When You Can't Stop (Harper McDaniel Book 2)

by James W. Hall

  “We don’t know which groves are in the Albion Olives tract.”

  “True.”

  “I know a local who could help,” Naff said. “I need to see him about something else anyway.”

  “What local do you know?”

  “Stick with me, kiddo, and find out.”

  They left the hotel and walked into the old city, Adrian guiding them down one narrow lane after another, doubling back a couple of times, stopping, looking around, until Harper asked him if he was lost.

  “Maybe a little.”

  “Tell me where we’re going and I’ll ask someone for directions.”

  “We’re close,” he said. “Give me a second, I’ll find it.”

  Ross had been the same. Determined to find his way without help, even if it took twice as long. Harper had teased him about the habit, but Ross argued that it was more than male vanity. For men like her husband, who’d had frontiersman ancestry, there was an ingrained need to keep their pathfinding skills well honed—you never knew when they might be critical to survival. It sounded like pure bullshit, but Ross seemed to take it seriously, so she hadn’t called him on it.

  A few minutes later, Adrian turned down an alleyway and halted in front of a trattoria named Lombardi.

  “Voilà,” he said.

  “You’re a regular frontiersman.”

  He gave her a curious look. “Thanks. Nice of you to say.”

  It was only a few minutes after ten, and the sign on the window said the establishment didn’t open until noon, but Adrian hammered on the heavy wood door and kept hammering until it creaked opened and a woman in her late thirties looked out at him through the crack.

  Her eyes were red and swollen, and she dabbed her nose with a handkerchief.

  “Remember me, Valentina?” Adrian asked. “The guy who was looking for Dickens. Can we come in?”

  Valentina looked past Naff at Harper and asked who she was.

  “This is my friend. She’s the one who discovered his body.”

  Her chin trembled, but she stepped aside and drew open the door.

  “She’s carrying his child,” he whispered to Harper.

  They followed Valentina into the bar, and she called out for her father.

  Papa Lombardi stalked out of the kitchen, his hands dusted with flour, his face stippled with flecks of dough.

  Without a word, he waved for Adrian and Harper to follow him to his office in the back and wiped his hands on his apron as they walked.

  “This is the woman digs up that man?”

  “I discovered the body, yes,” Harper answered for herself. “And I delivered Pagolo to jail.”

  “You beat him first. This is what I hear. Beat him bad and tie up his palle.”

  “L’ho fatto solo per domarlo.” Just to subdue him.

  “You should have killed the bastardo.”

  Adrian explained that they needed Mr. Lombardi’s help. He pulled out the map and asked if the man could mark the groves that Albion had purchased.

  “Stolen, not purchase. Like mafia.”

  Lombardi laid the map on his desk and studied it for several minutes, then opened a desk drawer, took out a pen, and drew a single large circle around an area south and west of Bari.

  “And the Bellomo grove?”

  He drew an X in the exact center of the circle.

  “I thank you,” Lombardi said to Harper. “Is better to know for sure this man Dickens is dead, not that he run away and leave Valentina and her baby behind.”

  Harper told him she was very sorry for Valentina’s loss.

  “One more thing,” Adrian said.

  Lombardi gazed at Adrian with large, damp eyes and said nothing.

  “I need a gun.”

  “What gun?”

  “Preferably a pistol. Do you happen to have one you can let me borrow until tomorrow evening? Or maybe you know someone who has one I could use.”

  Harper said nothing for the rest of the visit, but walking back to the hotel to get the car, she said, “A goddamn pistol, Adrian? Why?”

  “We don’t know how this is going to shake out. Who’s going to be there, or if they’ll be packing. You’re great with that hand-to-hand stuff and I can hold my own, but going into a situation like this, I’d like a little more firepower.”

  “That pistol looks ancient. You sure it works?”

  “Lombardi says it does, I trust the guy.”

  “I hate guns.”

  “Necessary evil,” he said. “This one’s a dandy. Astra A-100, feels like a Sig P229. A nine with seventeen in the magazine. A little bulky, but, hey, can’t be too picky, right?”

  “I hate guns.”

  “But you’ve used them.”

  “When there was no other choice.”

  In Adrian’s rented Opel, following the map into the countryside, Naff drove while Harper navigated using the map.

  They worked their way around the rim of the circle Lombardi had drawn, parking along the shoulders of the road and hiking into the groves, peering up into the branches until they spotted a brown patch of leaves. For the ones they could not reach from the ground, they shared the climbing duties, shinnying out onto the heavy limbs to snap off the withered stalks.

  When they exited each grove, Harper jotted a note on the pad she carried in her purse, the approximate location of each stalk they collected. She speared the tip of the branch through the page to keep track of which was which. She laid the stems in the backseat, the pile growing to several dozen by the time they’d completed the giant circle.

  “Spread pretty far,” Adrian said as they were heading back to Bari. “And that’s just the perimeter. We didn’t go very deep inside the circle.”

  “And we didn’t look beyond the circle either.”

  She and Adrian carried the branches into the lobby of the hotel, and Harper asked the concierge if he could find a bag of some kind big enough to hold them. He took a long, inquisitive look at the desiccated branches festooned with Harper’s notes and said, yes, of course, he’d be only too happy. He returned with a large hotel laundry bag barely big enough to hold the collection of branches.

  She and Adrian had a drink in the bar. A Peroni for him, a gin and tonic for Harper. For the moment she’d lost her taste for blue glaciers.

  “Take a look at this.” Adrian held out his phone.

  On the screen was a map of Bari with a flashing red dot at the Bari Karol Wojtyła Airport, the local international hub.

  “Jennifer Dowdy sent me the link. I told you she was a tech wiz.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “The dot is the current location of the phone from the number on that note. Looks like they just arrived at Bari airport.”

  Adrian studied his phone and shook his head.

  “Must’ve turned the phone off. No more red dot.”

  “Well, at least we know they’re here. Keep checking that thing.”

  When they finished their drinks, Adrian said, “You feel like dinner somewhere? My treat.”

  She did, but she said no.

  She claimed she was tired, needed to rest before tomorrow’s showdown. He patted her on the back, accepting her lie.

  “You change your mind, I’ll be in the rooftop restaurant looking longingly at the view.”

  “Call me if that dot lights up again.”

  In her room, Harper called Sal’s phone and got Nick instead. Sal was sacked out in the recliner. Nick said his burn wounds were healing nicely and he was up and around, feeling restless, ready to come help Harper in any way he could. Not necessary, she told him. Things were about to come to a close. She was hoping to be back in Madrid by the weekend.

  He filled her in on Daniela’s progress. She’d endured two more skin grafts and was doing slightly better than the doctors expected. She and Nick took long hallway walks together twice a day and were talking about what they’d do once she was released. One plan was that Nick would take some time off from work and go back to the olive groves
in Canena and help Daniela supervise the harvest and the reconstruction of Castillo de Aranjuez. Harper hadn’t heard him so animated in years.

  She didn’t need to ask him if he was falling more deeply in love.

  After the call, she slipped into her pajamas and lay atop the sheets and stared at the ceiling for a long time before finally she rolled over and switched off the lamp.

  In the darkness, she continued to stare at the ceiling, and during the little sleep that followed, she dreamed of moonscapes populated with skeletal trees, and sometime near morning she had a long and vivid vision of a seaside cottage with its doors and windows flung open to the ocean breezes, and on the beach exuberant children ran freely, playing tag, throwing a ball to a floppy-eared retriever, and every so often one of the children stopped to wave up at Harper, who stood on the sunny verandah, shoulder to shoulder with a man whose face she could not see.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Bari Milling Works, Bari, Italy

  Planning to arrive well before the scheduled meeting at ten, Harper and Adrian left the hotel at half past eight. They’d decided to walk to the mill to get the blood circulating before the face-off. Harper was carrying the hotel laundry bag full of diseased branches.

  She’d chosen her best close-quarters combat outfit: loose, gray, stretchy trousers and a dark, long-sleeve cotton top, rubber-soled flats. She’d used a scrunchie to bind her hair in a tight ponytail.

  Naff wore faded blue jeans and a button-down shirt, with a gray sport jacket to conceal the bulge of the pistol he’d wedged between the waistband and the small of his back.

  “I should’ve asked Lombardi for a holster. This thing is wrecking the hell out of my lumbar.”

  “You need to try a little yoga, Naff. You’re not very limber.”

  He smiled but looked mildly offended. “You can tell that just by looking at me?”

  “The way you walk, your posture. How you get up from a chair, basic movements. Yeah, it’s pretty obvious.”

  “I’m flattered you’ve been paying so much attention.”

  “Don’t be. It’s part of my training. Knowing the limitations of my fighting partner. Whether I can depend on you or not.”

  “Jesus, now you tell me. I could’ve done some knee bends when I got out of bed this morning, be ready to go.”

  “I think it’s beyond knee bends.”

  “Well, all the more reason to be packing heat.”

  The air was cooler this morning, a marine mist like an invisible fog was rolling off the Adriatic. A few thousand feet overhead, a haze had dulled the blue of the sky. Not quite a dreary day, but heading in that direction.

  “Since we’re noticing things about each other,” Naff said, “you’ve been balling up your fist and opening it every few seconds for the last four blocks. That part of your training too?”

  Harper shook out her hand.

  “Yeah,” she said. “A little tense.”

  “Nothing to worry about. We’ve got our plan. It’s a good one. If things go south, I got seventeen bullets to turn ’em around.”

  She gestured at his phone. “Your red flashing dot?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I checked last night, again this morning. They must’ve turned off their phone. It’s been blank.”

  “Check again.”

  Naff pulled out his phone, swiped, and tapped the screen till he brought up the map.

  He stared at the screen. He swiped and tapped a little faster. Looked up at her.

  “What is it?”

  He halted, stepped to the edge of the sidewalk out of the way of the foot traffic, and she leaned in for a look at his phone.

  “Madrid,” she said. “The assholes went to Madrid.”

  “Wait a second, let me enlarge the damn thing.”

  He fiddled with the symbols on the bottom margin of the screen until he managed to tighten down on the street map.

  “Haven’t made it to the hospital. Looks like maybe ten, fifteen minutes out, depending on traffic.”

  Harper was already punching in Sal’s number on her phone.

  She heard a series of clicks, then several more, the signal struggling between satellites and cell towers.

  Sal, sounding very distant, said, “You never call, you never write.”

  “Someone’s coming for you.”

  “Who?” Sal said. “When?”

  “Albion or his thugs, they’ll arrive in the next few minutes. Call security, get them up to your room. Make sure Daniela’s covered too.”

  “How many are there?”

  “I don’t know. Hang up, get security moving, and call me back when you’re all set.”

  “Don’t worry about us. The Rossi boys decided to stay. Benjamin fell in love with a nurse in the hospital. Can you believe it? Wise guy like that, he’s gotten so goofy he’s started writing poems. He’s trying to learn Spanish, for god’s sake. I told him, You don’t need to learn their language. Use the universal language, right?”

  “Are both Rossis close by?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I can see Benjy just outside the door. I don’t know where Marvin is, probably the cafeteria. That guy eats—”

  “Enough! Get them close by and call hospital security, now. Let them know bad shit’s coming your way. Hang up and do it right now. Okay?”

  “Okay, okay. Man, you’re pushy. You need to relax, Harper. Take some deep breaths.”

  He clicked off before she could yell at him again.

  “Now what?” Adrian said.

  “We’ve done what we can. We go ahead as planned.”

  “And if Bixel and Albion are in Madrid?”

  “They aren’t,” she said. “Bari’s where the real estate deal is going down. This is where Knobel is, where you’re handing me over to Albion. All the big fish will be here. Going after Sal and Nick has to be a diversion. Maybe it’s Gerda, maybe it’s your pal Müller. We know both of them were here in Bari. Maybe they were at the airport flying out.”

  “Could be that. Let’s hope you’re right.” He blew out a breath. “So we’re going with the same plan.”

  “Yeah, same plan,” she said. “Let’s crush these bastards.”

  A block before the mill, Harper stepped into an alleyway full of garbage cans and refuse. Cats were teeming around piles of food scraps.

  “How about here?” she said.

  Adrian looked up and down the sidewalk and nodded.

  “Perfect.”

  He drew the white plastic zip tie from his jacket pocket. Harper set the bag of branches on the ground and turned her back to him and put her hands behind her, crossing her wrists.

  Adrian cinched her wrists together, closing the zip tie snug.

  “Too damn tight,” she said.

  “Has to look believable.”

  “Snip this one off. Do another one not so tight.”

  Adrian took hold of the zip tie and drew it tighter.

  “Jesus, Naff, what’re you doing? That hurts.”

  “Good,” he said, his voice harsher than she’d heard it before.

  “Cut it off, Adrian. I’m going numb already.”

  He gripped her shoulder with his right hand, holding her in place, and before she knew what he was up to, he’d let go of her shoulder and lashed a gag across her mouth, knotted it behind her neck, then, with a rough shove, swung her around, face-to-face.

  “Small change in the plan,” he said.

  His eyes were blank. His face assumed a bland detachment.

  He stepped behind her, grabbed hold of the plastic tie, and wrenched it upward, pressuring her shoulder joints. She heaved and tried to spin around and break his hold, but he yanked up harder. On the practice mats she’d seen shoulders dislocated with less pressure.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Harper. I like you fine, but family comes first.”

  Her legs were free. She had an arsenal of tactics. Ashi barai, a simple foot sweep. Fumikomi, a stomping kick. Hiza geri, a knee strike. There were roundhouse kicks and circular falling kicks and
jumping double front kicks. But Naff clearly knew what she was capable of and kept prodding and heaving her forward, keeping her off balance, keeping enough distance to make a successful strike impossible. The numbness in her hands crept up her arms and into her shoulders. The plastic tie was cutting deep into her wrists. A trickle of blood running into her right hand.

  She needed to get centered, to load up her thighs and spring away from him, but he was stronger than she’d realized, and his grip on her wrists was unyielding and ruthless.

  She hadn’t seen this coming. She hadn’t read him well, falling for his playful banter, his wistful eyes, that exchange of family photos.

  Another failure of situational awareness.

  A minute later, they were at the mill’s loading dock. Workers stopped to watch this spectacle, a woman bound and gagged and staggering up the ramp into the plant, shoved along by a dark-haired man in a sport coat.

  Inside the glass office, Manfred saw the two of them appear and rose from behind his desk and hurried out to the plant floor.

  “What is this?”

  “You Manfred Knobel?”

  “I am. Who are you?”

  “Never mind that. This is for you.” He handed Knobel the laundry bag full of desiccated twigs.

  While Naff was beside her, engaged with Knobel and exposed, Harper unleashed a roundhouse kick aimed for his midsection.

  But Adrian skipped back and batted her foot away. Then he drew back his hand and snapped his right fist flush into her nose. She felt the entire mill spin a full rotation around her, watched as the bright bulbs in the ceiling winked once, then dimmed, and a blackout curtain inched across the room and finally shut out the last of the light.

  FORTY

  Bari Milling Works, Bari, Italy

  She tasted blood. Her jaw ached but not as much as her shoulders. Surely she’d dislocated one of them when she slammed onto the cement floor.

  She opened her eyes. She’d been positioned upright in the visitor’s chair across from Manfred Knobel’s desk. Gerda Bixel, slouched in the leather chair, was watching Harper regain consciousness.

  “Forgot your camera?” Gerda said.

  Someone had removed the gag. Trapped behind her, her hands were numb, probably swollen and turning blue, wrists burning from the plastic band cutting into her flesh.