Lost and Found Read Online Free

meet to talk about the assignment,” Fantasy Man said. “There are some complications involved.”
    This was the first time he had ever suggested that they should get together face-to-face.
Don’t get too excited, here. It’s just a job
.
    “Yes, of course,” she said. “Where do you want to meet?”
    “At the clients’ place of business.”
    She seized a pen. “Where is it?”
    “Las Vegas,” Fantasy Man said. “Place called Military World. A small museum that features reproductions of arms and armor from the medieval period to the present. Does a big gift shop business.”
    “Reproductions?” she repeated carefully. Her initial enthusiasm evaporated instantly. Reality returned with a dull thud. Military World sounded like a tacky, low-rent souvenir operation. She had professional standards. She did not work for people who collected and sold reproductions.
    On the other hand, this was Fantasy Man. In spite ofVesta’s warning, she was determined to encourage future assignments with Lost and Found.
    Sometimes you had to lower your standards a notch. Business was business.
    “When do you want me in Vegas?” she asked, pen poised above the pad.
    “As soon as possible. How about tomorrow morning?”
    Yes
.
    “I’ll have to check my schedule,” she said smoothly. “But I seem to recall that I’m free tomorrow.”
    And if she wasn’t free, she would cancel whatever appointments stood in the way of meeting Fantasy Man in person.

Two
    T he ranks of medieval warriors, forever frozen in their steel carapaces, loomed behind him in the shadows. Mack Easton’s face was as unreadable as that of any of the helmeted figures standing guard on the other side of the office window. There was something about Easton that made him appear locked in time too, Cady thought. A quality of stillness perhaps. You had to look twice to see him there in the shadows. If it hadn’t been for the glow of the computer screen reflecting off the strong, fierce planes of his face and glinting on the lenses of his glasses, he would have been invisible.
    Not a youthful face, she thought. Definitely mature. But not
too
mature. Thirty-nine or possibly forty, a good age. An interesting age. At least it looked interesting on Mack Easton.
    The weird thing was that, even though she had never been able to imagine an exact image of him with only the telephone connection to go on, now that she was actually face-to-face with him she could see that he fit the voice perfectly. Take the serious, dark-rimmed glasses, for example. Never in a million years would she have thoughtto add that touch if she had been asked to draw a picture of him based on their long-distance conversations. But when he had removed them from his pocket a few minutes ago and put them on, she had decided they looked absolutely right on him.
    “We have a photograph,” he said. “It was found in the museum’s archives.”
    “Museum” was not the word she would have used to dignify Military World, she thought. What was she doing here? She must have been temporarily out of her mind last night when she took Easton’s call. She was at home in hushed galleries, art research libraries and the cluttered back rooms of prestigious auction salons. She mingled with connoisseurs and educated collectors.
    Military World, with its low-budget reproductions of arms and armor from various wars, was very much as she had envisioned it: tacky. Then again, maybe that was just her personal bias showing. She had never been overly fond of armor. To her it symbolized all that was brutish and primitive in human nature. The fact that the artisans of the past had devoted enormous talent and craftsmanship to its design and decoration struck her as bizarre.
    The office in which they sat belonged to the two owners of Military World, a pair that went by the names of Notch and Dewey. They hovered anxiously in the shadows, having surrendered the single desk to Easton and his laptop computer.
    Mack occupied the