“Doing great.” Dex glanced past her. “Who’s this?”
“Jack Winters,” Jack said, extending a hand.
“Mr. Winters.” Dex shook briskly.
“Call me Jack.”
“Sure.” Dex turned back to Chloe. “What brings you here?”
Edward moved forward. “This is a J&J commission. Chloe and Jack need full packages, and they are in something of a hurry.”
Dex frowned at Chloe, concern tightening his features. “You’re in trouble?”
“Not me, my client.” She inclined her head toward Jack. “We need to disappear for a while.”
“No problem,” Dex said. He still looked worried. “Are you sure you’re not in danger? I know the family has had issues with J&J over the years, but Fallon Jones has been a good client. I’m sure we can convince him to supply protection if you and Jack need it. Jones owes us a few favors.”
“Here’s the problem,” she said. “Fallon Jones has an agenda of his own in this situation, one which may or may not mesh well with my client’s objective.”
Edward gave Jack a cool, assessing look. “And just what is that objective, if I may ask?”
“Staying alive,” Jack said.
“I see. A reasonable goal.” Edward glanced at the leather duffel on the floor near Jack’s right foot. “I assume your endeavor involves the Burning Lamp and my niece?”
“Yes,” Jack said.
“You need my niece because you think she can work the lamp. I understand that. But if things go wrong she may be in grave danger.” Edward’s eyes narrowed slightly. “From you.”
“No, Uncle Edward,” Chloe said firmly. “That’s not true. “I can handle the lamp and Jack’s dream energy field. Trust me.”
“How do you know that if you’ve never worked the lamp?” Dex demanded.
“We ran an experiment of sorts last night,” she said quickly. “Everything went swell. Piece of cake. No problem at all.”
“An experiment?” Edward did not look convinced.
Jack looked at her, brows slightly raised, but he had the good sense to keep quiet.
“I can handle this, Uncle Edward,” she said, mustering what she hoped was a professional air of confidence. “Mom always told me that every Harper has a talent. Well, working this lamp turns out to be mine. But I need some time to finish the job. It’s hard to concentrate with J&J and this Nightshade crowd sneaking around behind us. Forty-eight hours, okay? That’s all we’ll need. Please, just promise me you’ll give us two days of peace and quiet.”
Edward hesitated and then nodded once, decisively. “If you’re quite certain that you’re safe with Mr. Winters we can give you both forty-eight hours.” He looked at Jack. “Our family owes your family that much.”
Chloe blinked, startled. “What’s this about a favor?”
Dex snapped his fingers. “Right. Winters. Old favor. I remember Mom mentioning it a couple of times. Something to do with saving Norwood Harper’s life back in the Victorian era.”
“Norwood Harper,” Chloe repeated. “Our Norwood Harper? The Norwood Harper who created so many brilliant, uh, reproductions of Egyptian antiquities?”
“The one and only,” Edward said reverently. “A true master. It’s a long story, but suffice it to say that Norwood Harper got into a bit of a bind. Some very bad people were after him. Griffin Winters took care of the problem.”
“This family always pays its debts,” Chloe said proudly.
Edward inclined his head. “Indeed. Well, I suppose this means you aren’t free to have dinner with us tonight.”
“Another time, I promise,” Chloe said. “As you can see I’m a little tied up at the moment.”
Jack looked at Dex. “I don’t want to be rude, but this is what you might call a rush job.”
“Right.” Dex crossed the crowded space to open a steel cabinet.
“Where are you headed?”
“L.A.” Jack said. “Or, at least, that’s what I want J&J and Nightshade to think for the next forty-eight hours.”
32
CHLOE WENT TO STAND AT THE TINTED WINDOWS AND STUDIED the neon-lit night world twenty floors below. “Okay, we are definitely moving up. From a no-tell motel downtown to a one-bedroom, two-bath suite overlooking the Strip. I’m good with that. But why aren’t we headed toward L.A.? It would be easy to get lost there.”
She heard a heavy clunk behind her. Jack had just hoisted the duffel bag onto the table.
“Because my gut tells me that’s exactly what they’ll expect us to do,” he said.
The heavy, compelling energy of the lamp was thick in the atmosphere, calling to her senses. She turned around.
“You mean Nightshade?”
“And Fallon Jones. Both sides will assume that we’re hightailing it out of town now that we know we’re being hunted. It’s human nature to run in situations like this.”
“So we do the opposite.”
“Right.”
She heightened her senses a little more and studied his prints on the leather bag. Strong, healthy dream psi, the positive results of a good night’s rest, showed clearly. But she could still see faint traces of the medication he had been taking.
“Why are we worried about Fallon Jones?” she asked. “I got the impression you believed him when he claimed he wasn’t gunning for you.”
“I think he was telling the truth when he said that he hadn’t been tracking me. But now that he knows for sure that I’ve got the lamp and that Nightshade is on our trail, he won’t be able to resist trying to keep us under surveillance.”
“For our own good, of course,” she said drily.
“Probably had someone watching your uncle’s store even before we got there this afternoon. The question is whether the decoy car worked.”
“I’m sure it worked,” she said, not without a touch of pride. “My family is very good at this kind of thing.”
His mouth kicked up a little at the edges. “I noticed.”
Edward Harper had arranged for an SUV with heavily tinted windows to pull away from Harper Fine Furnishings shortly before sunset that afternoon. Dex and Beth, bearing a remarkably close resemblance to Jack and herself, thanks to theatrical makeup and wigs, were inside. They had driven off quickly, headed west on I-15 toward L.A.