In Plain Sight

“I can’t say I’m surprised to find you here, Mr. Lockerby,” she said, standing over him as Davis and Warner searched the room. She pulled back the veil, revealing her ice blue eyes, and placed a cigarette between her dark red lips.

Absently, Alex noticed that she wore the same burgundy lipstick that Evelyn had worn.

“How goes the hunt for our missing Germans?” he asked as the Sorceress came to a stop, standing over him.

“It’s being handled,” she replied with a raised eyebrow. “At the moment, however, I’d rather talk about what you are doing here.”

Alex smiled his most sincere-looking fake smile. “Why, I’m helping you with your case, my lady,” he said in a gallant voice. “Have your boys look in the handbag on the center table,” Alex added, nodding at the purse Evelyn had brought with her. “I’m sure they’ll find those pesky drawings you’ve been looking for. Along with a pistol that is not mine,” he amended.

Davis and Warner paused in their search and looked at Sorsha. After a moment, she nodded. The FBI men converged on the table as Sorsha searched her own tiny handbag for a matchbook.

“I’d offer you one of mine,” Alex said, holding up his right hand as much as he could in the handcuffs. “But, unfortunately…”

“That’s all right,” Sorsha said, then she bent down and reached into Alex’s jacket pocket, extracting a cardboard matchbook.

“They’re here, all right,” Agent Davis said. “All six originals.”

“Now will you uncuff me?” Alex said as Sorsha lit her cigarette.

“Not yet,” she said, blowing smoke in his face. “I must confess I’m very curious about how you got those papers, and just who cast the finding rune here tonight. If we dust those originals, will we find your fingerprints, Mr. Lockerby?”

Alex grinned up at her as best his could from his hunched over position. “You won’t find my fingerprints,” he said. “And I didn’t cast the finding rune.” He nodded at the handcuffs.

“You could have put those on yourself once you were done,” Sorsha said.

Alex smiled wider. “You can tell that I didn’t cast that spell because there aren’t obfuscation wards and concealment runes on the walls. I knew you were tracking that spell; you told me so yourself. That’s how you found Thomas Rockwell in the first place. You didn’t know that Quinton Sanderson had a partner and that she came with him to New York. When Thomas cast the finding rune, you tracked it to this neighborhood and then looked for a runewright. That’s why you didn’t find this workshop. This is where he actually cast the rune.”

Sorsha’s face carried the look of someone who unknowingly drank sour milk.

“Well,” she said. “If you knew I was tracking any casting of that finding rune, why didn’t you shield this place? And who cast the rune?”

“I hoped you wouldn’t come into it at all,” Alex said, and sighed. “But I knew if you felt the rune being cast here, you’d come, and I needed you in case something bad happened.”

“What if I hadn’t found this workshop for a week?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. Alex chuckled.

“Well, I hoped your aim would be better if you were close to the place it was cast.”

“You still haven’t told me who did the casting.”

“She called herself Evelyn Rockwell,” Alex said. “At least to me. She seduced Quinton Sanderson and got him to steal the drawings from the Archimedean Monograph. Then when he disappeared, she moved here and found Thomas Rockwell.”

“And then you, when Rockwell disappeared,” Sorsha finished, a reproving look on her perfect face. Alex nodded.

“When I put two and two together, I enticed her here. I told her I’d figured it out but I wanted more time. I told her to go home and wait for me to call.”

“And,” Agent Davis said, stepping up beside Sorsha. He held Alex’s bag, casually in his right hand. “If she’d been innocent, she would have gone home.”

“That’s right,” Alex said, his voice suddenly raspy.

“But she wasn’t innocent,” Sorsha said. “She got the drop on you, locked you to this bed, and finished the rune herself.”

“Yes,” Alex said.

“What happened to her?”

“Uncuff me,” Alex said, “and I’ll show you.”

Sorsha looked at Davis and nodded toward Alex.

“Before we do that,” Davis said with a malicious smile, “you’d better have a look at this.” He opened the bag so that Sorsha could look inside. She smiled, showing a row of pearly white teeth any shark would be proud of, offset all the more by her burgundy lipstick.

“My, my,” she said reaching into the bag. “What have we here?” When her hand came out, she was holding Alex’s rune-covered Colt 1911.

“Nice,” Davis said. “I have one just like it, though mine isn’t as decorative.”

Sorsha turned it over in her hands, scrutinizing the runes on its surface. “There wouldn’t be a spell breaker rune on this gun, would there?”

Alex forced himself to relax. He had a permit for the gun, but adding runes to it was questionably legal. If Sorsha wanted to make trouble for him, she could, but not if all she cared about were spell breakers.