The Italian Deception

by Darby Philips

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you remember how we triggered the memory?”

  He nodded at Jacob, knowing that following his direction would be the best way to provide a distraction for Shelly so she could figure out some way for them to escape.

  “All right then. Let’s do that again.” He’d lowered his voice, as he’d done in their last session. “Think about the sunrise,” he continued. “Think of the colors washing over the clouds.”

  As Paul focused on a vivid sunrise, Jacob chanted, “Remember, remember,” in that low voice.

  Nothing happened.

  Jacob continued to chant.

  Paul tried to calm his mind. Still, nothing happened. He pictured the brightest sunrise he could remember. Focused on the vivid reds, purples, and splashes of yellow.

  Eventually, dark water and the sound of splashing waves replaced the sunrise.

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Paul was swimming underwater. Pain wracked his body. He crested the surface and glanced behind him. The lights of the Grimaldis’ boathouse were less than twenty feet away. Franco stood at the edge of the indoor dock, a smoking gun still held in his hand. He yelled, “I will kill you!”

  Paul treaded water as he got his bearings. The shoreline on his right stretched down to the Port of Gioia Tauro. Beyond the port was the ocean, and the lights of ships winked in the distance as they bobbed on the surface.

  Waves slapped against his face. Eric wasn’t with him. He wasn’t visible anywhere. Paul dove beneath the surface. The water was dark. Cold. His hand brushed against something solid. Desperately, he grabbed for it. He felt a hand, grasped it, and heaved them both to the surface. “Eric,” he said. “Eric!”

  Eric sputtered water.

  “Are you all right?”

  His partner didn’t respond.

  Paul grabbed him under the arm in a lifeguard hold to keep his head above water and started swimming toward the port. He knew his life was hanging by a thread. He swam as hard as he could.

  As he swam, Eric mumbled. It sounded like the same two words over and over again. “Cloe,” then, “Ria.” He thought it was a woman’s name.

  The clanks and heavy engines of the port reverberated over the water. They were closer now, but his muscles felt like lead weights. Eric became heavier. He still mumbled, but the machinery of the port obscured his words.

  Suddenly, Eric struggled, as if he were in the throes of a terrible nightmare. His voice grew louder. “Cloe,” he screamed. “Riace!”

  Paul was losing his grip. “Eric, stop fighting me,” he said.

  Eric slipped through his arm and sank under the water. He reached for him, clutched his arm, but he slapped it away. He thrust both arms downward, gripped his clothes, and hauled him up. He fought him whole way. As his head crested the surface, he pulled him close. “Eric, it’s Paul. Stop struggling.” He must be delirious.

  Eric punched him in the throat. Involuntarily, he grasped his neck and tried to breathe. Eric slipped beneath the water. He lunged for him, but missed. Desperately, he dove deep and searched with his hands, but couldn’t find him.

  When his lungs were about to burst, he pushed to the surface. “Eric,” he yelled. He heard mumbling to his left that quickly faded to silence. He swam in that direction, but couldn’t find him.

  He spun around in the water, listening for his voice again to discover where he was, but all he heard was the port machinery and the ding ding of a diving bell in the distance.

  “Eric,” he yelled. “Eric!” He peered across water in all directions, hoping he could spot his friend, but he was gone.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Paul came out of his memory slowly, anguish consuming him.

  Eric was dead. He’d been lost beneath the waves in a foreign sea. As that thought drove into him, all his memories came flooding back in the right order. After Eric had drowned, he’d swam to the port, where Franco had chased him. He’d hidden, been found by the inspector whose life he’d saved two days earlier, and found a phone where he’d called the embassy agent for extraction.

  Those memories left him hollow. Eric had died. The Grimaldis and the Ndrangheta still smuggled drugs, weapons, and enslaved women for prostitution.

  Yes, he’d hurt the Grimaldis, badly. But they’d eventually recover. And they never got the Ndrangheta financier. The Ndrangheta would grow. Become an even more powerful global empire.

  But as the lobby of the girls’ dorm resolved itself around him, he knew he couldn’t feel pity or remorse now. He’d deal with it later. Now, he had to save his friends. And he knew how to do it.

  “You remembered, didn’t you?” Jacob said.

  “Yes,” he said, staring at him.

  “Where?” he asked.

  Eric had uttered clues only he’d understand. They’d talked about his fascination for bookish women and his love of museums. He felt safe there, and his boyish good looks had always drawn bookish women to him.

  Franco leaned forward and spat angrily. “That’s my money.”

  “No,” Jacob said, “it’s not. And I’m pretty sure you can’t outbid sixty-four million dollars in diamonds.”

  “I can,” Franco said.

  Jacob shook his head. “I read people for a living, Franco. You’re lying.”

  Paul stared up at Jacob. “How do I know you’ll let us go?”

  “Because if you tell me where the money is, I’ll collect it, change my face and identity, and you’ll never find me. And since you’re no danger to me, there’s no reason for me to kill you.”

  Franco sneered at Jacob. “You’re an idiot if you think he’ll tell you the truth.”

  Jacob chuckled. “Oh, he will.”

  Franco leaned forward. “I’ll transfer ten million to your account right now. Just give me a working phone. Ten in the bank is much safer than chancing a lie.”

  “He won’t lie to me,” Jacob replied. “In his mind, I haven’t hurt anyone he cares about, I haven’t done anything malicious to him, and I’ve given him a credible reason why I’d let him and his friends live. And he values his friends over any amount of money.”

  Paul kept silent. It was like Jacob had read his mind. But he was still holding two weapons on them, and he was an assassin.

  “Paul,” he said. “We’ve spent hours talking to each other. As much as I know you, you have a pretty good idea of who I am too. I kill, but only for a reason. For a purpose.” He gestured with one handgun to Franco. “Not like him.”

  He thought back to all their sessions. He hadn’t spoken about himself, but Paul had learned about who he was by the questions he’d asked and how he’d treated him. In a weird way, he understood Jacob. He had his code, his contract, and he’d let them go because it was the smartest way to get the money. Also, his earlier statement was right. He could escape and change his face before they got out of the storm and resolved the killings at the school with the police. So he had no reason to kill them.

  Paul gestured with his head. “What about Franco?”

  “You and Shelly can handle him, especially since that leg wound hinders his mobility.”

  He stared at Shelly. “I notice your eyes are darting around the room. I’m guessing you’re thinking of ways you can try to stop me. Possibly chasing me out into the snow before I can steal a snowmobile and disable the others.”

  Shelly tried to look innocent.

  “Let me tell you why that’s a bad idea. Antonio is in the boys’ dorm. If you chase me, he could slip into this building and kill the students. Your daughter among them. You can’t risk that.”

  “You’ve thought this through,” Shelly said.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s what I do.”

  Paul thought about what would happen next. If he didn’t give the diamonds to the FBI, they’d always think he’d colluded with someone to steal them. And, despite Forton’s dead body on campus, they might still believe Shelly or he was working with him.

  But if it came down to
saving everyone at the school or clearing his name, then that was an easy decision. “The National Museum of Magna Graecia. Ask for a woman named Cloe. Either she’ll have them, or they’ll be in one of the bases of the Riace Bronze statues.”

  “Thank you,” Jacob said. He stood up and grabbed Forton’s pistol and holstered it behind his belt. “Get a subscription to the New York Times.” He ejected the shells of the shotgun into his hand and dropped the empty gun onto Antonio’s body. “I think you’ll like their classifieds section.”

  With those words, he strode down the hallway and out the door into the storm.

  Chapter Eighty

  As soon as the door closed, Franco grabbed Erin by the throat and dragged her in front of him. Franco smirked and said, “She dies if you come after me.”

  Shelly and Paul both stood. He desperately wondered how he could save Erin.

  As Franco dragged her toward the door, he released his stranglehold and quickly swung his arm across her neck, securing it in the crook of his elbow. Every time Erin fought to get free, Franco squeezed tighter.

  Shelly shadowed each of Franco’s movements, as did Paul, but there wasn’t any opportunity for them to attack.

  Paul racked his brain for an idea that might delay Franco’s escape and give him time to save Erin. “You can’t leave Antonio.”

  Franco snorted. “Antonio can take care of himself.”

  “Paul…” Shelly began.

  He knew what she was about to say. She couldn’t chase after Franco if there was even the slightest chance that Antonio could come after the children. “I know.”

  Paul surveyed the room for anything he could use as a weapon. Both guns were empty. No knives in sight. His backpack was at the other end of the hall.

  Franco pushed the door open. The temperature dropped twenty degrees in seconds. Erin looked at him pleadingly, but there was nothing he could do. He remembered Eric sinking beneath the waves. Grief and despair crushed his mind.

  Franco moved into the storm.

  “Second floor, south stairwell,” he said to Shelly. “He had a gut wound. Hurry!”

  She hesitated a moment. He knew she didn’t want to leave, but tactically, logically, it was the only thing she could do to keep her daughter and the other students safe.

  “Go,” he said. She sprinted out the back door while he wrenched Forton’s jacket off his dead body and sprinted after Franco.

  The snow was an ocean of cold swirling around his skin. Hypothermia would overtake him in minutes.

  The heavy rattling sound of a snowmobile in the distance told him Jacob had already made it off the mountain.

  A muffled scream cut through the storm. “Let me go!”

  Paul dashed toward the sound.

  The storm seemed to be lessening, but he still couldn’t see more than twenty feet in front of him.

  He heard a heavy electric whirr and a loud curse. Franco had reached the snowmobiles, and the one he’d chosen wouldn’t turn over. Jacob must have disabled the remaining vehicles so no one could chase him. He’d been in the middle of a storm, however; if he’d missed even one, Franco could escape.

  Paul pumped his legs frantically. Another motor cranked, then sputtered to silence. Then a third. Franco cursed again.

  The wind suddenly died down and forms resolved in front of him.

  Franco had Erin pinned by the neck against a snowmobile with one hand while he reached into the engine compartment with the other. Erin scratched and beat against Franco’s arm, but her actions were sluggish. Oxygen deprivation.

  Trying to match speed with stealth, Paul slowed his pace. Neither of them had seen him.

  He was almost within striking range when the snowmobile’s engine roared to life.

  As Franco closed the engine compartment, he spotted Paul. He yanked Erin in front of him. “I’ll kill her,” he said, as he climbed onto the snowmobile, dragging her with him.

  Paul stood in the snow, desperately searching for some way to save Erin.

  Franco smiled and pressed a button on the handle bar. The vehicle lurched backward a few feet and halted. Paul moved forward. Franco reversed again. He moved forward again. It was all about control now. Franco knew he had the upper hand and wanted him to be his puppet. He had no choice.

  “Leave her,” he yelled. “Take me instead.”

  Franco laughed. “Beg me.”

  “Please don’t kill her,” Paul said. His mind raced for options. He had no weapon. His muscles felt like ice cubes. And he couldn’t reach the vehicle.

  “Get on your knees and say it,” Franco said.

  Erin stared at him, her drooping eyes pleading for help. It killed him to bow to Franco, but he didn’t see any choice. He sank to the snow, hoping that giving him this victory would appease his desire for control and he’d let her go. “Please don’t kill her. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  Franco’s eyes locked onto Paul’s. The snow and wind whipped around them.

  The motor sputtered and stalled.

  Paul dashed forward.

  Franco glanced from him to the snowmobile’s engine and back again. He squeezed Erin’s neck then tossed her to the ground.

  Paul rushed to Erin’s prone form while Franco attempted to restart the engine. She felt cold and wasn’t breathing.

  The snowmobile roared to life.

  He had a choice. Save Erin or kill Franco.

  He yanked Erin into his arms and ran back to the dorm as Franco sped into the night.

  Once inside, he performed CPR while glancing around for something to warm her up.

  Shelly entered. “Antonio wasn’t there. I think he escaped,” she said as she knelt and put her coat over Erin.

  Erin still wasn’t breathing. He continued CPR. Time ticked away.

  “Paul,” Shelly said, putting her hand on his shoulder. “She’s dea…”

  Erin breathed.

  His heart swelled. “You’re going to be okay,” he said.

  The stairwell door opened. He spun, expecting an attack, but David and Tiffany walked into the hall. They stared at the gruesome scene. Their faces turned white.

  “You two shouldn’t be here,” he said. He didn’t want them to see death up close, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

  Shelly moved in front of them to block their view of the dead bodies. She ushered them back into the stairwell, but David asked, “Is Miss. Randolph okay?”

  “Yeah,” Paul said.

  Tiffany looked up at her mom. “Are you going to get the people who did this?”

  Shelly and Paul glanced at each other. They both knew that regardless of whether or not Franco got the money before Jacob, he’d come after them. He’d stalk them, choosing the time and place, and they might never see it coming. But Shelly had her family to look after. He didn’t. As they met each other’s eyes, he knew she was thinking the same thing.

  Erin was breathing on her own now. He knew she’d want to help him, but she didn’t have the training. And one meeting with Franco almost got her killed. He wanted to protect them all, and keep them from worrying, but he needed to be honest. “One of the people who did this got away. If I don’t stop him, he’ll come back.”

  They all stared at Paul. Erin tightly gripped him. David appeared sad, but nodded. Tiffany hugged her mother. He wanted to spend more time with them. Explain more fully why he had to do this to protect them, but every minute he stayed here gave Franco a bigger lead.

  “I’m guessing you came by snowmobile,” he said to Shelly.

  “It’s by the entrance at the other end of the hall,” she replied. “I’ll do what I can on this end to help. And I’ll look after Erin and the kids.”

  He nodded.

  Erin stared into his eyes. She knew he wouldn’t let her come. “Come back safe.”

  He didn’t know if that was possible. He was chasing Franco back to his home territory of Italy, where he’d have resources as well as police assets. If Shelly couldn’t convince the FBI that he w
as innocent of all their charges, they’d hunt him down.

  It was very likely that he wouldn’t be coming back. But if it kept them safe, it was worth the risk.