my room. Should I meet you back down in the lobby?”
“Yeah, sure. But I warn you—our guy isn’t hiring right now.”
“No worries. I’ve got some leads out.” Because the last thing Hunter was going to tell this guy was that he was on the job.
In his ear, Stirling muttered, “Josh, get up to his floor and go into room 1652 to let Hunter in. If you come up through the stairwell and turn left, you won’t run into Tazo and his guy.”
“Roger,” Josh murmured as Tazo said, “Excellent! Looking forward to that beer.”
Hunter nodded and smiled, because that seemed friendly, and then turned to walk down to the end of the hallway and make a right. As he turned, he saw the elevator doors shutting on Tazo and his companion, and he murmured, “Clear,” before continuing down.
In his earpiece, Grace was moving, all but silent, for once not even murmuring to himself. Another hallway, another right, and he was at the room absolutely farthest away from the elevators, and Josh was there with the door cracked.
Hunter pushed through the door and closed it gently, standing for a few moments in the hallway, poised to go running to the rescue.
When Grace’s voice said, “I’m clear, heading for your room,” Hunter sagged against the hallway wall in relief, all of the things that could have gone wrong suddenly assailing him.
For a moment, his heartbeat roared in his ears, and he tried not to imagine what would happen if a guy like Tazo and his thin-lipped companion got hold of someone as unpredictable as Grace.
He didn’t like any of the answers.
When Josh opened the door to Grace’s soft knock, Hunter dragged Grace inside and crushed him close, taking one deep breath of relief before releasing him.
“Gotta go,” he said tersely.
“Enjoy your date,” Grace muttered as though bored.
Hunter gave him a tired grin. “Get that thing photographed and back in its package as soon as possible. The sooner you’re done, the sooner I get to claim I’ve gotten a hit on a job and I can disappear.” Stirling had brought the equipment with him—Hunter had no doubt he’d be in this hotel room with his trusty suitcase and laptop as soon as Hunter left.
Grace inspected the fingertip ends of his gloves like he’d normally inspect his nails.
Hunter shook his head, glared at him once, and took off. As the door closed behind him, Grace murmured quietly, “Don’t get laid, cowboy. I said no, you say no.”
Hunter let out a strained chuckle. “That’s what you’re worried about? I’d sooner blow a rattlesnake.”
There was a pause.
“Than blow that guy, right?”
“Yes, Grace. Than blow Tazo.”
Another pause, then, right as Hunter was getting in the elevator, he heard “Fine. Enjoy your fucking beer.”
Hunter chuckled all the way down, which worked well because he wasn’t that great an actor, and the smile he presented to Tazo was genuine.
He needed the edge.
An hour later, he slid back into the Westin, having excused himself for his pretend “meeting” after his second beer. (Always have the second beer, he thought irritably. The first could just be playing for time. The second meant you were planning to sit down and make a night of it, but dammit, you got that business contact and had to go.) The activity in his earbud told him that the object—and he’d never really gotten a bead on what it was besides the fact that it was “fucking stunning,” pretty much everybody’s words, and that you had to see it to believe it—had been taken out and photographed back at the Times Square.
Unfortunately, that meant Grace had got it back into the little bag before Hunter could see it, of course, but he was looking forward to actual pictures instead of X-rays.
The pictures—taken with a high-resolution camera on a black velvet background, part of Stirling and Josh’s rather amazing equipment bag—really were stunning.
“Damn,” Hunter said, looking at the images on Stirling’s monitor. “That’s… is that man-made?”
“I don’t think so,” Josh murmured. “I used the spectroscope on it, and it appeared to be natural. Bicolored tourmaline—in this case, amber in the center to clear on the edges.”
“It’s huge!” Hunter murmured. The base was the size of a silver dollar—in fact, the most striking image was of it couched in Grace’s palm.
“It is,” Josh said. “But that’s not what makes it so special.”
“Says you,” Grace muttered, sitting cross-legged in the center of one of the beds.
“Word,” Molly muttered. Molly was sitting next to him, wearing pajamas, her hair out around