What She Didn't See

by Heather Wynter

  He shook her, and she startled from her sleep. “Are you okay? You were sleeping and then you started screaming. Bad nightmare?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, looking away, thinking there would never be anything more embarrassing in all her life and not knowing how to deal with all the emotions that were surfacing.

  Chapter Ten

  Grace huddled in Luke’s arms. She curled up as small as she could get against his chest and shut her eyes. He rested his lips against the back of her neck. Neither of them moved or spoke. She heard him breathing, and the warm breeze ruffled the small hairs at her nape.

  He made her feel safe, in a way she didn’t know she needed. But he also gave her something so much more priceless than that. He gave her hope, not just that they would survive this nightmare, but that she could be someone who could take charge. Who could take risks. Who could fight an assassin to avenge her best friend.

  And maybe that was the silver lining in all of this. This maze of horror had led her to him, but it had also led her to herself. To her inner strength. Without this, she would’ve never known what she was capable of. She would’ve never said it was worth it. It would never be worth losing Lena, but she was proud of how she’d handled this shakeup of her entire world.

  Luke shifted his weight on the floor, and she sat up to give him room, leaning her shoulder blades against the unforgiving wall. She had never been so uncomfortable in her life, but she wouldn’t stand up. She didn’t want to put any more space between herself and Luke than necessary. That would come all too soon with no help from her.

  He tilted his head back and shut his eyes. Wincing, he repositioned his leg on the floor in front of him. His hair covered his forehead, and she noticed a scruff of whiskers appearing on his jawline.

  Where was Asheim? Why didn’t he come back? Did he plan to leave them down here to starve? Was that his cunning plan to kill them both?

  She faced front. She couldn’t deal with that kind of cruelty, that kind of torturous horror. She’d read about such fates, but it couldn’t be hers, could it? Maybe Luke had the right idea, and she should try to get some sleep. She settled down, but before she could close her eyes, a snap made her look up. A sharp, popping sound shot through her, and she tensed.

  Luke’s head swung up, and they both stared at the crack of light shining down on them. She didn’t dare take her eyes off it in case it went back to the tiny sliver it used to be. In case she was dreaming again.

  No, she hadn’t made a mistake. A large, ragged triangle of light beamed into the hole. She could make out the rough surface of the damp concrete on the floor.

  “Luke, I’m scared.” Even as she spoke the words, she knew how pathetically ridiculous the statement was. Yet how true it was. Sure, the whole experience was terrifying by anyone’s standard. Mostly, though, she was worried about what waited for her outside this box.

  She had been in a metaphorical box her whole life. Afraid to take a risk for something better. But she had grown, had evolved. She reminded herself of that. She’d taken chances. Some had worked out, and some hadn’t. But she couldn’t pass up this chance while it stared her in the face.

  Luke didn’t say anything. He stood there with his arm blocking her, waiting for whatever would come through the door.

  The heavy iron door flew wide open. She peered into the shadows to the putrid hollow past Luke.

  Asheim burst in, and things happened so fast her brain couldn’t register Luke lying flat on his back with Asheim on top of him. She couldn’t fathom the two men clawing at each other, baring their teeth and snarling in murderous animal fury. She couldn’t understand Luke clenching his fist around Asheim’s wrist, trying to stop him from pointing a pistol at his face.

  The next instant, she launched herself across the room, rocketing on a blistering explosion of mindless energy. She hit Asheim with all her might, not knowing what she would do with him once she caught him. But she knew she couldn’t let Luke fight him alone.

  She attacked him with wild abandon, hooking her elbow around his neck exactly the way Luke had told her to. She didn’t care if she killed him. She wanted to kill him. She wanted to make sure she never had to think about him again. For Lena. For Luke. For herself.

  As long as he was alive, he would haunt her dreams. She would spend her life looking over her shoulder, expecting him to be there.

  She yanked him by the head. He bellowed, enraged, but he couldn’t get away from Luke and Grace working together. She sensed his grip on Luke wavering and redoubled her efforts. She jerked him backward, but he wouldn’t come free.

  Instead, he wrenched his wrist out of Luke’s grasp. He wound back the gun and smashed it over his shoulder. It sailed toward Grace’s nose. She couldn’t let go of his neck quickly enough to dodge.

  It crashed into her eyebrow with a splintering blow. Stars burst in her brain, and she staggered from the impact. She lost her hold on him and stumbled into the wall.

  Her mind took a few moments to reassert itself. When her vision cleared, she saw Asheim pin Luke’s arms above his head. He clamped both of Luke’s wrists in one hand and adjusted the gun in his grip to aim it under Luke’s chin.

  The situation was spiraling out of control. She couldn’t stand here and watch that bastard shoot Luke. If someone died down here, it would be Asheim. Even if they had to die along with him.

  Fueled by the horror of hope being twisted, she vaulted off the wall, shrieking in primal mania. She tackled Asheim around the ribs this time. She couldn’t think to do anything besides knocking him off Luke. Luke was ex-military. Once he got free, he would handle Asheim.

  The instant she hit him, the gun went off. A deafening concussion blasted her ears. She couldn’t hear anything for a second. The next minute, Asheim was on her, rolling on top of her. His fingers clamped around her throat, and she couldn’t breathe.

  The whirlwind of crazy confusion that had infected her a moment before stopped dead. Time stood still, and she hoped with everything in her that the bullet hadn’t hit Luke. That there was still a chance for her. For them.

  She stared up at Asheim glaring down at her. His cheeks and jaw quivered with the effort of choking her, and that made her proud that she had put up a fight and had inconvenienced him. Lena would know she tried. A veil of black descended over her eyes. She wouldn’t wake up from this. He would make sure of that.

  With the last of her strength, she twisted her head around. Luke lay on the ground next to her. His eyes were closed, and he didn’t look asleep this time. Blood and soot stained his brow and trickled into his hair where the gunshot had hit him. He was dead. No help was coming. Soon Asheim would kill her too.

  Asheim gave her neck a vicious yank. He jerked her off the floor and slammed her head onto the concrete. Brutal pain coursed from her shoulders down her spine. Her eyelids swelled, and the room rotated in a swirling pool of consciousness blurring to nothing.

  She blinked up at him. Some blond showed through the temporary dye he had used on his hair. How fitting that his face should be the last one she saw in this life.

  But she couldn’t let go so easily. She’d spent so much time and effort battling Asheim. She couldn’t stop now. There had to be a way.

  At that moment, Luke craned over on his elbow and smashed his fist into Asheim’s jaw. Asheim’s head whipped to one side, and Grace reacted on pure instinct. She swung her own fist back the other way and punched him with all her strength.

  Asheim grunted, and a spray of blood erupted from his lip. His grip on her throat didn’t slacken though. Nothing would budge him.

  Luke heaved up on his one leg. He got onto his knee. Then, to her amazement, he bent over and picked up the gun that lay a few feet away. Grace didn’t even see it there. Asheim must have dropped it.

  Luke grasped it and leveled the barrel at Asheim. That did the trick. Asheim released Grace. He let out a deep-throated roar. Then he wedged both feet against the slippery floor and soared at Luke.

  L
uke braced his elbow to aim the gun. Hurtling like a freight train, Asheim hit Luke, plowing his shoulder into Luke’s midsection. The two men sailed across the room, and the gun flipped out of Luke’s hand. It hit the floor, and Asheim smashed him into the wall.

  Grace choked, drawing sweet, blessed air into her ragged lungs. Her throat hurt something awful, but she couldn’t lie here feeling sorry for herself. Couldn’t give herself time to recover, or there would be no recovering. While she was hauling herself up and getting onto her knees, Asheim pulled Luke away from the wall and grabbed him behind the neck. He jerked up his knee and drove Luke’s face down on it with bone-crushing force.

  Luke doubled over, but Asheim wasn’t finished, not by a mile. He wound back his foot and delivered a cruel sidekick to Luke’s injured leg. The knee buckled, and Luke slammed to the floor, groaning.

  Grace floundered to her feet and staggered to the gun. She picked it up and fumbled it into position, but once she got her finger around the trigger and the barrel pointed in the right direction, something strange happened.

  She couldn’t shoot. She couldn’t kill anybody, not even Asheim. Not even the man who killed her best friend. She wanted to more than anything, but her body wouldn’t obey her brain’s command to pull the trigger. It just wasn’t in her nature. She’d spent her life obeying the law. She considered herself a good person. All her family and friends were good people.

  And she never realized how intense it was to take someone’s life, no matter who that life belonged to, until she was in this position. She wasn’t a murderer. She couldn’t go against that now, not even to save her own life. How could she live with blood on her hands?

  She stood there like a moron, watching Asheim seize Luke by the hair and swing back his fist. Holding Luke in position with one hand, he punched Luke as hard as he could and let Luke’s form wilt back onto his knees. She screamed with every ounce of strength she could muster.

  Too slowly, Asheim turned around. His dead blue eyes found Grace standing there, pointing his own gun at him. In a fraction of a second, he read the truth. She couldn’t shoot.

  He straightened up, and his features softened. He knew only too well she couldn’t shoot him. She was too damned helpless even to save herself.

  He took a step toward her. He would reach her any second. He would take the gun out of her hands. Then he would turn it on her and on Luke. No force under the sun could stop him. He would enjoy every second of it.

  He didn’t smile. His eyes twinkled. Just a tiny whisper of light went off down in the blue depths of his eyes. That winking spark echoed to the farthest reaches of the universe. It rewrote the rules. It changed her forever. She would never be the same.

  Asheim sealed his own fate by looking at her with a smirk, that twinkle in his eye like he was enjoying himself. He could have gotten away with assassinating the congressman if he hadn’t made such an effort to stop her from identifying him. He’d made her into someone who could kill him. And that strength that was always within her gave her the ability to protect herself in the face of death and to fight for justice for Lena.

  She wasn’t the same person she had been on that balcony. He’d changed her. She’d changed herself.

  Relief flooded through her. She closed her hands around the grip, put her finger on the trigger, and squeezed. He pitched back and hit the wall right next to Luke. He quaked there for a second, trying to understand what just happened to him, his blue eyes staring in all directions at once.

  Then, as if fulfilling some prewritten script, he folded at the knees. He skidded down the wall, leaving a streak of black behind his head. He slumped down next to Luke, still staring at her in astonished shock.

  Resting his elbow on his knee, Luke glanced over at the corpse. He peered up at Grace standing there. A halo of silence enshrouded her. She stared down at Asheim, but he didn’t seem real.

  She was real. Luke was real. The gun was real. But Asheim would never be real again.

  Chapter Eleven

  The same medic who had tended to Luke’s last injury straddled his stool in the embassy office. The name patch on his jacket read Stockton. He peered at Luke over his glasses while he stabbed a curved suture needle through the torn skin of Luke’s thigh. “How many more times am I going to have to stitch this up?”

  Luke winced and sucked air between his teeth. “Please God, this will be the last time. Either way, I’ll be back in Virginia soon. After that, if it breaks open again, some other poor sap will have to take care of it.”

  Stockton bent over the wound and looped the fiber around the needle. “If you keep tearing it open, there won’t be anything left to stitch up. Sometimes things can break for good.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Luke grumbled. He already knew that all too well.

  Grace took the phone down from her ear. “There’s no answer. Mom and Dad are both at work at this time of day. I’ll call them again from Atlanta—my flight connects there. They’ll be home by then.”

  She was secretly grateful for the extra time. How would she explain all this to them? How would they react to their new daughter? How would her world fit her, now that she had grown so much?

  Luke looked over at her. “Will that give them enough time to get to the airport to pick you up?”

  “I’m sure it will.” She held out the phone. “Do you want to call anybody?”

  Before he could answer, the door opened, and three men walked in. One was the man in the black suit who’d spoken to Grace the first time. The second one was a tall man with black hair. He wore a much nicer suit, a tailored gray wool combination that looked like it had just walked off the pages of a magazine. The third was Gabe.

  She recognized Gabe immediately as he walked right over to Luke. He looked much more professional than when she and Lena had met him. They’d all transformed in this world. A world she still couldn’t quite make sense of.

  “Is this how you spend your vacation?” he teased. “How many times do I have to tell you not to take your work home with you?”

  Luke burst out laughing and held out his arms. Gabe walked right into him and they bear-hugged each other like family. Grace stared at them in wonder, and Stockton stopped stitching until the hug ended. It was bittersweet. She sealed in a tear that threatened to fall as she thought of Lena. Of the type of friendship she’d never have again. Of the sister she’d have to bury.

  Luke pushed the man back. Tears clung to his eyelashes. He bit back laughter and turned to Grace.

  Gabe walked over and gave Grace almost the same embrace he had given Luke. It was, of course, nothing like the hug she longed for from Lena.

  “Thanks for keeping him alive,” Gabe said as he winked at her. “He’s the only family I have. And I hear you did excellent work these last couple of days. A career in law enforcement on the horizon? You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw that screenshot.”

  Grace blinked up at him. What was the correct response to something like that? Before she could answer, the man in the nice suit cleared his throat as if the pleasantries were over. The instant she laid eyes on him, she knew he was someone important. He commanded the room in a way that said, “I am in charge.” He didn’t speak—he just watched and listened. Another man walked in and whispered in his ear, and he turned to the man who had shown Grace around earlier and they walked out.

  “That was odd,” Grace commented.

  “Don’t worry, Miss Costa. You’re in very good hands. I just want to keep this with as few moving parts as necessary for now.” He wore clean blue jeans and a short-sleeved, button-down shirt. His leather belt matched his polished brown leather shoes. He looked like just another guy from middle America, like any average American Joe walking around on the street. Except he wasn’t in middle America. He was in Rome. In the American embassy in Rome. The embassy it felt like they would never be able to leave.

  He shook hands, first with Gabe and then with Luke. Last of all, he turned his attention
on Grace. “Good evening, Miss Costa. I’m Sam.”

  “Lemme guess … you’re CIA, aren’t you?” she blurted out.

  He cracked a grin straight out of the neighborhood ballpark. “You got it. What gave it away?”

  Luke cut in. “I did. I’m rubbing off on her. She can recognize a spy at fifty paces now.”

  Everybody laughed, even Grace. He was right. The guy reminded her of Luke. Sam turned his attention back to her. “I just have to ask you a few questions for our records. I know it’s a lot to process and you’re probably tired of repeating yourself, but please humor me. Then you can go home.”

  “I hope you plan to take us to the airport in something other than a taxi,” she replied.

  Everybody laughed again. Because they had to laugh to cover the brutal reality of her statement. When she thought about the events of the last few days, she had to keep reminding herself that Asheim was dead. She’d killed him, and she was glad. She felt absolutely no regret over that at all.

  Sam wheeled over another stool and sat in front of her. He took out his phone and tapped on it. She couldn’t see what he was doing, and she didn’t care. The sooner this whole nightmare ended, the better.

  “Agent Hagen—Gabe, as you know him—tells me you didn’t know you recorded Asheim shooting the congressman. Now that it’s all over, can you recall ever seeing him before that? Did you happen to pass him on the street? Did you see him in any shop? Did you ever see him before the congressman was shot?”

  She cast her mind back over the weeks she’d spent in Italy with Lena. “I can’t remember ever seeing him until right before he started shooting. We got gelato, and he was in line behind us but walked out before we ordered—the clerk was taking forever watching the news. The next thing I know, he shot Lena in front of that store.”

  Sam cocked his head. “How do you know it was him?”

  “He had a distinctive Scandinavian look, don’t you think? The very first time I saw him, I thought he was Swedish or maybe Norwegian. I would remember seeing someone like that. He stood out from the locals and other tourists. Plus, he was alone and wearing a leather jacket in Rome in August. Anyone wearing a jacket stands out.”