In Too Deep

4

We still don't have any leads, Mr. Lucan," Julian Garrett said. "Turned over every stone we could find in Phoenix. It's like she never existed except during the short time she worked at that department store."

"It's been damn near a month," Max Lucan said.

"I'm aware of that, sir."

Max got up from his desk and went to stand at the window of his office. Absently he touched the black granite pedestal that stood nearby. The pedestal held the bronze statue of a seated cat. The creature had a gold ring in one ear.

The statue was Egyptian. Like the other antiquities displayed in the room, it was authentic. It had been created sometime around 600 B.C. But it was not the age of the bronze that intrigued Max. It was the power that the artist had somehow infused into the metal. After all these centuries, the energy in the figure still whispered to him.

"How could a little finder-talent drop off the radar so easily?" he asked.

"Beats the hell out of me," Julian said.

"Rawlins and Burley still haven't recovered their memories?"

"No, sir, and I think we should assume they never will. Evidently the finder-talent put them into some sort of fugue state. They remember locating her in that mall store, but the next thing either of them remembers is waking up in front of a restaurant three miles away."

Max felt the hair on the back of his neck stir. He knew it was because he was missing some important pieces of the puzzle. "Interesting that Rawlins and Burley didn't get run down by a car, walking blind like that through Phoenix traffic at night."

"They can't account for that, either," Julian said. "They had to cross a lot of streets in the process of getting as far as the restaurant. Damn lucky, I guess."

"I think it's more likely there are a few things we don't know about the finder-talent," Max said. He could hardly blame her. He kept his own unique ability secret, too. As far as most people were concerned, he was just very, very good at tracing stolen antiquities and providing security for museum collections. "I wonder what else she kept from us while she was here."

"We need to find her, sir."

"I'm aware of that," Max said.

He watched the sunlight flash on the yachts in the harbor. Lucan Protection Services occupied two floors of a gleaming new office building in one of the most exclusive enclaves on California's Gold Coast. Not that his clients were ever impressed with the view or the refined sophistication of the decor of his company's headquarters. The majority of the collectors who commissioned the services of his firm were wealthy and well traveled. They frequently owned handfuls of residences in locales ranging from the Caribbean to New York to Paris. It took more than a view and expensive interior design to impress them. Nevertheless, Max thought, you could not run a business like Lucan out of a storefront in a strip mall. Appearances mattered in the world in which he operated.

I'm missing something here.

"Tell me again what went wrong in Phoenix?" he said.

Julian ran through the details again but there was nothing new.

"Obviously she made my men when they found her in that department store," he concluded. "From what they could piece together later, she escaped through the emergency stairwell. Her car was gone from the mall garage. It turned up later in a parking lot outside a hospital emergency room. All indications are that she never did return to the motel where she was staying."

"In other words, she went to work that night ready to run if necessary."

"Yes, sir."

"Just like she ran from Lucan when we found the files on her computer."

"Yes, sir."

"She's damn good at getting lost." Max pondered that for a moment. "Any news on Caitlin Phillips?"

"No, sir. She's still missing, too," Julian said. "We need to assume that she's dead."

Max tightened his grip on the edge of the granite pedestal. "Someone has been dealing para-weapons out of Department A for nearly a year, and now two women have vanished. The broker handling the arms deals was shot to death, a dangerous artifact has gone missing and I've got a black-ops agency breathing down my neck. This is not good for Lucan's corporate image, Garrett."

"I understand, sir. Believe me, I'm working the case night and day."

Max turned around to face him. "No one gets away with using the resources of my company to deal black market weapons."

"Yes, sir."

"Find the women and find that damn artifact."