only hope of survival. Through the headphone pressed against his ear he could hear Connie-Gatina. Emma-telling Jane in that cultured, upper-crust British voice of hers how sorry she was…

Campbell, meanwhile, was holding a low-voiced conversation with one of the other agents monitoring field communications. The agent spoke into a radio mike, listened, spoke again, then looked at Campbell and shook his head. Campbell swore under his breath.

“Can’t get a clear shot-they’re too far back. The damn place is so full of stuff…” Like Hawk, he didn’t say “stuff.” He exhaled bleakly. “I’m afraid that, for the moment, at least, Mrs. Carlysle is on her own.”

“Like hell she is.” Hawk snapped. Before anyone could stop him, he threw down the earphones, dived out of the van and hit the brick pavement running.

“I don’t understand,” Jane mumbled. Her lips felt numb. So did all the rest of her.

“It won’t do, you know,” Connie cocked her head, reminding Jane of nothing so much as a little gray hen as she turned the doomed ship in its garish green sea toward the floor and peered at the torn paper backing, and at the flat square of black plastic that was taped to the canvas beneath it. “I had hoped you’d just gotten a rather peculiar bee in your bonnet, and were being silly and stubborn about it. But I can see that wasn’t it at all, was it? You do know what this is all about, don’t you? Well…” Her sigh overrode Jane’s futile denial.

“One of the others got to you, I suppose. Who was it, that Middle Eastem-looking fellow from the auction? No doubt it was a mistake not to kill him, but you know, there would have been such a fuss…

“Or was it someone etse-the FBI, perhaps? Now that I think about it, that circus outside does seem to have their stamp on it. They have an unfortunate tendency toward overkill. The CIA would have been much more discreet.”

Connie’s eyes were bright with that combative gleam Jane had seen before. She’s enjoying this, she thought. And for some reason, she suddenly felt very calm. Not angry, not even frightened, just a strange sort of quietness inside.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked.

Connie’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “Oh my-well, I shouldn’t like to, you know. You are a dear girl, and you’ve been quite a good friend, haven’t you? We shall have to see.”

As she talked, she was ripping the disk from the back of the painting, setting the painting aside, tucking the disk into a manila envelope and then into a large handbag that had been lying on the desktop. That completed, she looked once more at Jane. Jane wondered why she’d never noticed before that Connie’s eyes were as hard and flat as polished stones.

“I have an idea you are going to be of some use to me yet, dear. For example, right now you are going to tell me who it is you’ve brought with you, exactly where they are out there and how many.” She picked up her little jewel-encrusted pen and studied it thoughtfully. “Then we shall see how helpful you can be in getting us out of here.”

Jane gave her head a confused shake. “What are you talking about? Who is out where?”

And suddenly she thought of Tom, and what he’d said about waiting until Connie’s shop opened so he could look at the paintings she’d bought. She remembered, too, that she’d thought he must be lying. And that he must be up to something.

All those cars parked in the square… Was Connie right? Were the police, or the FBI, or-good heavens, the CIA-out there even now? Was help so near, just outside these old brick walls, visible, even through the dusty front window? And yet, so far away…

Tom. Her heart gave a great leap of hope. Might he be out there, too, she wondered, right this minute? She’d left him sleeping, but then, she knew how good he was at pretending.

Oh, Tom. She’d been wrong to lie to him. That note she’d left him-he thought she’d gone to work. He wouldn’t even know she was in here until it was too late. She’d probably messed up everything for him. Oh, God, what if she, with her foolhardiness, was the one who made it possible for Connie to get away, and with that all-important disk besides? Tom would never forgive her. Never.

I’m sorry, Tom…I should have trusted you.

She’d been wrong to try to do this alone. But wasn’t that what she’d always done, what she’d always had to do? She had a whole lifetime’s habit of handling things on her own, fending for herself, dealing with every task and crisis without help from anyone. She’d never worked with a partner before. She didn’t even know how.

Out of a deep, inexpressible sadness, she said before she thought, “I came alone, Connie. No one else even knows I’m here.”

The moment the words were out of her mouth, she knew how stupid she’d been.

Connie’s eyes flared briefly. She gave a short, hard laugh. “You know, dear Jane, I actually believe you. Your eyes, you know. They simply don’t know how to lie. So, perhaps court is in session, after all. Well, now…” She studied her little jeweled pen, thoughtfully clicking it, while Jane’s heart began a slow, heavy thumping. “This does change things, doesn’t it? It would be much more tidy, much less cumbersome, I think, if I killed you now. I’m so sorry, Jane…it’s not personal, you know. And I do promise, you won’t feel any pain at all…”

Like a snake striking, Connie’s hand shot out and clamped with a grip of iron around Jane’s wrist. The jeweled pen flashed as it caught the light Jane gasped when she felt the needle prick her skin.

Shock rocketed through her, turning her blood to ice water. But it didn’t stop her from whipping her Roy Rogers cap pistol from its hiding place and bringing it down with all her might across Connie’s forearm.

It made a most satisfying sound

There were other sounds, then, too. Connie’s shriek of rage. a clatter as the jeweled pen hit the floor and went skittering away under the desk. Some loud thumps and bangs, and Tom’s voice shouting, “Stay where you are-don’t move!”

She tried to turn toward him, but the room tilted alarmingly. There was another, louder bang, followed by a crashing and tinkling, as if a crystal rain were falling. And then a strange male voice bellowing, “Get down on the floor! Get down on the floor!”

And the next thing she knew, that’s where she was. Tom’s face was looking down at her, wearing a truly magnificent scowl. She wanted to reach up and touch his face, smooth away the frown, but her arms wouldn’t obey her. She heard a strange, garbled voice say, “How is she?” And then a second face joined Tom’s, the two hovering above her like pale twin moons.

Her last thought was Aaron Campbell? But that makes no sense at all!

“I can’t believe I hit a federal agent,” Jane said with a groan.

It was the third or fourth time she’d said it, but she sounded a lot stronger and a lot less groggy now, and the nasty little fear-pulse that had been throbbing in Hawk’s belly was finally beginning to subside.

She was lying on a gurney, much against her will, in the parking lot behind Connie’s Antiques. Hawk was sitting beside her on a yellow plastic chest that belonged to the fire department‘s paramedics, most of whom were busy at the moment tending to Aaron Campbell. The FBI man lay a short distance away on a stretcher with his arms encased in inflated pressure bandages meant to control the bleeding from several deep lacerations he’d sustained breaking through the shop’s front window. Connie had been whisked away to God knows where.

There was a measure of privacy there, “privacy” being a relative term, considering there was a small army of men wearing navy blue windbreakers with “FBI” in block letters on the back swarming over every inch of the store and the blue van, and another handful armed with high-tech rifles standing around in baseball caps and flak jackets, not to mention the four guys wearing berets who were engaged in polite conversation with two others dressed in