by Rene Fomby
But then they ran out of luck. Stairs. And with the nonexistent shocks built into the two bikes, Gavin realized that they would make better time on foot from this point forward. He dropped his bike at the top of the stairs and pointed left, away from the main path and in the general direction of the formal gardens.
“Andy, let’s split up. I’ll lead them down the path, you use the foliage for cover and head for the main exits. I’ll meet up with you there.”
“Roger,” Andy answered, not bothering to argue. At this point, they just didn’t have the time. One of them had to take the lead on decision-making, and right now that person was Gavin.
Racing down the stairs, Gavin got the sense that he had finally outpaced the gunman. The main exit was right in front of him, flanked by two strange buildings that looked like some kind of giant gingerbread houses that had mated with psychedelic mushrooms. Beside him a large tiled dragon suddenly lost its head. But that shot couldn’t possibly have come from behind him—it had to be somewhere off to his left. A second shooter.
Ducking low, he ran full tilt toward the mushroom house on the left side of front gate, diving through the doorway just as another shot plugged the door frame behind him. Tourists were crowded into the small building, which appeared to have been a small house at some point. Gavin knew the gunman was right behind him, but he didn’t see any place to hide. Tight stairs led up to the second floor, and he took them two steps at a time.
Again, at the top of the stairs everything looked wide open, with no place to take cover. He could tell from the screams down below that the gunman had now entered the tiny house and was right on his heels. He saw an open window and ran to it. Just below the window was a large café umbrella, advertising some local brand of beer. He leaped from the window, hoping the umbrella would help to break his fall.
It did, but just a little, and he hit the ground in a roll, twisting his right arm under him painfully. When he finally rolled to a stop, he looked up into the barrel of a very lethal pistol. And the unmistakable face of Peter Boucher.
140
Barcelona
“So we finally meet, eh, Agent Larson,” Boucher said with a slightly French accent. “You’ve been causing me a great of trouble, you and that whore of yours. Oh, excuse me, she’s your wife now, isn’t that right? So I should have said, you and that whore wife of yours. So just where is she hiding right now? She and I, we have some unfinished business to discuss.”
“She isn’t here, you pig. You’ll never find her.”
“Tsk tsk tsk, no need for name calling, here. That’s my responsibility, after all. But don’t worry, we will find her. We know she came to the park with you, and we have all the exits covered. It’s all just a matter of time.”
In the distance, Gavin could hear sirens, as the Barcelona police finally responded to the reports of a shooting at the park. When seconds count, the police are but minutes away. He tried to think of some way to delay Boucher just a little longer, to give Andy just a few more minutes to make her escape, but he was coming up blank.
Boucher had noticed the sirens, too. “Hmm. Time is running a little short, after all, so I suppose I need to stop talking and start shooting.” Sighting down the barrel of his gun toward Gavin’s forehead, he started to pull the trigger, when, suddenly, from somewhere high above them, a familiar voice rang out.
“Hey, dipshit! Heads up!”
Boucher turned his face toward the sound an instant before the large glass sphere collided with the center of his forehead.
141
Barcelona
With Boucher now down and out for the count, the rest of his team apparently slipped away quickly, eager to put a safe distance between them and the converging sirens. Andy raced down from the same window Gavin had jumped out of earlier and was beside him in seconds. When she ran up, Gavin had just pulled himself upright and had Boucher’s gun trained on the Frenchman, now lying unconscious on the ground.
“Gavin, better put that thing away before the cops get here. They’re looking for a shooter, and you very much match that description at this moment.”
“Yeah, good advice.” He tucked the pistol under his shirt and looked down at the remains of whatever had cold-cocked Boucher. “Andy, what in tarnation was that?”
“Well, when I ran into the little tourist house right behind the first gunman, I noticed they were selling these cute little snow globes of the park. So I grabbed two, one for each hand. The first globe I laid up against the back of the shooter’s head right in front of the window. He’s in la-la land right now up on the second floor. And the other one I tossed at Boucher’s head.” She looked at the shattered snow globe lying in a puddle of water at their feet. “Too bad about that one. What a shame, it broke. I always really liked those things growing up, but that one looks pretty unsalvageable. Do you suppose they’ll charge me for the breakage?”
“Given the circumstances, I’ll be glad to pick up the tab on that, no problem. But hey, what in the world gave you the notion you could nail him in the head from that kind of distance? Not that I’m complaining, mind you, you clearly got the job done.”
“Yeah, well, I used to be our school’s ace closer, back in the day.”
“You played softball?” Gavin asked, once again more than a little impressed by his wife’s seemingly inexhaustible range of talents.
“Softball? Hell no. That’s a sissy’s game. I was on the baseball team. One of the unique advantages of being in a town so small they kept running shy on ballplayers. And, don’t like to brag, but I brought home the state championship my senior year.”
“Baseball? Along with the Boy Scouts? Is there any glass ceiling you didn’t manage to shatter along the way?”
“Yeah, I wanted to play quarterback, or at least middle linebacker. But my mom wouldn’t let me, said she refused to stand by and let me get hurt.” She nodded in the direction of the police, who had finally started pouring into the park. A couple of them were headed their way. “So I wound up just being the placekicker. And homecoming queen, too, in case you’re asking. Again, small town, so there wasn’t a lot of competition.”
Gavin smiled as she turned to talk to the cops. And you will be the queen I’ll be happy to come home to for the rest of my life, Mrs. Andy Patterson Larson. Lieutenant Commander Andy Patterson Larson, that is. He looked down at Boucher, now lying prone in a small pool of blood, then back up at his amazing bride. And your mother was worried about you playing football?
142
Siena - Friday
Maddie fell asleep in the car on the way to the airport, so Sam gently clicked her into the special harness she used whenever they took off on one of the family jets. Not for the first time did she thank her lucky stars for the privilege of traveling with a small child by private plane, instead of commercial. When Maddie woke up she could make as much noise as she wanted, then race up and down the aisles running off all of her excess energy, and nobody would complain. Nobody could complain, after all. It was Maddie’s plane.
Sam stared out the window as the little jet pulled out onto the runway, pausing briefly before its engines roared to life, hurtling them down the thin strip of tarmac before leaping off into the soft blue Italian sky.
After the explosion and the subsequent attack on Gavin and Andy’s lives, more than a few people had advised her to delay her departure a bit to recover. But that, of course, was just foolish. She hadn’t been physically hurt in the explosion, other than her bruised and skinned knees and a slight concussion, and any lingering damage to her psyche would heal much faster the further she got from this place. And the closer she got to Harry.
Before long they were well out over the Atlantic, with the European continent and all its attendant intrigue and conspiracies receding in their wake. Sam could almost feel a heavy burden rising from her shoulders, the constant need to be ever vigilant for the dangerous games and schemes of all the people surrounding her back in Italy. She was not naïve—Houston would have
its own set of plotters, but those were the kind of plots she was well prepared to deal with. And in Houston she would have a co-conspirator of her own, and a partner in more ways than one. Hopefully.
She hadn’t noticed before that moment just how dirty she had felt during the past year she had spent in Europe, saving Maddie’s empire. She had been waking up almost every day dreading what she was going to face, the next crisis, real or imagined, she would have to manage. All by herself. Now her heart felt surprisingly light, almost skipping. She was going home. She was in command of her life once again. She could finally build a new future for herself and Maddie, one free of unnecessary complications. Carefree, like sweet old Barley, who was curled up blissfully at her feet. Innocent and free, at last.
143
North of Rome
Prime Minister Carlo Rossi crawled up on top of the train car to get a better look at the small gap in the Wall that was now one of only two entrances into the city of Rome. The meeting with the self-appointed president of the Southern Italian Republic would take place in no-man’s land, roughly halfway between the Wall and his train. At stake was nothing less than the future of Italy, and Rossi was not so naïve as to think that this meeting would go over any better than yesterday’s talks with the Caliphate. Too many egos were at risk, too much self-asserted power.
Part of the problem was that, even in the best of days, Italy had always been a loosely-stitched-together political quilt, a mishmash of ancient city-states with widely divergent histories and cultures. His only real hope for the near future was that the northern quilt would prove to be a wee bit stronger and more cohesive than its neighbor to the south. That the enduring economic strength of the north would ultimately prove to be too big of a prize for the south to ignore.
His eyes drifted off to the west, and his thoughts drifted to a small plane that was even now somewhere far out over the Atlantic, bound for America. His entire career, his entire life had been devoted to his beloved country. Italy. And now here he was, dealing with this. Maybe it was time for him to be a little bit selfish, for a change, to build a future for himself, separate from that of his country.
Rossi had long enjoyed the company of women, long before he had ever heard of Samantha Tulley. He was a man, after all, and an Italian man at that. But none of them had ever captivated him quite the way she had. She carried a delicate, unassuming elegance about her very much like the silken scarf she often tied around her head when she took off racing about in her little red sports car, and she had an appetite for life unmatched by anything he had ever seen.
But the thing that impressed him the most was the effortless way she stepped in to take command of almost any situation, no matter how dire the odds might be. Nothing ever seemed to faze her, and no foe—even William Tulley—could ever be the match for her quick wit and razor-sharp intellect. He had been fooled at their first meeting by what he had understood to be the doe-eyed innocence of a young country girl from Texas, a girl who had suddenly found herself flailing about helplessly in the deep, treacherous waters of European high finance. Boy, had he read that one the wrong way.
Reluctantly, he turned his attention back to the long line of black limousines now heading his way from the gate into Rome, President Moretti and his flock of newbie pretenders to the throne. His own car was idling patiently just off to his left, ready to escort him to what promised to be a long political dance around the hundreds of critical issues a divided Italy would have to solve if she was to survive. A dance where no two people sitting around the table would seemingly be hearing the same music.
Before climbing down off the roof of the train, though, he glanced achingly toward the west, one last time. She was gone, yes, but she would be back. And next time, maybe, just maybe he’d find some way to change her mind. To prove to her that her real future lay in Italy, not Texas. With him by her side.
144
Milano
Claudia Boucher stared anxiously at the screen of her little burner phone, but there was no still sign from her father. Which worried her to no end, because just two days earlier, when she triggered the bomb in Venice and then texted him the whereabouts of the two American agents, Peter had promised to meet her here that very evening. Or the next morning at worst.
And without him here, assuring her she was safe, Claudia didn’t dare venture out into the street. After leaving the castle in Siena with little more than her purse in hand, she had driven north in her nondescript black Fiat to the safehouse Peter Boucher had set up for her almost a year ago. Just as he had warned her, she parked the car several blocks away and walked straight to the apartment, not talking to anyone and leaving no sign whatsoever that she had ever been there. No sign that could possibly lead the authorities to her doorstep. She did have a small bag of groceries that she had picked up along the way, which turned out to be a blessing, because the apartment was almost completely bare. There wasn’t even a television set, so she couldn’t watch any of her shows to take her mind off the desperate waiting. Or find out how the outside world had reacted to the attacks on the Americans.
And one of those attacks, one of those Americans, had already started to gnaw away at her. That was the problem with having way too much time alone to think.
The assignment had seemed so easy at first. As her father’s personal liaison with William Tulley, it had been like child’s play positioning herself as Samantha Tulley’s personal assistant when William’s daughter seized control of the family trust the summer before. That, along with a new fake surname, made her the perfect spy for her father and Tulley, with unquestioned and unparalleled access to all of Sam Tulley’s secrets. And, even more important, to Sam Tulley’s calendar and travel schedule. Sam couldn’t go to the bathroom without Claudia knowing all about it. And then, by extension, her father, the emperor’s second-in-command.
But close proximity to Samantha and her daughter had left Claudia with a kind of Stockholm syndrome, an unhealthy attachment to her assigned target. So when her father finally told her it was time, carrying off Samantha’s assassination had been the hardest task she had ever known. At least, she consoled herself, she had made certain the baby was nowhere near her mother when the bomb went off. At least she didn’t have that tiny little soul hanging over her conscience, too.
Time slipped by, and Claudia was beginning to worry that she would have to violate her father’s instructions and venture out into the world, after all. She was down to her next-to-last bottle of water, and the rusty alternative pouring out of the faucet in the kitchen simply wasn’t going to work for her. Plus, she had finished off her last protein bar hours earlier, and her stomach was already starting to growl in protest.
After waiting another hour with still no word from her father, Claudia reluctantly sat down on the threadbare couch in the living room and started pulling on her shoes. She was just stretching the legs of her jeans down over the tops of the shoes when her phone dinged in her back pocket. A message! Finally!
The text message was short and sweet. “Be there in less than an hour. Be sure to keep the phone charged so I can call when I get closer.” She scurried eagerly over to the kitchen counter and plugged the phone into her USB charger.
※
“Got a lock on the signal?”
“Five out of five, sir. We’re good to go.”
“Excellent. Let’s move out.”
※
Forty minutes later the phone dinged again. “I’m right outside. Unlock the door. Hurry.”
Without a moment’s hesitation she raced to the front door, flinging off the chain lock and twisting the dead bolt open. The door didn’t have any kind of peephole, so just for added safety she cracked the door open an inch to peek outside. And landed flat on her back as the assault team from the Italian Carabinieri burst through the door.
145
Houston - Monday
Maddie had finally drifted off to sleep, so Sam eased the door shut and joined Harry in the living room of her hotel su
ite high atop a tower in downtown Houston.
“Whew! Finally got her down for the count.” She nodded toward the cold beer in his hand. “Got started without me, I see.”
“I did. But I poured you a tall glass of Chardonnay. It’s over there on the counter, waiting patiently for your arrival, my queen.”
“Ah. Fantastic. You know, Harry, some folks say you’re a no-good two-timing pathetic kind of loser. But I defend you. Most of the time.”
“Good to know I’ve got friends covering my backside. So, any word yet on your offer?”
Sam grabbed the glass of wine and plopped down on the sofa across from him. “Yeppers. It was a full price offer, so they snatched it up right away. I will say that the price of real estate in this town is really something to behold. Things have almost tripled since Luke and I left here for his job in Blair County.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing that price is no object to you and Maddie. But, seriously, you’re gonna love the place. Quiet street but close to all the amenities. Lots of room to move around in, but not nearly as out of control as your old mansion back in Blairton. Or the castle in Siena, for that matter. So I’d say it’s pretty much perfect for the two of you.”
“I hope so. I just can’t wait for the deal to close. Two months seems like forever right about now. Especially with a little girl in tow. She needs some sort of stability at her age, and a hotel room, however nice, just doesn’t cut the mustard for that.”
Harry chuckled. “Yeah, about that. That particular saying’s always confused me. Who the heck wants to cut mustard? And how hard can it be?”
Sam grinned back. “I know. Maybe the same folks that want to skin a cat. What in the world would you do with a skinned cat, anyway?”
