by Anne Stuart
But where the hell was he? And why hadn’t he told her the truth?
Of course, they’d never done much talking. They’d been too busy fighting and then too busy doing other, inventive things with their mouths …
It started as a polite knocking on the door, quickly escalating into a noisy pounding. Holly pulled herself to her feet, leaving the doubtful haven of the bathroom and heading toward the door. She didn’t even allow herself the momentary fantasy that Ian had returned. For one thing, he had his own key. For another, he wasn’t coming back. Not with Tim Flynn still out there.
“What took you so long?” Maggie didn’t look much better than she did, Holly thought as her sister rushed into the room. Her face was pale, her mouth slightly swollen, and her aquamarine eyes were shadowed. Randall followed, and Holly instantly noticed the bite mark on the side of his neck. Apparently her sister had been indulging in the same sort of dangerous exercise she had. They were Sybil’s daughters, all right. Always choosing the wrong men.
“I was in the bathroom,” Holly answered truthfully enough.
“How’s Sybil?”
“Not great. She took a turn for the worse a couple of days ago, but Kate says she’s holding her own right now.”
“I guess that’s better than nothing.” Maggie dropped down on the bed closest to the door, Ian’s unused bed, and kicked off her Nikes.
“Where’s Ian?” Randall was leaning against the closed door, his face impassive, at least half of his attention riveted on Maggie.
“Gone.”
“Gone where?”
Holly managed a creditable shrug. “Who knows? He’s been lying to us.”
Randall didn’t even blink. “About being in the army?”
Holly glared at him. “I should have known you men would stick together,” she snapped. “And not just about him being kicked out of the army. What about his connection with the IRA? With Maeve O’Connor and Tim Flynn himself? All hell has been breaking loose since we left Beirut. I nearly got butchered by our quarry.”
“You saw Flynn?” Maggie cut straight to the heart of the matter.
“I saw Flynn. He was registered at the Cielo under the name Robert Browning.”
“The bastard,” Maggie breathed. “Thank God Sybil’s so predictable. Every man in her life has been Robert Browning to her Elizabeth Barrett since she made the damned movie. So you and Ian went after him and he got away?”
Holly felt her face flush. “Not precisely.”
Maggie sat bolt upright on the wide bed. “He didn’t get away?”
Randall pushed himself away from the wall, his eyes alert. “I think what she means is that she and Ian didn’t go after him. She went alone.”
Maggie stared at her in disbelief. “God, Holly, you didn’t! You could have been killed!”
Holly’s flush deepened. “Well, I wasn’t. Ian found me in time, Flynn dived out a window and got away, and we …” Her voice trailed away.
“You don’t have to tell me what happened next,” Maggie said wearily. “I can guess.”
“Not that I’m not fascinated by your love life,” Randall drawled, sitting down on one of the armchairs better suited to shorter, Italian bodies and hitching up his khaki pants with a sartorial attention they didn’t deserve. “But I’d like to know where and when Ian disappeared.”
“He was gone when I woke up this morning. And I have absolutely no idea where he went. The British Embassy couldn’t find any sign that he left the country, or at least he didn’t use his real name if he did. But that’s all we could find out.”
Randall nodded. “I’ll find out where he’s gone.”
Maggie stared at him. “How?”
A small, secret smile curved the corners of Randall’s usually grim mouth. “I have my sources, Maggie. Patricia Werner is working at the embassy right now. You remember her from your CIA days, don’t you. I believe she’s working as a senior clerk-typist.”
“If Pattie’s a clerk-typist then I’m a housewife,” Maggie snapped. “I would have thought she’d have gotten out of the business by now.”
“Some people are addicted, Maggie. They like the excitement.”
“Do you?”
A momentary silence filled the hotel room. Holly watched with unwilling fascination, the dark, almost dangerous expression on her sister’s face, Randall’s alternating warmth and distance.
“I haven’t had an alternative yet,” he said finally. “I’ll give Pattie your love.”
“Do that,” Maggie said in a particularly sour tone of voice. “Do you want me to get rooms for us?”
Only the slight raise of his eyebrow signaled his reaction to the plural “rooms.” He shook his head. “Wait till I see what Pattie has to tell me.”
“You could always stay with her,” Maggie added sweetly.
Randall crossed to the bed, ignoring Holly’s watching eyes. He caught Maggie’s willful chin in one strong, tanned hand and forced her eyes to meet his. “If I didn’t know you better I’d say you were jealous, Maggie.”
“But you know me too well to have any such delusions.”
He bent down, brushing his mouth against hers for a lingering moment, and then pulled away. “Of course,” he murmured. “Don’t wait up for me.”
The door closed silently behind him. Holly’s eyes met Maggie’s for a long, meaningful moment. “So what do we do now?” she asked. “Wait here for our menfolk to return?”
Maggie brushed a hand against her mouth. “Hell, no. Though I have to admit Pattie’s our best source, and Randall will find out a lot more if he works on her alone,” Her lips curved in a cynical smile. “Even a pro like Pattie can’t hold out against Randall when he’s on the prowl.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Hold out against Randall when he was on the prowl?” Holly pushed it.
“I slept alone last night.”
“What about the night before?”
“None of your damned business. What have you been doing with Ian?” she countered.
Holly shrugged, and a reluctant smile curled her beautiful mouth. “So we’ve both been seduced and abandoned,” she said. “What are we going to do about it?”
“Nothing,” Maggie said, stretching out on the bed. “It’s happened before, it’ll probably happen again. We’re Sybil’s daughters, and we’re fools, just like her.”
“Maybe. There is something we can do, you know.”
“I’m not going shopping, Holly,” Maggie warned.
“Somehow, for the first time in my life, I’m not in the mood for it,” she admitted. “No, I had something better in mind. Before you showed up I was planning to get drunk on Amaretto and chocolates. Wanna join me?”
Maggie shuddered. “No, thank you. Make mine Scotch.” She shoved the pillow behind her back. “And you can tell me all about Ian’s connection with Flynn, Maeve O’Connor, and the IRA while you’re at it. I’m about ready for a bedtime story.”
“Only if you like nightmares,” Holly said.
Maggie didn’t stir when the phone rang hours later. She’d made quick work of the Scotch, or the Scotch had made quick work of her, and she lay asleep on Ian’s bed, shadows of exhaustion lurking beneath her eyes. Holly reached for the phone, her heart pounding and her palms damp as she spoke into the receiver. “Pronto?”
It was Randall. Holly closed her eyes in aching disappointment for a long moment, then shot them open again. “What did you say?” she demanded.
“I said wake Maggie. We’re going to Venice.”
thirteen
The tiny Palazzo Carboni hadn’t changed in the last four years. It was still a small, somewhat seedy, overwhelmingly picturesque little hotel on a side canal in Venice. It had been slipping into the water when she and Mack had spent their honeymoon there. It appeared to have sunk a few more inches, but there was fresh paint on the striped mooring pole on the canal side of the building, and the musty smell was lightened with fresh flowers.
A light dusting of snow covered the ancient city when the three of them arrived. Surrounded by the Adriatic, it was cold and blowy, and Maggie huddled beneath her thick wool sweater and thought longingly of California.
Randall had escorted Holly to the Hotel Danieli. They’d decided on the train to Venice that Holly would stay there while Maggie and Randall settled for local color instead of elegance. They needed to spread out. Holly was planning to check in under both her name and Ian’s, and then see if he showed up. The Danieli was the center of the upper-class tourist trade—it was also the hotel Flynn would be most likely to use, if the information Randall had received was true. Patricia Werner had been able to glean Flynn’s destination but not much more, and if the European intelligence community knew anything more about Flynn they weren’t talking to Pattie about it.
So the three of them had taken off. While Randall helped Holly settle in the luxurious hotel, Maggie was supposed to find more reasonable lodgings. And find them she did.
It would have been better if she’d gone someplace new. But the Palazzo Carboni was only a very short walk from the Danieli, the prices reasonable, the rooms full of character, and the service remarkably friendly. Signor Tonetti’s family had owned the hotel for more than a hundred years—it had been the gift of a grateful government for services rendered against the occupying Austrian forces, and Tonetti ran the place with pride and distinction. Maggie remembered him as a charming, garrulous old man, who reeked of lilac aftershave, and his plump wife and army of children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews who kept the Palazzo running smoothly.
But her two weeks with Mack Pulaski permeated every square inch of the hotel. In place of the German, the Dutch, the Japanese tourists she would see Mack, grinning at her, his eyes warm and loving. Not like Randall’s cold, stormy eyes that never warmed except with occasional malicious humor.
It had been fate that during this off-season there were two rooms available, two adjoining rooms. And one of them was the room she’d spent her honeymoon in.
She didn’t even hesitate. Knowing Randall’s room was one door away didn’t interfere with the rush of memories that swept over her. She stretched out on the massive bed and watched the patterns of light the fitful sunlight on the canal made.
She must have slept. When she awoke it was dark, with the sound and smell of the canal outside her drafty window and the noise of someone moving around in the room next to her. Randall must have returned.
She pulled herself out of bed, away from her memories, and silently crossed the room. The worn Persian carpet provided some protection against the draft, and once more Maggie shivered, pausing, her hand on the tarnished brass doorknob between their rooms.
She should knock. Or she could crawl back in bed and wait for him to wake her. No, she wanted to make sure Holly was settled. Who knows, Ian might already have made contact. Slowly, quietly she turned the doorknob.
The room was lit only by the tiny-watt light bulb European hotels considered necessary for proper eyestrain while reading. It was dark, cavernous, and the shadowy figure searching through Randall’s suitcase was barely discernible. But it was about a foot and a half shorter than the registered occupant of that room.
Maggie was still too sleep-fuddled to do more than stand there, open-mouthed, as the figure turned into the light from her open doorway. It was a very young, very pretty teenage girl.
She hissed something, and the sound was dreadful in the chilly darkness. And then she leapt for the open window.
Maggie was almost fast enough. She caught her ankles as she jumped, but the girl was very good. A flash of silver, a sudden stinging sensation, and Maggie fell back into the room as the sound of a motorboat took off into the dark expanse of the side canal.
“Hell and damnation,” Maggie muttered. The floors of the Palazzo Carboni were stone beneath their threadbare carpets, and her behind had very little padding these days. For a moment all she could think about was her bruised posterior. The wind from the open window howled around her like an angry ghost, ruffling her short hair, and her arm began to sting and burn.
Even in the darkness it was easy enough to see the slash. She was bleeding like a stuck pig, and she couldn’t tell from her current position how deep it was. She’d always had a strong constitution for anyone’s blood but her own. She looked down at the bleeding gash and keeled over on the stone floor.
She woke in her own bed. It was warm and smelled like Venice, a strange, wonderful mixture of the sea, mildew, ancient buildings, and even more ancient fish and garlic. She knew the bed, knew the room. She turned with a lazy smile to look at Mack.
But it was Randall staring down at her, his face dark with emotions she couldn’t even begin to read. Randall was here in Venice at the Palazzo Carboni, and Mack was dead. She waited for the grief and anguish to wash over her, and nothing came. She prodded again, like touching a sore tooth to make sure it still hurt. Nothing. Randall’s blue-gray eyes were dark with a passionate concern she couldn’t ignore, and his thin, sexy mouth was grimmer than ever. Grim with repressed emotions. She wanted to hold out her arms to him, to call him to her, but some last lingering bit of self-protection held her back.
“What happened?” he demanded gruffly, sitting on the bed beside her.
“Happened?”
“I found you passed out on the floor of my room, bleeding to death, snow filling the room, my suitcase strewn from one end of the room to the other …” His voice was tight with anger and something else. “So what happened?”
“I heard a noise in your room and I thought it was you. It wasn’t.”
“And?”
“It was a very pretty teenage girl rummaging through your suitcase. She took one look at me and dived for the window. I went after her but she managed to cut me before escaping.”
“It’s not that bad a wound. Little more than a scratch, as a matter of fact,” he said.
She looked down at her neatly bandaged forearm. “It hurts like hell.”
“I’m sure it does. Do you want me to kiss it and make it better?” he said in something that was almost a drawl from the coldly proper Randall Carter.
Maggie looked up at him. She had two choices. She could make the wise decision and give him a clipped, cool dismissal. Or she could lie back in the bed she’d once shared with Mack, lie back with the cold and the wind and the darkness all around and hold out her arms to him. For a cold man he was capable of a great deal of fiery warmth. For a dark man he managed to chase away the shadows that tormented her. Slowly she leaned back against the pillows that cushioned her body, and her mouth opened to suggest he do just that, when the telephone beside her bed shrilled into life.
So much for seductive lassitude, she thought, breathing a sigh of gratitude as she grabbed the telephone off the hook. “Pronto,” she said, and knew that even Randall could hear the relief in her voice.
“Maggie?” It was Holly’s voice, and yet it wasn’t. Her usually light tones were thickened with tears and something else. Something Maggie recognized as pain. “Maggie, they’ve got me. They’re … they’re hurting me. Maggie …” Her voice was cut off and the muffled female voice that took her place sent chills down Maggie’s spine.
“You wish to see your sister again, Miss Bennett?” The voice was charming, with a delicate Italian accent.
“Yes.”
A small, soft laugh on the other end. “Then you and your friend will be pleased to come to the Calle del Porco tomorrow afternoon. There is a little glassware shop called the Banquetto, and we’ll be waiting for you. That is, if I didn’t cut you too deeply.”
“We’ll come now!” Maggie said desperately.
“It will do you no good. We won’t be there. Tomorrow at three, Miss Bennett. Your sister will be safe until then, if you do as I say.”
“Now, damn you!”
“I give the orders. Just be glad Flynn isn’t here, Miss Bennett, or your sister wouldn’t survive the night. Ciao.” And the phon
e clicked into silence.
She raised desperate eyes to Randall. “They’ve got Holly.”
“So I gathered.” He was damnably calm, sitting there.
“They’ve hurt her,” she said. “They’re going to hurt her some more.”
“Probably.”
“Don’t just sit there,” Maggie shrieked. “We have to rescue her!”
“How? They’ve made arrangements for us to meet them, haven’t they?”
She hated the reason in his voice. “At the Calle del Porco tomorrow afternoon. It’s a little glass shop. But we can’t wait, Randall. They might kill her.”
“Maggie, you know as well as I do that they won’t be there now, or she wouldn’t have given you the address. And I don’t think they’ll kill her. She wouldn’t be any good as a bargaining chip if she were dead. It’s Flynn who kills for the fun of it—most of the other terrorists put their cause ahead of their personal hobbies.”
“Hobbies?” Maggie echoed in disgust. “You’re talking about my sister’s torture and murder like it’s collecting stamps or something.”
“I don’t think Flynn’s in Italy any longer. In which case your sister is safe, at least until they get what they want from us.”
“So what are you intending to do?” she demanded.
“There’s nothing we can do except wait. You know that as well as I do, Maggie.”
She tried one last time. “You didn’t hear her, Randall. She was crying. She was terrified, and she was hurt. I can’t just ignore that.”
“Holly’s a lot tougher than you want to admit. Your whole family is tougher than you realize. She’ll be all right.”
“Can you promise me that?” she demanded.
He rose, crossing to his door, and she waited for him to open it. He did no such thing—instead he slid the chain over it, went to the hall doorway, and did the same. “There are no guarantees in this life, Maggie.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He was kicking off his shoes, shrugging out of his charcoal-gray jacket and unfastening his tie. “I’m getting ready for bed.”