answer made him straighten, banging his elbow against the wall. “The Hilton? Are you sure? She doesn’t look the type.”
It wasn’t that he minded going upmarket, but it didn’t make sense. Most couriers he’d taken out were more concerned with blending into the woodwork. The heat invading his bloodstream confirmed the only place Ngaire would blend was an X-rated movie. His mind distracted by lust, he almost missed the rest of his instructions. “Tell me you’re joking?”
But his contact wasn’t.
They’d booked him on a guided tour of New Zealand. Seven days with his every move up for inspection by a busload of tourists. What was the cartel up to, transporting their courier that way?
There could be only one solution, kiss-and-tell was to be dropped off at some tourist destination. And if he didn’t stick like glue to Ngaire Two Feathers McKay, she’d be making the drop down some dark cave with glowworms as the only witnesses.
His gut tightened. He’d known that woman for trouble the first time he saw her, and he’d been right. How the hell was he to stay up close and personal and still keep his hands off her?
From the moment Team Leader Bennett flung open the door on the wrong side of the glass screens shielding the arrivals area, all Ngaire’s bodily apertures began displaying withdrawal symptoms. Hardly surprising since the first person she saw was a female officer who looked as if she enjoyed her work. One hint of snapping latex and Ngaire would be outta there.
Heck, she could handle all of them, no problem, including the big guy sitting behind the desk. But she had a feeling some countries got a mite upset with visitors who threw their officials against the walls, even walls that were as bare and gray as a prison cell.
“This lady’d prefer her things searched in private,” said Bennett. From his expression as he thumped her case onto the desk, he thought she was acting just too precious for words.
It sat there unopened while the handsome, copper-skinned officer with Manu Pomare on his name tag flipped through her passport. A quick read, since this was her first time out of the States. Hope sparked at the sight of his Maori name; surely he would understand that her reasons for leaving her precious cargo off her declaration form weren’t simply to avoid paying duty.
Finished, Pomare looked up and asked her, “What brings you Down Under, Ms. McKay?”
“I won a quiz show sponsored by a local nightspot. I’m a trivia nut and…” Ngaire could see her excuse didn’t cut any ice with the guy in charge, and her explanation stumbled on her lips. “First prize was a trip to the South Pacific, Australia and Singapore.”
A quick glance showed the prize impressed no one. Pomare flicked a finger and thumb at her suitcase. The sound of his fingernail hitting the lock filled the lumbering silence left by her boast. “And what are you carrying that needs to be hidden from the general public?”
“Open the case and I’ll show you.”
It took only a couple of seconds to remove her black do bok, the bubble wrap with its brown sticky tape would take slightly longer. She loosened one corner and pulled off a strip. Five more to go. Hesitation stilled her hands as her heartbeat gave a hiccup. Had the warm pulsing sensation she’d experienced when wrapping the parcel been more than just her imagination?
And had the startled yelp from the guy in Tahiti as he dropped her case come from pain rather than fear?
“Here,” Pomare said, offering her a letter opener.
“No, thanks. I can’t use anything that might damage it.”
The final layer under the bubble wrap was a white silk scarf more than fifty years old, yet more than two hundred years younger than the treasure hiding in its folds. This very scarf had been wrapped lovingly by her grandmother before she set out on her sea journey to the States. A silken cocoon to protect the only physical piece of her heritage she’d taken with her.
Ngaire pulled the scarf aside, the backs of her shaking knuckles skimming fifteen inches of paddle-shaped jade, careful of its cutting edge. She’d always known her inheritance was special. Magic. She’d been a child when her grandfather had spoken of the way the jade had darkened in the days before and after the deaths of her father and grandmother, and how the mottled spots had turned red as if flushed with blood.
She’d seen the phenomenon herself, seen the changes in the mere before her mother died. But, no warnings for her mother to please be careful had made any difference or stopped a car from ramming into her mother’s in the fog.
Less than four months ago George Two Feathers, master carpenter and carver, had been hard at work building display stands for an exhibition of Pacific Rim artifacts and weapons in the Halberg Museum.
In a casual conversation with one of the curators, George had mentioned the greenstone mere the family owned. The mere’s bloody history and the belief that an ancestral spirit lived inside it had intrigued the curator and her grandfather had been persuaded to loan it as part of the display.
It had been a curiosity when the mere had looked suffused with blood where everyone could see, and it earned a couple of inches in the local newspaper. The day George Two Feathers fell off scaffolding and broke his neck, the mere became front-page news.
That was how the mere came to the notice of Paul Savage.
The museum was high on the philanthropist’s list of charitable donations, topped only by places like the San Francisco opera house and the Savage Art Gallery, which his great-grandfather had endowed in the thirties. He was old money and never let anyone forget it. And the words borderline Mafia were never spoken aloud. At least, not to his face. Which meant her refusal to sell him the mere could make life downright hazardous. And now that she’d had time to think it over, Savage could be connected to the man who’d hijacked her case.
As Ngaire touched the greenstone, she felt it pulse with life. Then again, it might simply be the rush of blood through her veins. She shrugged off the eerie feeling of icy fingers counting the notches in her spine. Soon you’ll think you hear spooky music, she chided herself. It was one thing to believe the greenstone could become darkened with blood, another to imbue it with a heartbeat.
The original leather thong was still looped through the hole carved in the handle. Slipping her hand through the narrow strip, Ngaire lifted the paddle-shaped artifact above the desk from its resting place on the silken shawl and repeated its name. “Te Ruahiki.” She named the warrior chieftain, the Rangatira, whose spirit was said to have entered the mere on his death.
For a deadly weapon, the greenstone mere had a deceptive beauty, its sharp polished edges pale and almost see-through. It was as if all the light in the room had been sucked into the translucent green jade to produce an otherworldly glow. As if it knew that after all its years away from Aotearoa, New Zealand, it had come home.
And the theme tune from Jaws would start playing any second now. Get a grip, girl.
She saw Bennett’s jaw drop as if that would prevent him blinking his surprise. “A greenstone mere.”
“And not any ordinary one,” Manu Pomare said reverently as he got to his feet. “That’s inanga greenstone. Look at the hours of work in it, and the intricate carving on the handle. I’ve never seen another like it.”
As if fascinated, he reached out to touch, his gaze
