“Okay,” she said. “But straight to the police station.”
“Like a shot,” he assured her, and opened the door of the limo for her, rattling off a string of instructions in swift Italian to his driver.
He got in after her. “Now, tell me. What on earth happened to you today? Excuse me for saying it, but you look like a train wreck.”
This was the price she had to pay for this ride. Too late she had realized that it was too expensive. She sucked in a bracing breath, hung on to her patience with all her fingernails. “I found evidence of a terrible crime,” she said. “I have to tell the police right away.”
He looked shocked. “What crime? Has anyone been hurt?”
She cleared her thick, aching throat. “Many people,” she said bleakly, thinking of the tiny skeleton, the toy bear. “It was hard to tell the number.”
“Many? Good God, Svetlana, do we need to call ambulances?”
“It’s not a recent crime,” she said. “They’re long past help. I can’t explain right now, Michael. Please, give me some space.”
“Certainly,” he murmured. “I’m sorry. You’ve been through something terrible. Just rest, please.”
She leaned back, covering her eyes with her hands to block him out. Michael made a call on his smartphone and talked into it with great urgency, in Italian. She felt so strange, jumpy. As tired as she was, she was jangling like an alarm bell.
As soon as he finished talking, she’d borrow his phone and call Tenente Morelli. She had to tell someone, anyone. Correction. Anyone who was not Michael Hazlett. Maybe telling someone would make her feel less like doom was breathing down her neck. As it so often was.
The limo slowed just as he hung up. She looked out. It was not a police station. It was the façade of a luxury hotel.
“Michael?” she said sharply. “What the hell? I said the police!”
“I have a better idea,” he said smoothly. “Hear me out.” He held up his hand to forestall her protests. “I keep a suite here the entire season. They have an excellent chef. The police commissioner, Zabretti, is a personal friend of mine and Renato’s. I’ve dined with him many times. He speaks fluent English. I called him to tell him about you. As soon as he finishes his current business, he’ll be right over. In the meantime, you can sit down someplace safe and comfortable, have a cup of tea, maybe even shower and change your—”
“I don’t give a shit about my clothes! This is more important than my dinner fashion choices, Michael! This can’t wait!”
“Certainly not, which is why it should be done right!” he retorted. “What’s the point of going to the station, where you’ll just wait for a long time in a hard plastic chair to talk to a series of thick, uncomprehending bureaucratic underlings before you even find someone capable of listening to you? Commissario Zabretti should come to you! You deserve it, after your ordeal! In the meantime, drink some tea or have a glass of wine and something to eat! I’ve ordered dinner. From the looks of you, you haven’t eaten, am I right?”
She was staring straight at him, but she saw right through him, as if he were a ghost, or a fantasy. The skeletons in that hole, burned into her memory, were more vivid than he was. White flowers were twining around tiny rib bones, and he wanted her to sip some tea?
“I’m not hungry,” she said.
He made an impatient sound. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’ll be very light. Steamed sea bass with lemon and herbs, salad, grilled vegetables, a nice chilled Pinot. You must eat. I’m sure even your pit bull would agree with me. Much as he thinks I’m opportunistic scum.”
She flinched. “Don’t, please.”
Michael got out of the car and held out his hand.
She stared at it, still frozen. It was true. She was being hysterical and childish, spitefully refusing him just because she’d had the mother of all bad days. And because he was not Sam. That was not his fault.
She got out of the car, but she did not take his hand.
The suite he kept on the fifth floor was large and very beautiful. A table was set for two. White tapers twinkled. A wine bucket had a bottle chilling in it. A tea tray on a sideboard. Cream, sugar, lemon. Chocolate-dipped butter cookies. It was surreal.
“Ah, that’s better.” Hazlett shrugged off his jacket. “Wine or tea?”
She struggled with the question for a moment. “Tea,” she croaked.
“Sit,” he said briskly. “Zabretti should be here soon.”
She collapsed into a chair. He poured her tea and stirred a heaping teaspoonful of sugar into it. “You look like you’re about to go into shock,” he scolded. “You don’t take good enough care of yourself.”
If only he knew. The tea was too sweet, but her wiped-out brain could use the fuel. She needed to be cogent, for Zabretti.
After her tea was drained, he poured and sugared another. “So tell me, now,” Hazlett said. “What happened?”
“I found out why my mother was murdered,” she said. “She’d been investigating a crime. Hundreds of boat people from Africa killed in illegal medical experiments and buried in a cave.”
Hazlett’s jaw dangled. “My God. I . . . I don’t know what to say.”
She shrugged. There was nothing he could say that would be pertinent, so he might as well shut up. But no such luck. He rattled on.
“You have proof? In there?” He indicated the plastic envelope.
Her hand tightened on the plastic envelope as she gulped more tea. She was afraid to let go of it, even for a second. It could disappear in a puff of smoke. She felt like she’d been chasing the damn thing half her life.
“Tell me more,” he urged. “How on earth did you figure it out? It’s amazing, Svetlana. Not that I’m surprised, having seen you in action.”
She wished he’d stop kissing her ass, since she really didn’t want him that close to it. “I have to tell the commissario all about it,” she hedged. “Please, don’t make me say it twice.”
“Of course not,” he murmured hastily. “You must be so tired.”
“May I use your phone?” she asked suddenly. “I lost mine.”
“Certainly.” He pulled it out. “Who do you want to call?”
“The detective I talked to yesterday,” she said.
Michael looked worried. “Don’t you think you should let Zabretti handle this? The detective you talked to yesterday won’t be investigating a crime that took place in another jurisdiction anyway—”
“I don’t give a shit about the politics of jurisdiction,” she said sharply. “I just want everyone to know about this. As soon as possible.”
“I know,” he soothed. “Please, just talk to Zabretti first. He’ll be here any minute, and, and he—ah! Here’s dinner! Let’s discuss it after.”
Time dragged like a ball and chain. Her stomach was perplexed by food. The very small quantity that she managed to swallow seemed a lump of some alien substance that it had never encountered before, and had no idea what to do with. The luxurious place felt so fake. A façade.
She felt that way a lot, since the organ traffickers. As if she alone knew the dark truth, while everyone else inhabited a shiny dream world. Only Sam had made her feel fully rooted in the world around her. He made her feel like she inhabited it completely. Like she owned it.
Without him, she drifted, lost and transparent. Like a ghost.
Hazlett poured her wine. As she watched pale liquid glug into the glass, she thought of stories she’d read to Rachel about fairy mounds. People who visited the hall of the Mountain King. Neither shall ye eat nor drink in the land of faerie, lest ye never again return to the world of men.
The random, nasty stab of irrational fear put an end to dinner. She put down her fork and looked at the clock on the marble mantel.
“Where is Zabretti?” she asked. “It’s been over an hour.”
“He’s a busy man,” Hazlett said, dabbing at the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “And he understands it’s not a time-sensitive emergency. This is Italy
, after all. Nothing happens quickly.”
“Not time sensitive? You told him that?” She leaped to her feet. “I should have gone straight to the police. I’ll get a cab right now!”
“I did not say it wasn’t important! I simply let him know that it was not a crime that was currently in progress! Do not get hysterical, Svetlana. I did not diminish how terrible this situation is. Don’t panic!”
Panic was rising anyway. She trembled violently. Oh, please, please, let her keep her shit together just a little while longer. Until she could pass this torch on to someone she trusted. When no one needed her, when it no longer mattered, then she could fall apart. Not before.
She pictured the little girl, holding her bear. Her tiny bare bones.
“Let me make a suggestion, now that you have some food inside you,” Hazlett said. “Let me help you organize what you’re going to say to Zabretti. Just run through it for me, exactly the way you plan to say it to him. Let me ask all the questions that he will ask. It will save you time and energy, and it will give you more credibility. Please, Svetlana. I want so badly to help you. Come. Let’s run through it.”
The plastic envelope warped in her hands, sharp corners cutting into her palms. Her heart thudded. She was clammy with cold sweat.
“Let’s start,” he prompted. “First, tell me how you found this cave. And how on earth did you manage to climb down into it?”
Her mind froze into crystalline clarity. Her heart stopped beating. Time stopped, as she stared at his ruggedly handsome face, his expression of concern. His eyes, glittering. Knife-sharp. So focused.
She cleared her throat. “Who said I climbed down into the cave?”
Hazlett’s frown was puzzled. “Oh, I just assumed, I suppose. The area has so many natural wells and cavities. It seemed obvious that—”
“What area? How do you know where I went? I was gone all day. I could have gone hundreds of miles and come back in that amount of time.”
He took a meditative sip of his wine. “Svetlana,” he said. “The intensity of your day is getting to you. The tone of your voice is bordering on offensive. Take a breath.”
They gazed at each other. He was offering her a choice. She could laugh, abashed. Apologize for being a crazy, nervous hag. Smile, simper. Make nice while she frantically planned her escape.
She waited an instant too long.
Hazlett lifted a pistol and pointed it at her face. Still smiling.
“Oops,” he murmured. “My bad.”
CHAPTER 26
“Go on to the hotel. Get some rest, Dad. Both of you,” Sam said to his father and sister. So I can get some, too, was the pleading subtext, but he could tell neither of them was listening to that.
“We don’t want to leave you alone, in this place.” His father’s voice was rough with exhaustion. He was past seventy, with a triple bypass and heart valve surgery behind him. His eyes were red, his face puffy and blurred with weariness. Sam found it uncomfortable. He preferred feeling angry at his father to feeling sorry for him. Or worse, worried for him. Enough wrenching revelations about his feelings. He was fried.
“You shouldn’t be alone,” his father said. “What happened to that young lady whose honor you were defending so fiercely last week? Did she have no further use for you, now that you’re an invalid ?”
“She had some pressing personal business,” he said stiffly.
“More personal than bullet wounds?” Connie jumped in fiercely. “She shouldn’t have left you alone here! It’s just common decency!”
“There’s hospital staff to help me. And I’m feeling much better already. I really am. I’ll be fine alone,” Sam assured them.
“Fine? You’ve got contusions, torn muscle tissue, a bullet that almost severed your femoral artery and came within inches of your genitals, too! What are you trying to tell us? If you’d fucking verbalize it, instead of coding it in bullet wounds, I swear we’d listen!”
Sam closed his eyes. “I did not do all this to myself to upset you,” he said. “And I can’t deal with the histrionics.”
“Histrionics?” She snorted. “As if getting yourself regularly shot up by mobsters isn’t attention-getting behavior!”
“Lower your voice,” his father hissed. “Don’t make a scene!”
“He always gets to,” Connie yelled. “When’s my turn? What insane lengths do I have to go to? A sex scandal, a psychotic break?”
“That is enough!” Dad thundered.
Connie’s mouth quivered. “Yes, it is.” She grabbed the wheeled suitcases that leaned against the wall and turned toward the door.
“Hey!” Sam called. “The suitcase you brought for me. You’re not taking it with you, are you?”
She frowned. “Of course I am. It’s much safer at our hotel. What use do you have for it now? I’ll bring it when they release you.” Her eyes swept the small, grotty room. “Or when we have you transferred.”
“I want it. It has toiletries, right? Shaving cream, toothpaste, dental floss, fresh underwear? Leave it.”
“But you can’t even get out of bed!” she protested.
“I still want it,” he repeated stubbornly.
“Oh, whatever.” She gave it a shove, back against the wall, and turned to her dad. “Shall I tell the car to wait?”
His father looked grimly reluctant.
“A night’s sleep will help all of us,” Sam urged. “I’m just going to sleep. There’s no point sitting in that hard chair watching me do it.”
His father grunted and got to his feet. “Trying to get rid of me, as usual,” he muttered. “Fine. Tomorrow, then.”
Ten teeth-grinding minutes of lecturing and scolding before they were out the door. When it shut behind them, he almost wept in relief.
He’d been lying, when he said he felt better. Pain was a meat-mallet, hammering with each heartbeat. Face, head, ribs, thigh, balls. Add being dumped by your girlfriend to that, plus a day-long session of scolding familial disapproval, and you had the recipe for exquisitely calibrated pain on every level of the self. A symphony of discomfort. He’d never been so angry, or so hurt, or so scared. Other than the other day, when Sveti had been clamped under the goon’s arm, in imminent danger of dismemberment. A caustic stress cocktail zinged through him every time that image flashed through his mind, making him twitch and writhe on his bed. This could drive a guy right over the edge.
But hey. He’d left the edge behind a long while back. Ever since he saw that girl years ago, and promptly lost his mind. Inappropriately young, problematic, complicated, hostile, unattainable. And yet, he’d started courting her. Bugging her.
Stalking her. Call it what it was.
His eyes rested on her phone, which he had found in his tangled sheets in the night. A gift from a mischievous trickster god, intent on messing him up. A perfect opportunity for an obsessed, irrational ex-boyfriend. Hack into her phone, snoop into her life. Torture himself by listening in on her future love affairs. Feed the beast of his sickness, until it grew and grew, became more feral, more twisted. Less human.
Until they locked him up. That was the trajectory of a man’s life, once he picked up the cell phone of a woman who had dumped him and started fucking with it. So why was he still holding on to the thing?
The locked screen wanted a six-digit code. He tried all the obvious ones: her birth date, Rachel’s birth date, Irina’s. He tried all the kids’ names, one after the other, the ones who hung all over her and called her Auntie Sveti. None worked. He tried her parents’ names, too.
He moved on to all the adults in the McCloud Crowd, starting with Tam and Val, Nick and Becca. He tried the ass-bite’s name, too, just to torture himself, and was relieved when none of the “joshua” or “jcattre” or “cattrell” combos worked, either.
He hesitated for a long time, but since he was on the self-torture kick, why not? He tried PETRIE. Nothing, of course. Then he punched in SAMUEL. The device accepted the code and opened itself to him.
&
nbsp; He started to shake. His vision blurred.
He sat there for a long time, unmoving. Pathetically grateful to be alone in the room.
It passed through him. He sponged off his face with a wad of sheet and flung himself into the contents of her phone, ass over head.
Her calendar had no surprises for him. Her contacts were all known to him, and the ones he did not personally know, he’d already investigated. She hadn’t posted to her Facebook page, Twitter account, or v-log since before Nina and Aaro’s wedding. Busy, busy.
He dug in to the photos. McCloud Crowd kids, all over the place. Rachel, Irina, and Sofia were featured most, but all the McCloud brood were represented extensively. Adults, too. Nick and Becca. Tam and Val, kissing on their veranda with the sunset behind them, Seth and Raine laughing on their yacht. Connor and Erin carving a ham. Davy and Margot, Sean and Liv, Kev and a pregnant, very happy-looking Edie. Lily and Bruno, Aaro and Nina, Miles and Lara. Zia Rosa. Hundreds of photos, from weddings and christenings, birthdays and barbecues.
She had a good eye. People looked good in her photos.
He found a batch that were all from the housewarming party of Lara and Miles. Their beautiful house in the mountains. Cedar paneled, thirty-five-foot vaulted solarium windows, panoramic views. Shots of the newly landscaped patio out back embraced by massive pines and firs, a big barbecue grill loaded with steaks, a big tub of ice full of beers. There was the beautiful waterfall, with a bunch of the kids swimming in the pool under Sean’s and Davy’s watchful eyes.
There were two more folders, one marked “Mama,” one marked “Misc.” He clicked on the latter.
The picture was out of focus, taken from behind a sliding glass door. Miles and Lara’s housewarming party, where she’d never let him talk to her. She’d run away whenever he tried. The picture was Sam talking to Sean, holding a beer. The next one was the same photo, but enlarged, cropped. Everything trimmed out except his face.
He clicked the next one, which was of Kev and Edie’s baby Jon’s first birthday party, a clan-wide bash. Kev held little Jon up proudly, fat legs waving. Sam laughed at both of them. Next shot, just his own enlarged face, laughing, and a blurred flash of Jon’s bare, dimpled foot.
In For the Kill Page 38
