The police showed only procedural interest in the robbery, but the mention of the note brought an officer in plain clothes, a Lt. Rees, to the store. He quizzed Connor about Emmett, and Rachel about the store's business contacts. Rachel's responses were coolly professional, and Connor's were curt. Duncan's presence the man accepted with little curiosity; most of his attention was on the store's glowering owner.
Duncan lost his non-threatening status when he began questioning the officer. "You know something about the note," he observed.
"I know what you've told me," Rees evaded. "Is there something you've left out?"
"I'll give you my appraisal. It looked like it was typed on an IBM Selectric with a standard ball and fresh ink. The paper was white 20 weight bond."
"Who is L.?" asked Rees.
"I think you already have an idea. The robbery alone wouldn't be worth a lieutenant's time."
Rees gave Duncan an irritated look and addressed Connor, who listened, hunched on the back of an armchair. "The note sounds like Lucky Luigi. Crime boss. Family man. He's getting on in years, now, but he's got sons who leave his calling card. They do his killing, too. You running a fence here, Mr. Nash? Sell Lucky a little short, maybe?"
Connor unrolled from his slouch and sprang to stand nose to nose with the cop. Duncan made a slight move as if to interfere, then froze.
The two men glared for a few seconds. "Charge me or get out," ordered Connor.
Rachel let out her held breath. "Lt. Rees," she said, trying to sound calm and reasonable, "if we were fencing stolen goods, 'L.' would have no reason to say 'I've found you.' We've been here for years."
Rees was not going to be intimidated, and he made no withdrawal from Connor's challenge. But he did look to Rachel and answer civilly. "Yes, ma'am. But then, I've never seen this alleged note."
Connor made a low, inarticulate sound in his throat. "You think we made it up!" he yelled.
Now Duncan did step up and place a hand on Connor's shoulder. "Rachel's right," he said to Rees. "If we knew who L. was, why would we invent an incriminating note?" Rachel saw Duncan's hand squeeze some signal to Connor.
Connor took a deep breath and forcibly relaxed. "Are you going to look for Emmett Nash?"
"Your father?" the detective almost taunted. Rachel caught her breath again. She wondered for a brief moment if all policemen were pigs.
Connor's eyes narrowed dangerously, but he didn't allow himself to be baited. He said nothing.
Rees put his notebook away and began to button his coat. "Yes, Mr. Nash, we will look for Emmett Nash." He walked to the door and paused. "You should know . . . we've already done some checking on your 'father', and so far we've found no record of him anywhere, after the war. Call us if he turns up." With a smile and a tight nod to Rachel, he left.
The silence which Rees left behind was heavy and stifling like a wet snowfall. Duncan sank into the armchair Connor had perched on earlier, and sighed. Rachel took the desk chair and looked at Connor. Connor looked out the window.
Rachel knew Connor could maintain an angry silence for days, unconcerned about the discomfort it caused those around him. The best way to break it was to get him thinking; not brooding.
"Emmett Nash is real," she volunteered, braving the subject. "The VA has his service record." She decided not to bring up her source of this information.
Connor turned his head a fraction.
"So it's only after the war that there are no records on him," mused Duncan. "You looked in his room?"
"He hasn't packed," Rachel replied. "But I didn't go through his things."
Now Connor turned to face them, listening intently.
"We may be ignoring the obvious," Duncan mused.
Rachel waited for him to finish, but Duncan merely met his kinsman's gaze.
Connor went from stillness to motion in a startling burst. He opened a drawer of the desk, and took out the watch Emmett had given him. He tossed it to Duncan.
"How old is that inscription?"
Duncan worried the watch in one hand, and moved to the jewelry case where he found a jeweler's lens. He returned to his chair and peered through the lens.
Curious, Rachel thought. Connor was quite capable of the appraisal. Maybe he didn't want the answer to be biased.
"Forty years. No more," Duncan announced.
"Less?"
Duncan, who didn't know the significance of the watch, showed sudden understanding in his expression. He looked again.
"At least thirty," he judged. He tossed the watch back to Connor.
Connor nodded, wound the watch, then put it on.
"Rachel," he said, both kind and commanding. "Pack for the beachhouse. I want you out of town."
"I have a final," she protested.
Connor ignored her. "Duncan, I need you."
"Kinsman," Duncan replied quietly, "you know I'm yours. But, is this our concern? It may be a police matter."
Connor didn't answer right away. Then, with a glint in his eye, he said, "Emmett's running from the mob. Duncan, my father's in trouble."
And that was that.
II
Emmett, to no one's surprise, did not return. Connor was serious; he wanted Rachel out of town. Until she could get packed and off to the beachhouse, she was never without an immortal escort. Guarding her hampered their hunt for Emmett, Rachel knew, and she tried to get her affairs handled so as not to delay them more than necessary. Burning to do something, Connor asked her to finish her preparations at the store, so he could spar with his cousin in his personal dojo, with her safe under the same roof, and near the "call" button. Rachel agreed with relief; with never a private moment, she had had no opportunity to try calling Michael.
She was not to get the opportunity that day, either. She had just finished arranging delivery to the Lansing-Holmes's and was dialing Michael's number, when the thugs came to visit. Two well-built men in polyester leisure suits swaggered into the store like studs entering a bar. They looked around with disdain, then flanked Rachel at the desk.
"We wanna talk to Mr. Nash," said the man with flaming red hair and freckles. His open, boyish features didn't suit Rachel's stereotype, but the other man, darker and weaselly, did. He was holding a shabby, familiar-looking coat. Both men had conspicuous lumps under their arms.
She smiled and pressed the button. "Mr. Nash will be delighted to see you," she said with complete sincerity. She stood and began serenely moving the more breakable items in the store to safer locations, while the dark man watched with dead eyes. The red-haired man showed no curiosity, either.
Connor entered alone, wearing his long coat over his sweat clothes. He took in the two thugs, the coat, and Rachel's precautions impassively. Then he smiled broadly. Rachel winced with a wicked surge of pleasure, and wondered where Duncan was lurking.
"What can I do for you gentlemen?" Connor slid into the room, ever closer to the two men. Slightly shorter and lighter than either of them, Connor looked nothing like the threat he was.
"You Nash?" demanded the darker man.
Still smiling, Connor said, apparently to Rachel, "Mary, would you take Cupid and Psyche to the back?"
Rachel tried not to look startled at her new alias, and hefted the statue of the god of love and his mortal lover. She knew Connor meant to remove her, and possibly the statue, to safety, so instead of going to the back, she headed for the elevator.
None of the men said anything while she went. The elevator door swished shut behind her, and Rachel left the two thugs to their fate.
With nothing in particular to do during the downstairs mayhem, Rachel found herself in the guest room. Emmett's few possessions were not in much order. She suspected by the disarray that Connor, not Duncan, had inspected the room. She found the green plaque on the floor. Rachel sat on the bed, holding the plaque, and let dread for Emmett fill her. Those thugs had had his coat. At least it wasn't a body part, she comforted herself. Of course, that could come next.
And it could be a con Emmett was in on, a treacherous voice said in her head. She sighed and set the plaque aside.
Under a pile of clothes which looked like they had been pulled from the dresser drawer, Rachel found a paper tablet. It seemed familiar to her in some way, so she reseated herself on the bed to inspect it.
The familiarity, she realized as she flipped through it, stemmed from simple nostalgia. She held an old ledger such as accountants would have used in her youth. It sometimes disturbed her how many ordinary items from her childhood were now antiques, though this ledger was far too ordinary, not to mention worn, to have any value.
The company the ledger was from was called National Linen Supply, and had an address in St. Louis, Missouri. The dates of the entries were from 1947 to 1952. She studied the entries closely, spurred by vague mental associations with the mafia and dirty bookkeeping. Before long she was convinced that this ledger did, indeed contain hints of criminal activity. Some entries were detailed and specific, while some entries, both for credits and for debits, were extremely large and vaguely labeled.
A gunshot exploded on the floor below. Rachel closed the ledger and pressed her lips together. Two highly trained immortals against two thugs, and they couldn't manage to get their business done without shooting in the house? She shook her head and tsked.
She wandered the loft, uneasy. She knew better than to go downstairs before she was given the all-clear, but the gunshot worried her more than she liked to admit.
After what seemed like a very long time, she heard the elevator start up. Native caution made her position herself out of view of whomever would exit the lift, but, after it stopped, she heard Duncan's voice.
"Rachel?"
"Here," she replied, coming around the corner.
Duncan was shirtless, and wearing only the white pants of a martial arts dogi. Rachel caught her breath and blinked.
Duncan smiled. "Everything's all right," he assured her, "but wait a bit while Connor questions them. I'm going to put on a shirt and shoes." With that, he padded up the stairs to the top of the loft, Rachel watching, speechless. When he was out of sight, she gave her head a shake and sighed.
He returned wearing black trousers and a blue sweater. "Connor's got them tied up downstairs," he told her. "But they're not telling us much."
"Duncan, what are you going to do? We can't keep them prisoner. And we can't ... you're not going to ..."
"Of course not." But his voice wavered at the end, as if he wasn't sure.
Rachel's heart beat faster. "Shouldn't you be down there with him?"
"We're playing good cop/bad cop."
"What does that mean?"
Duncan gave her a curious look. "You don't watch much TV, do you? One of us tries to encourage them to talk by being nice; the other one uses ... intimidation."
"Which one is Dad?" An ancient dread was seeping into her stomach.
Duncan sighed. "He never lets me be bad cop. I'm sure I could do it," he whined, looking comically pitiful.
Rachel was not amused. "So right now he's down there ..." She headed for the elevator. "What's he doing to them?"
"Rachel," Duncan hooked her elbow with his hand. "I know he doesn't want you there." The jokester in Duncan was gone.
"What about you?" she demanded, turning to face him.
"I don't really want to be there, either," he admitted.
Rachel's dread peaked. Even Duncan knew. She went cold and hard. "Duncan, you get down there right now and make sure he doesn't do anything permanent to them."
"I'm sure he wouldn't do anything like that," he soothed.
"Then I know him better than you do," she bit at him. "You go, or I'm going."
Duncan also hardened, and spoke quietly. "You know I can't let you do that."
Time to try a different tack.
"Duncan," she pleaded. "I've seen ... known of too much torture in this world. No more, please." Her voice quavered.
She saw sympathy and indecision on his face.
"Honeybee," he used a childhood endearment, "some people deserve it."
"I don't care. Not in my house. Duncan, please."
"All right," Duncan gave in, too gracious to point out that it wasn't her house. "But you stay here."
She nodded her promise, and watched him go down in the lift. When he was out of sight, she turned unhappily to the large windows and looked out at the grey city. Being somewhat past the prime of her beauty, she reflected with grim disgust, had not weakened her powers of manipulation. But no self-loathing could erode her resolution.
Whatever it takes.
III
When Rachel was allowed in the store again, she learned that Connor had released the thugs.
"I sent them with a message for Lucky," said Connor, looking pleased with himself. "Also known as Luigi Fortunata."
She looked around the store. Shattered glass from the remains of the dagger case lay strewn on the floor.
"You couldn't keep them from shooting the cases? Do you know how much we laid out for that?"
Connor refused to accept her accusation. He met her gaze and smiled. "Well, it freed up some weapons."
"The dagger!" Rachel's mental inventory came up wanting. "Where's the Ching dynasty?"
"Right after the Ming, I think," supplied Connor unhelpfully, a far too cheerful expression on his face. He has leads now, Rachel realized. Having something to do had always improved her father's disposition.
Duncan snorted and Rachel scowled at him. Duncan made a placating motion with his hands. "It's all right. It may need some cleaning; that's all."
Rachel decided she didn't want to know more. Not about the dagger, anyway. "So," she looked from one man to the other, "do they have Emmett?"
Connor's eyes held a mischievous glint. "They wanted me to think so." He nodded to the coat, which lay crumpled by the desk. "They actually got that off of a homeless guy."
Duncan stooped to pluck up the coat, and Rachel moved to his side in order to finger its familiar fleece.
"But this is Emmett's," she said, puzzled.
"Emmett gave them the slip," Duncan explained. "He put his coat on someone else to throw them off."
"Pretty smart," Connor judged.
Rachel was a little shocked. "Kind of hard on the homeless man," she protested. "Why do they want Emmett?"
"Apparently he embezzled from them," supplied Duncan.
"Oh, no!"
"He may not have known he was working for the mob. It was some front company in St. Louis."
"National Linen Supply?" Rachel brought out the ledger, and explained where she'd found it.
"Interesting," Connor mused, flipping the pages. "But why would Emmett keep evidence of his crime?"
"Guilty conscience?" guessed Duncan.
"But this was all 30 years ago," protested Rachel.
"Why should that matter to Luigi Fortunata?" Connor asked. He held the ledger in both hands and tipped his head toward Duncan. "He can hold a grudge for centuries."
"You're a fine one to talk," retorted his kinsman.
"I" Connor replied, haughtily, "am the soul of Christian forgiveness. Rachel, are you finally packed? Good, because I've called you a cab. I'm expecting a revenge attack." The gleam in Connor's eyes was positively predatory. "Take the book with you," he added. "Put it in a safe deposit box when you get there."
"I'm going," she sighed, donning her coat and gloves and accepting the ledger. "But, I've been thinking about this ledger."
"What?"
Rachel clicked open her suitcase and slid it in on top. "I don't think it's evidence of Emmett's crime. I think it's evidence of National Linen Supply's crimes."
Duncan snapped his fingers. "Emmett kept it as insurance," he concluded.
"But what I don't understand," Rachel complained, "is where Emmett's been for thirty years."
Neither immortal could answer her.
IV
The cab appeared, outside, blocking traffic on the narrow street. Duncan took Rachel's bags. Connor put his arm around her, both a fond embrace and a firm encouragement to go. The wind whipped her wool skirt as she kissed both men and stooped into the cab. Connor spoke to the driver. Rachel knew the instructions would seem odd. She was to change cabs once, then take the subway before hailing another.
The cab pulled away as Rachel looked out the rear window at the two MacLeods standing sentinel over her departure. Connor turned aside first. Rachel knew with a little sadness that he would now be focused on the task ahead. She was a valuable he had sent to safety, a preparation taken care of, and he could now spare little thought for her.
Duncan watched the cab until it turned the corner and she could no longer see him.
Rachel sighed and turned back to face front, and pulled her purse into her lap. It was not a good time of year to be at the beachhouse, she complained to herself. Very few services would be open in this season; just the general store. And she would miss her final.
The cab bumped, with fits and starts, through narrow Manhattan streets never built for modern cars. Their route took them up Waverly Place, past the purple and white banners of New York University. Michael would miss the final too, she thought, if he really had left the country as quickly as he'd promised Connor. She smiled at herself. As if missing a final compared to missing a head. The Game really did have to come first for all of them, herself included. She was pleased to find that she held no ill-will towards Michael, neither for deceiving her, nor for leaving without saying good-bye. She understood both, perfectly. In fact, she thought with a sigh, she'd be a good match for an immortal. No messy explanations, and she came already trained to deal with the Game.
They left Greenwich Village and it started to drizzle. Rachel considered Michael with some wonder. He must have talked awfully fast to escape Connor without a fight. While she had never known her father to be blindly murderous, an immortal who crossed him in any way was asking for a challenge, and Connor always answered. Rachel had begun to think the Game must somehow make immortals immune to fears for their own lives, since all they really had to do in order to live forever was not fight, but that so seldom seemed to be their choice. Michael had made that choice. He didn't want to fight Connor MacLeod, and was willing to abandon his home in order to see that it didn't happen. To Rachel that seemed so smart, so logical. Michael might live a truly long time, she guessed. Too bad she'd never see him again.
She wondered where Connor had directed her cabbie to leave her off. Somewhere public, where other cabs would be quickly available, she assumed, but they were now moving into the warehouse district. She leaned forward on the seat and spoke through the plexiglass divider which separated the front and back seats.
"Where are we stopping?" she asked.
"Right here," said the cabbie in unaccented American English. That was a surprise, and so was the cab whipping into an alley and stopping. Before Rachel could reach for the door handle, the man had knocked down the faux divider, and yanked her head back by her hair.
She shrieked and struggled, but his other hand covered her face with cloth and chloroform. Her body rebelled, from head to stomach, against the overpowering chemical odor, and her last awareness was of terror and nausea.