“Here we are at the Ponte di Rialto.” Disappointment that their tourist break was at an end laced her words.
The Rialto was a building in itself, a stone span over the wide canal. Arcades with arched openings and carved cornices rose above the walkway to strengthen the structure.
As they passed beneath the bridge, a chill raked down his spine. His hand went instinctively to his sidearm, but he shook off his nerves. Probably just cold radiating from the massive stone arch. He pushed the boat’s throttle forward as they left the bridge behind them.
When Sophie directed him to their turnoff on the right, he steered into the smaller canal and slowed. Not palaces but graceful town houses rose on both sides. The buildings in pastel shades, some with iron balconies and red-tile roofs, were set back from the canal and interspersed with walkways and small squares.
Sophie tucked her guidebook in her handbag and traced their route on the map. “San Polo is a residential and merchant section.” She pointed to a bar where people sat at tiny tables beneath striped umbrellas. “People come from all over Venice to the produce market and the fish market we saw earlier. The ground is higher, safer for banks and other businesses from the acqua alta, the high tide that sometimes floods the streets.”
“Is all that in your guidebook?”
Sophie’s mouth rounded and her eyebrows winged skyward. “No. I don’t know how I know that. It just popped out.”
“The doctors said your memory might return gradually.”
She laughed. “Does that mean you believe me?”
Her low chuckle, although with a bitter edge, resonated in his very bones, but he wasn’t ready to concede the amnesia. “Just conversation.”
“Wish I remembered something more helpful, like what secrets Sebastian Vadim might have told me.”
He couldn’t reply. The old pain clawed inside him and stole his power of speech. His hatred had acquired a new dimension, one that included Sophie. The mere thought of Vadim’s hands on her, of his involving her in dirty business, fired rage that could boil over without firm control.
“Are you all right, Jack?”
Her gentle question freed him from his funk. One by one he relaxed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Fine. Just fine. Anxious to get you safely inside.”
She nodded, but her pleated brow said she didn’t buy it.
Following her directions, he turned left, then right, then another left to an even smaller canal.
“There it is, Fondamenta Salvo.” She indicated the street that ran alongside the canal. The yellowish brick house at the end on the left was their destination.
Jack maneuvered the craft toward the finger docks in front of the house. He eased it into an open slip. A set of stone steps from the docks led up to the fondamenta. “Wait here while I check on the safe house.” He gathered up the bow line.
The familiar ominous noise—thunk, thunk, thunk—of bullets slamming into the boat’s port side kicked his pulse into high gear.
He dived back into the cockpit. “Get down!”
Chapter 7
SOPHIE TURNED WHITE as paper but complied. She scooted onto the cockpit floor. “What was that?”
No loud reports had shattered the neighborhood peace. The shots came in rapid succession. “Gunshots. An assault rifle equipped with a suppressor. Either an AK-Alpha or an H&K MP-10.” Professionals? Doubtful. Their aim wasn’t so hot. Or maybe Vadim’s regular muscle with shiny new weapons.
More muted shots zinged into the water beside the boat. Tiny fountains sprayed up at the lethal impact.
Where were they coming from? He couldn’t take time to search. The safe house had been compromised. Without more caliber than his Glock, he couldn’t risk a firefight.
Protecting Sophie was his priority. “We have to get out of here fast.”
Her brow was crimped and her mouth tight. Pain from the contorted movement needed to hide below the console. If he’d accepted the escort, could he have spared her this anguish, this danger? Probably not, but dammit, they’d have had backup. No time for recriminations. He had to deal with it.
He started the engine. Threw the boat into reverse.
Farther down the canal, another boat motor revved up. The attackers?
A sleek black powerboat with silver lightning bolts streaming back from the prow surged toward them.
Jack straightened the wheel and shifted to forward. As he jammed the throttle ahead, the motor coughed. Dammit, don’t die. He eased back. The engine caught and evened out. Slowly he pushed the throttle forward. The powerboat sliced through the water back the way they’d come.
He kept an eye on their pursuers as he took out his phone. Familiar profiles in the cockpit. It figured. He punched the speed dial. When he heard Leoni’s voice, he barked, “Safe house blown. Bad guys shooting and in pursuit. Vadim’s boys Guido and Petar. Do you copy?”
He zigged and zagged at each turn of canal and rio.
Other boat drivers cursed and waved fists at them as they sped by. The wake from the chase boat sent a gondolier scrambling for footing.
“I copy,” Leoni said. “Got your position on the screen.”
The black boat wasn’t gaining, but Jack wasn’t widening the gap between them. More bullets riddled the boat’s stern, but none hit the gas tank. Yet.
He described the black boat to Leoni. Its distinctive markings ought to make it easy to spot. “They know these damn canals a hell of a lot better than I do. I can’t shake them.”
“If you can make it back to the Grand Canal, you can lose them in traffic.” Leoni paused as if consulting the computer map. “Head south. I’m sending official boats to intercept.”
“Roger that,” Jack said and disconnected.
Sophie was still huddled on the cockpit floor. “You okay?” He had to yell over the roar of the motor.
Her face was a pale oval tilted up to him, but she nodded.
He gave terse directions, slid the map to her.
“What canal are we on?” she yelled back.
At the next turn a sign answered her question. “Rio dei Megio.”
“Take the next left. Rio di San Polo leads back to the Grand Canal.”
“Worth a try.” He sped ahead and swerved around a water taxi. Their spray soaked the driver and his passengers. The man’s fluent curses filled the air.
“Don’t enter any side canals,” Sophie called up to him. “Some of them are dead ends.”
Jack sped along on the wider canal.
More shots hit from the stern. Fiberglass cracked and light covers shattered.
The thugs hadn’t fallen back, and the heavier traffic wasn’t inhibiting them. But the shots came from a pistol, not a submachine gun. Less obvious to witnesses.
Jack and Sophie’s boat burst onto the Grand Canal. A ferry-sized tour boat churning by forced him to wait.
On their other side, flower-decorated gondolas clustered at a palazzo blocked their turn. Formally dressed people in the slender boats hoisted wine goblets. A white veil floated in the breeze, and the bride wearing it blew Jack a kiss.
The black boat pulled up behind.
Guido stood up in the cockpit. He leveled a suppressor-equipped pistol at Jack.
From beneath the console Sophie couldn’t see much of what was going on. When she heard a scream, she craned her neck to see. A woman in a bridal gown was pointing behind them in wide-eyed and openmouthed fear.
Sophie jumped at the thunk, thunk of bullets slamming into the teak decking.
Jack hit the deck between the two seats. He crouched low beside the driver’s seat. His lanky body was almost folded in half. “I’m going to try something. Pray there’s enough room.”
Her shoulder throbbed and her head swam. Fear of Vadim’s men so close dried her mouth. She struggled to focus. Jack would save her. She had to believe that. Save them. Vadim’s men were shooting at him too. She had made him a target. The knot twisted inside her
, but she reminded herself that protecting her was his job.
She had a clear view behind them as the powerboat propelled ahead. Their boat grazed the dock on one side and the big tour boat on the other. Sparks shot up from either side, and wood against fiberglass screamed in protest. The wedding party shouted at them, but Sophie couldn’t understand them over the motors’ roar.
Seconds later they surged ahead of the tour boat. Jack had threaded the needle. She could see the tourists and their guide, microphone in hand, gaping at them.
But she could no longer see the black boat.
“They’re gone!” she shouted. Navigating from the floor was flying blind, so she started to push up into her seat.
Jack sat up and eased back on the throttle. “No, here they come around the other side!”
Her head bumped the console as the boat surged ahead. Black spots bounced before her eyes, but she blinked them away. She’d be no good to Jack if she didn’t stay alert. Staying low, she slipped into the seat for a better view.
“Still on our tail,” he shouted, half standing, half sitting, “but not shooting.”
“Too much traffic.” Vaporetti, tour boats and every conceivable type of private and commercial boat crowded the Grand Canal and lined the docks. “Can you dodge around and duck into a side canal?”
Jack shook his head. “Got to lead them to the task-force blockade.”
Up ahead, on both sides of the broad canal, rocked the distinctive blue-and-white launches of the Venice polizia. Task-force men and women in vests with Polizia on the back appeared to be monitoring the passing traffic.
“I’ll get us out of the way. Hope the shooters keep going and don’t see us.”
She crossed mental fingers as she gripped her seat with her free hand.
Jack zoomed around a slow barge. He hung a sharp left just behind a vaporetto traveling the opposite way and hugged its right side. They were then hidden by the water bus, three times as big a craft.
“Can you tell what they’re doing?” He was fighting the wash from the vaporetto.
She winced as she twisted in her seat, but spotted the sleek black boat continuing its same course. The fast reversal of direction must’ve confused their pursuers. “They don’t see us. They’re slowing and idling. Oh, Jack, if they look this way, they’ll find us!”
He pulled back on the throttle and steered into a slip at a finger dock. With a taller boat in the next slip as cover, they could observe their pursuers by peering around the stern. “They shouldn’t see us here.”
She watched, her breath backed up in her throat, and prayed.
The two thugs in the lightning-striped black boat apparently didn’t notice that other traffic had been cleared from that swath of the canal. They stood and searched for their targets.
Official launches with blue lights flashing converged on them. Loudspeakers blared warnings and guns were drawn.
The gunman hesitated only a second before he fired at the police. Smoke and sparks spat from the silenced submachine gun. Then the boat swung around. At the helm, the other thug made for a hole in the police circle.
The police fired back. The volley echoed off the surrounding buildings in a deafening barrage, and the stench of smoke filled the air.
Flames shot up from the black boat’s stern. The two men turned around, terror on their faces.
Sophie recoiled in horror as she grasped what was about to happen, but she couldn’t look away.
A volcano of fire and debris obliterated the black boat. Smoking fiberglass shards and other flaming fragments rained over a wide arc.
***
An hour later Jack stood on the dock at the Palazzo Balbi. A plaque on its painted-brick facade announced that Napoleon had once witnessed regattas from the balcony. Because the Balbi was now the seat of the Veneto regional government, officials readily allowed the task force access. Sophie was resting in an employee lounge inside the government building, a secure area.
Across the water the task force and salvage divers still worked. Their maneuvers barely registered in his brain. Instead he pictured Sophie’s face. She intrigued him. Hell, she drove him nuts. The face of a Renaissance angel and a body built for sin. Wide mouth, lush curves and skin like wild honey. He sucked in a breath. Yeah, she was an erotic dream, but she was more.
Her injuries and her artless demeanor gave the impression of fragility, but today she’d remained cool under fire. She didn’t panic at the flying bullets but read the map and shouted directions. Neither did she fall apart after the explosion.
She had to be exhausted and aching. She’d swallowed one of her pain pills when he found her a place to rest. Not once did she complain or berate him for leading them into a trap. Strength lay beneath the delicate exterior. Just thinking about her triggered potent heat he hadn’t experienced since Miami. Not since—
Not in a long time.
The beast that prowled inside him left no room for softer feelings. Sometimes the pain was more than he could bear, but he couldn’t let it go until he had Sebastian Vadim by the short hairs.
Justice depended on staying on track. He owed it to them. He owed it to himself. Sophie was temptation he could ignore. Temptation he had to ignore. In a secure safe house he would have other officers there as buffers. He wouldn’t be alone with her.
If she was faking amnesia, after the chase would’ve been the time to admit it, to pretend recovered memory. She did neither. Maybe the doctors were right. She really didn’t remember. If he was going to prod her memory, they needed a new safe house where they wouldn’t land in a trap. And it had been a trap. Vadim knew about the safe house.
Suspicion twisted in Jack’s gut.
“Hey, man, this Italian sun getting to you? You’re sweating.” Leoni climbed onto the dock from a police launch. He carried two plastic evidence bags.
Jack was sweating, all right, but not from the climate. “You don’t know sun until you’ve spent a summer in Florida.” He ignored the trickles down his temples. “What d’you got?”
“IDs on the shooters.” He handed Jack the bags.
As Jack had thought, Vadim’s men. One bag held a charred Cleatian passport in the name of Petar Smryczk, and the other an EU driver’s license for Guido Mazza. “Is there enough left of these guys for forensics to do a positive ID?”
Leoni shrugged. “DNA maybe. I saw you discussing things with De Carlo. What gives?”
Jack’s respect for Leoni had risen several notches since that first day. The DARK officer might appear lazy and uninvolved, but a sharp mind hid behind his sleepy eyes, and he could move fast when necessary. His efficient organizing had lined up the official boats in the canal block.
“Debris from the boat looks like a gas can exploded,” Jack said. “Could’ve been hit by bullets. Or they had the can stored too close to the motor.”
“An extra gas can? If you’d made it into the safe house, they could’ve smoked you out with one hell of a bonfire.”
A muscle in Jack’s jaw jumped. “Vadim doesn’t fool around.” He knew from past experience.
“De Carlo must see how important the Rinaldi woman is.”
“He sees what he wants to see. He doubts I’ll get information from her, but he’ll go for protecting her. I have to check with him on a new safe house.” The CO was putting Jack off on that. Why was the question.
“Did you warn him about a possible leak?”
“You’d think I’d offered him poison. He blamed the Venice polizia for assigning us a safe house known to locals. Guido Mazza had connections and could’ve sniffed it out. From De Carlo’s attitude, I thought he suspected me.”
“Like you’d set yourself up to be shot at.” Leoni squinted against the sun’s rays as he stared across the canal. The salvage boat was heading toward them. “We’re about done here. And speak of the devil, here comes De Carlo.”
The commissario might be height-challenged, but he didn’t lack for arr
ogance. As he sauntered from the air-conditioned Palazzo Balbi, his gait contained a distinct swagger. After dispatching Leoni to write his report, he turned to Jack.
“Officer Thorne, the task force will not authorize another safe house. Too risky. You are better off hiding the woman somewhere away from Venice.”
“What about backup?”
“The terrorist Ahmed Saqr has been located in England, in a South London flat. Vadim’s telefonino records show multiple calls between his villa and the number there. Scotland Yard will hold off arresting Saqr so we don’t warn off Vadim. I need all available officers to find Vadim and confiscate that uranium. Backup? Non è possibile.”
Even knowing little Italian, Jack grasped the man’s last words. Even if he’d translated incorrectly, the control officer’s stern look said Jack was on his own with Sophie. He had to ask anyway. “So I get no one?”
A thin smile cracked De Carlo’s face. “Only the lovely Signora Rinaldi. Keep in touch with Leoni by telefonino, uh, cell phone, as you Americans say.”
Chapter 8
BY THE TIME Sophie climbed into the powerboat, she’d recovered from the effects of the chase. The prescription pain pill and a bottle of water revived her so she could go on.
She would never get over seeing the terrified looks on those men’s faces just before their boat exploded. They’d intended to kill both her and Jack, but no one should die like that. A shudder quaked through her.
She had to do whatever she could to stop the madness, to find her memory of Vadim and his secrets. But being cooped up in a safe house would be unbearable if her laconic guard reverted to his initial cold-eyed demeanor.
Before the attack she’d glimpsed another man inside his hard shell, a man who could enjoy the beauty around him and laugh with ease. A man she could be comfortable with, a friend. She shouldn’t, but she wanted to see more of that man.
“You okay?” Jack asked as he started the boat motor.
Dark Vengeance (The DARK Files Book 4) Page 6