Grotesquely, Folti’s mouth kept smiling and talking into the mic, but she barely heard what he said over her pounding heart. He was introducing the next speaker, a famous academic. The big screen lit up with an image of the cross as the scholar mounted the dais, embraced Folti and gave him a both-cheeks kiss. She was a tall, skinny woman. Black beaded dress, big, toothy smile.
She was eyeless and drenched with blood, just like Folti.
Oh fuck not real not real just wait it out
“…the matter? Caro!” Noah’s urgent whisper was in her ear. “What is it? What the hell is wrong with you? Talk to me!”
She dragged in some air, trying to relax her constricting throat.
“Folti. He’s…like Tim.” She forced the words out. “The eyes. Just…give me a second.”
Noah’s arms circled her, and he tugged her back against himself. The contact helped. So did closing her eyes and blocking it all out while she repeated her familiar old mantra. Not real not real not real…
Tim had been an old friend of hers. He’d tried to help while Mark was stalking her. Mark had torn out Tim’s eyes before he killed him. She had found his body herself.
She gathered up her courage. Opened her eyes.
Her knees went weak with relief. Folti and the scholar had their eyes again. The woman’s low-cut beaded gown was no longer drenched in blood. Her voice was normal.
It was over. She was so grateful for Noah’s solid warmth. His strong arm around her waist.
Details of the cross’s carvings appeared on the screen. The scholar tapped a button on the media controls to zoom in on magnified images of the Last Supper and began to talk. Caro’s mind was too scrambled to understand any of it.
She looked up at Noah. “It’s over,” she whispered. “I’m OK now.”
“Like hell,” he muttered back.
Caro suddenly realized that he’d deactivated the shield protection on his lenses. His eyes glowed luminous amber. She must have scared him half to death to make him go bare-eyed in a place this public, even for a moment. He looked tense and worried.
“Shield your eyes,” she murmured. “Really. I’m fine.”
Noah looked down for a second, and when he looked up, his eyes were black again. He put his arm around her. “Babe. Want to leave? Because I do.”
“What?” Her gaze had drifted to the cross before he spoke, and she stared at it, suddenly confused. Blinked. Stared at it again.
No way.
“Noah,” she whispered. “The cross.”
“What about it?” His voice was impatient. “Right now, I could give a flying fuck about the cross, Caro. I’m worried about you.”
She barely heard him, she was so focused on the spotlit cross. “It’s dead.”
Noah narrowed his eyes. “Meaning?”
“Inert, I mean. There’s nothing. I feel nothing. No buzz, no hum, no force field like I usually get with an art masterwork.”
“Oh.” He pondered that for a moment. “Huh. Looks pretty damn impressive to me, but whatever you say. Getting back to my question, does this mean we can leave now? Because I am down with that.”
An older lady, dressed in pink and draped in twinkling jewelry, scowled over her shoulder and shushed them loudly.
Caro pulled Noah closer until his ear was closer to her mouth. “You don’t understand,” she whispered fiercely. “There’s no way that thing is the product of sixteen years of obsessive work and spiritual devotion.”
“Ah. So…you’re saying that this isn’t Orazio’s cross?”
“Right. It’s a fake. An incredibly convincing fake.”
Chapter 11
Noah looked up at the ornate cross of blazing gold that loomed over the room. Caro’s words had given him an ugly chill. “Maybe so,” he said. “I’m glad it’s not my problem. Consider this possibility, babe, even if it hurts you. Maybe Orazio just didn’t have the stuff.”
“No. I would have felt the energy he put into it. Even if his technique was weak.” She looked up at the cross again. “Which it is definitely not.”
Noah blew out a frustrated sigh. “This is making me tense.”
“Me, too. It would cost a fortune to make a fake that good,” Caro said. “Someone must have had a really compelling reason.”
That thought made his neck crawl nastily. “Maybe,” he said. “But I don’t want to ponder that reason tonight. Let’s just go.”
She tightened her grip on his arm. “We should tell them first.”
“Who, exactly? And tell them what? Why would they believe us? We’re not on their team. We’d just create a lot of confusion and possibly wind up in the deepest of shit.”
“Morelli, at least,” she urged. “He’s Asa’s friend. Just a heads-up.”
“I’ll text him from outside,” Noah conceded.
“Let’s tell him now,” she urged. “Something’s really wrong. Tell him now. I have a bad feeling.”
“Tell me about it,” he said fervently. “I’ve had a bad feeling ever since we got the invite.”
“I’ll text Morelli myself,” she offered. “Give me his number. Worst case scenario, he pegs me as the crazy lady making trouble. I don’t give a shit. I’m used to it.”
Noah didn’t even dignify that suggestion with a response, but she wouldn’t give up.
“It’s the right thing to do,” she coaxed. “Then we leave. Like a shot.”
“Right. Like it’s ever that easy.” He pulled out his smartphone and tapped in a succinct message to Morelli. cross is a fake. watch yr back. He sent it.
Morelli’s attentive gaze ranged constantly over the room. Noah caught his eye, lifted his phone. Pointed to it.
Morelli reached into his pocket, read the text, and shot him a startled look.
He tapped his earbud, backing further away from the front of the crowd, speaking quietly to whoever was monitoring him. He texted something, and gave Noah a meaningful stare. The reply appeared on Noah’s display.
Go with security upstairs. I will join you asap to discuss.
Fucking great. And so it began.
Several of the security guards were staring at them now. One who’d been posted near the dais was moving toward them, forcing his way roughly through the packed crowd. Big guy, a head taller than anyone around him. He looked unfriendly.
Noah pulled out the key fob for the rental car and dropped it into Caro’s evening bag. “Wait for me in the garden,” he murmured. “Keep a low profile.”
“I’d rather we stayed together—”
“You wanted to text Morelli before we left, and I did it,” he said. “Now I want you to get the hell out of this building. Come on, babe. Humor me. Please.”
She looked rebellious, and trapped. “Shit,” she whispered. “Not fair.”
“Right. I’ll text you. Go!”
Caro threw up her hands in frustration, but she went, slipping into the crowd with sinuous grace. She was soon lost to sight, and the shield contacts he wore blocked the frequencies of her sig. Still, some part of him kept frantically seeking them anyway.
Noah didn’t like the security guy up close any more than he had from a distance. Black hair, gelled back, cold eyes, lantern jaw.
“Mi scusi, Mr. Gallagher,” the man said. “Signor Morelli requested that I escort you upstairs. Please come with me now.”
“Sure, fine.” He clenched his jaw and followed. The quickest way out of this mess had to be straight through it. He could not wait to be done with this place.
Noah had already background checked this guard earlier this afternoon, at the security headquarters right after they arrived. Mirko Vilardi, Italian citizen. Like Morelli, Vilardi had served in an elite branch of the Italian military before going into security work. He’d been on Folti’s payroll for about nine months. He’d checked out fine.
&nbs
p; “Where is Mrs. Gallagher?” Vilardi asked.
“She went closer to get a better look at the cross,” Noah said. “Let’s leave her to it while we go upstairs.”
Vilardi muttered into his monitor and led the way. He had no scruples about pushing and shoving, so they made rapid progress to the tune of indignant squawks and angry murmurings. Noah used the time to repeat the data-dive on Vilardi as he followed him through the crowded room, racing farther and farther back in time, when there was less information. Data flooded across his inner visual field as he followed Vilardi up the wide staircase to the third floor.
Wait—what? It felt like a subtle speed-bump in his head when his AVP flagged an anomaly. Noah slowed the data-scroll and went back to check it out.
The item in question was a high-school type photo on Facebook, taken on a class trip in 2003. A band of teenagers on a ferry to Greece. Same T-shirts on all. Liceo Tecnologico. So this thug had started out as a computer wiz. Go figure.
Vilardi stopped at a door part way down the third floor corridor, murmuring into his mic, not for Noah’s benefit. “Sì, signore…we are at the blue room…yes, I understand.”
He studied the photo, enlarging it on the screen that his AVP projected onto his field of vision. Vilardi was tagged in the photo, but Noah didn’t immediately spot a younger version of Vilardi’s face in it as he followed the other man through the door. There were several burly dark teenage boys in the picture, but they were tagged with other names.
Then he caught it. The boy tagged as Mirko Vilardi was a shrimpy, skinny kid with wispy blond hair, light eyes, no eyebrows. A pale face that was mostly beaky nose.
He definitely wasn’t a young Lantern-Jaw. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
Different boy. Stolen identity? Fuck.
That was all the thinking he got to do before Vilardi spun around and whipped a blackjack down at his head.
Noah swerved and blocked, slamming the guy’s arm upward with enough force to shatter the bones in Vilardi’s forearm. The man let out a harsh, startled sound and the blackjack flew, cracking against the carved stone mantel of a big fireplace.
Vilardi came at him again, grimacing. A knife was now in his left hand.
Noah moved, keeping the other man dancing around him. Didn’t take long to find an opening. A front kick to the guy’s broken arm and Noah darted forward as his opponent grunted in agony, got in close, and seized the guy’s knife hand. Crushing, twisting.
Noah barely heard Vilardi’s hoarse shriek as more bones splintered and tendons tore. He wasted no time, picking up lethal momentum on a savage rush across the room.
He slammed Vilardi’s head into the wall. A sharp crack—and Noah let the man’s limp body drop to the floor. Vilardi’s forehead was a bloody mess that matched the gory red splotch on the cream-colored marble.
He was still breathing, but he was out of the game. No need to bother killing him.
Noah picked up Vilardi’s knife. Crashing applause was still coming from the Sala dell’Annunziata. No one had heard the noise, not through these thick stone walls.
Caro had texted him a bunch of question marks. He was about to text back, confirm that she’d gone out to the garden when he caught the murmur of agitated male voices coming from downstairs with his augmented hearing. He filtered them out of the general roar and hum emanating from the Sala.
Two men talking in English as they ran up the stairs. “…Vilardi?” one muttered into his earbud. “Where the fuck are you? Answer me!”
Great. Vilardi’s pals, come to lend a helping hand.
Noah darted into the next doorway just as they reached the top of the stairs. He could have simply flattened them on principle, but screw it. All he wanted was to find Caro and get the hell out of this nuthouse.
He waited until they were inside the room and focused on their fucked-up friend before he sped silently past that door. He took the stairs with flying leaps.
A sense of desperate urgency grew inside him by the second. If someone was prepared to kill him just for sounding the alarm about the fake cross, then something was about to happen in the Sala. Right now.
Which was a goddamn deathtrap with all those clueless people packed into it.
Sheep in a pen, ready for the slaughter.
And Caro right in the middle of it.
Chapter 12
It took a while for Caro to weave through the crush of guests, particularly now that they were excited and straining forward for a better look at the famous cross. It was even worse at the doors, which were still jammed with people trying to get inside.
Three minutes passed…then four. She texted. Several times. Still no response. He should have signaled her by now.
Something was very wrong.
She had to know where the hell they’d taken him. He’d be furious, but she didn’t care. Hide outside in the garden, her ass. Asfuckingif.
There was Morelli making his way through the crowd, looking grim and stressed. He would know where they’d taken Noah. She locked eyes with him and beckoned.
He changed course to intersect with her. As soon as he reached her, he took her arm, steered her deftly through the crowd and around a velvet rope blocking a security area, a blessedly clear space behind the panels that backed the cross. The oppressive noise level was rising by the second as those close to the dais roared with laughter at some cute thing the scholar said.
Caro stood on her tiptoes and hissed into Morelli’s ear. “Where is my husband?”
Morelli murmured in Italian and tapped his earbud, waiting for a reply. His frown deepened when it didn’t come. He spoke again, but not to her, repeating a name: Vilardi.
“Noah wouldn’t just walk away and not respond to me,” Caro said. “Tell me where he is.”
“Why are you not with him?” Morelli’s voice sounded accusatory.
“He thought it was dangerous.”
“No harm would come to you with anyone on Lella’s team!”
“Really? Why isn’t your guy talking to you?”
“Oh please. Your husband will be found exactly where I told Vilardi to take him,” Morelli said impatiently. “We will go to him now and speak of his wild accusation—”
“I’m the one who made the accusation. Noah was just passing it on. At my insistence.”
“It is ridiculous! Lella must speak to both of you!”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen.” Caro grabbed Morelli’s arm and tugged him to the edge of the security area where they could see the dais. “Look at Lella, Stefano,” she urged. “Take a good look at him.”
Morelli hesitated for a second, and did as she asked, turning to look at Lella.
Lella’s face was ashy. His one eye was glassy and blank. His mouth was slack and he swayed on his feet. He was clearly on the verge of collapse.
Morelli drew in a sharp, dismayed breath.
“Listen,” she said urgently. “I think the cross is fake. My husband has disappeared. Lella is sick or drugged. Your man is not responding. Something’s seriously fucking wrong, and you should take charge and get these people out of this room until you know what’s going on.”
“But—I cannot believe—”
“If anyone gets hurt tonight, it’s on you.”
Morelli’s gaze darted around the room. “I will talk to Lella,” he said stiffly. “Then I will decide what to do.”
“Be careful. Lella might be compromised.”
Morelli looked outraged. “That is unthinkable!”
“Think it,” Caro said crisply. “Where’s Noah?”
“Up one flight, second door on the right, but I will accompany you. Wait for me.”
“Of course,” she lied. “I’ll wait right here. Please hurry.”
Morelli unhooked the velvet rope and muscled his way back into the crowd to get to Lel
la. Caro promptly followed him out and headed in the opposite direction, toward the door on the side nearest the stairs.
She finally got out into the corridor, which was deserted at last. Everyone had squeezed into the Sala trying to see the cross. She hurried around the corner to the huge stairwell—
And shrank back, startled by whispers. Some trick of acoustics weirdly amplified the sounds that came from the floor above in the stairwell.
“…bastard ran back into the fucking Sala! What the fuck is he doing in there?” The man’s accent sounded eastern European.
Caro slid into a niche behind a statue of St. George stabbing a dragon. She shrank back as the muttering got louder.
“We have to be careful. You saw what he did to Vilardi.” This man’s accent sounded Italian.
The two men were running down the stairs together. Caro held her breath, heart thudding.
“The boss said to take them both out, the woman too, but why? If they are in the Sala, they are done for. There is no need.”
“Not if he warns them in time. We must take him down fast.”
“The crowd will be terrified. We might not get clear. And as soon as we take him down, that bastard will pulse the frequency and kill us all.”
“Don’t be a pussy. You took the money. Do the fucking job. Take the first door, I will take the third. Whoever gets the first shot, take it and run.”
Two men hustled by. Dark suits. Bluetooth devices. Each man held a pistol close to his leg. They did not see her.
Caro waited until they turned the corner and hurried back after them, staying close to the wall and darting from statue to statue. Wishing she’d opted to wear a shapeless black gown, not this blazing crimson beacon.
One of the men stopped at the first entrance to the Sala, and peered over the shoulders of the people inside, looking for his clear shot. Clearly reluctant to step inside.
A palace corridor full of marble columns and statuary was a crap place to improvise a weapon. The only thing small enough to move was a painting on the wall depicting an old man with a skullcap. Not as big as she would have liked, but it had a heavy gilded frame.
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