The Sarah Roberts Series Vol. 7-9

by Jonas Saul

  Shots fired. Tiny billows of rock dust burst around the second floor window as the Italian authorities fired shot after shot where Sarah’s head just been.

  “Cease fire,” Parkman yelled.

  Then he ran for the house.

  People ran, the crowd below the window dispersing.

  The cop from her hospital room shouted something from the podium and dozens of officers looked her way, pulled their weapons, and fired.

  She ducked back in the house.

  “Holy shit! You have got to be kidding.” She ran out the bathroom door. “Come on, Betsy.”

  She ran through the dining room, into the kitchen, and down the stairs she had come up hours before.

  How can they assume it was me? The shooter’s unconscious in the bathroom.

  She was about to jump through the door when it ripped open. She jumped back just in time.

  “I’ll shoot,” Sarah yelled.

  “Please don’t,” a familiar voice said. Darwin stuck his head in. “Come on. Follow me, quick.”

  She didn’t need any more coaxing.

  They ran through the bushes where she had hid the Brit’s mountain bike, ran across a dirt road, and onto the train tracks.

  “Where are we going?” Sarah asked.

  “This way.”

  “I know that. But where?”

  “Just keep up,” he shouted back.

  The sounds of men shouting at the house for her to come out drifted through the trees. She ran harder, hoping Darwin knew the train schedule. To be killed by a regional train now after what had just happened would be shit luck.

  The tracks curved, losing them to sight if someone were to check the tracks. They crossed a small bridge. A dilapidated building came up on the left. Darwin jumped from the tracks and ran for the building. Sarah followed, staying close.

  His Fiat sat in front.

  They jumped in, and he turned onto the road, gunning the small engine to get up to speed.

  “How did you know?” Sarah asked, trying to catch her breath.

  “I have someone who wants to meet you.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Darwin, what’s going on?” Sarah asked.

  “How come you don’t know?” he asked, turning to look at her. “If you didn’t write the note, then who did?”

  “What note?”

  The lines on his forehead thickened as he frowned. “Rosina found a note in the guest room where you stayed. You had to have been the one who wrote it.”

  Sarah thought about it for a moment. “Remember how I told you my sister works through me?”

  He nodded.

  “She must’ve written the note and left it for you. Maybe when I was sleeping, because this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  He said as he rolled his window up. “It told me what to do at the hospital and to be here to pick you up. It said you’d be running out of that house. I’m to deliver you to someone who wants to talk to you and then leave. My job is done after this, the note said.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Sarah asked.

  He shook his head. “We’re supposed to be in lockdown until tomorrow, but you can thank Rosina. She’s the one who convinced me to do this after we saw the reports that Marconi was confirmed dead. The more Mafia you eliminate, the safer our lives will be. So I made an exception.”

  “Well, for what it’s worth, thanks.”

  He nodded and kept his eyes on the road. “This is it, though. I drop you off and I’m out. As far as the note said, anyway. I’d love to help more, but I have a family to think about now.”

  “Fair enough. You’re out. Where are you dropping me off?”

  “At a B&B on the E45 highway. According to the note, a man is there and he wants to speak with you.”

  A man? Frank De Luca?

  “Do you have anything else on this man?”

  “He goes by, The Cowboy.”

  Chapter 48

  Sarah thanked Darwin profusely as he pulled away. Once his Fiat was out of sight, headed toward Umbertide, she faced the front of the B&B.

  A gorgeous building built in what appeared to be a perfect square. A fenced-in garden sat to the right, on the sunny side. She assumed they pulled many of their meals from that garden.

  Each window on the second floor had two circular flower pot holders at its base with colorful flowers blossoming in the early spring. The front door was a dark wood engraved with a spectacular design unfamiliar to her.

  Someone had gone to a lot of work to make this bed and breakfast stand out in its Italian heritage. Love and care was in every intricate detail.

  Maybe one day she would own something she could take pride in other than a reliable gun.

  She opened the small wire gate by the walkway and closed it behind her.

  The feeling of being watched covered her like a soft blanket as she started for the front door. The door opened a crack, then opened wider.

  An old woman stood in the doorway, her lips a straight line. The Italian sun over the years had played havoc on her features.

  “Buonasera,” the woman said in a gruff voice.

  Sarah nodded, not knowing what to say in Italian. “The Cowboy?”

  The woman stepped back from the door, picked up a laundry basket, and walked away.

  “Humph,” Sarah mumbled to herself.

  She stepped inside the front door. A younger woman was in the hall near the back wearing a floral summer dress and a large smile.

  “Hello, you American?” the woman asked as she entered the front foyer.

  “Ahh, English,” Sarah said. “Yes, I’m here to meet a friend.”

  “We only have one guest at the moment. I’ll go ring him. You can wait in the games room.”

  The woman gestured to her left. Sarah headed that way.

  The games room was impressive. She took in the pool table, the soft couch and the boxed games on the table beside the couch. A dart board took up the far corner. The area to stand while throwing the darts was distanced out with markers on the carpeted floor. A foosball table was situated along the wall by the window.

  Sarah sat on the couch to allow a clear view of the door. She arranged her jacket in such a way that the butt of Darwin’s gun would be easy to grab if the man who entered the games room was Frank De Luca. Even though Darwin’s gun was useless now, it still posed enough threat to aim it at someone.

  She suspected Frank De Luca had been monitoring the GMO conference and the performance of his hit man, and that he wouldn’t be relaxing in his room at a B&B along the highway.

  Heavy footfalls came down the stairs.

  A moment later, a man wearing cowboy boots and a brown cowboy hat stepped inside the door to the games room. He looked vaguely familiar, the man she had glimpsed as she chased him down the escalator at the train station in Rome.

  He was also very good looking in a rugged sense. Normally the cowboy fashion looked stupid to her unless she was at a rodeo, which she had never been to, but with him, it added to his looks.

  He tipped his hat. “Good afternoon, Ma’am.” If he was surprised she was here, he didn’t show it.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  He cocked his head to the side and tightened his facial muscles. As his teeth clenched, a bulge formed at the back of his jaw.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Don’t call me Ma’am. I’m not one of those.”

  His face relaxed in understanding. “I apologize. How did you know I was staying here? How did you find me?”

  “My sister told a friend …” She shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. Long story.” She got off the couch.

  “What happened at the conference?” he asked. “Were you there?”

  She told him how a shooter attempted to kill someone. Everyone ran from the area. She left Darwin out of the story.

  “Wish I was there,” he said, still standing in the doorway.

  “Where are you from?”
r />   “Calgary, Alberta. Heard of it?”

  “Seriously?”

  “May I?” He gestured for the other end of the couch.

  She nodded.

  He sat down, straightened his jeans, extended his long legs, and crossed them at the ankles.

  She sat back down, too.

  “I’ve met a lot of Americans who don’t know Canadian geography that well. It’s okay, though. I was only asking if you had heard of it because that’s what I do. I ask questions.”

  “What is it you do, exactly?”

  “I ask questions,” he repeated.

  She nodded and looked away.

  Where the hell is this going?

  “Why did you come to Italy?” he asked.

  “You first. What’s your story? Why are you so far from home?”

  “Coffee first.” He got up and strode from the room.

  What a character.

  A few minutes later, he came back in with two cups of coffee and a small tray of biscotti.

  “You okay with espresso?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  They sipped in silence and ate the biscotti.

  “Why did you run from me in Rome?” Sarah asked.

  “Because your hotel room was being watched. I decided we couldn’t talk until you were on the move. Then your partner was shot. I just had to leave the area.”

  Sarah finished her espresso and set the empty cup down. “I came to Italy to gather information on Sam ‘The Dealer’ Marconi, but he’s dead now and I’m looking for a man named Frank De Luca.”

  The Cowboy started at the mention of Frank’s name.

  “You know this man?” Sarah asked.

  “Who doesn’t? De Luca’s a legend. No one ever gets close to him.”

  “I did.”

  The Cowboy’s eyes widened.

  She explained what had happened the day De Luca tried to tell her that he was The Cowboy and how she had smelled a rat. De Luca was the one who blew up the restaurant in Umbertide’s piazza and he was the one who hired a hit man to kill the two ministers at the conference an hour ago.

  They sat for a moment in silence.

  “Your turn,” Sarah said. “Tell me about you. Gain my trust.”

  The Cowboy twisted in his seat to face her better.

  “Being an investigative reporter is a thankless endeavor. It makes my editor impatient and angers powerful people.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  “After getting my bachelor in journalism, I wanted to go deep, learn about something corrupt, even become a whistleblower myself. So I asked tough questions and wouldn’t leave an issue alone until I was satisfied I had done all I could.”

  Sarah leaned back, giving him her undivided attention.

  “I was advised against this job, but my passion for truth and justice thrust me forward. That and having a father as a criminal judge taught me a thing or two about justice. This is a risky business. I thought a story on GMOs would be safe enough, but I was wrong. I’ve received death threats, been followed, and even had a car attempt to run me over.”

  “Wow.”

  “I’ve discovered that the company wanting their GMOs grown in Italy has millions of dollars funneling into certain political campaigns here. I’ve followed the money trail as best I could and learned that the Minister of—”

  “Finance,” Sarah finished for him. “Silvio Capelli.”

  “Right. How did you know?”

  “De Luca told me.”

  “I’m confused. If Capelli is bought and paid for and he hired Marconi, or he hired De Luca, why would he tell someone like you information like that?”

  “I suspect Capelli has done something to piss De Luca off. Anyone else of interest on this money trail?”

  “The trail led to one more name.” The Cowboy paused to adjust his hat, pushing his hair up under it. “The senior officer of the State Police in Umbertide, Antonio Delarusso.”

  Sarah snapped her fingers. “That’s why he’s being such an asshole.” She met The Cowboy’s eyes. “He wanted me cuffed, taken to an airplane and flown out of Italy. He said he would tell his men to shoot me on sight if I didn’t leave Italy right away. He won’t listen to reason when I tried to explain what happened the night of the explosion.” She looked away in a daze. “I should’ve picked up on it sooner.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. Once there’s enough money involved, people go to great lengths to silence others. An old colleague of mine, Don, once did a piece called the ‘Nuclear Family.’ It was about the leaks from nuclear power stations across America and how one day, the radiation will cause birth defects and deformities in our future children. He focused on a plant where he had an insider feeding him raw data. Don is dead now and his principal informant is still incarcerated.” He paused.

  Sarah soaked up every word. These people were just like her, only their weapon was ink.

  “I lost my job because I refused to relent,” he continued. “I can’t contact my family until this is over. I’m running out of money and I always have to look over my shoulder. The only casualty of all this terror and fear is the truth, justice. So far, you’re the only one going after it, too. You’re the only one still alive I hope I can trust.”

  Sarah rested her head on her hands for a moment. “As far as the world knows, I’m dead right now. My parents are even preparing for my funeral and I can’t do anything about that until this is over. I guess we both have it bad.” She crossed her arms and draped a leg over the other. “Tell me more about GMOs. Why are they so important that people will kill for them?”

  “Global domination of the food supply,” he said. “I’ll get into that in a minute. But first, I have to explain why I wanted to see you in the first place.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “There’s a way to bring them all together. I have an idea. If this works, you expose Delarusso and Capelli, and nab De Luca in the process.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, but it would involve you being shot. I would threaten to expose them to the international community through the press if they didn’t give you medical aid—no questions asked.”

  Sarah smiled. “I’m liking where this is going.”

  Chapter 49

  Parkman had been ordered out of the way. No one had seen Sarah leave. It took them all of fifteen minutes to clear the house after having a difficult time with a German shepherd.

  “Someone find the farmer who owns this place,” Delarusso yelled. Parkman picked up most of the Italian. Delarusso continued, “I thought this building was already cleared. Who’s responsible for this?”

  An officer dressed in black fatigues stepped forward. “I was, sir.”

  “Report back to base. Clear the area.”

  The officer walked away, a pensive look on his face.

  When Parkman turned back to Delarusso, he was watching him.

  “What are you doing here?” Delarusso asked.

  “Same thing you are,” Parkman shouted back.

  “I don’t think so. Arrest this man.”

  Officers moved in.

  “What are you doing?” Parkman asked.

  “Getting a tighter grip on this case. You aren’t going anywhere until we find that red-haired girl of yours. Then I will personally escort you to the airport this time, because your girl will be staying behind in our jail, if she makes it.”

  “You had better hope she makes it.”

  Delarusso glared at Parkman. After a heartbeat, he closed the distance between them to stand nose to nose.

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Sarah Roberts is an American citizen who is only in Italy because she was asked to be here by the Italian authorities. If for any reason you are not aiding in her investigation, then you are hindering it. If anything happens to her, you will be questioned. Back in the States we call that an investigation, which means we would examine intent and motive. For example, why wouldn’t you help a small red-haired
girl in her twenties who is working for your country? What’s in it for you to not help? How do you—”