She looked up to find Luke inspecting her. Could he see what a terrible friend she had been? Had Lena’s sacrifice left visible scars on her skin?
“What do you know about the shooter?” she asked to distract them both.
“Nothing beyond the description you gave us. I was fighting with him for about thirty seconds before the carabinieri showed up. He weighs about a hundred and eighty pounds and he’s right-handed. That’s all I know.”
“I think he might be Scandinavian. Swedish, I’d say, or maybe Norwegian.”
His eyebrows jumped up. “What makes you say that?”
“I got a clear look at him when he was in line behind us getting gelato, and then again before he started shooting. He had that kind of Scandinavian stamp about him—blond hair, ice-blue eyes.”
“You think he’s Scandinavian simply because he had blond hair and blue eyes?” Luke countered.
Grace shook her head. “He definitely wasn’t American. I’m certain of that.”
“What makes you so sure?”
She shrugged and swiveled to face the store. “Just a hunch.” She sliced her finger from the car to the door. “I fell right here. I flipped around behind this car until the shooting stopped. Then I crawled over there. I was holding Lena when the carabinieri showed up.”
She paced from the car to the doorway. The phone wasn’t there.
Luke checked over his shoulder. “Let’s walk down to the building where the apartment is to make sure it isn’t there.”
She didn’t want to leave. Something nagged at her mind. It wanted to get out, but she didn’t understand what it was. “Is it possible the shooter came back here after the cops left? Is it possible he already found my phone?”
“Not likely. The cops were all over this area after the shooting. I would say it’s more likely one of the carabinieri found it and took it into evidence, except we already know they didn’t.”
“The shooter could have checked my route between here and the building,” she pointed out. “You followed me from the building to here, and so did he. He would have gone back and forth over that area a dozen times to make sure the phone wasn’t there.”
He inclined his head toward the far corner of the building, as if saying quit asking questions and let’s go with a single motion, and she started walking next to him. “You’re forgetting one thing,” he said. “The shooter doesn’t know you dropped your phone. He probably thinks you already gave it to the carabinieri.”
They walked further down the sidewalk. Grace scanned the street and the gutters for her phone, her awareness sharpened to a pinprick. Shadows obscured cracks and crevices where the pavement adjoined the buildings, but she would have spotted a phone in seconds if there had been a phone to spot.
“We have an advantage over him,” Luke mused. “He doesn’t know we don’t know who he is. He thinks you can identify him, which is why he’s after you. He’ll be more likely to do something stupid trying to get out of the country. The border and immigration services will be on high alert trying to catch the guy who shot the congressman. He could bolt right into their clutches.”
“Do you work on cases like this often?” she asked. This may have come out a bit bluntly, but she wanted to know just how much trust she should place in him. Lena deserved the best.
He chuckled and his cheeks lit up when he smiled. “No, not often. Then again, it’s rare to have a congressman assassinated in front of you while you’re on vacation. The Secret Service has two responsibilities. We protect the president, and we investigate crimes, mostly financial ones.”
“What do you usually work on?” she asked, cynical. She wondered if he was really the one to get justice for her friend.
“I’m in financial crimes. Counterfeiting, money laundering. You know, nothing as dramatic as this. But it’s given me experience with criminals. They often start off with white-collar crimes before moving on to something darker, and they’re sometimes immersed in both worlds at the same time.”
She hadn’t considered that. She still wasn’t completely confident, but at least he had some experience. She continued surveying the sidewalk. “I see what you mean.”
“There’s a lot of bad people doing a lot of bad things in the world. But I’ve been trained to deal with them all. You don’t need to worry. You’re in good hands.”
She didn’t want to think about that, but now that he’d brought it up, a monster of insatiable curiosity reared its head inside her. Someone had to stop all those villains. Someone had to track them down and make sure they paid for what they did.
Someone would track down the guy who shot the congressman, the guy who’d shot Lena. Some international intelligence agents would arrest him and use evidence to put him away where he belonged. If Grace and Luke ever found that phone, the agents, the judge, and the jury would use the video she’d taken to identify the perpetrator.
She would be part of the force that got justice for Lena. She would fight to regain a new normal in her life at home. But should she stop there?
Luke said they had lab techs, pathologists, and scientists working for them. Now that Lena had sacrificed for her, Grace wanted to do everything she could to live her life fully. To somehow repay this most imposing debt.
She’d never travel the world like Lena wanted to do, but what if she did something that could honor her memory in a way that utilized her strengths? What if she could use her skills to help make the world a better place? She felt at home in her quiet, boring lab, but maybe she could do both. Maybe she could live her life in some boring old lab helping to make the world a better place, and maybe she could live for her and for Lena.
Luke swung his hand and whapped his knuckles against her shoulder. He did it exactly the way Lena used to when she wanted to get Grace’s attention.
She whipped around to glare at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. He nodded ahead. “There’s the building your apartment is in.”
She didn’t know what to say to him. That gesture had given her a weird feeling of familiarity.
Grace wanted to trust him, mostly because she had no idea what to do in such a situation. She wanted to believe everything he told her, but maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing to do. What did she really know about him? He was a charming guy she’d met at a bar, and then he came out of nowhere to save the day. He might not be the Secret Service at all. It could all be a massive lie.
She hung back while he approached the building. All at once, phantoms crowded out of nowhere to get her. They closed her in and suffocated her.
He rattled the iron grating blocking the entrance. Then he squinted upward at the lighted windows above his head. “It’s all locked up. Do you have your key?”
“No, it was in Lena’s backpack. The carabinieri must have taken it.”
He started to turn away when a window scraped open a floor above the sidewalk. An old man stuck his head out and started spouting Italian so fast Grace couldn’t make out a single word.
Luke waved his hand and called back at the guy. The two men exchanged a rapid-fire conversation, neither making any headway. Then Luke took a wallet out of his inside jacket pocket and flashed something at the man. The old guy scowled down and humphed. He retracted his head and slammed the window shut.
Luke grinned at Grace. “That put the fear of God into him.”
A second later, the man, in an old terrycloth bathrobe, appeared behind the grate. He unlocked it and held it aside for Luke and Grace to enter the building.
Chapter Four
Luke waved toward the stairs. “After you.”
Grace squared her shoulders and eyed the steps lit by harsh fluorescent lights. This was it—the last mile. The phone had to be somewhere in this building. If she hadn’t dropped it at the shop or on the street outside, it had to be here.
Her intuition told her she wouldn’t find it here. What made her so certain of that? She couldn’t put her finger on it, but this trip up the stairs was just a formality. She was l
earning a lot today about following her gut. She had to get this out of the way so she could get on with the business of … what?
What would she do after this? Would she go home to Clearwater, or would she do something else? What else could she do?
The pieces of Lena’s soul bound her here. She knew Lena would want her to be safe. But Grace wanted to make sure her friend got justice. She promised she’d stay in Italy as long as Lena wanted to, and now Grace vowed she wouldn’t rest until the killer was caught. Lena wouldn’t return home until her death was avenged, and neither would Grace.
She started winding her way up the stairs. She inspected every step passing under her shoes, and the lights left nothing to the imagination. No phone. She pushed open the metal door at the top landing and emerged onto the roof. The lights revealed a long expanse of concrete extending to the balcony. The city looked peaceful from here.
She strode across the roof and leaned on the railing. She gazed down into the alley, but no kids played down there now. It was dusk, and the tourists were just starting to fill up the square again now that the heat of the day was lessening. It felt as if she’d aged a few decades since she’d last stood here.
“This is it. This is where we were standing when I shot the video.”
Luke squeezed onto the balcony next to her. He was standing too close, but his presence didn’t make her uncomfortable. A thrill coursed through her, but he didn’t seem to notice that he was the cause of anything out of the ordinary. A small part of her tried to crawl away from the dead and toward his warmth.
He pointed to another balcony on the same building. “That’s where the shooter fired from.”
“How do you know?”
“Your phone reflected the sun, and I looked up. I saw it glinting off the rifle he aimed at the congressman. Then the shot rang out, and I got caught in the stampede. That’s the only reason it took me so long to get to you.”
“If you saw him shoot the congressman, you should be able to identify him,” she pointed out. “You were looking right at him. Was he wearing a ski mask or something?”
He shot her a sidelong grin. “Now you’re thinking, but I couldn’t see him from that distance. I couldn’t identify him. I didn’t even know he was blond until I saw him at the shop. I could just make out the outline of the gun.”
She frowned. Now that she’d started puzzling over this case, she couldn’t stop herself. Wouldn’t. She had ignored her own intuition too much in the past. She had to be bold, curious. Like Lena.
“So why didn’t he cover his face? If he had, no one could have ever identified him.”
“Probably because he planned to escape with the crowd as soon as he shot the congressman,” Luke said. “He wanted to blend in once he got down to the street. Besides, he didn’t realize you’d filmed him making the shot until after it happened. He figured he had to get that phone away from you before he fled the country. We might get lucky though. Coming after you might have made him miss his window of escape. He might be trapped in Italy, scrambling to change his plans.” He peered down at the ground. “The phone’s not here. Let’s go down and check the alley.”
“I didn’t drop it up here. And it won’t be down there.”
“I know, but we have to check every possibility. Police work 101.” He turned away. “Come on.”
“No,” she said, tired of running after leads she knew wouldn’t pan out. “I’m not looking for my phone down there because I know I didn’t drop it there.”
“Don’t you at least want to look?” he asked, a bit of irritation in his tone.
“No,” she shrugged. “It’s a waste of time.”
“Well, will you at least join me while I look?” he asked. “You shouldn’t be left alone with a killer on the loose.”
She considered that as she glared at him. She didn’t want to face the killer again. She had no knowledge or experience in such things. But it was also infuriating that Luke didn’t trust her. Wouldn’t believe her.
“Fine,” she said. “But I’m not looking, and if you don’t find it, you owe me.”
“Owe you what?”
She couldn’t think of a good answer. All she really wanted was her friend back. “I’ll let you know when the time is right.”
“Deal,” he said. He took off downstairs, tossing words over his shoulder. “I’m really not trying to be obnoxious. We just need to find that phone. It’s our one chance to identify him.”
“I could identify him,” she suggested. “I saw him at the shop.”
“You can identify him as Lena’s killer. But you can’t identify him as the congressman’s assassin. Only the phone can do that.”
He held the door open for her, and they trotted down to the ground. They found the gate standing open with the landlord nowhere in sight.
Luke pulled his phone out of his jeans pocket and used it as a handheld flashlight. He tilted it back and forth, sweeping the alley under the balcony. “Nothing. Let’s get back to the questura. We’ll figure something out from there.”
“I can’t go back to the questura. You told them you would take me to the airport.”
He clicked off the flashlight, and his teeth shone in the streetlight’s glow. “We’ll tell them you lost your phone and went back to check and get your belongings from the apartment. I’ll insinuate that there might be something important on it, and we’ll get help to find it. It’s the perfect solution.”
He rotated around and took two steps to the mouth of the alley. Grace stayed close enough to feel safe, but far enough away to show her irritation. Nervous energy scorched her veins. She was working an international intelligence case with a card-carrying Secret Service agent. Luke might look like a regular guy, but he was the closest thing to James Bond that Grace was ever likely to meet.
He stepped into the light, casting his flinty gaze right and left. A high-pitched motor whined out of nowhere. In a split second, a scooter zipped past the alley.
A gun belched a grotesque blare of spray into the light. A quick rattle of bullets popped against the concrete brick. Then the hollow echo of more bullets whistled down the alley past Grace’s head before the scooter whizzed out of sight.
Luke dove at her so fast she didn’t have time to prepare herself for the impact. He hit her full force and flattened her to the ground in a blink. She landed hard against the immovable wall and smashed her head. She clamped her eyes shut against the firecrackers exploding in her skull. Luke was not as gentle a savior as Lena had been. Grace decided that next time she would protect herself.
The scooter engine squawked as it fled, and then it was gone.
Luke peeled himself off her. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She summoned the will to nod, but he didn’t give her a chance to nurse her injured skull. He snatched her by the arm and yanked. “Come on! Get up! We have to get out of here.”
She pulled her arm away from him and straightened herself, wanting to give him a piece of her mind but knowing that now wasn’t the time. He flattened his back against the wall. Straightening his arm in front of her, he darted forward, stole a look outside, and flung himself back again.
He bared his teeth and winced, gasping for breath as beads of sweat plastered his hair to his brow. He peeked outside a few more times, but he didn’t leave.
The fourth time he did this, he dove one hand into his jeans pocket. He grabbed Grace’s wrist and pressed something into her hand. “Get back to the car. Drive back to the questura. Tell the carabinieri everything. Tell them all about the phone. Understand? You’ll be safe there.”
“What about you?” she asked. He was working her last nerve, but she was in a foreign country with an assassin after her. He couldn’t just leave her like this. “You’re coming with me.” She opened her fingers and looked down. She was holding the car keys.
He looked outside again. Then he whipped around and seized her by both shoulders. “Listen to me, Grace. When he comes back, I’ll run out and lead him that way
. He’ll go after me. When he does, make a break for the car. I’ll lead him as far away from you as I can. Just get to the car and drive. Understand?”
His breath puffed into her nostrils with every word. He smelled like cologne and sweat.
He hurled himself back against the wall again, shut his eyes, and rasped for breath. She hardly dared to look down because she already knew what she would see. Yet that ancient, morbid curiosity won as always.
A black streak stained his jeans. It slashed across his thigh from the knee up toward the hip. It looped around behind him where she couldn’t see the other end of it. She didn’t want to. Blood seeped from the torn edges of denim and spread through the fabric.
“You’re not running anywhere on that.”
“Forget it.” He cast a stern glance over his shoulder, but he still didn’t move. He said they had to get out of there, but he didn’t go.
Something snapped in Grace’s head. She hadn’t held Lena’s dead body in her arms for nothing. She hadn’t come all this way to run for the car while that bastard ran Luke down on his fucking scooter.
She shoved the keys into her pocket, slammed Luke flat against the wall, and grasped his belt buckle. She yanked the leather tongue, gritting her teeth.
His hands flew up. “Hey! Cut it out! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Oh, will you shut up?” she snapped. “Just keep still. Jesus Christ, Luke! You didn’t really think I would run off and leave you bleeding like this, did you? What do you take me for?”
He tried to fight her off, but she slapped both palms against his shoulders and shoved him against the wall. “Hold still,” she said and then continued to work on his belt. She tore it out of the loops. It hissed against the denim and whipped into her hand.
He shrank away. “What are you doing?”
Slipping the belt around his leg, she didn’t even try to avoid touching his crotch. She strapped it above the wound and cinched it tight. “Just keep still. You didn’t know I was EMT certified, did you?” It wasn’t like she would’ve agreed to travel around the world without some kind of training under her belt.
What She Didn't See Page 3