Passing a shop window filled with antiqued and gilded mirrors, she caught a glimpse of a slender young woman in a blue-and-lavender gown, blond hair falling loose around her pretty face, eyes mysterious behind a sliver of golden mask, and just as she passed from view it dawned on Vanessa that she had seen her reflection.
A cold breeze touched her bare shoulder and she glanced back to see a hobbling, almost comic hunchback of Notre Dame holding hands with a bird-beaked demon, and yet another creepy plague doctor. She felt pinpricks of fear on her skin. She rubbed her arms and increased her pace.
The narrow walkway widened a bit and she breathed in relief. She’d reached Campo de la Guerra—or was this Calle de le Bande?
She stopped in her tracks, confused by directions and frightened by her confusion. She’d gone to the restaurant with a left turn, hadn’t she? She turned right, hearing the distant strains of horns and violins. Were they coming from the square?
Where was her unerring sense of direction now?
A group of English-speaking tourists (Canadians, she guessed) passed her by and she followed. She thought she remembered the stairs that appeared in front of her were part of Campo de la Guerra. That was the darkest part of the walk, and now it loomed ahead.
The crowd seemed to surge and the wave of revelers began to climb the staircase. Vanessa pushed along with them, but she was driven toward the left side and the stone casing. Amid the general crush of people and costumes it took her a moment to realize that either someone had clutched at her arm or she was caught on something. She almost cried out, but she felt the pressure give way and she was released. Again, the crowd carried her forward.
At the crest of the steps, she stumbled off, moving quickly away, relieved to be free of the claustrophobic crowd. She stepped to one side and found herself sheltered by an alcove, but someone grabbed her and pulled her around in a sort of dance. Instinctively she contracted her fingers into claws, pulling roughly away, prepared to attack.
“It’s me,” Khoury said, dipping his head close to hers. “There’s an alley just ahead. Go with the crowd but turn off to the left when you get there. It’s narrow. I’ll be with you.”
And he was gone again before she could argue, weaving through the crowd ahead of her, his blue cape a blur of velvet.
When she reached the alley most of the crowd surged right. For a few seconds she hesitated before the fear generated by Khoury’s warning spurred her forward into the dark, winding alley. No streetlights. No moonlight reaching through the shadows. No illumination from storefronts, because the doorways along this route led almost exclusively to private residences. A group of four costumed revelers brushed past her and she was relieved to know she wasn’t alone. But almost immediately they turned into a doorway.
She heard footsteps behind her.
She caught her breath glancing back, braced to fight.
A couple moving arm in arm skipped past her, their laughter echoing off the centuries-old stones.
Khoury, where are you? Was she certain she’d heard his directions correctly?
—
A DOZEN YOUNG women in brightly hued gauzy costumes danced their way toward Khoury. The men behind them carried torches and temporarily cut off access to side streets. They were part of a street act—one of several dozen roaming Venice’s alleys tonight and performing on bridges and in squares.
When Khoury left Vanessa after directing her to turn down the alley, he’d stayed on Campo de la Guerra so he could watch anyone who followed her. His first view of the caped man outside the restaurant was brief. Khoury thought that the man sensed he’d been seen so he disappeared. Khoury couldn’t say exactly what first drew his attention—certainly not the man’s cheap cape or the macabre mask, both ubiquitous accessories tonight. But something about him had struck Khoury as off.
Then Vanessa and Charles had exited the restaurant and Khoury had improvised his plan.
And it was feeling like a stupid plan by now.
He’d been fairly certain that he’d spotted the caped man again just minutes ago, so he’d spoken to Vanessa once more. But after she turned down the alley Khoury had failed to spot the man on her trail. And now his access to the same alley was temporarily blocked.
One of the women was dancing a kind of flamenco solo while the other dancers clapped along and the men raised their torches higher.
Khoury couldn’t wait. He strode toward the alley and the heavyset torchbearer who blocked his path. The man saw him coming and widened his stance. These guys were serious about holding an audience captive, but Khoury was fast. He knocked the torch so it flew, and when the guy stumbled after it, swearing loudly, Khoury made his move.
The alley was dark. He didn’t see Vanessa. He ignored the angry protests from the performers.
He’d let her down, he’d put her in danger.
—
VANESSA HEARD MUSIC and then heard men yelling, but she couldn’t see around the curves of the winding alley. Damn you, Khoury.
A few more stragglers were coming up behind her, and, because the alley had narrowed even more, she pressed her body to the wall to let them pass. Why had she let Charles persuade her to wear the dress? The petticoats kept catching between her legs so she almost tripped.
A tall man decorated with peacock feathers turned into a doorway. Another man approached, then turned and darted back the way he had come. A third man stopped to light a cigarette. She glanced around. If Scarface came at her, what could she use to defend herself? A brick? A flowerpot?
A figure came from the opposite direction. He was caped like almost every other man, but it wasn’t Khoury. His mask was flesh-colored. “Scusi,” he murmured as he passed her with his painted smile. The hair stood up on her neck. Somehow she knew before she felt the rush of air and the brush of fabric. Her attacker grunted just as his left arm closed around her throat. He yanked her head back, cutting off her oxygen. In seconds he could crush her windpipe.
She dug the fingers of her right hand into his arm and thrust her left elbow back, but she barely connected. He felt big, heavy against her, and he outweighed her, but by fifty pounds or ninety didn’t matter because she couldn’t break his hold. Her throat burned and she gasped for air. She had only seconds—get to his eyes or his throat or punch his nose up into his fucking skull!
She flailed desperately for his face, digging her nails into what she thought were his eyes. He grunted sharply and she prayed she’d hurt him.
She pushed, gouging deeper into flesh.
She stomped down on his foot, cursing the light flats she’d worn with the dress. She contracted her thigh instantly, rebounding from the stomp so she could jam her foot back toward his knee. Again, she hit something—
But she was dizzy, spinning. If she lost consciousness, she was dead.
She couldn’t breathe and the world went black.
And then abruptly the weight was gone, lifted away. She stumbled across the alley, gasping for air, and when she turned back she saw Khoury had her attacker in a stranglehold.
Then the man twisted into a half nelson, pulling Khoury forward and down. But Khoury went with the momentum and managed to flip and land with his feet on the ground. He twisted his body, thrusting his elbows violently upward inside his attacker’s arms, and he broke the grip. He slammed his elbow into the man’s throat and then slapped his ears with the flats of his hands.
The man jammed a knee up into Khoury’s groin. He buckled violently, and Vanessa readied herself to get back in the fight, but Khoury was up again and the man was bouncing light on his feet, his hands closed into tight fists, moving in a way that told Vanessa he knew some combination of karate, Krav Maga, and kickboxing. She moved into range, ready to kick and pummel, just as Khoury stepped into the man’s punch to throw a hard right jab. It hit the other man’s jaw with a sickening crack. Khoury drove his left fist into his attacker’s solar plexus.
Vanessa almost heard the wind being knocked out of the man, but then Khoury c
ame up with a left uppercut to the chin. It snapped the man’s head back. He went down.
67
Vanessa reached Khoury as he knelt over her attacker’s body. The man’s eyes were closed and his cloak had spilled out beneath him, creating the illusion of dark wings.
“I hope you killed him,” she said, barely able to push the words out. Her throat burned and each breath came with a harsh gasp. “Is he dead?”
“He’s out cold.” Khoury was breathing hard, too. “But unfortunately, he’s got a pulse.” He caught the edge of the man’s mask and pulled it away from his face. It was deeply pockmarked and a spray of shrapnel scars marred his left cheek.
Vanessa inhaled sharply. “He’s the Scarface Bogdan was talking about . . . and Dieter . . . he’s young . . .” And he’d been sent to kill her.
Khoury pulled his phone from his pocket with shaking hands. He snapped several pictures and the flash illuminated the unconscious man’s features: broad face, thick dark brows that almost met above his prominent nose, and, incongruously, a narrow rosebud-shaped mouth.
“But how did he know where to find me?” Vanessa asked. “Could Jeffreys have known?”
“It was—” Khoury broke off. “We need to get out of here now.”
They both heard the voices and laughter as holiday stragglers approached—a woman speaking high-pitched, rapid-fire French and a man answering in resonant and somewhat reproachful-sounding Italian.
Khoury grasped her hand. “We have about fifteen seconds before we have company.”
Vanessa started to turn but stopped, arrested by a glint of gold. She pointed to his throat. “He’s wearing the same cross as Jeffreys.”
Quickly Khoury snapped a close-up of the cross, and then he ripped it and its leather thong from the man’s neck. “Insurance,” he said, stuffing it into his pocket. He turned toward the approaching couple, just as the woman, dressed as a harlequin, asked, “Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?”
“È malato?” the man piped in. He was dressed as a clown with a huge painted smile and an equally large, perfectly round, red plastic nose. “È ubriaco?”
The harlequin recoiled. “Non, non, tu ne vois pas qu’il est mort?”
Vanessa understood the French and just enough Italian to get the gist of their bilingual bickering: Was the man sick or drunk or dead?
Khoury clapped his hands twice in front of the harlequin. “Il n’est pas mort! Il est ivre ou malade. Nous appelons la police.”
She stared back at him with round, kohl-rimmed eyes, one of her black harlequin tears smeared across her chalky white cheek.
Now Khoury turned to the clown, barking out the order: “Chiamate la polizia, chiamate il 112! Quest’uomo è malato—è un’emergenza. Chiamate un’ambulanza!”
“Certo, sì, certo!” The clown pulled out his phone, dialed, then pressed it to his ear in a way that dislodged his bulbous nose.
Backing away with Vanessa on his arm, Khoury ordered the man to stay until the police arrived. “Avremo aiuto!”
“I told him we’re getting help,” Khoury whispered in Vanessa’s ear as they turned to retrace their steps quickly back toward the Campo de la Guerra. Already Khoury was dialing his contact at Rome Station to let him know about the urgent situation in Venice: international fugitive, unconscious at the moment, wanted for questioning in assault, murder, and the terrorist attacks in Paris. He told his contact to alert Venice police pronto. And, finally, to make it easier, he sent over the photo of Scarface with embedded geo-coordinates to the Station. “Our guys will be all over this like hungry cats on a rat,” Khoury said with a quick grin.
Without another word, they both slowed as they reached the end of the alley. The campo was still fairly busy with late partyers.
“What if he regains consciousness too soon?” Vanessa asked.
“Trust me, he won’t. Not if you felt his head snap back like I did.”
“Humor me, let’s wait to make sure the polizia get here,” Vanessa said.
Khoury nodded, guiding her into a darkened doorway of a flower shop closed for the night. “Listen . . .” He searched her face, touching her cheek gently, and brushing loose strands of hair from her eyes. “I need to tell you—it was Aisha.”
Vanessa stared at Khoury. From the troubled expression on his face, she knew what was coming. “Aisha betrayed us?”
“Against her will,” Khoury said, his fingers tightening around Vanessa’s shoulders.
She braced herself for the worst.
“The hostage in their last video? It may have been Aisha’s sister.”
“Oh, God, no . . .” She blanched. “Will this nightmare ever be over?”
“French forces found the farm where Farid was held—they managed to kill one terrorist,” Khoury said. “I’ll tell you more when we get back, but they found the hostage, and she was dead.”
Vanessa covered her face with her hands as she fought back the rush of tears. “My God . . .”
Khoury put his arms around her. “But the terrorists got to Aisha just before you went to Amsterdam. They said they would kill her sister unless Aisha did exactly what they wanted.”
“That’s why she was acting so strange . . .” Vanessa looked up, blinking away tears. She asked the next question with dread: “What did they want?”
“She was to keep them informed about Team Viper, what we were up to. But that wasn’t all. They specifically wanted to know when you were on the move.”
“They knew me by name?”
“Aisha said they identified you as blond, young, American CIA.” Khoury’s voice quavered for an instant. “I know . . .”
It felt to Vanessa as if a hundred thoughts and questions careened simultaneously through her brain, and at the same time she felt twisted by conflicting emotions—anger, betrayal, sorrow, and horror. Then a wave of sadness for Khoury washed over her when she saw the look on his face. Aisha was more than his colleague; she’d been a friend and, briefly, his lover.
“Of course, there’s no excuse for this kind of betrayal”—Khoury swallowed audibly—“but Aisha confessed to me as soon as she guessed her sister was dead.” His voice broke.
It only took a few seconds before Vanessa felt the shift in his body—the tightening, the effort to hold back emotion.
“I wanted to tell you myself,” Khoury said.
Vanessa nodded. “Where is she now?”
“I told her to go to Fournier and tell him everything—” Khoury broke off again, but this time it wasn’t emotion driving the shift. He’d seen the Italian police walking briskly toward them along the campo, coming from the direction of the closest canal. They would probably take their prisoner away by boat.
Khoury pushed Vanessa against the wall and kissed her. He didn’t stop after the police passed them by, and Vanessa didn’t pull away. But, finally, she came up for air.
“We should make sure they got Scarface.”
“I don’t think we need to worry,” Khoury said, turning his head as one officer’s very loud voice echoed up the alley. “By now Rome Station has already reached Headquarters and the locals, and my contact will be in touch with me as soon as they know where Scarface is spending the night.”
“Then let’s go home,” Vanessa said softly.
“Where’s home?” Khoury sounded exhausted, but she could hear the faintest smile in his voice.
“Follow me.”
—
INSIDE HER ROOM at Hotel Ala, business came first: Khoury sent the photographs of Scarface and his cross to Zoe at Headquarters and to Chris in Paris. His text read, “Scarface had bad night. In Italian custody now.”
Vanessa left a separate, urgent message telling Chris to call her back ASAP.
“We need to move quickly,” she said, as she disconnected. She’d filled Khoury in on most of her conversation with Charles, most important, on the rumors that something big was scheduled tomorrow night in Istanbul. “We need confirmation from Chris if he can get it,” she said.
&n
bsp; She disappeared into the bathroom and dressing area, returning with a wet washcloth, Q-tips, and a tiny packet of antibiotic ointment from her kit. She pushed Khoury gently to sitting. “You’re bleeding.” She raised the cloth to the cut just above his left eye, dabbing lightly even as he winced. “If Jeffreys is going to make his move it will be then,” she said. “We have no time to waste.”
“I’ve booked us on a 0545 flight to Istanbul,” Khoury said. He glanced at his watch. “So we’ll need ninety minutes to get to the airport and check in and thirty minutes to handle logistics here, so that leaves us just over three hours to celebrate. Am I the guy or what?”
“You’re the guy.” She smiled.
He took the cloth from her and eased her face into the light with his free hand. “Ouch,” he said softly, framing her chin with his fingers. “You’ve got a fat lip.”
She ran her tongue along her lower lip, tasting the rusty blood, feeling the scab that had begun to form. “I think I bit myself when he had me by the throat.” She kept her voice strong. “We could have died, Khoury.”
“But we didn’t,” he said, searching for the clasps and zippers to get her out of her now bedraggled gown. “Call it cheating death.”
“I know,” she said, stopping his hands as she rested her face in the curve of his neck. “I was scared . . . terrified . . .” For a moment she felt nothing but darkness, emptiness, a feeling so horrible it took her breath away.
“Hey . . .” Khoury held her tighter.
She took a breath, opening to relief. They were both alive, they had each other.
Vanessa reached for the side zipper on the dress. “I can do it more quickly.”
“I love you.” Khoury took a deep, shuddering breath. He whispered, “Fuck . . .”
Vanessa kissed him urgently, pulling back for just a moment to respond in a hoarse whisper, “Oh, God, yes . . .”
Burned (Vanessa Pierson series Book 2) Page 26