What She Didn't See
Page 6
The detective scowled again. “That’s impossible. We would have seen a phone in the car.”
“All we have to do is go check to see if it’s there,” said Luke.
The carabiniere slapped the folder against his thigh and hopped off the table. He raised his eyebrows at the translator. “Very well. Let’s look.”
He rotated around the table and bent over a laptop sitting there. He tapped on the keyboard. While she waited, Grace stole another sidelong glance at Luke to find him gazing back at her. This was it. All her instincts told her this was right. The phone must have fallen out of her pocket in the police car. It was the only possibility left after they ruled out all the other options.
The detective straightened up. “You were transported here in Car 71. It’s in the parking garage. Come with me and we’ll look.”
He didn’t argue when Luke stood up along with Grace. Luke walked slowly, limping from the injury to his thigh. Grace supported him when he needed it as they made their way to the garage. The detective escorted the pair through the building, down innumerable flights of concrete stairs, to an underground garage full of police cars.
The detective found the vehicle in question and unlocked it. He cracked the rear passenger door, and Grace slid into the seat. She sat in the same position in which she’d ridden from the shop to the station.
She ran her fingertips through the crease behind her hips. If the phone fell out of her pocket, it should have gotten wedged there, but she didn’t find it. She looked on the floor. Nothing. Her heart sank. How could she experience such a deep, wordless certainty that it was here only to find out her intuition was wrong? It couldn’t be wrong. The phone had to be here. It had to. Where else would it be? How else would she convince him they weren’t lying?
She doubled over and traced her hands under the front seat. She groped around the iron seat slides and across the rough carpet. A sob stuck in her throat. Just for a second, despair almost inundated her. All the horror and desperation of the last twenty-four hours hit her like a ton of bricks. This city was a trap, and it had wrapped its dirty claws around her. She wasn’t sure if she should be grateful or furious. Too many things had conspired to stop her from leaving Rome. She couldn’t ignore them.
With the next thought, all those disparate events congealed into one solid mass of cold-blooded determination. She wouldn’t leave Rome until she found her phone. She didn’t care what it took. She would finish what the killer started. What Lena started when she saved her. She was in this, and by God, she would see it to the end. Whether by chance or by design, circumstances had brought her to this pass. She would solve this case with Luke, come hell or high water.
In a fraction of a second, she knew with unwavering certainty that the phone was here. It was in this car. It had to be. It couldn’t be anywhere else, and she wasn’t about to get out without finding it.
She arched even lower and shoved her hands under the rear seat. Desperate. Led by an intuition that was all hers. It would stay with her even if Lena hadn’t. Even if Luke didn’t.
Seconds later, she felt the slick surface of a phone. She grabbed it and pulled it out. She didn’t need to look at it. It felt right. She already knew it was hers. It completed the whole picture, and she was proud that she’d stayed. That she had persisted.
She got out of the car and held it up. “Got it.” She couldn’t stop beaming.
Luke burst into a huge grin and slapped his thigh. “Ha!”
The party took the phone back up to the interrogation room. Grace resumed her seat, and Luke eased himself into the chair next to her. He kept his leg straight and flinched when he rested his heel on the floor.
The carabiniere blew out a long breath. “All right, let’s see what you have. Show me what this is all about.”
She unlocked the phone and navigated to her photos. She tapped on the video of the boys playing soccer. The detective pivoted around behind her, and Luke leaned over to watch. She played the video of the women yelling at the kids and them yelling back.
All at once, Luke’s finger shot into her line of sight. He tapped the screen and paused the video. The first woman’s forefinger pointed down at the alley. The second woman froze while pinning something to the clothesline.
Luke whispered under his breath. “There! There he is!”
Grace blinked at the screen. Right there in plain view, over the second woman’s shoulder, the killer sighted down his rifle, aiming at the ground. It was him. It was the blond shooter, as clear as day. He was right there on her phone. She had been so busy watching the women she hadn’t seen him. Never one to peer into windows, anyway.
Guilt stunned her. If she had only put away her phone sooner. Enjoyed her time with Lena fully. Then perhaps she’d have more time with Lena to enjoy.
The carabiniere groaned and turned away. “I must turn this case over to Interpol. It’s beyond our authority.”
Grace looked up at Luke, but he didn’t see her. He frowned at the screen, and she didn’t like the look on his face one bit. She gulped. “Luke? What is it?”
He shot her a glance. “Do you mind?”
He took the phone out of her hands and did something. “What are you doing?”
“I’m forwarding the video and sending a screenshot of his face to Gabe. We have his contact details on file. He can send the relevant information to Interpol. Even if he gets out of Italy, we’ll be able to track him down.”
She stared at him and her breath caught. “You … you know him?”
He handed back the phone. He sat up straight and his features cleared. “I know who he is. His name is Aksel Asheim, and you were right. He’s not American. He’s Norwegian.”
“If that’s true, why didn’t you recognize him when you fought him at the shop?”
“I never got a good look at him. I was too busy trying to punch him and avoid getting punched by him. Then I was surrounded, and he was gone. Since then, his bullets have dissuaded me from looking at him directly. Besides, seeing a picture of someone and recognizing them is sometimes not an exact science. He had a mustache before. Now he’s clean-shaven, and he’s thinner.”
She looked down at her phone, but the screen went dark. She didn’t see the device. She saw the face on the video. It was definitely the same guy. She could never forget that face if she lived a thousand years.
“He used to belong to the Joint Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Service Line out of Brussels. It’s part of NATO, but he went rogue. He’s been hiring himself out for the last five years. I couldn’t tell you who he’s working for now.”
The carabiniere interrupted. “Thank you for the information, but we have to take the phone into evidence. We’ll make sure it gets passed on to Interpol.”
He advanced on Grace, holding open a manila envelope. He gazed into her eyes, waiting for her to hand over her phone.
She peered down into the envelope. Should she do it? Should she let this precious repository of evidence out of her hot little hand? What if one of these cops proved corrupt as TV and movies painted them to be? What if they destroyed the evidence and Asheim got away?
She glanced over at Luke, but he didn’t give her any clues what to do. Didn’t give her any indication that she even should be considering this. And really, why would she? She wasn’t an investigator, officer, or anything like that. What was she going to do with the phone? She couldn’t even keep herself safe.
Either way, Luke already knew who the killer was. He’d emailed the video and the screenshot of Asheim to Gabe. The phone itself was essentially inconsequential now. Luke, the carabiniere, and the translator had all seen the video.
She summoned all her courage and dropped the phone into the envelope. It thumped against the paper with a portentous sound. The next instant, the carabiniere turned away and started talking to the translator in Italian. The translator didn’t translate what he said. Grace drifted into a cloud of isolation with Luke. The detective and the translator erased the
m out of existence.
All the energy that had kept her going until now drained out of her. She collapsed lower into her chair. She had gone to all the trouble of finding that phone. Now it was over, and she needed some sleep.
Grace no longer had a good reason to stay in Rome or to give this case another thought. It had been passed to someone else exactly the way Luke told her it would be. Even this graying carabiniere understood that. He knew they would send a case like this up the chain of command and let someone else suffer the headache of solving it. It was dangerous and foolish to try to solve it themselves.
When she checked Luke again, she discovered him staring straight in front of him. He looked smaller. All the vitality that had animated him all night long had evaporated. He was finished too. He would spend the rest of his vacation recovering from the gunshot wound to his leg.
She couldn’t even feel sad about parting from him. It was inevitable now. The compulsion that bound them together no longer existed. They had no reason to stay together. Maybe he didn’t even want to. She wasn’t sure she wanted to either. Their trauma bond wavered under this new promise of safety.
The carabiniere’s cell phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and held it to his ear. When he put it down, he raised his tired eyes to Luke and Grace. “The embassy is sending another car for you. You can go to the airport now.”
Chapter Eight
The carabiniere shook hands with Luke, then with Grace. He paused a moment before her. Said something in Italian that she didn’t understand before turning away and walking back into the station.
Luke cast a glance across the parking lot. The taxi driver reclined against the fender, doodling on his phone. Grace couldn’t see his face. His black hair touched his jacket collar. He didn’t look toward his passengers. He just tapped his screen as he waited for them to get into the car.
“Do you have your tickets and passport?” Luke asked.
She nodded. Now that it was over, she couldn’t remember why she’d ever felt so much about this situation. She didn’t feel anything now. It was as if everything had happened a thousand miles away.
She’d kissed him. That was how she got wrapped up in this. She must have been desperate to do something like that.
He nodded toward the taxi. “Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here before something else happens.”
He started to walk away, but at that second, she shot out her hand and caught his arm. “Luke?”
“Yeah?” His sparkling eyes drifted in front of her. His impossibly good looks occupied her whole awareness one more time, maybe the last time, distracting her from the fear she had of ever stepping into another car again.
She swallowed hard. “Thanks. I just want to say that. Thank you for everything.”
He broke into a grin. “You bet. I meant what I said before. You made a great partner. It was an honor to work with you, even if only for a little while. Now come on. I don’t want to be responsible for you missing another flight. It’s time for you to be safe again.”
He grabbed her hand and held on to it, sliding his thumb back and forth over the back of her hand. He held it like he didn’t want to part from her either. She would miss him, miss that they weren’t really strangers anymore who had known each other one day and lived a thousand miles from each other. She could pretend they were in this together and always would be.
As they approached the car, the driver stayed where he was. Grace caught a fleeting glimpse of his phone. He was playing some kind of video game. His thumb danced over the screen. The light cast a greenish-blue shadow across his knuckles.
Luke grabbed the passenger door and swung it open. He held it back for Grace to get into the back seat, drew her forward by the hand. She stepped next to the door and put her foot on the carpeted floor.
She was just thinking she would need to get a new phone when she got back to Florida, when the driver pushed himself off the fender and jammed his phone into his pocket. Grace pivoted on her heel and dropped into the seat.
The moment she was seated, the driver spun around. He stood right behind Luke. Grace got a look at his face and froze. It was Asheim, but his hair was black, and he wore black contact lenses. A great disguise if you weren’t bothering to take a close look, and after everything that had happened, she took a second to hate herself for not being more alert.
In a split second, he gritted his teeth and stabbed a syringe down into Luke’s neck. Luke buckled like a struck ox, collapsing at Asheim’s feet. Grace flung out both hands to grab the killer when he launched across Luke’s fallen form. But he attacked Grace with such speed she didn’t have time to bring her arms up.
She saw him coming at her with a white cloth. His hand shot out, attempting to force the cloth to her face. She smelled something sickening and wrong, and the next minute, Asheim tackled her backward. She toppled across the seat with him on top of her.
She floundered to get any kind of hold on him. She caught him by the neck and tried to choke him, but he proved far stronger than she ever could have imagined. He strapped his left hand behind her neck, and the white handkerchief closed over her nose.
Fumes hit her in the eyes and stung her nostrils. Her head swam. She tried to choke him with all her might before she passed out. Luke. Was he dead already? She would be dead if she didn’t think of something quick.
One of Asheim’s contact lenses slipped in the struggle. She spotted a rim of pale blue beyond the black iris and knew she couldn’t win. At that moment, he wedged his knee into the seat and adjusted his weight on top of her. He secured his position and tightened his hold around her skull.
The handkerchief obliterated the last shred of fresh air entering her lungs. She had to breathe, and when she did, she inhaled a full breath of those fumes. Her consciousness wavered, and everything went black.
She came to her senses with a horrible pain stabbing her in the ribs. She winced, which only made it worse. Each breath was agony as she forced her eyelids open. She found herself lying on her side on the floor of a car. It vibrated under her and bounced over bumps and ruts.
She blinked the haze out of her head, rummaging in her mind for something. Asheim had attacked Luke and her outside the questura. Luke had said if Asheim attacked them between the parking lot and the station, that he would suspect something fishy was going on.
How did Asheim know the American embassy had called a taxi to take them to the airport? How could he possibly find out unless he had someone from inside the questura informing him? Was that the reason they had been struck by that car? Was someone on the inside conspiring against them?
That would just be far too much for someone so inexperienced to handle, and Grace didn’t even want to consider it. But once it was lodged in her mind, she couldn’t easily get it out. If she was honest, she couldn’t afford to. This whole situation was crazy, but she was stuck in it. She had to find a way out.
She picked up her aching skull with heroic effort. That awful smell still hovered in her sinuses. It made her sick to her stomach, but she had to get up. She had to find out where they were and what would happen to them. Try to formulate some sort of plan. She couldn’t lose hope, not even in this messed-up space in life that was so hopeless.
When she lifted her throbbing head, she came face-to-face with Luke. He lay flat on his back on the taxi’s rear seat with his eyes closed. She checked his chest. He was breathing. He looked peacefully asleep. The rest would do him good. How long had he slept? How long had she slept?
Then she caught sight of a trickle of blood on his neck. It had stained his shirt collar. The events of the parking lot flooded back. Asheim had kidnapped them, and they were riding in the back of the taxi. He was taking them somewhere. But where?
Only one answer made sense. He was taking them somewhere to kill them. Yet why hadn’t he just killed them when he had the chance? Why kidnap them like this? Maybe to make sure they weren’t found? But why would he care if they were found all of a sudden?
Whatever and whoever were in on this, it went a lot higher than the carabinieri. Whoever hired Asheim to assassinate the congressman didn’t want him getting caught. With Luke and Grace out of the way, the authorities could pretend that the assassin had fled Rome. He would never be caught.
Had Luke really sent that video and screenshot to Gabe? Of everyone she’d met since this nightmare started, he was the one person Grace never doubted. She could believe some international conspiracy was working behind the scenes to let Asheim escape. She could never believe that about Luke.
He was lying here in this car with her, wasn’t he? He was in just as much danger as she was. If he was working for the other side, he wouldn’t have gotten shot trying to find her phone. Asheim wouldn’t have drugged him. He wouldn’t be driving Luke off to murder him along with Grace.
He must’ve sent the video and screenshot to Gabe, which meant there was hope. Someone would know what was going on. Someone would know who the assassin was. Someone would save them.
While she gazed at the side of Luke’s face, his eyelashes fluttered and opened. He scowled at the ceiling for a second. Then his head whipped sideways, and he locked his deep, glittering eyes on her.
The car hummed under her. It hit something, bumped her hip against the carpet, and slowed. Purred to a stop.
Slowly, too slowly, Luke shut his eyes. He took a deep breath and settled down on the seat in exactly the same position he was in when she first saw him. He looked asleep.
She didn’t need words to know what he was doing. Or at least what she thought he was doing. She shut her eyes and rested her head back on the carpet. She forced herself to relax and pretend she was still unconscious too.