To the cathedral. Now. Jack knew enough Italian for that. He got the picture. Tomasso had a new henchman, a man who’d been watching for him. He’d been watching Sophie’s back but not his own.
Dammit, he’d allowed emotion to interfere with proper procedure. He conducted surveillance like an amateur. Resisting Rot-Breath, even if he took him down, meant Tomasso would get away with Sophie. Sweat dripped down his forehead and stung his eyes. He had to keep cool and obey. Rot-Breath would take him to Sophie.
Then he would come up with other options.
As he let the goon march him toward the duomo, Jack scanned the market. Only locals — women and children, robust farmers in rough country clothes.
Where the hell was his backup?
***
Inside the massive brick church, Sophie shivered in the cool air. Candles’ waxy scent and the musty odor of centuries-old mortar mingled in the duomo’s shadowed interior.
Her captor dragged her into a side chapel and shoved her against the wall. As she fell, her weight rocked a marble post. It wobbled on its base, then settled.
“Non ti muovere e stai zitta,” he said as he gestured his meaning — stay put and be quiet.
The sight of his ugly black pistol was all she needed to make her obey. She edged away from the marble post so as not to bring it down on her head. Apparently the pedestal for a statue, the heavy pillar stood empty. Heart pounding, she huddled in the corner.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. He’d separated her from the crowd. Jack was supposed to stop him. Would the GPS button work from inside a brick-and-stone building? Where was Jack? Why didn’t he reach her before this man dragged her away? She pressed her fists to her mouth to hold in the sobs swamping her chest.
The shuffle of feet on the stone floor approached the chapel. Jack? He’d be killed. She had to warn him. She swallowed her panic and yelled, “Jack! Look out!”
The thug Tomasso barked a laugh and ordered her to be silent.
She watched in mute shock as Jack stumbled into the chapel and fell to his knees. Blood trickled from beneath his ear. A man with a long ponytail and a wicked-bladed knife entered behind him.
“Sophie, are you okay?” Jack climbed to his feet.
She bobbed her head, but her movements were jerky as a broken puppet. “What did he do to you?”
“Silenzio!” Tomasso raised his pistol.
She flinched away from him, subsiding, and he stopped short of striking her.
With a nasty laugh he lowered the gun and stepped to one side, in front of the pedestal.
Jack shook his head slightly in warning. Wait, his eyes seemed to tell her.
Assured that he would know what to do, she crouched in her corner and reminded herself to breathe. Backup, where were they?
“You called it, Tomasso,” she heard the new man say in Italian. “This fool didn’t know I was there until I had him.”
Clearly buying her act that she knew no Italian, they talked freely of their triumph. She watched Jack for guidance while she listened.
Tomasso ordered the other man to make sure no one was in the nave or other side chapels. When the ponytailed man returned with the all-clear, Tomasso screwed a long attachment onto his pistol.
She knew little about guns but recognized a silencer when she saw one. Her racing heart leaped up into her parched throat. The leader’s next words confirmed her worst fears. They were going to kill Jack right there and take her with them.
How could she warn Jack? What could she do?
Jack saw the suppressor on Tomasso’s Beretta. He had little time to act or he would never get another chance. Rot-Breath held only the knife. Jack’s Glock was jammed into his waistband. Tomasso was the immediate threat, but for the moment he ignored the two captives and blabbed away in rapid Italian with his henchman.
Jack stood legs apart, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet, his arms loose. Mental telepathy would’ve come in handy, but eye signals were all he could send Sophie.
Tomasso continued to stand where Jack wanted him — in front of their best chance. Their only weapon. A distraction at the least. He willed Sophie to interpret his glances….
She frowned, then looked to her left and at Tomasso’s back. Her eyes widened in comprehension. With snail-slow deliberation she placed her hands around the marble stand.
When she looked back up at Jack, he mouthed, Now.
She gave a mighty shove.
The pedestal toppled. It knocked Tomasso off his feet and both crashed to the floor. Italian invectives echoed off the chapel’s stone walls. The Beretta squirted from his hand and skated across the floor.
Jack had no time to go for it. He pivoted and aimed a kick at Rot-Breath’s knife hand. The dagger clattered to the stones. He dived headfirst at the man’s midsection.
The two men fell to the hard floor in a welter of tangled limbs. The Glock slipped loose. It clanked onto the floor, and Jack grabbed it.
The henchman landed solid blows to Jack’s belly and one to the jaw. He fought tough and street-dirty but was shorter and untrained. Jack managed to hold on to the gun.
Where the hell was Byrne’s DARK crew?
Crimson fury fueled his strength, at all this bunch had done to Sophie, to him, to countless others. At Vadim for hiring them. He delivered a solid chop to the throat, and the man collapsed like a tent. Just in case, Jack shoved the Glock’s nose into the soft flesh beneath his chin.
“Well done,” Matt Leoni’s cheery voice said above him.
“You!”
Behind Leoni stood Commissario De Carlo and two other guys Jack recognized. Not DARK but the task force. Had his good friend Byrne sunk him? Would De Carlo take him into custody along with the Mafia rent-a-gorillas?
Leoni held Tomasso’s Beretta in one hand.
Jack’s heart sputtered before lurching into overdrive. Sophie. “Sophie, what about Sophie?”
“She’s just fine.” Humor glinted in Leoni’s gaze.
Jack’s shoulders relaxed, but white noise filled his ears and his head spun. He had to sit there, straddling his captive, while he got it together. The moment of terror followed by overwhelming relief drained him more than the fight.
“This creep’s coming around. Better secure him.”
Jack roused. He still had his gun, and Leoni was handing him cuffs. Things couldn’t be all bad.
Pushing the coughing thug over onto his face, he snapped the plastic bands around his wrists. Then he stripped him of a second knife in an ankle sheath. He pushed to his feet, under protest from various body parts. He touched his jaw, and his hand came away smeared with blood. Sore as hell but nothing broken. “What took you so long? I could have used some help a little earlier.”
“We thought you might need to throw a few punches at somebody. Ms. Rinaldi had things well in hand.” Leoni cut a meaningful glance toward his left.
“Sophie, what—” Jack stared, struck dumb as a stone, at the scene in the corner.
Sophie sat on Tomasso. Correction — on top of the marble pedestal that held the man down.
Leoni clapped Jack on the back. “A hell of a woman, but I guess you already know that.”
Jack couldn’t help grinning. He surmised what had happened. The pedestal apparently had done even more than distract Tomasso. It had fallen square on his lower torso and legs, knocking his Beretta away and pinning him prone to the floor. To make certain he stayed there, Sophie had straddled the pedestal and held the man’s gun on him until the task force had arrived.
In precise phrases, she translated between the hit man and the DARK officer. Her cheeks were rosy with excitement, and Jack fought an overwhelming urge to snatch her up and shelter her from the other men’s admiring stares.
“When we showed up, she had the Beretta’s silencer jabbed in his neck like a bayonet. I relieved her of the weapon. Don’t want to lose our prime witness.” The languid humor in Leoni’s voice eased
Jack’s tension down another notch.
“They were going to kill us,” Jack said. “Looks like she wasn’t taking any chances.”
An officer helped Sophie to her feet, and two others lifted the heavy weight from the hit man’s lower body.
“He says he doesn’t think anything’s broken,” she said.
She crossed to Jack, worry etching deep lines in her brow. Her gaze skimmed him from head to toe. She touched a finger to the dried blood on his neck and, apparently satisfied the wound was superficial, smiled.
That curve of her lips curled around the muscles of his chest and blotted out the other people in the room. When he opened his arms, she stepped into them.
Leoni’s mouth twitched with a smile. Jack ignored him. He didn’t care what the damn task force thought, the CO included. If he’d followed regs, Sophie would be dead.
Only the feel of her against his body could completely dispel the lingering fear for her. “Everything’s okay, Sophie. It’s over,” he murmured into her hair, its familiar fragrance the final reassurance he needed.
“Signora Rinaldi,” said the silky voice of Commissario De Carlo, “you did a very brave thing. You are to be commended.” With an avuncular crinkle to his eyes, he approached them as officers hauled the two Mafia hit men from the chapel.
Sophie lifted her head from Jack’s chest and edged left, but he kept her tucked under his arm. “He was going to shoot Jack — er, Officer Thorne.”
“Ah, of course.” De Carlo passed a hand over his mouth. “I see you are recovered from your injuries.”
“I’m still a little stiff, but yes.”
“And this Mafia … merdiaolo didn’t harm you? Pardon my language.”
“Grazie, I’m fine.”
Straightening to a military posture, he turned to Jack. “Officer Thorne, your independent actions have saved this young woman’s life. My apologies to you for questioning her importance to Sebastian Vadim. And for doubting your integrity. There was a leak, as you suspected. You have your friend Byrne to thank for bypassing normal channels.”
“He’s not one to color within the lines.” The exact reason Jack had called on Byrne in the first place. “The leak was somebody in Vadim’s pocket, I assume.”
“Boh!” the CO uttered in disgust. “The Venice Questura slipped up on background checks. Our leak was a filing clerk assigned to the task force. The man loses money in the casinos. Vadim paid him generously for information.”
Sophie slipped from Jack’s embrace and stepped forward. “So does that mean Officer Thorne is back on the task force?”
De Carlo made a small bow. “We shall see, signora. He and I will discuss that later.”
Jack fought down the spike of uncertainty sparked by the CO’s ominous undertone. “What will happen to those two men? I’d like to be in on the interrogation.”
Chapter 23
“THIS IS NOT a good development, Sebastian.”
“I know, Ahmed. My men experienced … difficulty. I may need a bit more time. Perhaps Wednesday.” Vadim dabbed his handkerchief across his forehead. Late June in Venice was hotter than he remembered. Hotter still because not only had his men failed again, but they had allowed themselves to be arrested.
“I can give you no more time. I want what I have already purchased. You have until Monday. No longer.”
When he heard only silence, Vadim also disconnected.
Monday. Only two days.
This problem was Jackson Thorne’s fault. Vadim should have killed him the first time Thorne interfered in his business. He cursed in both Italian and Cleatian. He was surrounded by incompetents. Sullying his hands with such messy chores was not his preference, but the unusual circumstances forced him to make an exception. He must go obtain the uranium himself.
Thorne would die, but first he would have to watch the lovely Sophie perish.
***
“So they won’t talk? We have nothing?” Jack asked the CO as officers handed Tomasso and the other prisoner into a task-force van in the farmhouse’s driveway.
Jack and Sophie in their rental car had led the entire party from Fiorasole for the prisoners’ interrogation. Then six hours of questioning at the dining-room table had borne no fruit, only stony silence and evil looks.
“Niente. Questo m’aggrava!” De Carlo slapped his forehead, further expressing his frustration.
Jack understood, both the Italian and the aggravation. He was ticked as hell too.
The dapper commissario smoothed his thinning hair and shrugged. “Boh, I should have known. There is no honor among thieves, only fear of reprisal.”
Jack shifted his feet. He’d been waiting hours for De Carlo to follow up on his earlier promise that they would talk. Part of that talk ought to be returning Jack to the task-force investigation. He hoped. “Commissario, Sophie Rinaldi is safe here.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. This Vadim is resourceful.”
Jack’s jaw muscle knotted. De Carlo was right, but... “Someone else can guard her. Put me back on the task force. I know Vadim. I know more about him from what she’s told me. Sir.”
De Carlo looked down at the ground as if marshaling his thoughts. The light breeze feathering across their faces carried the verdant fragrance of freshly mowed grass. A jet trail streaked across the fading pink-and-purple dome of the sky. When he raised his head, he said, “You joined this task force in order to take revenge on Vadim, the man responsible for your wife’s and son’s deaths, did you not?”
“That doesn’t mean I won’t do my job.”
“I do not question your abilities. I simply do not want you doing more than your job.”
When Jack frowned, De Carlo continued. “Signore, as a father three times over, I understand vendetta. If Sebastiano Vadim had killed my son, no barrier would stop me. No death would be too painful for him.”
“Then you’ll put me back on the team?”
“I cannot let personal desires come first. Vadim has committed too many crimes to escape justice. You must trust the task force. There is too much at stake here.”
Jack’s shoulders tightened. He’d been so focused on Vadim, he’d ignored the other dangers. “Like the weapons-grade uranium that’s still out there.”
“Sì, the uranium.” Nearby the waiting Alfa Romeo’s taillights winked out as the driver gave up and cut the engine.
“I understand.” But he didn’t have to like it. He would detour around it if he had to.
De Carlo put out his hand. “You’re a fine officer, Signore Thorne, as are the other DARK personnel. I was skeptical at first about working with DARK, but no more.”
“Thank you.” Even as Jack shook hands, the fire prowling inside would give him no peace. He fought to control his words. “I need to talk with Vadim. To tell him he hasn’t gotten away with those particular murders.”
“Done. Once he is in custody.” The CO began to walk toward the Alfa Romeo. The engine purred to life. He turned. “Signore, revenge is a cruel master that brings no satisfaction. Losing your family need not be the end of your life. A man, especially a man who deals with the harsher side of life every day, needs balance to have a full life. The warmth and softness of a woman, the laughter of children.”
Jack averted his eyes. “I put my family in danger. They died because of the job. Once is more than enough.”
“Polizia everywhere have families. I have a family. There are divorces and the normal difficulties of family life, but your loss was an unusual tragedy. Do not deny yourself a basic human need. Buonasera.”
On that instructional note of farewell De Carlo slid into the idling car and rode away.
Jack watched the disappearing taillights until he stared into only dark shadows.
***
Through the sitting room window Sophie watched the last task-force vehicle roll down the drive. Its taillights glowed as night winked out the last mauve tint in the western sky.
Exhau
stion enveloped her like a hot towel. She collapsed on the white leather sofa and closed her eyes. If only capturing Vadim’s hired guns meant it was over.
But Matt Leoni had told her that neither man revealed anything. “Vadim means nothing to them,” he said. “You don’t want to know what their don would do to them if they talked.”
When Jack entered the house, she opened her eyes. He paced the room. Golden bristle covered his clenched jaw, and he could’ve held a pencil between his rammed-together eyebrows.
“Disappointed?” she said, at a loss for consoling words.
“That doesn’t come close.” He rolled his shoulders and flopped down beside her, his long legs stretched out. He lifted her hand and threaded his long fingers with hers. “But at least you’re safe from those bums.”
“Until Vadim hires more.” Her heart gave a little hiccup at that thought.
“He won’t have the chance.”
Hope for an end to this mess sprouted within her. She scooted back on her cushion to sit up straight. “Does that mean De Carlo knows where he is? You’re going with the task force to arrest him?”
Was this good or bad? If Jack was part of an arrest unit, the company of others might deter him from going too far. Or did he want Vadim dead so much that he’d kill him without concern for himself? The rush of thoughts twisted through her, tangling in her tired brain and wrenching her heart.
He sighed. Or it might’ve been a growl. “Not exactly. We’re no closer to him. Or the uranium. And I’m assigned to continue guarding you.”
Unexpected, but a good thing if it kept him by her side. “I don’t understand. De Carlo reinstated you to the task force, didn’t he?”
“Officially. But he knows my connection to Vadim.” He rested his head on the sofa and barked a humorless laugh. “He appreciates what I’ve done but considers me a loose cannon.”
They sat quietly, hands linked, her head on his shoulder, as darkness filtered through the room. The only sounds were a few sleepy birdcalls and the creaks of an old house settling.
As Jack saw matters, preventing the sale of the uranium to Ahmed Saqr didn’t hinge on Vadim. The Yamari extremist was under surveillance, and officers would intercept the package.
Dark Vengeance (The DARK Files Book 4) Page 18