Katherine O’Neal (50 page)

The bed shifted. A moment later, his head
came into her line of vision. His tongue joined hers, lapping at
her aureole, twining with her tongue.

“Lock the door, darling.”

He raised a brow. “Modesty at this late
date?”

“I don’t want Bat walking in.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t want him to see the evidence of how
very much I love you.”

His eyes softened. “Are you sure about this?
I shouldn’t want to overtax you.”

“I need your loving to make me whole.”

With a tender smile, he leaned down and
kissed her lips. “Then how can I refuse?”

He crossed the room and turned the key in the
lock. As he turned back, there was a distinctly carnal smoldering
in the depths of his midnight eyes. He unbuttoned his shirt and
pulled it from his trousers, displaying the wide expanse of
delectably hairy chest. As he walked back toward her, he shrugged
out of the shirt and tossed it negligently aside.

“Do you merely require the—taste of my flesh
on your tongue? Or may I partake as well?”

Her eyes were full of promise, but her voice
was provokingly remote. “Let’s just see what happens, shall
we?”

After their loving exertions, Mace suggested
Saranda sleep. But instead she felt energized by their lovemaking,
filled with a new conviction that together they could accomplish
anything. So she put on the robe Bat had bought her—a frilly peach
ensemble, with ruffles at the low neckline and along the lower half
of the sleeves—sexy and flamboyant in the way Bat liked women to
dress. Hardly the style of a woman who’d spent most of her life
aiming for invisibility, but she wore it to please him. Mace called
Bat and Wyatt into the sitting room, leaving the volatile Doc
Holliday to guard the door.

The men could scarcely help but notice the
new bond that existed between Mace and Saranda, so intense was it
that it seemed like another presence in the room. Bat took a
straight-backed chair, turned it backward, and straddled it,
settling himself grimly to concentrate on the task at hand.

Saranda was eager to get down to business. “I
want to hear everything,” she said, looking at Mace.

“Our immediate problem is to get moving
before the courts find a way to reclaim you. We can’t hold you here
for long. Already, we’re surrounded day and night. They may cable
Washington of their own volition and come back with another
warrant. It isn’t enough just to escape their clutches. We must do
so legally, so Saranda is free from fear of further incrimination.
To do that, we must regain the newspaper. It’s the only way we can
effectively prove her innocence.”

“How can we help?” asked Bat.

“First, by making sure no one gets in here to
discover Saranda’s disappearance.”

“Am I going somewhere?” she asked.

“That’s the next step.”

“But how are we going to get the paper back?
You said yourself you’re the last person McLeod would sell to—if he
sells at all.”

Mace sat back and gave her a mysterious
smile. “You tell me, Princess. What’s the one way we can get to
McLeod?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think back, to before the murders. Who’s the
one person in the world he’d likely take counsel from?”

She was straining to think.

“His mother?” Bat supplied.

With a coaxing gleam in his eye, Mace leaned
forward and urged in a low voice, “Think, Princess. The dinner
party at Jackson’s... the masked ball...”

Suddenly, it came to her. “Of course!” she
cried. “Madame Zorina!”

He grinned and sank back in his chair.
“Clever girl.”

“Who in the Sam Hill,” asked Wyatt, “is
Madame Zorina?
”

“I remember now,” said Bat thoughtfully.
“She’s that Gypsy fortune-teller.”

“
Madame Zorina,”
Saranda corrected,
“is not
merely
a Gypsy fortune-teller. She happens to be the
greatest confidence woman the world has ever known. Better, even,
than I am. She’s such a smashing success, in fact, that no one can
figure out exactly what her con is. As far as I know, every one of
her predictions has come true. But where is she, Mace?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“But I don’t see—”

Mace was watching her with a complacent
smile, as if waiting for it to dawn on her. Suddenly, it did. She
fell back in her chair. “Perhaps I do.”

“
You’re
Madame Zorina.”

Her hesitancy fluttered like moths in her
stomach. “I don’t know, Mace. Sander just saw me in prison. He
might recognize me.”

“Has anyone ever recognized you before—anyone
you didn’t want to?”

“No... but Madame Zorina’s at least
seventy.”

“All the better. Less chance of him making
the association.”

“And her predictions—”

“I’ve already thought of that. All you have
to do is play the role convincingly.”

She took a breath. “Madame Zorina has been my
heroine since I was a child. The thought of impersonating her—”

“Yes?”

“It’s a bit daunting.”

“Challenging, perhaps. Not impossible.”

“I’m so weak... and thin....” She ran a hand
self-consciously over her collarbone.

“All the better to pass as an old woman.” He
leaned forward again and took her hand in his. “You don’t have to
do this if you don’t want to. I shall think of something else.”

She saw in his eyes that he meant it. He was
willing to sacrifice his plan for her feelings. She remembered what
Bat had said to her the day he’d rescued her from prison.
When
you love someone, you’ll do anything to help them. Even if you have
to sacrifice your own feelings to do it.

“You needn’t worry about me,” she assured
him. “I shall play my part superbly. More brilliantly than I’ve
ever done before.”

“That’s the spirit, love. Remember, we’re not
just out to flam McLeod. We’re going to gut him completely.”

Their eyes met in a look of
comprehension.

“I shall need backup, naturally, for a job of
this magnitude,” she reminded him.

“I have people at the
Globe-Journal
willing to help. We’ll have to plant a few stories in the paper. I
would warn you, though. It won’t be easy. With Lance at the paper,
we shall be working under serious handicaps. He’ll be expecting
something. He’ll be checking everything. We must work carefully,
and without mistakes.”

Hearing Lance’s name reminded her
uncomfortably of his confession in prison. She’d have to tell Mace,
but she wasn’t certain how to broach the subject. She hesitated to
say anything, now that they were feeling closer than they ever
had.

Before she could respond, she was distracted
by a scuffle outside. Doc’s voice rose and was answered by another.
A second later, a gunshot shattered the stillness of the hotel. As
one, they surged out of their chairs and raced to the door.

Doc Holliday stood there with a smoking gun.
A man with a similarly smoking backside was screaming that he’d
been shot by a madman. Doc raised his Colt and shot him again in
the seat of his pants, sending him running down the hall in a
panic.

“He tried to force his way in,” he muttered,
holstering his gun. “Son of a bitch was wearing a badge so I reckon
this is my cue to hightail it on back to Dodge.”

“Just a moment,” Mace said. “We may need you
at a later date. Is there somewhere the three of us might
hide?”

“We can go to Stubbs,” Saranda volunteered.
“He’s an old friend on the con. Maybe he can help too.” She gave
the address of the beer hall where she’d last seen him, before
leaving town.

“Go, then,” he told Doc. “Wait for us. We
shall use the commotion you’ve caused to get Saranda out of here
undetected.”

With Stubbs’s help, they rented cheap hotel
rooms on the Lower East Side and sneaked in past a sleeping night
clerk.

Two days later, there was a knock on the
door. Mace had just come out of the bath down the hall and was
ruffling his wet hair with a towel. Saranda was eyeing him
appreciatively as she opened the door and a newspaper was thrust in
her face.

“Take a look,” Bat said.

He’d already folded the paper to the item of
interest—an article in the
Globe-Journal
announcing the
arrival of Madame Zorina, the world’s greatest psychic. The story
made a great point of stating that, though the fortune-teller was
much in demand, since reneging on her promise to appear earlier in
the year, she was here on holiday and would be seeing no one
professionally.

Saranda skimmed it as Bat read over her
shoulder. As one, they began to smile. “Not bad if I say so
myself,” Bat said.

“I told you it was too dangerous for you to
be seen here,” Mace told Bat as he took the paper from them.

“Well,” said Bat. “Just checking in.”

When he’d gone, Mace tossed the paper aside.
“What goes on here?” he asked Saranda.

“Nothing, darling. Bat’s just happy to be
involved in such a brilliant con. Have I told you how simply
brilliant you are?” She wrapped her arms about his waist and
brushed her lips along the hollow of his throat.

He moved her back so he could look at her,
frowning. “Not trying to flam me, are you?”

“I should think I’d learned my lesson on
that
score. Now about this costume you brought me. I require
a few more accessories to make it convincing...”

* * *

They checked into the Metropolitan Hotel,
where, eighteen years earlier, the Prince of Wales had taken up
residence on his trip to New York. Saranda had made herself up to
look like an old woman, with an imposing charcoal-grey wig,
fashioning crinkles, creases, and the illusion of crepey skin with
carefully applied cosmetics. She’d even taken rouge and a thin
brush and fabricated lines along her upper lip. When she pursed her
mouth just so, it gave the impression of a woman whose mouth had
once been sensually alluring but was now wrinkled and puckered with
age.

She padded her figure and dressed in a heavy
brocade suit lined along the neck and sleeves with dyed fur. The
suit gave her a stately authority and a European air. It was dusty
rose, yet she’d wrapped about it shawls and scarves in clashing
colors of purple, orange, red. The orange was calculated. When worn
close to her face, it turned her eyes a diverting shade of
green.

As Madame Zorina was known always to travel
with her dog, Stubbs had gone to extensive trouble to procure a
Hungarian vizsla—or at least a dog that looked enough like one to
pass. This close-coated copper-red pointer tugged on the leash as
they checked in, sniffing at the clothes of other guests and
generally making a nuisance of himself.

“I said it,” Stubbs grumbled. “Never work
with animals. They’ll upstage you every time.” His father had been
a carnival performer and had learned the hard way. But Saranda
decided it wasn’t a bad idea for a frolicsome hound to take the
focus off her heavily made-up face.

Stubbs, in a conservative dark suit of
European styling, was posing as her secretary. Mace, with a cap on
his head to hide his eyes, carried the bags.

Once ensconced in the elaborate suite, they
settled in to wait.

“I hope he comes soon,” Saranda said, fanning
herself with a newspaper. “This makeup is so heavy, my skin can
scarcely breathe.”

“How do you know he
will
come?”
demanded Stubbs, who was skeptical of the plan. There were too many
variables, he claimed, that could go wrong.

“We know nothing for certain,” Mace answered,
unconcerned. “But if he does, it’s up to you to make him want to
return. Now sit down and wait. Patience is the key to a
success.”

They waited three hours. Stubbs paced the
room nervously. He was a safecracker by trade and was used to more
action. Saranda concentrated on not rubbing at her face, which,
beneath the heavy greasepaint, had begun to itch.

Only Mace was serene. He made use of the time
by reading every story in the paper and making notes to himself.
Whenever Stubbs asked again, “How do we know he’ll come?” Mace
simply replied, without looking up, “He’ll come.”

Within minutes there was a knock, and Mace
and Saranda went into the bedroom, leaving the door slightly ajar.
From their vantage point, they heard Sander McLeod’s voice ask for
Madame Zorina. Without looking, Saranda could feel Mace grin.
Stubbs, holding the barking dog back by its leash, opened the
door.

* * *

They were ready for his return by eleven that
night. Candles set all around the sitting room were the only
illumination, casting eerie shadows that suited the mood and would
keep him from too clearly seeing her face. Saranda was dressed in a
costume inspired by Mace’s Gypsy ancestors: deep purple silk shot
through with gold, mixed with scarves of vibrant blues, pinks, and
greens. In her ears were gold hoops, and dozens of bracelets
jingled along her arms. She was careful to wear them over her long
sleeves to hide the youthfulness of her skin. On her hands, she
wore bright green gloves that, when she put them close to her face,
reaffirmed the impression that her eyes were green instead of blue.
As an added precaution, she wore a thin chiffon veil, also green,
across the lower half of her face and around the steel-grey of her
wig.

She was sitting at the table by the back
windows when McLeod came in, necessitating a long walk across the
room while she studied him with unflinching eyes. This was an added
precaution, in case he should catch on to her act, and she was
forced to make a speedy exit out the window. The dog Vizchy sat
panting by her side.

“So you are the impertinent young man who
demands my presence at this table,” she greeted in a scolding
tone.

“It was good of you to see me. I told your
secretary you gave a reading to my father. Preston McLeod. Maybe
you remember?”