She had those tight-pressed lips he already associated with challenges, so he pinned her with the look he used to test fresh team members. “Understand?”
“No, I don’t.” She lowered her voice as they reached the fringes of the group. “Shouldn’t we call the police?”
“Not if it’s about Afghan heroin.”
Her mouth dropped open, and she pulled away before he realized how that had sounded.
“My team’s investigating. It’s army business, got it?” Shifting his grip, he brought her hand to his lips. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”
Letting go of her felt ominous, worse than any first step into a hostile building, but he had to work alone. Screened by the mass of Scandinavians, he slipped through the remains of an arch. Beyond the tumbled blocks in the rear of the building, a former alley paralleled the main road, and he doubled back through half-crumbled columns and piles of sun-bleached bricks, their marble veneers long ago looted for Renaissance palaces. Occasionally a higher-pitched laugh carried to him, indistinct on the breeze, but it didn’t disturb his hunt.
At the next corner he spotted his prey scurrying to catch the tour group. The beefy man with a sun visor, baggy khakis and fanny pack was the eager photographer from the Mouth of Truth. Following them once might be nosiness; twice was surveillance. Wulf melted behind the stones and changed course to match his quarry, but the other man never turned, never looked over his shoulder, never noticed that he’d acquired a stalker.
Ahead, Theresa’s guide stopped and directed the group to consider the Baths of Neptune.
The follower slowed as if unwilling to overtake them.
Wulf’s alley ended in a T intersection at the multistory remains of the baths. He broke right, heading north, and sprinted to circle the rear of the large structure. Taking his eyes off the target felt risky, but without a partner he had to gamble and use his knowledge of Ostia to set an ambush. As he dashed down the lane that separated the baths from the barracks of the Vigili guards, the sun beat on his head. Perspiration stuck his jeans to his legs.
He stopped at the last corner, concealed by the wall, and watched Theresa and the tour group drift toward the restored amphitheater at the center of Ostia Antica. He’d wanted to saunter through the ruins beside Theresa, not hunt some fat, slow prey like his namesake taking a sheep. Some days it felt as if everything he wanted for himself, everything he tried to build in his life, ended up as jumbled and empty as the roofless two-thousand-year-old apartments that stood between him and the spot where he intended to act.
He trotted in the shadow of the buildings, scanning for one of the slaves’ passages that would bisect this faded street. Halfway to the main road, a slip of alley barely wider than his shoulders cut west to the plaza where the others had gathered. At the end of the passage, he dropped behind a stack of bricks high enough to conceal a prone man.
Theresa, still in the midst of the Scandinavians, craned her neck and studied the ruins. Her arms crossed above her waist as if her stomach hurt, but she hunched her shoulders and traipsed with the others into the amphitheater’s entrance tunnel.
He’d attended enough summer concerts here to know the dark ramp sloped below street level, then emerged into sunlight in the middle of a half circle of two thousand seats. In seconds, the group would be facing the stage and the remnants of the guild halls. With that spectacular sight in front of them, no one ever looked behind. There’d be no better strike opportunity.
The target slunk into the tunnel without checking over his shoulder. Dude wouldn’t last one hour in Special Forces Q-Course; he probably wouldn’t make it on a playground. He didn’t hear Wulf until after Wulf’s elbow hooked his throat. Wulf jacked the man’s arm between his shoulder blades and slammed him face-first into a wall niche. “Shut up, or I’ll pop your shoulder.” He twisted the arm high enough to trigger groans while he frisked him one-handed.
Zipped into his fanny pack the guy had a nine-mil Beretta semiautomatic. That was an immediate game changer. Anger erupted in Wulf’s chest as hot and lethal as the volcanic ash that had doomed a different ancient city. This man had come after Theresa with a weapon. It would be so easy to break his arm, and he deserved it. Deserved worse.
He only rubbed his captive’s face into the stone until he whimpered.
“FYI, buddy, zipped up your ass is a stupid place to keep a weapon.” He pushed his prisoner up the ramp toward the road. “Someone might jump you from behind.”
The afternoon was not going to include gelato from the café at the other end of the ruins.
He shoved the guy through the first gap in the rubble across the street.
Today was not going to involve a pleasant blend of beer, sun and a frisky woman.
Shoving hard, they zigged and zagged deeper into the unkempt section of the ruins.
This outing was not going to end in Theresa’s hotel room. To the ever-sucking contrary, it was going to be soldier shit, him and this fucker hidden deep in seared grass past rows of mausoleums, while the woman he wanted until he ached—who also controlled his future if she talked to the wrong people—boarded a bus and rode away, like he’d told her.
He’d had more successful dates after sacking a convent.
* * *
The stacked stone arch in front of Theresa framed more stone blocks and sun-dried weeds, the opposite of the dampness where her shirt clung at her armpits.
After the amphitheater and guild mosaics, she’d realized the tail had vanished. The tour guide had called the boulevard that divided the ruins the Decumanus Maximus. The unmowed area south of it, away from the tourists and gift shop, was the logical place to find Wulf and, by extension, the man who’d pursued them.
Now that she had no doubts they’d been followed, she’d realized an unfortunate truth: Wulf might not be who the man was keeping an eye on.
Another plane roared overhead for Fiumicino Airport as she rubbed her palms on her pants and reminded herself that there were dozens of people in the park who could hear her. She wasn’t alone. She stepped into the open space through the arch, expecting to find nothing.
Something—someone—spun her and smashed her body against a wall. The iron tang of blood mixed with chalky dust to become a foul paste that glued her lips to her teeth. Crumbling bricks dug through her clothes to chafe her thighs and chest. Next to her ear, a man’s breath hissed in and expelled like an espresso machine.
“Why aren’t you with the tour?” The anger in Wulf’s whisper flayed her skin. His mass pressed her against the stone, but without the care he’d shown during their kisses.
She couldn’t suck enough air to reply.
“I mistook you for an accomplice.” He moved an arm’s length away. “I could have hurt you, dammit.”
After she peeled herself from the wall, she scrubbed the back of her wrist across her lips and tried to swallow.
“Why’d you disobey me?”
“I’m not under your command.” She’d done nothing wrong, but she gave in to the urge to slide along the wall before she continued. “The guy in the car—”
“What about him?” Wulf stalked her. His head and shoulders loomed in her space.
“He could be...” She took a deep breath. “One of my sort of stepcousins.”
No rocks fell on her. No lightning bolts. The ground did not open.
“Why do you say that?” His alert stance didn’t change.
“I need to see him.” Don’t let the guy be a misguided emissary of Her Nosiness.
“First answer me.” His face matched their surroundings, hard and dry. “Why do you think he’s a relative?”
“I told you my family’s Italian.” She brushed her pants, but her sweaty hands smeared the dust that had transferred from the wall. “My last name, Chiesa, it’s from the Piedmont region. Maybe my mother called some
—local relatives. Asked them to look me up.” They were from Naples, not part of the Chiesas or her mother’s side, but she was sticking close to the truth.
His look changed to disbelief. “What kind of family do you have?”
That she really didn’t want to answer.
“Anyway, he’s not Italian.”
Thank you, thank you, thank you. No need to explain her family to Wulf, or anything about Wulf to her family.
“See for yourself.” He gestured behind a collapsed pillar.
She shuffled around rubble that had once stood vertically. On his side among smaller stones, eyes closed, lay the American who’d offered to take their picture at the Mouth of Truth. Wulf’s belt bound the man’s elbows behind his body, shoelaces crisscrossed his wrists and it looked as if he had a sock stuffed in his mouth.
Wulf had captured a prisoner, but they weren’t in Afghanistan.
Only one thing could be worse. “Is he dead?”
“I wouldn’t have wasted time on restraints. Carotid artery sleeper hold.”
Not dead was good. “Have you checked his circulation?” If she focused on the man’s well-being, maybe she’d fool herself into thinking they had a prayer of getting out of whatever mess tying him up was going to cause. “Those bindings look painful.”
“Not compared to this.” Out of his waistband, Wulf pulled a Beretta identical to the one she’d locked in the arms room before catching her flight. “I took it from his fanny pack.”
Her neck and shoulders prickled to think that this man had followed them yesterday, even into the church, with a weapon.
Wulf rested the Beretta near his torso, pointed at the ground like an extension of his hand. Eyes narrowed, he stared at her. “Have you seen him in the sandbox?”
“What?” If their stalker wasn’t a member of her extended family, she had no clue what was going on. “Other than yesterday at the Mouth of Truth, I’ve never seen him. You’re the one who said this was army business.”
“It is. Look at his feet.”
The tan suede boots, minus the laces employed on his arms, were common to everyone with the army in Afghanistan, from general officers to privates, including most civilian contractors. Looking closer, she realized his receding hairline showed a white strip where he usually wore a hat, but the rest of his face and neck were tanned. “Is he a soldier?”
“Age, gut, shiny watch. I’d guess contractor.” He slipped the Beretta into his waistband and untucked his shirt, its bottom creased by sweat. From a row of items on another rock, he chose an unfamiliar cell phone. “Have anything in your purse to copy his call history?”
The only paper inside the leather bag hanging diagonally across her body was a postcard she’d bought at the Ara Pacis, a reminder of the morning before the world had shifted at the Mouth of Truth. The tourist who had reveled in the beauty of the altar celebrating Roman peace was gone, replaced by a dry-mouthed woman whose mind raced past branching consequences faster than she could search her purse.
Hunting for a pen, her fingers wrapped around a plastic rectangle that made a familiar tick-tick sound. The mints from Jennifer, weeks old but brought along for the trip because she’d wanted to be prepared for any hot guys who thought she was like ice cream. Simple problems.
Today absolutely called for two of the white mints, which hit her tongue like a shot of epinephrine.
Wulf fanned the man’s wallet contents in one hand and silently held out the other to her.
She shook two into his palm, but he kept his hand open. “I’m rationing.” Like hell she was giving him another. “For the next happy surprise.”
“Fair enough.” He nodded and examined the plastic cards in his hands. “Texas driver’s license says our buddy is Jack Spencer.”
Sitting on a chunk of rock, she studied the phone. A simple disposable like hers, it didn’t seem to have fancy locking functions. Finding the call history wouldn’t be hard.
“Better photo on the Indiana license for Mr. Jim Schroeder,” Wulf said. “Before he ate too many fries chez Black and Swan.”
Her stomach growled, but she forgot about it when beautiful columns of numbers appeared on the screen and one of the tentacles squeezing her chest unwrapped. While she wrote, her eyes darted from the phone to her notes to Wulf.
“Here’s a credit card for John Sullivan. Guess he doesn’t like to redo those J-S laundry tags.” Wulf dropped to his haunches next to the bound man. “If you’re coming round, Jack, let me reassure you. I’m a law-abiding type of guy.” He spoke barely above a whisper.
She strained to hear his next words while scribbling numbers.
“Ask people who know me. I’m easygoing. Fun-loving. Except for one thing.”
He was no longer the gentleman who’d wined and dined her. He had the same hair, same shoulders and same clothes, but this Wulf came from the part of the army that ended lives with precision. She came from the part that saved them, and the difference had never been so stark.
“One thing pisses me off.” He spoke to the prisoner. “People who spy on me.”
Suddenly she was very glad she hadn’t requested his personnel records after their first meeting in the cafeteria. “Finished.” The postcard covered with numbers trembled in her hand.
As Wulf left the bound man and returned to her, he switched to a smile. “Do you have a phone too?”
She nodded, then stopped, but it was too late.
“A disposable?” He held out his hand. “I need it.”
His stare compelled her to pull it from her purse.
“Yours should be clean. At least until Jack’s missed and someone starts checking where his phone last registered its location, and then finds other phones on at the same place and time.”
“How can someone—”
“Hack phone company records? Easily, but these people probably won’t have to.” As he spoke, he tapped keys and waited for someone to answer. “I’d call the billing department with a story about my daughter losing my phone and say it has the number for my boss’s vacation house. I have to find it because I’ll lose my job if I don’t tell the boss his wife is coming up a day early. Maybe drop a reference to his young blond assistant, and how much I need to keep this job because my wife’s been laid off.” The worry in his voice made her want to give him whatever he asked, even though she knew he was fabricating the story.
On the phone, he greeted someone named Lorenzo. Their Italian conversation flew too fast for her to catch more than Ostia and Roma and ciao before he hung up.
“Everything’s squared.” He popped the SIM cards from both phones. “Of course, Black and Swan’s so connected, they can probably tell the U.S. embassy to send the Italians a terrorism investigation letter of interest.”
She froze, hands in midair reaching for her phone, but Wulf stuffed it in his pocket. Whatever a terrorism investigation letter was, she didn’t want to be named in one. She was an American and an army officer. Things like extraordinary rendition or secret CIA prisons couldn’t happen to her...could they?
“If we’re named to the Italian government,” Wulf continued while he gathered the man’s papers, “we’re playing high stakes poker.”
Chilled in her short-sleeve shirt, she stared from the bound man to Wulf. The fear she’d battled all morning became much closer to panic. She didn’t want to spend another minute with the mystery man and the threat he represented. “Let’s go. Leave him and call the police later. Anonymously.”
“I made arrangements to dump him until we figure out the who, what and why.”
“That’s kidnapping. Won’t it make this even harder to explain?” She had to draw a line. “We can’t do that.”
“Who do you think will report our buddy Jim missing?” His eyes flicked over to the prisoner. “I doubt he brought family on this trip.�
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Chapter Fourteen
“This guy had three identities and a semiautomatic. He’s no tourist.” Wulf’s voice was steady, his tone as rational as if they were discussing the probabilities of medical outcomes, but it wasn’t enough to convince her to abduct a man.
“It feels like we’re committing the crime.” She couldn’t ignore her roiling stomach. “I don’t understand what—or why—”
“Fine.” He threw his hands in the air. “My team’s investigating Afghan heroin shipments. Black and Swan is moving the junk in empty cargo containers. Before flying to Rome, I tracked a load to a ship in Karachi that’s due next week in Albania.” His eyes didn’t break contact with hers. “We think the smugglers killed a warrant officer who discovered an earlier cargo.”
“Then this is absolutely a police matter. We have to—”
“You think the army wants this publicized? That army resources, even inadvertently, are smuggling drugs? A soldier here or there with a duffel bag of hash, that’s one thing, but tons of heroin sent around the world on cargo ships courtesy of American taxpayers?”
Despite growing up reading Nancy Drew, she’d never had an urge to become a crime fighter. She was a doctor, and that made her job crystal clear.
He wasn’t finished. “We haven’t figured out how high up the corporate chain this goes. Black and Swan’s too politically savvy to take on lightly. So no police.”
Her head throbbed with the scale of what Wulf had revealed. The crazy-afraid part of her argued against his story, but her eyes couldn’t erase the man, the identifications and the gun.
“If we stick together, we’ll get out of this.” He pulled several bills from his pocket. “First, I want you to buy a couple beers at the snack bar.”
“Beer?” What was he thinking?
First to Burn Page 15
