to check the work they’d done for his summer line of clothing.
He wanted something innovative, something young and fresh, he’d told Stevie within minutes of breezing into Images, Stevie’s studio-apartment, two weeks ago. She and Paige had been booked solid with other jobs, but they’d have been fools not to shelve everything in favor of Armatrading’s offer. This one was big. This was the contract that could quite conceivably boost Stevie’s career to a level she’d hardly dared imagine.
When she’d signed her first free-lance photography contract ten years ago for a meager $135, Stevie hadn’t imagined it could lead to anything like a full-time career, let alone something as potentially lucrative as shooting an entire line of Armatrading fashions.
Ever since her father had given her that old Leica camera for her tenth birthday, photography had been her absolute passion. She’d lived her life through the dingy viewfinder of that battered camera and the many others that followed. Over the past few years, Stevie’s reputation soared with the phenomenal success of Images, and she considered herself truly blessed to be doing what she loved most in life.
Battling a winter storm for the sake of some jammed film in an aging Nikon, this she could have lived without. Stevie groped for the Volvo’s door handle. As she stepped from the car, a gust of frigid air sucked the breath from her lungs, and sharp pellets of snow stabbed her exposed skin. Stevie pulled up the collar of her coat and raced for the warehouse door.
“GARY? GARY!”
In his frantic dash across the ransacked office, Allister stumbled once, banging his shin on the chrome leg of a toppled chair. He ignored the pain as he forced his way behind the desk to where Gary lay in a crumpled heap amidst scattered file folders.
“Gary!”
He heard a quiet moan, and one shaky hand reached toward him from behind the desk. Fear seizing him, Allister shoved the office chair aside. When he looked down into the bloodied face that gazed up at him, he hardly recognized his friend.
“Oh, God, Gary.” He knelt beside him. “What the hell happened?”
Gary tried to push himself up, but the effort was futile and he moaned weakly. Going against what little first aid he knew, Allister grasped Gary’s shoulders and eased his head onto his lap.
He hadn’t imagined that one person could bleed so much. The front of Gary’s denim shirt was soaked, and his blond hair was matted to his head. But it was his face that appeared to have taken the most abuse. A two-inch gash above his right eye still flowed freely, and Allister couldn’t tell if the blood that Gary choked on came from the split in his lip or from internal injuries. Fear coiling in his stomach, he suspected the latter.
Allister scanned the debris for the phone. But it, too, had been smashed into shards.
“Gary, I have to get you an ambulance. I’m—”
“No.” Gary’s head wobbled to one side in feeble protest. “No,” he muttered again, his voice a strained whisper between weak coughs.
“Gary, you’re bleeding.”
“No, Al…listen. You have to listen—to me.” His hand shook as he reached past Allister’s open jacket and clutched his shirt with bloodied fingers.
He was dying. He knew it and Allister knew it. He could feel the life slipping from Gary’s battered body as he cradled his friend’s head in his lap and held his weakening gaze.
“You—you were right, Al,” Gary said, each word, each syllable, wrenched with pain. “I should…have listened to you. You…warned me.”
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, Allister kept thinking even as Gary struggled for breath. This kind of brutality—it wasn’t the way it was supposed to end.
“Al, listen to me. I—”
“It’s Bainbridge, isn’t it, Gary? It’s Bainbridge who’s done this.”
Gary gave a single nod, swallowed hard, then coughed again. His hand sought Allister’s. His grip was weak through the thin leather of Allister’s glove.
“It’s the shipment, right, Gary? Bainbridge’s shipment. What’s in the package? What’s he dealing?”
“Coins. It’s…coins.”
Allister shook his head. “Coins? I don’t understand.”
“From the museum… the collection… remember?”
Allister was still shaking his head, trying to put the pieces together. “The burglary? Back in May? That was Bainbridge?”
Gary nodded feebly, and then his eyes closed.
“Gary, no! Stay with me, you hear?” Allister’s fear rose again, and finally his friend’s eyes flickered open.
“Where are the coins now, Gary?”
Allister wondered if his friend even heard the question through his pain.
“Where are the coins? Does Bainbridge have the coins?”
Gary shook his head. “No…”
“Where is the package?”
“Safe…”
“Where, Gary? Where is it safe?”
“Stevie.”
“Stevie who?”
“Fal…Falcioni.”
“The photographer? Your friend the photographer?”
Gary nodded.
“She has them? She has the coins?”
This time when Gary shook his head, it was followed by a rattling gasp. “You have…to…to get…Stevie, Al. And tell…Barb…I love her. Tell her…for me, will you?”
And then, with one final shuddering breath, he was gone. Allister felt his body slacken. His eyes, suddenly vacant, gazed upward. In the silence of the warehouse, Allister held the man who had been his dearest friend, the man who had always been there for him. And yet, when Gary had needed Allister…
No, he thought, as he gently eased Gary to the floor again. No, he couldn’t think about the way things might have been. How if he’d forced Gary to hand over Bainbridge’s package, or if he’d gone to check the shipment this morning, instead of waiting until tonight, his friend might still be alive. There were other factors to consider now. Like Edward Bainbridge.
From what Allister remembered, the coin collection, with an estimated value in the seven figures, had been stolen from a touring exhibit hosted by the Danby Museum in the spring. Definitely the kind of job that had Bainbridge written all over it. No doubt the collector had a buyer in mind and had hoped to use Gary to ship the stolen goods for him.
But why kill Gary? It didn’t make sense. Not unless Bainbridge had found out that Gary knew the shipment’s contents. Not unless Gary had tried to blackmail Bainbridge.
Allister
