The Sarah Roberts Series Vol. 7-9

by Jonas Saul

Betsy looked up at Sarah, then dropped her head and continued licking the water.

  “You stay here, then.”

  Sarah walked the length of the dining room and the living room, past the couches and doors that led to bedrooms on her right, until she got to the last door at the end of the house.

  Inside, she found a large bathroom that was a waste of space. The shower, washing machine, toilet and tub didn’t take up even half of the room. She walked around it in a circle and looked out each of the three windows.

  The third window, by the toilet, had the best view of the temporary stage set up for the conference.

  This was the window the sniper would come to. She was sure of it.

  She headed for the kitchen.

  Betsy was gone.

  “Shit,” she mumbled. “Betsy.”

  Nothing.

  A vehicle approached from outside. Then another.

  She had to hide. She had to be inside when the sniper arrived.

  The only room where she was supposed to be safe, according to Vivian, was the sunken living room.

  That couldn’t be the main living room. She had just walked through it twice.

  A door opened downstairs. Metal clanged against something.

  She ran out of the kitchen and tried the first door on her right.

  Someone was coming up the stairs.

  The door opened onto a square room that was larger than an average bedroom. Inside were a small writing desk and a couple of lounge chairs.

  Three steps dropped down into the room.

  The sunken living room.

  She jumped in and closed the door behind her just as whoever was coming up the steps entered the kitchen.

  The door had a wooden latch that secured it from the inside. She brought the handle down slowly and locked the door.

  She backed away quietly, moved to the far corner and sat in one of the lounge chairs.

  Someone pushed on the door from the outside. She held her breath and didn’t make a sound. They pushed again, trying harder. The door didn’t budge.

  They gave up and walked away.

  Sarah leaned back and rested in the chair, knowing she had at least two hours before the sniper would attempt to take his fatal shot.

  She closed her eyes and thought about Betsy, hoping she was okay wherever she had gone. She listened to whoever was in the house and waited, preparing herself for what she had to do, as hundreds of people began to gather for the conference outside the farmhouse amidst heightened security.

  Chapter 46

  Parkman stood beside Kierian in the farmer’s field. They were directly between the house and the temporary stage set up for the conference.

  “You can’t be serious,” he said. “They’ve actually got a ‘shoot on sight’ order out for Sarah now?”

  Kierian nodded. “They wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “Have they identified the bodies in the cellar of that abandoned building yet?”

  Kierian shook his head. “No.”

  “You said that time of death was not this morning when that British guy heard the shots and witnessed Sarah leaving the building. Your words were, with the condition the bodies were in, there was no way Sarah did that. They had to be dead for twenty-four to thirty-six hours and Sarah was in a drug-induced sleep at that time in the hospital. Do you remembering saying that?”

  Kierian looked around and raised his hand to pat Parkman’s shoulder. “Look, calm down. We’ll find—”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Kierian dropped his hand.

  “This isn’t the time to calm down,” Parkman said. “Sarah’s out there somewhere and she’s alone with an army of cops aching to shoot her. The odds aren’t good and they aren’t fair. Didn’t her version of the story make sense to anybody?”

  His toothpick supply was out. He hadn’t been able to locate any since arriving in Umbertide. It was times like this that he really needed one.

  Kierian stared at Parkman sideways. “There are some who suggest that Frank De Luca isn’t even a real person. How the hell could Sarah meet the man for coffee and still be alive? You have to admit, that’s science fiction to the Italian authorities.”

  Parkman leaned in close. He wrapped a hand around Kierian’s tie and yanked. “She’s still alive because she’s Sarah. If she says she met De Luca, then she did. End of story. Once you start believing her, she starts trusting you. That’s how this shit works.” He released Kierian’s tie and stepped back. “Something’s wrong. In a civilized country, they don’t order someone shot when there’s enough doubt. They bring her in and question her. Even charge her. They don’t just kill her. Whoever’s pulling the strings has been compromised.”

  “Parkman, be careful. You’re talking Delarusso here, the head of State Police.” He lowered his voice. “Watch what you say when in his lair.”

  “You think I fuckin’ care about whose lair I’m in. Corruption is in every police force and I won’t let anyone hurt Sarah because of a payoff. She’s too important.”

  Kierian stepped away. They were surrounded by hundreds of people who had gathered in the field, setting up lawn chairs, some with coolers, others with small cases of beer. If he hadn’t known any better, he would’ve thought this was a concert of some sort.

  A wall of blue uniforms surrounded the perimeter of the field. They thickened at the stage area where Delarusso stood.

  Local and State Police were working together to make sure this event went smoothly. The Health and Environment Ministers had increased their security recently after the assassination of the Minister of Agriculture. Even though Sam ‘The Dealer’ Marconi had claimed responsibility for that murder and he was dead now, no one was taking security lightly.

  A line of black vehicles entered the field. They snaked through the land on the makeshift tractor road and weaved through men in blue until the row of cars stopped by the stage.

  “Any idea where Sarah would go?” Kierian asked.

  “None. If I did, I would be there and not here.”

  Kierian nodded. “This is on me, isn’t it?”

  Parkman didn’t respond.

  Men exited the vehicles behind the stage and walked in a line up the few steps and onto the platform where speech after speech was about to be recorded in Italian history.

  “All I can say about who’s at fault is we better get to Sarah before these assholes do because if they just shoot her as they’re ordered to, I’m probably never going to leave Italy.”

  “Why not?” Kierian frowned.

  “When I locate the shooter, I will kill him and as he dies, my face will be the last thing he sees. The last thing he hears will be me telling him that I did it for Sarah.”

  “Now, Parkman …”

  He turned to face Kierian. “You think I can go back to the States and face her parents after all the shit Sarah and I’ve been through and tell them that an Italian police officer killed their daughter? No way.”

  “Cooler heads prevail—”

  “Kierian, please, just stop talking. It’s you and the idiots you work for that brought Sarah into this. You need to get her out. In the meantime, anything you say or do is only pissing me off right now. I’m going to find Sarah. I suggest you get a head start. Find her first and keep her safe.”

  Kierian backed away and wandered off through the crowd.

  A man on stage came up to the microphone and tapped it twice. He said in English, “Testing, testing, testing.”

  A moment later another man came up to the microphone and thanked everyone for coming. He also spoke in English and then in Italian.

  “We are gathered here today in a corn field to talk about GMOs and how they are destroying the planet,” the man said. “Ironically, this farmer was almost put out of business because of a lawsuit that began due to cross-pollination …”

  Parkman tuned the man out as he moved back through the crowd, headed toward the side. He wanted a better view of the entire field. This much police presenc
e meant someone somewhere felt there was still a credible threat to the members on stage. If anything happened, Parkman wanted a good line of sight.

  “We need to win this war on GMOs,” the man continued. “We demand transparency regarding the testing of genetically modified foods and we demand labels, but most of all, we want an all-out ban on GMOs in Italy. If this isn’t fixed now, the world is heading to hell in a hand basket filled with zombie fruits and vegetables. We won’t stand by and let farms like this one be destroyed …”

  Chapter 47

  “If this isn’t fixed now, the world is heading to hell in a hand basket filled with zombie fruits and vegetables.”

  Sarah snapped awake at the sound of the amplified voice from outside.

  I fell asleep. Shit!

  That surprised her considering what she came here to do today. Was she too late? Did it already happen?

  “We won’t stand by and let farms like this one be destroyed …”

  It couldn’t have happened yet or the conference wouldn’t still be going on.

  She got out of the chair, stretched, and walked to the window. Outside, hundreds of people were gathered in the field, all staring straight ahead at the stage as whoever was up there had just switched to speaking Italian. Whatever he was saying, he sounded pretty angry.

  She had once heard someone say, ‘you’re either arguing or you’re Italian,’ in reference to how passionate these people were when speaking about anything. There were hundreds of hand signals the Italians used when talking, and Sarah knew almost none of them.

  They sure add the word culture to agriculture, she thought as she stepped away from the view of the farmer’s fields.

  She placed an ear against the door.

  Nothing. Not a sound.

  She put the jacket on, got her gun ready, and lifted the small latch to unlock the door. She cracked it open and peeked out.

  The dining room was empty. She opened the door wider and looked the full length of the dining and living room. Then she stepped up on the stairs and checked to the left of the door. The entire area was empty. Even Betsy was nowhere to be seen.

  With her gun leading the way, she put one foot in front of the other and headed for the bathroom. She prayed she wasn’t too late. At any second, the sound of a high-powered rifle would signal that she had missed her chance. As long as she didn’t hear that and as long as the conference continued, there was still hope.

  Just before the bathroom door, she checked over her shoulder.

  Where’s Betsy?

  Police style, as if clearing a room, Sarah raised her gun to aim it at the ceiling, her back against the wall. She took two deep breaths and swung around into the bathroom, her weapon extended in front of her.

  One man, dressed in black, sat on the closed toilet seat, his arms wrapped around the long shaft of a rifle, his eye on the sights. His black suit covered him head to toe. Even his hands were covered in thin black gloves. She couldn’t tell if it was De Luca or a hired hit man.

  She visually swept the rest of the bathroom to make sure they were alone and then said, “Put it down.”

  The man barely flinched.

  “I said put it down or you win the prize behind door number one, which is a bullet in the back of the head.”

  The man maintained an eye on whatever he was looking at.

  “Motherfucker,” she said in frustration. “No more games. Drop the fucking weapon or die. That’s it—”

  His rifle spit a bullet. The crowd outside screamed in a horrific chorus.

  Sarah blinked. Her gun faltered, her trigged finger sweaty. It slipped off the trigger guard and the gun rotated in her hand so far she almost dropped it.

  The man in black lifted off the floor as if he were propelled by springs. Light glinted off a long blade in his hand.

  Sarah backed up one step, flipped the gun back into position and pulled hard on the trigger guard. Her finger didn’t get inside fast enough to shoot.

  The man landed on her. She had to use her gun arm to block the knife. His weight forced her down until she hit the floor on her back, reigniting old wounds, her ribs aching.

  He forced the knife hand down, the tip of the blade edging closer to her chest. She was losing the struggle of his strength against hers. She kicked her feet off the floor and brought them up to wrap around her opponent’s waist. She locked her ankles and squeezed just as the tip of the knife tapped her chest. Then she reared back, pulling him partially off.

  She screamed as she twisted, knocking the shooter sideways and into the hard stone floor of the bathroom.

  He brought the knife around in a wide arc, aiming for Sarah’s leg.

  At the last second, she unlocked her ankles and moved her leg out of the way in the hopes he would continue the arc to stab himself.

  The knife flew out of his grip and across the room. He scrambled back and grabbed at something on the floor by his bag.

  She brought the gun up in front of her at the same time he aimed a silenced weapon at her.

  He fired before she had a chance.

  Her gun was violently ripped from her hand, twisting two of her fingers back.

  She screamed as the shooter clicked something on his weapon and took careful aim again. She was too far away to kick at him or scramble to cover. She was out of options.

  “Say a prayer,” he said. “It’s goodnight time.”

  As his finger twitched, a blur bolted in from the bathroom’s door.

  Betsy was airborne, her mouth wide. When her teeth came together, the shooter’s arm was inside them, the gun all but forgotten as he struggled against the jaws clamped on him.

  He squirmed under Betsy’s weight as she bit and chewed to protect the new member of her pack.

  Sarah scrambled to her gun, but the bullet that knocked it from her hand had rendered it useless.

  Betsy was still fighting the shooter, but he was edging toward his bag again.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Sarah said as she got to her feet.

  Another knife came out of the side of the black bag by the toilet. The shooter grunted as blood covered his midsection now, his arm mangled. He raised the knife as Sarah got to him and kicked.

  She connected perfectly, knocking the knife into the bathtub behind him.

  With a perfect round house kick, one Aaron would be proud of, her heel connected with the shooter’s face.

  His head snapped back, his eyes shut, and the back of his head bumped the bathtub.

  Betsy backed off the unconscious man. She sat beside him, blood dripping from her snout, pink tongue hanging out the side.

  “Thanks, girl,” Sarah whispered. “You saved my life.”

  Sarah pulled the black balaclava off the shooter’s head expecting to see Frank De Luca, but it wasn’t him.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  She had hoped it would all end here with Frank De Luca being arrested.

  After tapping the top of Betsy’s head, she couldn’t ignore the pandemonium coming from outside.

  At the bathroom window, she moved the sniper’s rifle aside, and looked out.

  Parkman ducked instinctively at the shot, as did everyone around him. The crowd went wild, running in all directions. Some people were running across a neighboring corn field, others headed toward the Tiber River.

  The men on stage dove in front of the ministers like they were the President of the United States. A group of at least six men circled each minister and rushed them all off the stage and into waiting vehicles.

  The crowd thinned as people ran.

  Parkman examined the trees in the distance, the cars by the stage and the train tracks behind the house.

  Where could a sniper hide?

  Then he looked up at the house.

  No way. Where’s the farmer?

  Wouldn’t the police have secured that?

  He turned back to the stage to see what Delarusso was doing. Through binoculars, he scanned something near the farmer’s house.


  Parkman swiveled his gaze back to the house. There was movement in the window on the second floor.

  He squinted and looked closer.

  Fiery red hair billowed in the soft breeze as Sarah stuck her head out.

  Delarusso shouted something in Italian from the stage. Parkman knew enough Italian to know it wasn’t good for Sarah.