by Rea Thomas
Lisabeth followed him down the hill, over the grassland and toward the vineyard beyond. Their strides were brisk and urgent, but the excitement usually cocooning her following risky state of affairs had deserted her. She longed for solitude and quiet, a comfortable bed and saline solution for her wounds. Maybe a bottle of fine bourbon for the emotional wounds too.
Vikram led in silence, crisscrossing through the rows of growing white grapes, until the narrow access road came into sight. The traditional Italian farmhouse was in darkness, its occupants blissfully unaware of their trespass.
Halfway between the house and the main road, Vikram had parked a small, black sedan against a hedgerow, and Lisabeth was relieved to realize stealing a car wouldn’t be necessary. While Vikram tossed his belongings and the sword into the trunk, Lisabeth sank into the passenger seat and rested her head against the window, exhausted.
“Are you hurt?” Vikram asked, once they were on the road and speeding toward the unknown.
“Yes,” she replied without opening her eyes. The movement of the car was lulling, and the cool blast of the air-conditioning soothed her weary body.
“Where?” He sounded weary, too, she thought.
“My legs and feet. My shoes are in the villa.” The pain was refusing to be ignored now. Lisabeth felt the wet trickle of blood on her shin, and tears stung her eyes. “I’m ruined, Vikram,” she whispered, realizing there was no one in the world who understood her. No one who would mourn the loss of her credibility, or truly comprehend the misery she felt at failing so badly. Vikram Singh was the closest thing she had to a confidante, and only because of their shared profession. Certainly not because he cared about her.
Vikram did not soothe or reassure her. “Yes,” he said in unemotional agreement. “The police are looking for you now. You know how this works, Lisabeth. You’re a liability now.” It was the principal focus of every thief to remain an anonymous face in the crowd. Notte was never supposed to know Lisabeth had stolen the sword, or ever intended to. She had planned to make it seem as though an intruder had stormed the villa—which was exactly what had happened.
“You are a liability too,” she told him harshly.
“Yes,” he agreed again. “But this is my last job. I haven’t lost anything I wasn’t already prepared to give up.”
Lisabeth laughed sourly, opening her eyes to look at him now. “Of course. French Polynesia, wasn’t it? Drinking from coconuts in Tahiti?” She hated him. Mostly because she had lost the respect she had worked for so long to achieve. Her prominence in their world had been recent and had made her the delightful scorn of jealous women thieves the world over. There had been ten years of heists that they didn’t know about to make her so infamous.
“All good things must come to an end,” Vikram said quietly.
“Philosopher of the fucking year, now, are you?” She was feeling even less companionable than usual, biting her words with caustic animosity. “The sooner you piss off to your precious retirement home, the better.” Each word heightened her anger, made her want to spit insults at him like a machine gun.
Vikram sat in stony silence, his eyes fixed on the empty road ahead. The Tuscan hills flew by in a blur of shadowy night and the sparse droplets of rain came heavier now as the clouds opened.
Nothing smelt more pleasant than Tuscany in the rain, heavy with the floral scent of agitated lavender, and passing vineyards—the zing of fresh grapes, drying hay and wet grass—a cocktail of earth, fruit and flower, mingling together in a sweet, succulent perfume. Lisabeth let the window down and breathed it deep into her lungs, letting it fill her body. She didn’t care when the rain lashed against her dress, dripping over her chest and between her breasts, soaking the car’s interior.
The rain shower was heavy but brief, and too quickly the landscape was blanketed in silence once more. Vikram continued to ignore her, probably breaking the speed limit as he aimed to get them over the Tuscany border and into neighboring Umbria.
Lisabeth did not try to make conversation and instead pretended to sleep.
* * * * *
It was dawn by the time Vikram found them a cheap, anonymous bed and breakfast in a little Umbrian village. Located in a narrow alleyway barely eight feet in width, the ancient stone buildings were decorated with hanging and window baskets filled with thriving, colorful flowers that spilled over the edges and dripped in waving rainbows toward the cobbled floor.
Windows were covered by vibrantly painted shutters in green and blue, and arched doorways welcomed the weary traveler. These were not luxury accommodations, but the beauty was simple, exquisite and ancient.
Lisabeth was sore and exhausted, forced to wear a pair of Vikram’s sneakers—at least three sizes too big—on her feet as they trundled into the small, cool lobby of the lodge and rang the bell on the desk.
A small, elderly woman emerged from the back office, and if their disheveled appearances caused her any kind of discontent, she did not show it. Her smile was disarming in its warmth—homely and welcoming. Lisabeth could almost imagine the bubbling of homemade pasta in the kitchen and rich tomato sauces prepared from scratch.
“We need a room for tonight,” Lisabeth said in perfect, albeit accented Italian. The old woman informed her, almost with apology, that the only vacancy was an attic room. After driving through the night, bruised and sore, Lisabeth would have welcomed the basement or a dungeon, if it had a bed.
Vikram paid with euro notes and presented a forged driving license as identification, which the owner afforded only a cursory glance. A heavy, old brass key clunked on the desk along with a brochure of information about the village.
She pointed to a steep, narrow set of stairs to the left and directed them to ascend three floors. Before Lisabeth’s foot touched the first stone step, the old woman had disappeared back into her office. Deal done, no questions asked.
“I didn’t know you spoke Italian,” said Vikram as they followed the staircase to the first landing, and then the second. The white-washed walls were decorated with an assortment of framed paintings depicting wine bottles and flowing purple grapevines, olive branches and sun-kissed hay fields.
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” Lisabeth replied, climbing the last flight of stairs to a small square landing with a single, heavy wood door. She extended her hand for the key.
“I tried to find out once, remember? I think you told me it was my cock you cared about and everything else was an unnecessary distraction. Not a direct quote, but you get the gist.” He ignored her outstretched hand and squeezed past her to unlock the door.
The attic bedroom wasn’t as small as Lisabeth had imagined it would be. A large double bed faced a rectangular window, weak morning sunshine spilled across hardwood floors and the scent of beeswax polish filled the air. The pale blue bedclothes looked cool, welcoming her into their clean cottony depths. A pine dresser against the wall held a white ceramic vase filled with fresh sprigs of scented lavender. The sight of them brought the stinging pain back to the forefront of Lisabeth’s mind.
She sat on the bed and examined her legs in the light for the first time. Angry red welts marred her smooth skin, dried blood crusting at the edge of the gashes and in long streams toward her feet.
Vikram’s expression softened at the sight of her—vulnerable for the first time since they’d met. She looked slight, covered in bloody gashes and ghostly pale from exhaustion and despair. He knelt before her and slipped his running shoes off her feet, touching her skin with a tenderness she didn’t think he possessed.
“We need to clean this,” he said, moving to the bundle of his belongings on the floor by the window. Lorna’s sword was sheathed in a long black bag that could have been mistaken for any number of things—a musical instrument, a billiard cue. “It’ll get infected otherwise.”
Lisabeth had not been cared for by another person since adolescence—during a nasty bout of flu in which her mother had sat vigilant at her bedside, patting h
er forehead with a cool flannel, bringing her warm tea and creamy broth soups. Six months later, Lisabeth had returned the favor by nursing her mother though pancreatic cancer.
Vikram retreated to a tiny bathroom housing only a sink and toilet, returning with a cup filled with hot water. He poured antiseptic disinfectant the color of honey into the water and crouched before her again.
“This is going to sting,” he told her needlessly.
“I know,” she said, and she did. There had been other mishaps in her career, none so bad as to ruin her, but bloodied wounds nonetheless. She had dabbed cotton balls over those inflictions herself. She felt submissive, watching Vikram as he tenderly touched the wet ball to her skin, cleaning away the dry blood from each leg before pressing gently against the cuts themselves.
The tears stinging her eyes were not attributable to pain, but the understanding that without her career as a thief, she truly had nothing else in her life. No real friends—at least none who knew anything about her, including her real name. She kept up to date with her sister without ever contacting her, because their last attempt at conversation had ended with bitter insults, and even in her loneliest moments, Lisabeth was not remotely tempted to contact her father, the man who had shamelessly deserted her mother.
She studied Vikram’s lowered head, the thick, dark tendrils of his hair and wished she had allowed him to pry into her life, even for a moment, weeks ago during the drive through southern India.
“Did you ever think of me?” she asked him quietly.
His hand caressed the back of her leg and tightened at her words. When he looked up at her, Lisabeth saw the longing glittering in his majestic gold eyes. “All the time,” he admitted, continuing to administer the antiseptic to her grazes. “You are the best fuck I have ever had.” She saw his lips upturn in a lewd smile. “The best blowjob too.”
The words hurt more than the sting of disinfectant.
“No,” she pressed gently. “I mean as a person. Did you ever think of me as a person?” The dabbing of cotton wool stopped again, and she saw Vikram’s shoulders sink in defeat.
“Lisabeth,” he began softly, without looking at her. “I could have gotten away from Notte’s villa in a heartbeat. I’m faster than any of his men, and I had my escape route planned and memorized for a week. Instead of running, like I should have, I stayed behind—and I shot him. Stealing is one thing, but attempted murder is pretty bad. Even for people like us.” He looked at her now, his gaze piercing and intense. “No one is stupid enough to do that just for sex.”
Lisabeth held the weight of his words in her mind for long moments after, while he tenderly applied cool, white cream to her legs and then told her to let the air at them. She covered her knees with her dress, smoothing her fingers over the jagged tears and rips in the expensive chiffon material.
There had been no one in her life for such a long time, Lisabeth felt conflicted by the realization Vikram might have cared for her, beyond sex, and beyond their participation in grand larceny. A part of her had remained human, and quite liked the idea of being a constant thought in the mind of someone else. She knew there were men who would remember Lisabeth Baker as a wild night they had with a flighty, mysterious woman who gave nothing away.
Sad as it was, Vikram Singh knew her better than anyone in the world, including her sister, her blood relative.
Vikram removed a navy T-shirt from his bag of belongings and placed it into her hands. “Get changed,” he said, “and try to sleep.”
The sunlight shafting into the room was veiled by heavy draperies Vikram pulled across the narrow window. He drew the bed linen back, exposing the sky blue sheet and matching pillows.
Lisabeth complied, stripping off the ruined dress and pulling his worn T-shirt over her head, realizing every muscle in her body—from her neck and shoulders, to her hips and thighs—ached. Climbing into the bed was tantamount to an expert massage, lulling her into an almost instantaneous doze.
As she fell asleep, Lisabeth’s last waking thought was how she could smell Vikram on his T-shirt, and he smelled luscious. Then, relinquishing the grasp on her consciousness, Lisabeth realized she felt oddly safe knowing he was there.
Chapter Fourteen
A stream of expletives pierced what was already a troubled sleep, filled with restless, fleeting images of guns and blood. Lisabeth opened her eyes to the dimly lit attic bedroom, experiencing a definite feeling of discontent. The swearing had been real, she knew. The accented words had been clear and pronounced. Tangible. While her dreams had been unsettling, they’d been vague enough not to wake her.
Vikram passed into her line of vision, pacing in the agitated way he did when his mind was preoccupied. His movements were stiff and rigid, almost robotic. She saw his long fingers were curled into tight fists, making the white pop of his knuckles visible.
“What happened?” she asked, her voice hoarse and dry.
Vikram spun toward her, unchecked emotion swimming at the surface of his eyes. She thought he looked almost afraid, or at least as worried as she had ever seen him during their time together. His features were knotted with tension, small wrinkles aging his forehead.
“We are all over the news,” he said, gesturing with one hand to the muted television screen in the corner. “Fucking international news.” A BBC world-service news presenter talked at her desk, two blurry photographs of Lisabeth and Vikram hovering above her head. “Notte pulled our pictures from security cameras around the villa. Shit.”
Lisabeth pushed herself upright, sweeping unruly curls back from her face as she turned to focus on the news report. The closed captions were grim, spelling out in big white letters their physical descriptions and the “attempted murder” of Luca Notte. The words were damning, the news reporter throwing out phrases such as “armed and dangerous” and “do not approach”.
“You told him your name,” Vikram said, tense with despair. “How could you make such an amateur mistake, for God’s sake?” The full weight of his angry glare rested on her, interrogating her without words.
“He thinks I’m Lisabeth Holmes. It was a stupid, spontaneous decision to pursue him.” She lowered her face into her hands, sinking into the darkness of her palms while the ramifications of her foolishness sank in.
“You should know nothing in this business can be spontaneous,” Vikram snapped, switching off the television as the news moved on to an oil spill from an upturned tanker off the coast of Mexico.
“I thought this didn’t matter to you,” Lisabeth mumbled against her hands, peeking at him through her fingers.
His pacing recommenced in long strides across the floor, the polished wood creaking underfoot. “I don’t care about my career,” he growled. “But my face has been broadcast across every European country on the afternoon news, Lisabeth. I’d like to get to Polynesia without getting arrested.”
She dropped back against the pillow, her mind reeling. Careful, exact planning would be required if they were to evade capture.
“Lorna has already been on the phone, giving me hell about the publicity. I’ll be getting nothing out of this deal because she won’t touch the sword now.” It seemed to Lisabeth that Vikram was beginning to rue his decision to save her, having now had time to weigh up the true cost to his reputation and freedom. A quiet, anonymous retirement to tropical climes seemed a million miles away now.
He pulled back the curtains, turning to examine the stunning vista of the small Umbrian town from their third-story window. Down the steep hillside, a collection of brown stone buildings with sloping red roofs descended to a weaving gray river sparkling invitingly in the afternoon sunlight. To the west, a church tower struck the hour. It would have been a postcard-perfect getaway, had they not officially been declared fugitives.
Vikram eased the window open, momentarily soothed by sounds of carefree day-to-day life taking place on streets throughout the town. The rumble of engines was infrequent; the noise of singsong voices and footsteps prevailed in t
his rural Italian spot. So when the brakes of a vehicle squeaked nearby, Vikram peered over the ledge to gaze down at the alleyway below. Through the mass of flowering plants, at the arched entrance to the passageway, a pair of uniformed policemen advanced toward the lodge.
“Lisabeth…” he whispered urgently. “We need to go. Now.”
She clambered from the bed in his T-shirt, crossing the room with enough speed to assure Vikram she was taking him seriously. Her lips were tight with worry and her magnetic green eyes darkened.
“Get the stuff, we’ll take the window,” she said, flinging the window wide enough for her to squeeze through.
“And go where?” Vikram snapped. “Are you planning on using some kind of black magic to make us fucking disappear?”
He began to pace, ignored by Lisabeth as she stuffed his sneakers into the backpack, and slung his bags over her shoulders. Shimmying onto the windowsill, still dressed in only his T-shirt, her long legs wriggled, fingers finding the gutter above her head. Vikram watched in disbelief as she hoisted herself up and disappeared from the room. Moments later her long hair fell down in a curtain of mahogany silk, her face appearing upside down a millisecond later.
“The roof,” she announced, quietly pleased.
Down in the alleyway, the police had disappeared and Vikram knew it was only a matter of minutes before the deadbolt on their door unlocked, and their arrest commenced. He took a deep breath and negotiated his considerably larger frame through the window, following without Lisabeth’s cool finesse. He found her sitting on the red tile roof, rummaging in his backpack for a pair of his jeans.
“They’ll be too big,” Vikram said, rubbing a spot on his elbow where he had ungainly knocked the wooden frame.
“They’ll have to do,” Lisabeth replied, slipping into the pants and tightening the belt around her slim waist. She bore great resemblance to a happy-go-lucky hippie in her too-big clothes and uncombed hair. His large sneakers completed her chaotic outfit as Lisabeth got to her feet. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”
