Poor Gil, I thought. Maria’s death still haunts him. But what did her story have to do with Italy? Had Gil found himself in a mob family that ran a prostitution ring?
I logged the Maria story away and put the journal back in my bag.
We were entering a town that looked similar to Bologna. The farmhouses and pastures were slowly being replaced with rows of homes and businesses. It seemed like a nice place to explore someday—when I wasn’t searching for my missing brother and running for my life.
After several turns, including a few extra that I’m pretty sure Ian took to be on the safe side, we pulled into an alley.
“Let’s go,” he said, his game face still on.
“May I ask where we are?” I shut my door and followed him into a building and up two flights of stairs. My still-fatigued legs were not thrilled by the lack of an elevator.
“We’re almost an hour southwest of Venice in a city called Padova.”
He pulled out his phone and began typing, but instead of putting it to his ear, he held it flat on his palm while we stood in front of a door. A moment later, the door unlatched and popped ajar.
“Fancy,” I muttered under my breath.
“Damon!” Ian called as he strode across the room.
The setup here was different. This was a huge apartment with rooms and furniture. It felt almost welcoming until I spotted Adam’s artillery on the coffee table. Although, it probably felt like home to Adam to have his “babies” right at his fingertips. Claudia’s scaled-down tech was spread out on the dining-room table, a fraction of what she had at the other location. There were no flat-screen televisions. Only a lonely TV with bunny ears like the one my grandmother had in New York.
“Thank God, you’re both okay,” Damon said as he rushed in from a back bedroom. “We couldn’t reach you when it all started.”
Damon kissed both my cheeks and threw his arms around Ian in a manly hug.
Ian looked angry. “What happened? Why didn’t the surveillance security on the building work, and why the hell didn’t any of you answer your cell?”
Claudia was feverishly clacking away at her computer. “I don’t know what happened, Ian. Our cells were fine when you called Damon after you got ambushed at the hotel. Then we got raided within minutes of Damon hanging up. After that, we hit the tunnels. They went dead down there and didn’t come back up until we were already here. We tried calling you, but there was no answer,” she explained. One of the thugs probably destroyed Ian’s phone when they strung him up. “And I have no idea how they got in, but I’m going to find out. No one cracks my system!”
“I’ve pulled a few things you need to see,” Damon began.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked. I didn’t know if Ian was going to bark at me or ignore me altogether.
“Just sit tight,” he said before he walked away with Damon.
I sat down next to Claudia, and Adam joined us. “You okay, kid?”
“Yeah,” I answered him. “What about you guys? What happened?”
“We were totally freaking ambushed, that’s what happened!” Claudia said as she continued working.
Adam explained, “The trip wires at the other end of the building went off. Claudia pulled up the surveillance feed, and once we knew a rat wasn’t the culprit, we grabbed everything and were in the tunnel in less than a minute.”
“That tunnel is nuts!” I said.
“Right? That building used to be a factory. Rumor has it that the tunnel connected the factory to the designer’s house. Shipments had to be brought through the tunnel to his home for his personal approval before they went out.”
“Who was the designer?” I asked.
“The Prada family,” Adam answered. “Ever heard of them?”
“Oh, I’m more than familiar! My friend Tiffany would have a heart attack if she knew I stood on the same ground as a Prada,” I laughed. “But, I hate to break it to you, the Prada business has pretty much always been in Milan.”
Just then, the door flung open, and I thought for sure that we were being attacked again. A woman with a blazing red pixie-cut and a broad-shouldered wall of a guy with dark brown hair entered the apartment like they owned it. They were both dressed up and looked like they had come from a fancy party. His white dress shirt was undone, and his tie was draped around his shirt collar. Her strapless, skin-tight cobalt-blue dress didn’t leave much to the imagination. They both looked a little rough, but not enough to keep them from being embarrassingly good-looking.
“What the hell, Ian?” the guy shouted as he closed the door behind them.
“Carter. Eva. What are you doing here?” Ian asked.
“Well, let’s see. We were solidly embedded in Rubio’s family, enjoying the engagement party of his daughter Caramia, when all hell broke loose! A team came in, guns blazing, and took Rubio and his boys out. You know the procedure before you send a Rogue team in!”
“That’s bull and you know it!” Ian shouted.
Carter was pissed, and Eva seemed just as angry.
“What’s a Rogue team?” I whispered to Claudia and Adam.
“We are. We’re R-14, Rogue-14,” Adam answered.
“How many Rogue teams are there?”
“No one knows for sure. I mean, someone knows, but we don’t.” Claudia looked at her screen again and shook her head. “And no one knows how long the Command division has been around. All we know is that in the last year, seven teams have either been eliminated or disbanded, with the remaining team members sent to join other teams.
“Enter Carter and Eva. They were on a mission in Colombia when the rest of their team was found dead, execution style. They contacted base, were extracted, and got reassigned to our team.”
“Ian’s right, Carter,” Eva said, calmer now. “We need to regroup. If that wasn’t a Rogue team, then we were ambushed along with the rest of them. What happened out there?”
“It’s a long story that starts with Victoria and me being attacked at the hotel,” Ian told them.
Carter and Eva turned to look at me. “Who’s this?” Eva asked.
“This is Victoria. She’s a part of the team now,” Ian said matter-of-factly. It was the first time he referred to me as a member of the team without sounding like he was sorry I was there.
“Hmph,” Carter responded.
“Stop being a jerk, Carter,” Eva said. She walked over and shook my hand. “I’m Eva. That’s Carter. He’s not usually so . . . well, that way. It’s been an interesting day. Welcome to the team.”
“Thanks, and I don’t think interesting begins to cover it,” I said.
Carter took Eva’s hand and disappeared into a second bedroom, closing the door behind them. I wondered if they were together, like, together-together. While I would think that romantic relationships would be a no-no, if you are playing a part with someone for so long, the lines must get blurred.
While everyone else returned to their tasks, I sat on the couch, tense and worried. Why was Ian’s team being ambushed out of the blue? Of course any mob family that realized it was being monitored by a Rogue team would surely want to eliminate the agents. But the attacks didn’t seem very moblike, based on how Ian said they operated. And Carter’s description of their ambush didn’t sound like one mob family coming after another.
I thought back over the events at the hotel. I felt like I had missed something. I closed my eyes and pictured the hotel bar. I saw the two guys who chased me, the old lady knitting, the various couples and people around the room. I couldn’t think of anything I had missed. The two men who chased me were the only ones I saw do anything. Except . . .
The old lady. She had been there the day I checked in and met Ian. She moved to the lobby just around the same time Ian did. And she was in the hotel today. It sounded crazy, but I knew in my gut that she was involved.
“What?” he asked, looking slightly annoyed.
“They want Gil,” I said as if it were explanation enough.
“What is she talking about?” Carter asked. He and Eva joined us in the living room, his bow tie hanging loose around his neck and Eva’s feet bare.
“The old lady who was knitting—well, she’s probably not an old lady, she’s probably young and just dressed as an old lady to seem less assuming. She was there the day I arrived. She was in the lounge where I first saw you.”
“She’s probably a guest there,” Carter said.
“She was sitting in the lounge not far from you, knitting. When I checked in at the front desk, you were behind me in line and she moved to the big bench in the lobby.”
Carter looked annoyed. “There are any number of reasons why that woman was there. C’mon, Ian. Really? Have any of you wondered about her showing up within days of the attack on this team?”
Carter folded his arms and glared at me. “What are you even bringing to this team?”
I stepped forward and looked up at him. “You favor your left leg.” I said.
Carter dropped his arms. “What?”
“You try not to, but you favor your left leg when you walk,” I said. “You also have a scar behind your right ear. And you might want to consider a smaller weapon strapped to your ankle because the one you had on when you got here screams, ‘I’m armed!’”
Ian folded his arms. “That’s what she brings to this team.”
All eyes were on Carter, with Eva adding a knowing smirk.
“We’ll see,” Carter said before turning on his heel and walking back into the bedroom.
“Well done, Victoria.” Eva said with a smile. “He may be pissed now, but he’ll respect you later for not backing down.”
Ian waved his hand dismissively. “Carter is a hard-ass. He doesn’t like taking orders from someone with less field experience than him. I trust your instincts. If you say the old lady was casing the hotel, then let’s start with that.”
“Why do you think they were at the hotel?” Damon asked.
“Maybe for the same reason Ian was,” I said. “Maybe they were waiting for Gil. Ian heard me ask about Gil, maybe she did, too?”
“Then why not just follow you to your room?” Eva asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Gil sent me his journal from that hotel, and he sent it to me because something was wrong. What if they, the two guys and the old lady, were closing in on him, and he sent it just before he was able to get away?”
“Claudia, pull up the hotel surveillance footage,” Damon said. He leaned in over her shoulder. I could see she was not as comfortable with his proximity as he was. His cologne must have been too much for her, too, because she kept wriggling her nose and looked like she was about to sneeze.
“They wouldn’t be after the journal,” I mused aloud. “There’s no way anyone would look at it and think it’s anything but a family history. Besides, I’m guessing no one else knows about it. They must just want him.”
I tried not to let my nerves get the better of me, but my voice betrayed me. “This whole time, I’ve been thinking that Gil was relatively safe because his skills are so valuable, but what if he was trying to get away from them? What if they asked him to do something he just couldn’t do? Either he didn’t know how or couldn’t morally do it? Do you think he tried to make a run for it?”
“First of all, calm down,” Ian said. “Even though it might not seem like it, we’ve got this under control. And, honestly, I have no idea if Gil is hiding or if someone has him. He was sure he was getting closer to Paolo and had new information for me, which is why I had been sitting on the hotel when you arrived. Maybe the old lady knew what he had. But why come after you?”
“If she heard me ask about Gil, it makes sense that they would come after me thinking either one of us could get to Gil. The question is: What does Gil know?”
“I don’t know,” Ian said. “Damon pulled some information about the locations we decoded and the people of interest. We haven’t gone through all of it yet, but so far, there’s nothing we didn’t already know. All of it showed up on our radar, but none of it was out of the ordinary.”
“I read through the rest of the journal. We could go through that and see what else we find. Paolo has to be in there somewhere,” I suggested. Ian was right, though. So far, we had figured out where Gil had been and what he had been observing, but none of it was getting us that much closer to Paolo.
“I’ve got the surveillance footage pulled up,” Claudia called from the dining-room table.
We joined her, eager to find out if we could identify our hotel stalkers.
“That was fast! How did you do that?” I asked, peering over her shoulder.
“I’m insulted, but I’m going to let it pass since you’re still new.” She smirked. “It’s the twenty-first century. All that stuff is kept in the cloud. No more of that ancient hard-copy crap.”
We all huddled around Claudia and watched the footage from different camera angles and locations in the hotel. It was devastating to see the moment when the poor girl behind the counter was killed. One of the men distracted her while the other one came from behind, took a knife, and slit her carotid artery. That explained the pool of blood on the counter. But they were smart. Both kept their heads down so there was no clear shot of them.
When I walked into the lounge onscreen, I confirmed that the two guys who killed the girl were also the two who followed me into the hallway. And then I pointed out the old lady pretending to knit. We watched the two thugs, and it was clear that they were keeping a close eye on me. My skin began to crawl, reliving what it felt like to be watched and followed by two cold-blooded killers.
As soon as I moved into the lobby, the two men got up and spoke to the old lady. She must have given them some kind of instruction because they just nodded.
“I just need them to look up, dammit!” Ian said, frustrated.
I watched myself walk behind the reception desk and quivered as my hand slid across the desk in a puddle of blood. Even on the black-and-white screen, it was easy to see my face pale.
Damon rubbed my back comfortingly.
We watched as I got into one elevator and nervously pushed the button over and over again, while the two thugs and the old lady got into another elevator. They said little to one another but then, miraculously, the woman looked up at the numbers above the doors, giving us a clear view of her face. I was right: the old lady was anything but.
“Pause,” Ian instructed. He stared at the screen. It didn’t take enhanced observation skills to tell he was working hard to contain himself.
“Do you know who that is?” I asked.
“Yes.” His answer came out quick and sharp. “That’s Bianca Moran. She’s a Rogue agent.”
Chapter 13
The room was deadly silent. Confusion passed over the faces of each agent as they tried to understand why a Rogue agent would turn on her own.
Ian walked slowly toward the back bedroom where he and Damon had been working. “Victoria,” he said by way of asking me to follow him.
He shut the door behind me. I studied Ian’s face. He was scared.
“Why is a Rogue team coming after us?” I asked, worried.
Ian shook his head. “This is bigger, no, worse than I could have imagined. At this point, I wish the mob were after us.” He wouldn’t look at me. “You can’t be here, Victoria.”
“We’ve been over this,” I said. “I’m the only one who can decipher the journal. You need me. And I need you. I’m not leaving without my brother. I can’t.”
Ian turned and started pacing. “I don’t know that it’s a Rogue team. It could be just her, but I’d be surprised. I worked with her a c
ouple of years ago on an arms case. She was always a by-the-book agent. Something is happening here, and I’m not sure I can protect you. If she has bad intel, she’s going to follow her orders until she hears differently. If she’s going off the grid and trying to take us down because she’s joined a mob family, it’s the same thing. She will not stop until she completes her mission.”
“Can’t we just contact your boss and find out? I mean, we could get some help, some backup from another team, couldn’t we?” Ian looked at me and I knew my naïveté was showing.
“I can’t just walk down the hall to the Command division’s office and file a report.”
“Well, there has to be something we can do. Carter and Eva are here now, so maybe they can—”
“You can’t stay,” Ian said. “Claudia will get you to a safe house in France tomorrow. Then you can take the train to England and fly home out of Heathrow. I’ll have an agent watch you once you’re home until we quash this.”
“I’m safer with you, and you know it.”
“You’re not safe anywhere. Not as long as whoever has Gil is still out there. If they don’t know you’re his sister now, it’s only a matter of time before they do. And then they’ll come after you to get to him.”
“Why do you keep looking for reasons to send me home?”
“I don’t need to look for reasons,” he said defensively. “All I see is proof.”
“You and Adam ran me ragged in training so I’d be prepared for a situation like this. For the most part, I succeeded. So why are you going back on all that and trying to get me to leave?”
“Because you’re different.” He looked up at the ceiling, exasperated. “You’re not like us, Victoria. That’s what I tried to tell you from the beginning. You have a family. You have a real life. This work is merciless. It hollows you out. It steals your soul. It kills your heart. I can’t let that happen to you.”
“I’m no different than you, Ian,” I said. “You have a heart and a soul. I know you do. I’ve seen it. And those people out there? They are your family. They are your home. I saw the look on your face when you thought they’d been harmed. You love them.”
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