The Payback Assignment (25 page)

           
“That I’d lead you to it?”
 
Baptiste asked.
 
“Well, O’Brian, when you tilt your head just so and bat those big green eyes at me like that, how can I say no?
 
Besides, I’m not above collecting a small finder’s fee.
 
Now just what are we talking about?
 
What does this bauble look like?”

           
“Oh, ‘tis a honey of an antique brooch,” Felicity said.
 
“Picture a teardrop diamond set in Russian malachite, surrounded by matched pearls.
 
It’s really quite lovely.”
 
Her speech slowed because without warning, her senses had again heightened.
 
If humans had antennae, hers would have been out.
 
Reaching for a sandwich she dropped her napkin, apologized and bent to pick it up.
 
While she was under the table she scanned the room.
 
She took six precious seconds to confirm the locations of exits and to plan for trouble.
 
When she sat up she could sense a man standing behind her.
 
She didn’t turn, but kept her eyes on Baptiste.

           
“All right, Duncan,” she said, her voice cool but not threatening.
 
“Why ever do you think you need two bodyguards to have lunch with me?
 
So very dangerous, am I?”

           
 
“I don’t really know, Felicity.”

           
“Why a trap?” she asked, still not looking at the man behind her.
 
“I’m here alone, unarmed, asking an old friend for help.”

           
“Sorry, sweetheart,” Duncan said, “but I’m afraid I had a secondary agenda for our meeting.
 
You see, there’s a gentleman, a man about town, who would like an introduction to you in the worst way.
 
I couldn’t resist the reward offered, but I couldn’t be at all sure that you would agree to the meeting.
 
My friends are here to escort you to him.”

           
She turned finally to stare up at the big, bald man with the cavernous eyes who stood behind her chair.
 
“But I never even had my lunch,” she sighed.

           
“I will remain and enjoy the marvelous menu in your stead.”

           
She bit her lower lip, and her shoulders dropped in apparent resignation.
 
“Well, I’ll travel with gruesome here if I must, but he’ll at least have to be neat.”
 
With that, she twisted around in her seat, reached up and began straightening the tall man’s tie.
 
Out the corner of her eye, she watched Duncan, who was plainly amused at how nervous her attention made his hulking bodyguard.
 
He must believe she was simply trying to make the best of a bad situation.

           
When she saw that Duncan and his seated assistant were relaxed, she knew the time for action had arrived.
 
She smiled sweetly up into her standing “escort’s” eyes, subtly tightening her grip on his tie, and slid herself off the edge of her chair.

           
Her rump smacked the floor painfully.
 
Her guard, snapped forward by her weight, bent awkwardly at the waist.
 
His tongue jutted out when his Adam’s apple crashed into the back of her chair.

           
Before the tall man had slumped to the floor gagging, even before James could rise from his seat, her hand darted like a striking adder to the table.
 
She flipped a shaker at the big man’s face.
 
The cap, which she had loosened in her assailants’ full view, dropped away.
 
A cloud of black pepper engulfed the flunky’s head.
 
Fingers that were originally headed for his shoulder holster, now clawed at wounded eyes.

           
She and Duncan rose to their feet simultaneously.
 
His eyes gleamed with hatred.
 
She tossed her scarlet locks and smoothed her dress.
 
The agile, continental cat burglar took one step toward the girl and fell on his face.
 
He had not noticed Felicity tying his shoelaces together during those scant seconds she spent bent under the table.

           
The statuesque redhead was pushing the door open before her three “dates” recovered.
 
The entire episode, from tie tightening to darting across the room toward the door, had taken place within eight seconds.

-22-

           
Felicity wasted no time getting into her Corvette and moving it into traffic.
 
She was angry.
 
Angry with herself for being so trusting.
 
Angry at an old friend for being untrustworthy.
 
Angry at a world that twisted people so easily, turning friends into enemies in a heartbeat.
 

           
Her brain spinning, she drove by reflex.
 
As she cruised, a growing uneasiness crept into her mind.
 
She wandered the streets, pursuing an elusive feeling.
 
It was her usual danger warning, but then again it was not.
 
She was confident of her own safety, but her senses were never wrong.
 
Whatever it was, it was driving her crazy, like a hornet trapped in her ear.
 
And something was drawing her uptown, making her turn.
 
She wondered if Morgan ever...

           
That was it!
 
Her eyes snapped wide and she squealed her tires taking the next corner.
 
It was Morgan.
 
He was in danger, deadly danger.
 
Perhaps walking into a trap.
 
She did not know how she knew, nor did she care.
 
All she was sure about was how she cared about this man.
 
He had saved her life and by God, she would save his if she could.

           
Felicity usually kept a low profile because she hated the idea of entanglement with the police under any circumstances, but this day her need for speed tossed all that out the window.
 
She turned up the Chieftains blaring from her radio, then pressed her thumb into the button on the side of her Hurst T-shifter, releasing the nitrous oxide kicker to her engine.
 
Her head snapped back as her car leaped forward and suddenly she was drag racing across town, aiming at the ramp onto the Henry Hudson Parkway.
 

           
The Henry Hudson, recently rebuilt, was a narrow strip along Manhattan Island’s western edge.
 
It was two lanes wide each way, with a two-foot high cement wall on either side.
 
The lanes were wavy lines dotted with potholes.
 
The traffic flow was fierce, hot and unforgiving.

           
At times like this, she did her driving on another mental plane.
 
The union of driver and machine was nearly meditative.
 
She flowed among the cars, weaving with the wavy lines at eighty miles per hour.
 
Pursuit was not a concern.
 
She knew no policeman would be insane enough to chase her on this madcap road.

           
While much of her consciousness focused on guiding her car, another part of her brain considered her reactions, as if she could stand outside herself as an observer.
 
She wondered if this mad urge she felt was the same as whatever drove Morgan Stark to her, days ago in an obscure Centrral American jungle.
 
Where had it come from?
 
What was the bizarre link between their minds that appeared to be functioning right then as a biological homing device?
 

           
After all, they were barely more than strangers and they could not be less alike.
 
White and black, sophisticated and earthy, educated and not.
 
They had nothing whatever in common.
 
Of course, they both traveled in an underground subculture, but she moved in a world of thieves and confidence men, not professional soldiers and hardened killers like he did.

           
She remembered two or three people in the past telling her that she was psychic, usually after a narrow escape.
 
She had never really accepted it.
 
A natural skeptic, she had always figured she just had good instincts, or sharp senses.
 
But now this had happened.
 
There was no denying this, no explaining it away.
 
There was no logical, rational way that she could know Morgan’s location.
 
But she also had not cared about anyone this much since she had left her family.
 
Now her respect, affection, and perhaps something stronger she felt for this adventurer rogue was leading her right to him.

           
Although she was quite familiar with Manhattan’s streets, she had very little experience with the rest of New York City.
 
She somehow got onto the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive on the east side of the island.
 
Soon she found herself on something called the Major Deegan Expressway.
 
Minutes later she was smoothly shifting down through the gears in a slum neighborhood in the South Bronx.
 
She remembered seeing Dublin after a clash between the IRA and British forces.
 
The setting was eerily familiar.

           
Fear and doubt were eating their way into her mind.
 
This was insane.
 
She could cruise around for days looking for Morgan.
 
She must have been crazy thinking she could find one man in a city of millions.
 
Oh, God, she would hate to fail.

           
She shifted down into first gear to lose more speed just as her ebony Corvette slid past a building surrounded by vacant lots.
 
At the moment she glanced up at the tenement, she heard the sound of a small explosion come from inside the building.
 
A bomb?
 
No.
 
Too high pitched for a bomb blast, but too loud for a gunshot.
 
It could have been a shotgun blast.

           
In less time than those thoughts took to form, she had pulled the ‘Vette over to the curb, locked the car, engaged the anti-theft device, kicked off her high heels and started her sprint toward the door.
 
It was Morgan.
 
Somehow she knew he was in there, and the intermittent gunshots she heard could spell his death.

           
Seconds later she stood in the hall, panting as much from anxiety as breathlessness.
 
She had lunged up the front stairs to the landing before she had time to think.
 
People were upstairs shooting at each other and here she came to save the day with nothing but her teeth and her nails.
 
She cast about quickly for a weapon.
 
In a far corner lay a dirty man, slumped over in a ball.
 
Next to him lay a broken wooden table leg.
 
In desperation, she snatched it up.
 
With a leap she smashed the single naked bulb illuminating the building.
 
Now the entire hall was midnight dark.

           
As silently as a cat creeping through a graveyard, the girl stepped up the stairs, avoiding the broken ones.
 
She thanked the Lord for blessing her with almost inhuman night vision.
 
It was an invaluable asset for a burglar.
 
Now it was her only equalizer against men whose profession was killing.

           
Darkness also filled the apartment on the second floor, interrupted only by the intermittent muzzle flashes of pistols and a shotgun.
 
Morgan could smell rather than see the cloud hanging in the air.
 
The smell, gunpowder mixed with sweat, stung his nose.
 
His back against the sofa and gun in hand, Morgan braced to make his move.
 
His crash into the wall had sprained his left shoulder but, aside from that minor injury, he considered himself pretty lucky so far.
 
A half dozen bullets had ripped through the couch but none had hit him.
 
The well-stuffed sofa had also proved solid enough to absorb two follow-up shotgun blasts, mostly because the man firing the shotgun lacked the courage to get any closer to Morgan’s gun.