No one else drank. Of course. Thank you, Claudia.
“Really?” I said. “You wanted to be an actress?”
Claudia nodded. “Yeah. I had a few small parts on the stage and I was an extra in a national commercial. Nothing anyone would remember, but big for me.”
“I think that’s awesome.” I smiled at her like a friend would.
“Can I go now?” Carter whined. “Never have I ever been on the run from the law.”
He took a huge swig of his beer, as did everyone else in the room. I looked at Adam curiously.
“Yep,” he said. “It turns out you can’t take guns across the border into Canada.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Well, you probably could if they weren’t stolen . . . and loaded,” Adam chuckled.
“Okay, piccolina. Your turn.” Damon raised his bottle to me and nodded.
I twisted the bottle around in my hand nervously. “Never have I ever flown halfway around the world to find the only family I have left.”
I took a drink. As I suspected, no one else did.
I bet they had all flown around the world many times over. But no one here had any family left. They were loners, runaways. Forging lives for themselves void of any real connections besides one another. That was how it worked, right? In order to be part of a Rogue team, you had to have no connections, no loved ones left behind to face your possible, and imminent, death.
“Would you do it again if you knew your brother had lied to you?” Carter took a condescending swig from his bottle, keeping his eyes locked on mine.
“How would you know anything about it?” I asked. I thought the only person who knew what was going on with my brother was Ian. Had he told someone else in the group, who passed it along to Carter, or had he told Carter directly?
I felt my blood beginning to boil at the betrayal, but Carter just raised his eyebrows. I looked around the room, eyeing Adam and Claudia, and then finally landing on Damon.
“I’m done.” I stood up and walked to the back bedroom. I pulled back the sheer curtain and walked outside to the small balcony, just big enough for two people. The view of the city was lovely. The sky had the same orange glow it did back home. For a single moment, I didn’t feel so far from Miami. I didn’t feel so lost. So alone.
I heard a boot scuff on the wooden floor behind me. “Piccolina,” Damon began.
“I don’t know what that means, but don’t call me that.”
“He was just curious about who you were and why you are here,” he tried to explain. He leaned back against the railing. “I was just trying to alleviate his suspicions about you.”
“It wasn’t your story to tell. It wasn’t Ian’s story to tell you, either.” I could feel heat rushing to my face as I became angrier with them both.
“I know your brother. Ian had me teach Gil about gathering information,” Damon said. “He told me Gil was helping some of the mob families. He wanted to know if I thought there was a connection between the places Gil told you he was going and the places he could be now.”
Damon propped himself on the railing with an elbow and crossed one foot over the other, his Italian swagger in full force.
“Yeah, well, Ian still didn’t have to tell you my business.”
Damon thought for a moment. “The way you talk to Claudia, you see her like a friend, like a sister. Amica sorella. I see this team like a family,” he said. “If we do not watch out for one another, no one will. I am sorry I told Carter about Gil lying to you. Carter is like a younger brother to me. An annoying, arrogant, younger brother,” he chuckled.
The temperature of my blood began to cool. It was nice to hear Damon share my sentiment about treating the people you trust with your life as friends or family.
I nodded. “Okay. But next time someone wants to know something about me, you tell them to come see me. It’s my story, and I’ll tell it how I want it to be told.”
I gave him a small smile and raised my eyebrows. Just enough to let him know that we were cool, but I was serious about him keeping his mouth shut.
“I can handle that,” he said.
We stood there together on the balcony in silence, enjoying the view of the sky. A café owner down the street was wiping off tables and setting out tablecloths and flowers. Mothers were coming home from the park with sleepy toddlers in strollers. It all looked so normal, so Italian Norman Rockwell. Little did they know that not far from here, and maybe in this town, children were possibly being bought and sold like property.
I wondered how long a person could handle being on a Rogue team. It all seemed crazy, so outlandish to me. But it stood to reason that, after a while, one would become desensitized to the atrocity of it all.
I wondered how long a person could handle being cut off from the world. Agents may not have any family left, but there had to be friends left behind. You would have to accept that your future would consist of the same three or four people who made up your team forever. Or until you—or they—were killed.
“I was polizia,” Damon said, breaking the silence. “A police detective.”
I turned to look at him. He was volunteering his story to me.
“There were so many Mafiosi in my town. They came to us. They said they wanted to work with us. They said they could give us protection.” He stared into the street below. “We told them, ‘we are the polizia. We do not need your protection. We protect the people of our town from you!’ They did not like that. They made an offer to the men of my unit. What is it that gangster movie said? Oh yes. They made an offer that couldn’t be refused.”
“So the men accepted their offer, and the mob took over?” I asked.
“Not everyone. Those who didn’t accept paid the price. Some were never seen again. Others had brothers and sons beaten, mothers and sisters raped. They were left with no choice but to do what had to be done to keep their families safe.”
Damon turned his head to hide the emotions welling up in him. “It was a very difficult time for me.”
I realized that, as a member of Rogue, his biological family was gone.
“I’m so sorry, Damon,” I said.
He took a deep breath and looked at me. “Now you know my story. Perhaps one day you will share all of yours with me, not just the parts that Ian told me.” He smiled and patted me on the shoulder before he stepped inside.
I turned back to the railing and smiled. This was the kind of thing that connected the team. Knowing one another’s stories made us real. Not divulging secrets through a lame pseudo-drinking game, but on our own terms, in our own way.
Suddenly, I was reassured. We were closer to finding Gil, and I knew that however it played out, Adam, Claudia, Damon, and I would have one another’s backs.
Chapter 16
Cabin fever was setting in and everyone was starting to go a little crazy. It had been two days since Ian “had to go out.” We hadn’t heard from him or from Command. That’s when I became the subject of my own personal Spanish Inquisition.
“Did he give any indication as to where he was going?” Adam asked me. “It’s not like him to be gone this long without communicating.”
“Who was he going to find? Are you sure he just said ‘locals’?” Claudia asked.
“What about the journal?” Damon added.
My stomach churned at the mention of the journal. I could handle everything else they were throwing at me, but as soon as they brought up the one thing I wasn’t supposed to talk about, I was afraid I was going to involuntarily vomit up information.
“You were exploring that further yesterday, were you not?” Damon continued. “Perhaps something in there triggered his need to go out?”
The best, though, was when Carter all but pulled me into a dark room and turned on a bright hanging lamp so he could question me relentlessly.
“
What are you hiding, newbie?” he barked. “Where’s Ian? He doesn’t leave like this, and you were the last one to talk to him. Where did he say he was going?”
“He just said he had to go out,” I told him. “Like he would tell me where he was going! I’m the newbie, remember?”
“I don’t trust you.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
“Back off, Carter!” Eva intervened. “Geez!”
“What if she sent him into another ambush?” he said. “My gut tells me something is off, and my gut is never wrong.”
“How about that? We have something in common,” I said. “I didn’t send him into anything and you know it.”
Carter examined me with as much skepticism as I did him. I couldn’t decide if he was just an ass, or if something about him was off. All I knew was that Ian had been gone too long and that could only mean one thing: trouble.
Eva finally pulled Carter off me and sent him to his room. With a look of frustration on her face, she followed him, closing the door behind them.
As the hours went by, I struggled with the idea of telling them about the kidnappings and Ian’s theory about Gil’s quest to avenge Maria’s death. I understood Ian’s reasoning for keeping it from them. Having been forbidden from touching cases like this, it was best to have something solid to take to Command—without getting the whole team into trouble. On the other hand, Ian had been gone a long time, and it wasn’t a good sign how worried everyone was. And if I told them, they would know where to start looking for him.
Damon worked nonstop. When he took a break to eat, he was surprisingly jovial. It seemed everyone else was constantly on edge, but Damon was able to flip the switch between working and relaxing. He told me that if I were going to be in Italy much longer, I would have to learn some conversational Italian. He taught me phrases like “Dov’è il bagno?” for “Where is the bathroom?” He said this might be the most important phrase I learn. He also taught me “Sì, per favore,” for “Yes, please” and “No, grazie” for “No, thank you.” And then, just for fun, he taught me two of his favorite Italian curse words: merda and stronzo. I decided I wouldn’t use either one of them. If I really needed to let the sailor in me out, I was sure English would do just fine.
Adam and Claudia tried to teach me the fine art of waiting.
“We wait a lot,” Claudia told me.
“How do you pass the time? I’m guessing you can’t exactly go to a movie,” I said.
“Oh my God! Do you know what I would give to see a movie?” Adam said.
“I know, right? Unfortunately, waiting usually means monitoring our surveillance or doing research.”
“Well, I’m tired of waiting,” I said. “There must be something we can do. What about the locals Ian is checking in with? Do you know who they are? What if we tried to retrace his steps?”
“She is right,” Damon said.
“I’ll go,” Carter announced, materializing from the back room. “But I’m not talking to Ian’s contacts. I’ve got my own. If Ian’s around, they’ll have heard something.”
“I’m coming with you,” I declared. Keeping my eye on Carter seemed like a much better idea than sitting around the apartment with nothing to do.
“Even better,” he said.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Eva suggested.
“It’s not a mission,” Carter said. “It’s a drive into Venice and a conversation with some guys at a bar. It’ll be fine. Besides, I’ll look less conspicuous with her by my side.”
Carter cupped Eva’s face sweetly. “Don’t worry.”
Carter put on a fresh shirt, and I pulled my hair into a low ponytail. Then he picked up a gun and gestured for me to do the same. When I demurred, he said, “I don’t care if you’ve been a member of this team for five minutes or fifty years. If you’re with me, you’re carrying. You need to be able to protect yourself and protect me.”
When everyone else agreed, I let Adam secure a back holster with a pistol at my waist.
“We’ll be back by morning,” Carter told the team as we left.
We weren’t five minutes down the road before I had to call out the elephant in the room.
“I thought you didn’t trust me,” I said.
“To be honest, I’m still making up my mind about you,” he answered.
“Well, if I were being honest, I don’t completely hate you.”
A moment passed before Carter replied. “You don’t completely suck, either, newbie.”
As we drove into Venice, Carter laid out his plan. Twenty minutes later, he parked the car and came around to open my door. “Are you clear on the plan?” he asked.
“We are a happy honeymooning couple. Except to your contacts. To them, we are the most dangerous people they know.” We took a few steps then I stopped. “You don’t like Ian. Why are you doing this?”
Carter considered me for a moment. “My allegiance is to Rogue. For better or worse, Ian is my team leader. Looking out for him is part of protecting my team. It’s my job.”
I could see the worry in Carter’s eyes.
“That was pretty convincing.”
Carter rolled his eyes and shook his head. “There are a lot of people out here, newbie. I need your eyes and ears more than anything. Tonight’s the night to prove your worth.”
“But no pressure, right?” I said.
“I’m not worried a bit.”
It was a busy night, and the streets were full of tourists. We walked the busy sidewalk, stopping at two bars where Carter had informants. According to Carter, bartenders made the best kind: They saw and heard everything. Usually, the thugs like the ones who’d grabbed Ian and me were just strong-arms for hire. They weren’t part of an organized crime family. Carter referred to them as Thug Temps. He said they were known for coming into a bar, getting drunk, and spilling everything to the bartender.
After the first two bars, Carter’s contacts had come up empty-handed. While Carter did the questioning, I kept my eyes and ears open for anything that struck me as odd. When two guys I noticed at the first bar followed us to the second, I figured that qualified.
“We’re being followed,” I told Carter.
“You sure?” he asked. I nodded. “All right. Let’s hit this last bar and see if my guy knows anything. If they’re still tailing us, we’ll take care of them,” Carter said.
We were in character, walking hand-in-hand up the sidewalk. A chill from the air made me shiver, and Carter put his arm around me.
We found the last bar and took a seat. When the bartender saw us, he flinched. The other two bartenders hadn’t been happy to see Carter, either.
I scanned the room as I had at the other locations and watched as the creepy guys who had been tailing us followed us inside. The first guy was bald and had a scar on his chin. He had been obsessively checking his phone. The other guy was wearing a black leather jacket and had enough earrings to make a pirate jealous. He watched the door like the Second Coming was about to arrive.
“I’m looking for a friend of mine,” Carter asked the bartender.
“He speaks English?” I questioned.
“Yeah. He also speaks money.” Carter slid a folded bill across the bar to him. “Tall British guy. You seen him around?”
“No. No Englishmen around here in a while,” he answered.
“Any noise about someone matching that description? Maybe something about someone poking around and getting himself into trouble?” Carter prodded.
“I haven’t heard anything, but I will keep an open ear for you,” the bartender replied.
He was acting a little jittery, shuffling back and forth and wiping a cloth around a glass long after it had become dry. And then he darted his eyes to the guy with the scar.
Carter let the bartender go and put his arm around me. “Did you catch t
hat?”
“Yep,” I answered. I leaned into Carter’s ear like a newlywed would. “Those two ugly mugs are failing miserably at blending in.”
“I see them,” Carter said, cupping my face.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
“Let’s just watch them and see what kind of trouble we can get into with them.”
Great.
We sat there for another hour watching the two men and pretending to be in love. When they still hadn’t moved, Carter declared that we had to “smoke them out” by making a move of our own.
Stepping back out into the night air, I took a deep breath, a nice break from the smoky bar. We were halfway to the car when I shook out my ponytail to give me an excuse to look behind us. In the glow of the streetlights, the baldheaded thug with the scar on his chin was impossible to miss. Across the street was the earrings guy.
“It’s them,” I said.
Carter just nodded. When we were a block from the car, and the crowd had dispersed, Carter pulled me into an alley.
“We have about sixty seconds,” he said sternly.
“I can’t believe I’m being ambushed twice in a matter of days,” I bemoaned.
Carter grinned like a shark. “Sweetheart, it’s only an ambush if you don’t see it coming. If anyone’s being ambushed here, it’s them.”
Then, without warning, Carter kissed me. It was a big, passionate, write-home-about kiss. It took my breath away.
“What was that for?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.
“Luck. I always fair better in a fight after kissing a beautiful woman.”
He gave me a crooked, sexy smile, and I knew he was full of shit. He leaned down to my ear and whispered, “Time to up your game on those acting skills.”
Carter snaked his arms around me, gripping me tightly as the two men rounded the corner. Then he kissed my neck and said things like, “C’mon, baby!”
When the two men following us hesitated, I understood the game Carter was playing. I shoved Carter away from me. “Not here!”
When Baldy grabbed Carter’s shoulder, I launched myself at Earrings Dude.
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