What She Didn't See

by Heather Wynter

  The motor shut off. The front door slammed, and the rear door creaked outward. The car jounced. Her eyes snapped open before she could stop them, and she saw Luke’s body sliding out of view. Someone grunted, and then Luke was gone.

  Grace heard heavy breathing and clamped her eyes shut. She concentrated all her power on being an inert lump of flesh. So simple yet incredibly difficult when you’re actually trying to do it. Rough hands grabbed her and hauled her out of the car. Someone slung her over their shoulder. She let her arms flop, and her head banged into his spine.

  A moment later, he dropped her onto a brutal concrete floor. A heavy iron door boomed shut, and darkness closed beyond her eyelids. She waited several minutes before she dared to look. At least it felt like several minutes. Panic has a way of speeding up time.

  When she felt it was safe, she opened her eyes just enough to see a faint gleam of light illuminating Luke’s features. He was opening his own eyes, and they both looked around.

  Luke leaped to his feet. “Hurry, Grace!” he whispered. “Get up! He’ll be back any second.”

  She scrambled upright as best she could. They were in a damp concrete chamber. She wiped the dirt off her face, a gift from the disgusting floor he’d dropped them on. A crack high up on one wall let in the only light. Her knees didn’t want to support her. Her everything didn’t want to be here. “What are we going to do?”

  He hobbled to the door and propped himself against the wall near it. “He’ll be back here to put us down. He probably brought us here because it’s somewhere he can dispose of our bodies easily. He won’t delay at all. He won’t want to take the chance of us getting away from him.”

  She hustled up next to him, ready to do anything. If she could just figure out what to do. “Why didn’t he kill us in the parking lot? He chased us all over Rome to kill us, and now he locks us up?”

  “How should I know? Maybe he borrowed the cab and didn’t want to get blood on the seats. Who knows why he does anything?”

  She stood aside and inspected the door. It looked depressingly solid.

  “I’m sorry,” he said with a sigh. “That was rude. I’m just in a lot of pain. This is all a lot.”

  “I know,” she said and turned to him. For once, he looked vulnerable. Human. Frightened. And she hated to ask, but she had no choice. “What are we going to do? How do we fight him?”

  He cast another fleeting glance over the door and looked hopeless for a moment. His eyes flickered closed. When he opened them, he shot her a grin. “We have an advantage over him.”

  “What advantage is that?” She jerked her chin at him. “Your leg?”

  He laughed. The sound of it in this hole made her skin crawl. It was far from happy. It was a sound produced from exhaustion and desperation. “No. There’s two of us and only one of him.”

  “How do you know he doesn’t have a friend working with him?”

  “If he did, he wouldn’t have come to the station himself to pick us up. He wouldn’t risk one of us recognizing him.” He ran his fingertips along the door crack. “He’s working alone. That means he’ll come to kill us alone. He’ll know we both regained consciousness in the interval, so he’ll walk through that door holding a gun. That’s when we’ll get the jump on him.”

  She cocked her head to study him. “Is that realistic? It sounds like a scene from a movie.”

  He chuckled. “Have a better idea?” He retreated to one side of the door and waved her to the other side, the side with the hinges. “You stand over there, and I’ll stand here. When he walks in, I’ll jump out and grab him and the gun. When we start fighting over it, you can jump him from behind.”

  “And … do what, exactly? I don’t know how to fight. I’m not trained for this.” As much as she wanted to be his best partner, this wasn’t the movies. This was a crazy idea. Though it was the only one they currently had.

  He made a face. “Nonsense. Just get your elbow around his neck and do your best to strangle him. That’s all the advantage I’ll need to get the gun away from him. Once I have the gun, then brute strength won’t matter.”

  She snorted. “You’re crippled. He could beat both of us and kill us. We’ll never get out of here.”

  “That’s only one possibility. The other possibility is that we’ll defeat him and get out of here and everything will be fine. Don’t say we’ll never get out of here when one scenario is as likely as the other, if not more so. Think positively.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fan-fucking-tastic. We’re about to die, and you’re thinking positively. That’s just perfect.”

  “I mean, would you rather die miserable?”

  She didn’t respond. Didn’t want to waste any of her precious time left on the earth arguing. Or feeling hopeless. Just how would she go about living a normal life again anyway? It’s easier when you feel like you have nothing to risk.

  Luke chuckled again and flattened his back against the wall. She did the same, but she didn’t hold out much hope for this plan. Asheim had attacked them so many times in such a short period of time. She didn’t trust that he wouldn’t just keep coming after her for the rest of fucking eternity.

  Luke’s heavy breathing slowed and became quiet. The dripping of water echoed in the distance. She strained her ears to listen for any other sound, but she heard nothing else.

  They stood there for a long time. Asheim never came back. The light squeaking through the crack rotated the other way. A thin shaft of gold streamed through the murk. It swung around to an angle from the other side of the room, or box, or whatever it was they were in.

  Luke glanced right and left at nothing. The light faded and changed from gold to gray. It drifted into deep sea green and eventually to blackish silver. The air chilled, bringing ghosts with it. Grace shivered and rubbed her arms, but she didn’t dare move. Asheim could come back at any second.

  At last, Luke threw up his hands. “Screw it. I can’t stand up anymore. I’m sitting down. We’ll hear him unlocking this door if he comes back.”

  He slid down the wall and propped his injured leg out in front of him. He rested his elbow on his other knee. She stared down at him for a while, and then she, too, threw in the towel.

  She sat down cross-legged next to him. “Luke?”

  “Yeah?”

  She hesitated a long time before she gathered her courage to ask. “Do you think … do you think Gabe is in on tipping Asheim off to where we were going?”

  She expected him to laugh it off or grin or … or something. She almost wished he would. She wanted nothing more than for him to dismiss her worries and assure her she’d imagined the whole thing.

  Instead, he hung his head and let out a long sigh. His hair fell over his eyes. “No, I don’t. In fact, I know he isn’t. He’s solid. We wouldn’t be sitting here if he wasn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He peeked at her from under his bangs. “I speak Italian. That translator didn’t tell the detective that I sent the information from your phone. They don’t know someone else on the planet knows Asheim’s identity. They think it’s just you and me.”

  “If that’s true, then …”

  He nodded. “Even if Asheim kills us, he’ll still get caught. The United States government will track him down. He won’t get away with this.”

  She faced front. Cold dread settled into her guts. “It doesn’t help much, does it?”

  “No,” he breathed. “It doesn’t.”

  “But Lena will get justice.”

  “We all will. No matter what.”

  Grace sat still, thinking the whole thing over. She couldn’t imagine a worse situation in which to find herself. She’d been worried about a lot of things when she and Lena left the country, from being robbed to getting lost and everything in between. Yet she never imagined something like this. If she had, she never would’ve agreed to go. Never would’ve let Lena go.

  She didn’t doubt for an instant that she would die in this horrible prison. A
sheim would dump their bodies in the Tiber River or whatever body of water proved most convenient to his ends. No one would ever find them. Some news reporter would deliver the story that three American tourists met their deaths in Rome and authorities were still searching for the killer. End of story.

  Luke sniffed and ran his fingers through his hair. That simple motion brought Grace’s attention back to the present. She looked over at him. When she met his gaze, she couldn’t help but smile. “Being here with you helps. That’s the only thing that does.”

  He smiled with that sad understanding she’d first noticed at the station. “Thanks. Being with you helps too. Though it’s horrible two people have to suffer, I’m glad that neither of us is alone in this.”

  He covered her hand with his, and the warmth of his palm radiated into her. He squeezed. That fast, everything was okay, and she felt strong enough to face whatever the future held in store for her.

  Chapter Nine

  Grace adjusted her position, and her neck kinked. She fidgeted and was just too uncomfortable to go back to sleep. Her hips hurt from sitting on the hard concrete so long, and she couldn’t shake the cold. And then there was everything terrible that had happened to them. Everything dark had joined them in the cage, and there was nowhere to run now.

  She squirmed again. Her ear ached from resting on Luke’s shoulder all night, and her neck felt twisted even when she straightened up.

  He lifted his head off her when she sat up. He tightened his hold on her hand, but he didn’t stop her from moving away. They’d been sitting side by side all night, holding hands with their heads leaning against each other.

  The light streaming through the crack was gray again. Through the dank, musty smell of their cell, she caught a whiff of dawn. “It’s morning again.”

  “Yeah,” Luke murmured back.

  “Why doesn’t Asheim come back? Why doesn’t he come and kill us already?”

  Luke did his best to laugh, but it didn’t come out very well. “What’s your hurry?”

  “I don’t want to wait around to die. I’d rather be shot quick than suffer in this cage until we die of starvation, dehydration, or freezing to death. Something must have happened to him.”

  “He’ll come back,” Luke said, but he didn’t sound certain of it. His stone facade had been steadily slipping. It had allowed them to get closer, but it also made Grace feel more mortal without an indestructible hero by her side.

  She adjusted her position again. She wanted to stand up and stretch her legs, but she couldn’t bear to let go of his hand. Even if they were mere mortals together, he was the only thing keeping her sane right now.

  “How long before someone notices you’re gone?”

  He bit back a grin, but he only made eye contact for an instant. Then he went back to looking straight ahead. “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m on vacation. I’m not due back at work for a month.”

  She groaned. “Great.”

  “What about you? You must be scheduled to check in with your family soon?”

  “Lena was the one who checked in with her parents. My parents learned a long time ago not to check on me. They won’t think something’s wrong until Lena’s parents tell them something’s wrong, and as far as I know, she wasn’t particularly diligent about it either.”

  “Then they’ll know something’s wrong when the authorities tell them Lena’s dead. Your parents will wait by the phone counting the seconds until they hear that you’re on the plane heading home.”

  She dared to peek at him. “How likely is that to happen when that carabiniere has done everything to stop anybody from finding out I disappeared?”

  He looked away. “Good point.”

  She tightened her grip on his hand, summoning up the hallucination that they were a normal couple, holding hands and talking on some date somewhere. “What about you? Where are your parents? How often do you check in with them and tell them you’re alive?”

  “My parents are both dead. I don’t have anybody waiting to hear from me.”

  Now she really did turn. She locked her eyes on him for the first time since last night. Impending death made it easier for them both to open up. They didn’t have to worry about rejection later. Didn’t have to speculate that their secrets might be spread over the world.

  “That sounds like a lonely way to live. Don’t tell me you’re one of those orphaned kids turned secret agent who doesn’t have any human attachments.”

  “That’s pure fiction, sweetheart. I’m no orphan. My mother died of a stroke five years ago. My dad sort of went downhill after he lost her. He died of pneumonia a year later. You won’t find an agent with human attachments as strong as mine.”

  She hugged his arm close to her chest. She needed him solid next to her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  “It’s okay. These last few years have been lonely, but I somehow keep hoping that will change. Who knows? Maybe I’ll meet some beautiful, smart, brave FBI agent and we’ll live happily ever after.”

  She smiled, but the thought only made her sad. “Maybe.”

  He jostled her shoulder, but he held her hand just as tightly as she held his. “Don’t sound so down on it. It could happen. I’m not that repulsive, am I?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” She glanced up at him. “You’re not repulsive at all. Any woman would be lucky to nab you.”

  He chuckled. “And you’ll find yourself some geeky, freckle-faced lab tech and have geeky, freckle-faced kids who are obsessed with chemistry and growing fungi in Petri dishes.”

  She burst out laughing. “Shut up! I will not!” Though it wasn’t exactly like she hadn’t harbored similar dreams for herself.

  They laughed together. Laughter sounded wrong in this dungeon, with everything they had gone through, but it felt good to let go of the dread and apprehension for a little while. Why not laugh? There was nothing else to do but cry. Grace feared that if she started crying now, she might never stop.

  She looked over at him to find him smiling down at her. “You never know,” she said. “Maybe I’ll go into law enforcement and hook up with a strong, brave knight in shining armor, and we’ll both spend the rest of our lives busting bad guys across the globe.”

  Now that she had come face-to-face with him, she didn’t want to look away. She never wanted to look away. She glanced down at his mouth. She wanted to kiss him, just one more time. But she went back to gazing into his eyes.

  His lips twitched. “Maybe.”

  He raised his hand. His fingers drifted toward a strand of hair to push it off her forehead. The next minute, they were kissing. She dissolved into those lips, lips she’d enjoyed kissing earlier. She put her head back on his shoulder, drifting in and out of sleep, content for the moment that Gabe would be all Luke said he was and would find them.

  … His palms closed around her cheeks and she lost all her moorings. She floated on his tongue sliding into her mouth and surrounding her. She wanted to touch him, but her hands wouldn’t travel beyond his shoulders. He held her suspended between heaven and earth where she couldn’t think, couldn’t decide.

  None of that mattered now. If she was doing to die, she wanted this. She wanted him. She didn’t care what happened afterward. She wouldn’t hold back.

  His face blurred beyond her nose. She couldn’t see—and didn’t care to see. She existed in the endless delight of his mouth tasting her, inviting her in, fulfilling her every desire. His fingers in her hair guided her head to one side to match his kiss.

  She could kiss him forever. She could wander in the hot, close embrace of his mouth, lighting her up from the inside, obliterating all the horror and despair beyond their skin. She needed this to stay sane.

  All too soon, his muscular arm closed around her ribs. He lifted her up. She knew this would happen, and she wanted it more than anything, but she almost mourned the end of that kiss. The farther they progressed down this road, the closer they came to the end. She wo
uld give anything to pretend it would never end, that nothing could ever stop it.

  He hugged her weight against his chest. His mouth locked over hers and muffled the ecstatic sighs rising out of her soul. He drew her toward him and sat her down on his lap. She straddled him, aching way down inside herself for more and yet desperately anguished that it couldn’t last. That this beauty would end in the worst way possible.

  Her soul hurt, knowing she couldn’t love him the way he deserved to be loved. She saw the fleeting nature of their encounter. It could never be enough, never be what he deserved, but she couldn’t give him that.

  He sank his teeth into her lip. The pain set her blood on fire. He excited her out of her mind, but not even that could soften the terrible agony of losing him even before she got him.

  She attacked his clothes in a ravenous and violent frenzy, but she didn’t get further than pulling up his shirt. She yanked it out of his waistband and dove both hands underneath, almost losing her mind at the hot, silken velvet of his back. She wanted to taste him, to trail her moist tongue up his spine and bite his neck. She wanted to taste every inch of him, but she couldn’t stop kissing him, and she didn’t want to.

  He roared into her mouth when she touched him. Shuddered and trembled. He pulled up her shirt, groped around her waist and up to her bra. He was all over her, stabbing his tongue down her throat.

  She saw it all. She couldn’t stop it, and she didn’t try. She watched her destiny unfolding before her eyes. It would happen.

  His lips took hold of her one more time, and her mind vaporized in vague fantasies jumbled in delusions and impressions.

  She wanted to cry, but she felt too good. Her eyes opened, and she discovered him staring back at her with the same astonishment. He gasped for breath between kisses. His skin glistened, and his eyes shone. What was happening? Trauma bonding? Something deeper?

  Whatever it was, it was happening to both of them. What she experienced, he experienced. They were going there together. Away from this nightmare and into a dream …