Touch of Magic (25 page)

The passenger's door on the Jeep flew open, and it
skidded around in a half circle, almost out of con
trol.

"Ellery!" a voice from inside called sharply.

"Jesus Christ!" he said under his breath.

Channing was following the line of the shots to locate him. She swooped again, and her open door gave him partial cover.

"Here!" he called, gathering himself for the
sprint across open ground.

Bullets shattered the glass in the door as he
caught hold of it. Channing peeled out almost be
fore he heaved himself in by the back of the seat. He
was nearly thrown on top of her. She veered
adroitly to elude the rain of shots that hit her right fender.

"You always drive like a drunken bat?" He
panted, bracing himself.

"You always take dumb-ass chances?" she shouted
back as her wrists whipped the wheel.

But she grinned, her eyes never leaving the road,
and Ellery, ducking a shot, knew she was aware he
had returned the grin. The night, which thirty sec
onds ago he'd thought would be his last, seemed
suddenly fine.

"Why'd you do it?" he asked as another shot whizzed by. They both flinched.

She concentrated on driving. The gears grated as
she tried for a higher speed to get them away from
the boulders.

"I've never liked lousy odds."

Ellery found himself letting in all the sensations
he'd locked out. Admiration for the sense of right and wrong that drove her. Anticipation of their ar
guments. Attraction to the set of her mouth and the
speed of her mind. The question of whether in a
lifetime anyone could figure her out, and whether
she'd let anyone get close enough to try.

They were almost out of range of the rifles now,
but a final bullet cracked through the Jeep.
Channing's
head jerked sideways, hitting the driver's
window. She slumped, her hands dropping from the wheel.

Ellery grabbed to recover it, wrestling the vehi
cle a short distance down the rough trail, out of
reach of the powerful rifles. He stopped, the most
mind-numbing fear he'd ever known in his life
pounding through him. The woman who had joked
beside him a moment before was motionless, her
mesmerizing energy snuffed out. Her hair had es
caped the elaborate arrangement she wore onstage.
It tangled about her.

Telling himself he shouldn't waste this time, that
he should just get the hell back to report what had
happened, he touched her chin.

"Channing?"

His voice was rough. His tongue felt swollen. A sense of something lost that might have been his if he'd reached for it glimmered and went out in front
of him as he turned her head.

His fingers found the wetness before he saw it.
Blood was trickling down from her left temple.

Seventeen

"Damn."

Her voice, thick with irritation, reassured him just as Ellery pushed back her hair. She'd knocked
herself out when her head hit the window. The
blood was from a cut - - broken glass, maybe.

"You okay?"

He leaned back as she raised a hand to the side of
her forehead. He saw her wince. Still seeming a
little groggy, she glared at him, then pushed herself
erect.

"No. I'll have a lump the size of an egg on my
forehead tomorrow. And half the routines I'm using
are just the way Gramps did them - - not mine at all!"

Ellery rested his shoulders against the seat,
chuckling with relief at the grit that fueled her. The
sound of her swearing had been like music. That mumbo jumbo about her routine showed she was still disoriented. He'd bet it also betrayed a profes
sional ego she'd like to deny she had.

"Come on. If we don't get moving,
Ballieu's
guards could catch up with us again," he said.
"Switch places with me." Reaching out, he lifted
her across his lap, sliding under her.

They seemed to stall midway through the trans
fer, pressed face-to-face by the cramped confines of
the Jeep's interior. Ellery could feel the warmth of
her waist beneath his hands. He could feel her
breathing. The change in its rhythm told him she
wanted him as much as he suddenly wanted her. Or
maybe it wasn't so suddenly, after all. It had been
building for days - - since he met her.

One move. That was all it would take from either
of them. Only there wasn't time.

With an effort of will equal to any he'd ever made
in his life, Ellery eased her into the passenger seat
and put the Jeep into gear. It slipped down the dirt
road and onto pavement. He switched on its lights.

"You seem to have a headlight gone," he said to
break the tension.

"Yes. And a few scratches here and there. Think
they'll give me a good price on trade-in?"

Her voice sounded strained.

There was no sign of a car behind them. When
he'd been on foot, he'd passed
Ballieu's
, parked far
ther in than where he'd left his, but
Ballieu
and
whoever had been with him out there weren't giving chase. The first ugly thoughts about what had happened back in those boulders started to swarm
through Ellery's mind.

Beside him, Channing had lapsed into silence.
Not because of what had almost happened between
them a few minutes earlier, Ellery thought. She
seemed to have put that aside as completely as he
had. When he glanced to make sure she hadn't
passed out again from the bump to her head, he saw
she was frowning. A coin danced back and forth
across the back of her closed hand, a restless, shim
mering waterfall of motion.

"Those weren't guards back there," she said.

He had turned his attention back to the road.
Now he shot a sharper look at her. Her eyes were
brooding.

"There's nothing to guard," she said, turning to evaluate his reaction. "No building - - no place for a
safe unless it's built into rock. That was a setup."

Reluctantly Ellery nodded.

"
Ballieu
let us overhear those phone calls deliber
ately, so we'd spread ourselves thin. He must have found the bug. Your cover's blown."

"I'll convince him I'm working my own game."

"No. I want you and
Serafin
to clear out tonight."

"It wasn't me he was after, or he wouldn't have
scheduled his shooting party so close to the end of
my act!"

The vehemence suddenly present in her words
made him dread the turn the conversation was go
ing to take. She drew breath carefully.

"Damn it, Ellery, hasn't it occurred to you there's another way
Ballieu
could have learned about the
bug?"

They were nearing the turnoff to Palacio Sol. El
lery slowed the Jeep and eased it toward the entrance, his face averted.

They seemed to think alike sometimes. He'd
started to realize it in these few days they'd spent
together. She was rational and intelligent, and what
she was suggesting confirmed the suspicions that
were starting to bite at him.

"It has occurred to you, hasn't it?" she said more
softly.

"That someone could have told
Ballieu
what was
in his watch? Somebody we thought was on our side?" Ellery coasted the battered vehicle into a
parking place as out-of-the-way as he could find and
silenced the engine. "Yeah. It's occurred to me."

The possibility was sucking at him like an under
tow, pulling everything he believed in, everything he'd worked for out from under him. He fought a
drowning feeling, held afloat only by his own anger.
Somebody he'd trusted could be as crooked as
Yussuf
had been. Somebody he and Channing thought
was helping might be willing to kill them.

And suddenly he knew this assignment had nar
rowed down to just the two of them. Him and Chan
ning. Him and the woman he'd scorned as an amateur but had come to admire. She was his partner
now, the only one he could trust. It had nothing to
do with his attraction to her as a woman - - he'd be a
fool to base judgment on that. It had to do with the
fact she'd saved his tail tonight, and with what she
was saying now, with her directness. They sat amid
shards of glass, neither of them moving.

"It sure as hell would explain a lot of things," he
acknowledged. "How
Ballieu
knew to tear out the
first bugs we planted. Why that other room
Yussuf
reserved is unoccupied. How the film disappeared
in the first place. It all falls into place if the seller is
one of us."

He realized she might not know what he was
talking about. The film had disappeared a while ago, back when Sam was alive. With a grimace he back
tracked.

"We were all in Washington when it happened.
Me. Sam. Oliver. Max and Walker. Lots of other
people - - all in to debrief a big case."

Frowning, he looked back in time. Patterns that
hadn't been apparent started to emerge.

"We assumed that whoever initially stole the film
did it by accident. That they thought the people
moving it were moving money. Maybe we've been
wrong from the first. Maybe whoever killed those
couriers knew exactly what he was getting."

Channing leaned against the frame of the shat
tered window behind her.

"The people at your meeting knew when the film
was moving?"

"Not the time, especially. Just that it would move and that it would be that day. It wasn't a big thing - -
 
had nothing to do with us - - just a comment one of the bigwigs made in passing. I guess the fact that
the theft occurred practically under our noses made
us all a little extra indignant."

He reached for the handle of the door beside him
and shoved it to release the anger building inside
him.

"Some of us, anyway," he said correcting himself.

Someone he'd worked with was a traitor. And a
killer.

They met in front of the Jeep and fell into step
together.

"Ellery?" Her voice slipped into huskiness. As she
looked up, he saw she had dirt and dried blood on
the side of her face. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah. Me too," he said. "I thought I was working
for a high-class outfit."

He took her arm. It felt right. They walked
through the night together.

Ellery was aware of silence building until at last
he spoke what was on his mind.

"It'd be risky, trying to make
Ballieu
and whoever else we're up against think you're flimflamming
us," he said.

He didn't know how he could even consider it,
except that, like taking her arm, it seemed right.

"It's my world too," she said lightly. "I move
around in it more than most people. You're not go
ing to tell me I don't have to pay my dues because
I'm a female, are you?"

Ellery didn't answer.

They could abort the whole mission, go to Oliver
with their suspicions, and, because the odds were
too clearly against Channing's switch, pull out. It
would mean instant safety for the two of them, and
they could still nab
Ballieu
- - maybe. Not a total loss.
But if they were right about a traitor on their team, not playing things through could give that individual a chance to vanish back into the woodwork. He
could stay with the department for years, impossi
ble to smoke out and committing God knows what
acts of treason in the years to come.