An Angel In Stone

“Sorry!” Raine laughed after him.

On she strolled, swinging occasionally to drift backward like a child leaving the movie theater, shaking her head with incredulous delight. Born and raised in the wide-open West, she’d never make a city girl. Yet at times like this she could see why New Yorkers thought the sun revolved around their own special little island.

Like the rough granite face of a cathedral, the bridge’s first tower reared into the dark. The boardwalk split and flowed to either side of the central stone column, then rejoined on its far side. Rounding it, Raine almost bumped into a desperately kissing couple.

Her thighs tightened in reflex. Her nipples brushed against the silk of her dress. Aftermath of adrenaline, she admitted ruefully as she skirted the clinch—that and the knowledge that she should meet Kincade anytime now. “If he could get away from the police,” she muttered to herself. They might keep him half the night.

But Raine didn’t believe it. He’d come. Something about the man told her that for better or worse he kept his promises. “A fossil of great rarity and interest,” she repeated, her blood surging with the thought. If he really had one to sell, she meant to acquire it!

Ashaway All wasn’t a nonprofit museum that could throw its money around, but a business, with a business’s constant need to score. But would the attraction she’d felt for Cade survive a half–hour of hard-nosed negotiations? He didn’t look as though he’d be a pushover, when it came to bargaining. She was no cream puff herself, while cutting a deal. “Whatever.” If it came to a choice, rare fossils were in shorter supply than sexy men.

Yet nobody waited on the boardwalk ahead. “Still time,” Raine comforted herself.

Beyond the first tower, the view of the East River opened out to either side—a black velvet shawl crinkled with moonlight, spangled with gliding navigation lights. A tug trudged upstream against the monstrous outgoing tide. Nimble as a water bug, an airfoil ferry spun out from a pier below Wall Street. It rumbled off toward the outer harbor, trailing a widening wake of creamy foam.

“Whoa—baby! Check it out!”

Raine bobbled a stride, then walked grimly on. Up ahead on her right, three young men had balanced their way out one of the iron beams that stretched above the traffic lanes on the deck beneath. This idiot feat took them out to the actual edge of the bridge, where they could look straight down to the water, some hundred and fifty feet below—or jump, if they were so inclined.

They looked more the type to push somebody else, than to jump. “Hey, bitch! Want some company?”

“Sure she does! She dressed up just for me!”

Without a word, Raine walked on, passing the point where their beam intersected the waist-high side rail of the footbridge.

They weren’t the type to take a hint. Here they came, catcalling and clowning as they wobbled back along the girder with their arms outstretched.

Not a bicycle cop in sight, nor anybody else. Raine sighed as she stopped to skim her gown up to midthigh. Definitely a side zipper next time.

Behind her the chorus rose to gleeful hoots—then missed a couple of beats as she unsheathed her knife.

The heavy silk slithered back to her ankles. Holding the dagger up by its point, Raine turned—and tipped her head inquiringly. You’re sure this is a good idea?

“Sometimes a warning works,” Trey had told her more than once. “And sometimes it gives away your best advantage—the element of surprise.”

Holding the stupefied gaze of the leading punk, Raine flipped the knife straight up in the air. Without seeming to watch its whirling rise, she caught it as it spun back to earth. Blade first.

Her audience stood on the beam, uneasily silent.

She tossed the knife again—caught it casually. Their size had misled her. They were younger than she’d thought, still in their teens, which if anything, made them more dangerous. Overdosed on testosterone, and probably they’d yet to learn how to shift into reverse. Still, the second one in line was actually shuffling his feet. The third had developed a sudden interest in the cars passing below. Raine gave their leader a confiding smile; it was best not to challenge. You’re prowlers of the night—but so am I. And it’s a big bridge. Who needs trouble?

She turned and strolled on, her ears tuned for overtaking footsteps. All she heard was a buzz of earnest mutters.

Then there, up ahead, sauntering to meet her from the Brooklyn shore, came Kincade! Raine laughed aloud. He must have driven over to the far side, where parking was better. She gave the knife a final jaunty flip, sheathed it, then met him at the halfway point.

He scowled over her shoulder. “Did they bother you?”

“No more than I could handle.”

“Ah.” Amusement softened that look of glinting danger. “Then I guess I’ll let ’em live.”

They turned as one to rest their forearms on the railing, and gaze southeast toward the outer harbor. Miles away, the twinkling spikes and curves of the Verrazano Bridge marked the start of the beckoning ocean.

“Trenton was all right?” she asked as the sea breeze rippled her hair.

“Seemed to be,” Cade agreed without turning. “They tried to whisk him off in an ambulance, but he wasn’t having any. By the time I ducked out, he was busy buying your police horse. Claimed he and a couple of teammates own a racing stable in Maryland, and any horse that saves his life, belongs in high clover, not breathing traffic fumes.”

“And as for you?” Cade laughed under his breath. “Ten-ton said if it takes his last nickel, he’s naming your Carnotaurus ‘Rainy.’”

“Oh, please!” Raine swung around with a comic groan.

“And as for me…” Cade’s smile faded to intention.

Her lips parted in surprise—she turned her head aside as his mouth descended.

Another guy who couldn’t take a hint. He smelled of bay rum, tasted of champagne. Easy and slow, his kiss teased the quivering corner of her mouth, till she smiled in spite of herself. Warm lips brushed her cheekbone, then trailed deliciously away. “That’s…for saving my neck, there at the end.”

“After I’d gotten you into the fix,” she reminded him, swearing inwardly at the way her voice had gone all fuzzy—all of her had gone hot and fuzzy. “He was my friend, not yours.”

“Well, yeah,” Cade allowed with a glimmer of mischief. “But still—”

She flattened a hand on his chest and locked her elbow, holding off a second demonstration of gratitude. “How about we get to business? What’s this fossil that you want to sell me?”

“I want to—” Cade’s brows flew together. “Then you didn’t send me—” from an inner pocket of his suit, he fished a familiar white envelope “—this? You said you had a date at midnight. Once I read this, I assumed—”

Raine shook her head. “I got an invitation, too, delivered at the party.” She’d dropped hers somewhere in all the excitement.

“Then—” Cade snapped a glance left, then right. No one approached from either direction. “Hmm.”

He really hadn’t sent it, Raine concluded, noting his wariness. “It’s clear why somebody would offer to sell me a fossil—they do it all the time. But why would someone think you’d be interested in buying bones?”

“Ever heard of an outfit called SauroStar?” Suddenly Cade’s smile wasn’t all that friendly.

Raine’s hand twitched toward her mouth, then she fisted it. Too late to wipe that kiss away. “You’re connected to SauroStar?” The company had materialized out of nowhere last year. If it even had a headquarters, so far Trey and Ash hadn’t been able to find it. SauroStar seemed to be simply a Web site backed by a very deep pocket. But it had been competing with Ashaway All in a way that was increasingly disturbing.

Sure, there were half-a-dozen commercial fossil-collecting and supply houses like her family’s around the world. They vied fiercely for significant discoveries with each other—and also with the staffs of museums and academic teams fielded by the paleontology departments of numerous universities.

But though feuds did arise from time to time, generally the competition was nothing personal. Advances in science made by a rival were to be applauded, as well as envied; they were comrades in the same exhilarating quest for knowledge. And considering that one commercial firm might dig up the back end of a Stegosaurus—while another found a front—well, in the long run, cooperation simply made sense.

But SauroStar didn’t seem to be hunting bones, so much as hunting Ashaway bones. At least it was starting to feel that way, the family had agreed in a cross-country conference call only last month. This summer alone they’d lost three licenses to dig on private property out West, productive and profitable quarry sites that the firm had worked for two generations. And oddest of all, once SauroStar outbid them for these collecting rights, it hadn’t bothered to dig. Dog in the manger tactics, Ash had labeled that.

Trey with his military background had offered a more ominous term. Scorched earth. Where one army burns or steals everything in its path, so the pursuing army can’t survive. “You’re with SauroStar?” she repeated. “We’ve been trying to talk to you guys!” Messages to the company had been met so far with stony silence. The only contact given on the Web site was—she winced as it hit her—“You’re OAKincade@tiac.net?”

“Yes. And I’m not with SauroStar—I own it.”

“Well, you’ve got a funny way of doing business, Kincade.”

“Really?” His amber eyes mocked her. “Up till now, it’s been an amusing hobby. But now that I’ve got time to give it my full attention…”