He grinned. “You don’t seriously think there is such a thing, do you? Besides, I haven’t worked as an archaeologist in over a decade. No, the only creed I follow is my own, and though it pains me to see something with so much history and passion behind it fade into the woodwork, in the end that casket will fetch a fortune on the underground market and those jewels will keep me going for a long time.”
“You’re contemptible. What is your creed now: take what you want and screw everybody else?” Ahead a ragged bite of mountain cut a sharp silhouette against the horizon and sliced my wounded heart all over again.
“Pardon me for being crude but I’d love to screw you one more time.”
“Very funny. You’re taking us to the Atlas
Mountains?”
“Mountains are a great place to hide. I only need a few days before the dust dies down with a lot of places to hole up in the meantime. Morocco isn’t a rich country. They don’t have the resources to chase me for long.”
A few cars passed us on the highway, a few saddled mules and camels plodding along on the sandy shoulders, too, but otherwise the road was empty. I thought about trying to jump out but he had the child minder lock on. I considered trying to wrest the steering wheel from him but I didn’t see how that would end well. For one thing, his gun was in his other pocket and I doubted I’d be fast enough to get it from him. Instead, I sat still, scheming and furious, feeling the press of my phone in my pants pocket. Would anyone track me and who was left standing to do it, anyway?
Recrimination burned deeply. Why was I so trusting? Did love make me blind and stupid, too? I should have never let him into the riad, not that that made a difference in the end. If I was being brutally honest with myself, I still gave Noel too many ins—ins to my heart, ins the riad, ins to my life. Always had. Love was like a squatter: once it set up house, it was hell getting it evicted. My mind said one thing, my heart another. I was so done with this. I needed to change my tact.
“I can’t bear to think we’re going to end this way, Noel, not after all the years we’ve sort of been together,” I said softly.
The sun had broken through the mountains to pour bloodred light down on us both. “Yeah, Phoebe. It hurts me, too. It’s always been you and me, no matter what you think, despite all our differences. What we had together was real but I couldn’t just turn myself in and go to jail.”
“I could have negotiated a lighter sentence if you had.” Having been an almost lawyer, I had connections.
“I’d have died in there, you know that, and besides, do you really see me as living some kind of ordinary life? What would that look like, anyway? Me coming home from work at six every night and watching TV while you knit?”
I snorted. “As if that spells out everything worth living in an ordinary life, and by the way, that sounds pretty damn appealing to me. Life isn’t all adrenaline and breathless moments, Noel. There’s comfort in having someone you care about nearby on cold nights, someone to hold you when you’re hurt and afraid, someone to make supper with on a Friday night plus all those little moments in between. Love breathes life into the ordinary things.”
“Sounds like you want a puppy, not a man.”
I clenched my teeth after that. We drove for another five minutes until we were at the foot of the mountains with nothing but expanses of scrabbled earth and spotty palm trees all around. He pulled off the road and bumped over the earth to a copse of palms with a flat sandy area nearby and cut the engine.
“This is my rendezvous point and where we part. You can take the car and drive back to Marrakech once my ride arrives. No hard feelings, all right?”
He was gazing at me, one brown arm on the steering wheel, his dark eyes warm and that mouth of his exactly as I remembered so fondly. I leaned over and kissed him. He hesitated only seconds before kissing me back, one hand grabbing mine in case I lunged for his gun. All the passion between us ignited as if all the years and pain didn’t exist. He pulled away, breathless. “One more time for old times’ sake, my love?” he asked.
“One more time,” I whispered.
We were out of the car in seconds, he tossing his gun in the back seat in case I tried to grab it and then locking the door. No one was around but the car shielded us from the road just in case. He furled his jacket on the sand, Sir Walter Raleigh–style, and beckoned me to lie down.
I smiled and shook my head. “You first.”
“You always were my woman-on-top kinda girl,” he murmured into my hair as he embraced me.
“And don’t you forget it.” My hands were under his shirt and exploring, a familiar electricity hitting my vitals as I touched him in all those secret places. In moments he was on the ground with me on top of him, our kisses wild and fevered, nothing forced, nothing feigned. I had his pants down and mine half-off when I pulled my phone from my pocket, held the home button down along with the volume button, and pressed the phone against his bare skin. I whispered into his ear: “Thank you for making this so easy for me.”
A jolt of real electricity zapped beneath my fingers as the man beneath me flopped still.
23
Tall, dark and tasered was a good look on him. Lying there bare-chested with a rectangular burn below his heart, he’d never looked so fetching or so dead. For a moment, I thought I’d killed him, but no, he still had a weak pulse. I dropped the blistered chunk of phone into the dust beside him. The taser app worked fine but destroyed the phone, seared my good palm, and nearly killed the victim, too. I had to remind Evan to tweak that feature. If there even was an Evan. Shit! If there even was an Evan!
I buttoned my shirt and snatched the keys from Noel’s pocket, ripping off the wire from inside his jacket while I was at it. I took his phone and wallet, too, and then started up the car before returning to try dragging the limp man into the back seat. Though lean, he was still heavy, and with both hands injured, I lacked my usual leverage. And then I heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter far in the distance.
Shielding my eyes, a speck like a faraway bug could clearly be seen heading my way. I had expected a car for the rendezvous, not a bloody helicopter! In seconds, I was behind the wheel, forced to leave Noel and take off while I could. I doubted I could outrun a car, but I knew I couldn’t outrun a helicopter. And then there was the little matter of the loot in the front seat. Once they found Noel dishabille and the bag missing, presumably they’d come gunning after me. I also had to factor in the fact that by taking Noel’s phone, I may have made it easier for them to track.
I pushed down the window and reluctantly tossed the phone. Damn. I’d hoped to use it to call the police. If lucky, maybe I’d get a half hour head start before Noel’s team realized what had happen.
Turns out, I got less. Fifteen minutes after I’d started zipping down the highway, that helicopter was trailing behind me. The traffic had picked up. What would they do, shoot the car full of holes like they do in the movies and not care what collateral damage they caused along the way? Maybe they’d try to run me off the road, then drop down and pick the loot out of the wreckage. What did I know? There were plenty of places for a helicopter to land in this desert flatland.
Quick decision time. I whipped off the highway into the parking lot of a gas station complex. The possibility that the car was identifiable or trackable was too high a risk. I dashed into the adjoining leather shop and bought a tooled and beaded camel-skin bag from the money in Noel’s wallet. Moments later I had the casket transferred into the bag and left Joe’s backpack in the bathroom.
In the truck stop minutes later, first I tried to use the phone. No problem except I had no idea of local area codes or even who to call exactly and my efforts to communicate with the attendant too fraught. What if I called the regular police, then what? Imagining the questions I’d answer while carrying a fortune in my bag and leaving a tasered man by the side of the road didn’t bear thinking about. Next, I tried negotiating a ride to Marrakech with a tractor-trailer driver. Whether the la
nguage barrier was to blame or some company policy, none of the guys smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee would give me a lift at first, at least until I flashed a few American dollars. Then I was overwhelmed with offers. I finally settled on a delivery guy packing a trailer load of dates to the city.
By the time I’d hurried Salim out the door, the helicopter was in the distance heading back toward us with two more far in the distance. If Salim thought it odd that I leaped into the truck’s cab without so much as a hoist up or an official invitation, he didn’t say. Besides, he didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Arabic. That left a long ride back to Marrakech in a cab full of smoke and Moroccan pop music. I kept the window down, so tense I thought I’d snap in two. Forty-five minutes later, I thanked Salim as he dropped me off near the square and I jogged my way through the medina to the riad.
This time, armed uniformed men packing machine guns surrounded the riad. When I identified myself and held up the bag to prove I was who I said, the bag was whipped from my hands and I was promptly marched inside at gunpoint. All that mattered was Peaches and Evan. By then I didn’t care about anything else, not the treasure, nothing.
“Phoebe!” Peaches cried when she laid eyes on me. “My God! I thought he’d dragged you off somewhere!”
“He did. We managed one last tender moment before I tasered him.” We hugged, her squeezing the breath out of me. “Thank God, you’re okay. What about Evan?”
Agent Walker stepped out from the tangle of uniformed men. “Phoebe McCabe, you never cease to amaze me.”
“What about Evan?” I repeated.
Sam Walker gazed at me with his cool blue eyes. “He’s been taken to the hospital with two bullet holes and a lot of blood loss. I’m waiting for an update but the last I heard he was still alive, that’s the main thing. Otherwise, there’s one woman down, two men with a head injury, and another two on their way into headquarters for questioning.”
Over his shoulder I saw Mohammed and one of the other riad helpers mopping up the tiles.
“And Noel Halloren is by the side of the highway unconscious, I hope half-dead,” I said.
“We’ve got helicopters out there now. If he’s there, we’ll get the bastard. Peaches filled me in on what happened.”
“I shot June,” Peaches said, “and Amira helped by tripping the bitch. Didn’t kill her, though. My bad.”
I nodded, part of me too numb to take any more in.
Back in Venice days later, the world had taken on a different cast. It had become a noticeably colder universe for me, slightly less infused with the exuberance in which I had previously viewed it. The colors were still clear in my retina but how I saw them had shifted—darker, deeper, richer. But no, just for the record, I was nowhere near depressed, just sadder and wiser.
“Phoebe, thank you again for all you have done,” Nicolina was saying. “If it were not for you, we may never have known why Maria was killed or by whom,” she continued.
We were sitting in the Contini villa salon with the Bartolo hanging in pride of place over the mantel. The police had located the missing painting tucked into a closet at Amira Alaoui’s shabby apartment and now it hung triumphant and undamaged. I could not take my eyes off it, specifically at the hexagram outlined in what must have been knotted gold silk beneath the bride’s feet.
“If it were not for you, we may never have known many things,” Nicolina continued, looking up at the painting. Those things were too numerous to outline yet again, thankfully—Evan Ashton and Sir Rupert Fox’s true roles, Noel Halloren’s modus operandi, Zara’s unwitting duplicity, and it went on and on. All of it was more than I could process right then. All I wanted to do was crawl inside some quiet place and pull the covers over my head but I had the feeling that the world would always find me anywhere I went.
“I will give the Bartolo to a museum here in Venice, possibly the Galleria dell’Accademia. It memorializes a marriage in Venice and should return to Venice,” Nicolina said, but I was hardly paying attention.
“There are lots of things we might never have known without my Phoebe,” Max said from the couch beside me. He had flown in the day before and our conversations had been intense ever since. Try telling a man that you tasered his son in a moment of passion. The fact that the son was a bastard was borderline irrelevant; the fact that he still managed to get away with his crimes may have been a comfort to Max but not to me. Noel’s helicopter team must have picked him up and whisked him off to safety. My only consolation was that he’d bear a phone-sized brand below his heart for life, a permanent reminder of just how hot Phoebe McCabe can get.
“Look,” I said, getting to my feet. “I just have to get out for a walk, do you mind?”
Nicolina and Max erupted at once. “Phoebe, are you all right?” “Shall we come with you?” I don’t know who said what.
“No, thank you. I just need to be alone for a bit. Stay here, both of you. Please.”
After all, it had been three full days of interrogation, first with the Moroccan authorities and then with Peroni, plus all the endless, convoluted discussions with Sam Walker and my friends in between. And then there was the treasure, a hotly contested item that would be tied up in international courts for a long time—found on Moroccan soil on property owned by an Italian estate. Untangle that one, if you can. At least it was in “public” hands, whatever its ultimate destination, and I had my photos and my convictions. There was a story there that needed to be released to the world, not that I believed for a moment that it alone could change the world. Still, every story of hope counted.
I just needed to leave it all behind and blow some fresh air into my thinking.
“Sure, darlin’,” Max said, rising. Nicolina stood, too, both of them casting worried looks at me with the two bandaged hands and what they believed to be my broken heart. If they could see through my shirt, they’d discover that the heart in question hadn’t broken so much as hardened to a tensile strength.
I left them standing there and strode into the hall, snatching up my carpetbag where I’d dropped it by the door. The thing was in rough shape, its seams slit and the battered Ottoman kilim textile carefully cut away to reveal the leather interior. There was a metaphor to be had there. Carrying it under the arm was the only possibility now that the handle had been sliced off.
I passed Seraphina in the hall but barely acknowledged her presence. Her friend Zara might yet be charged as there were unanswered questions about how much the family retainer had suspected about her niece and nephews’ actions. By default, Seraphina herself might have in some way obstructed justice by not disclosing her own suspicions earlier. She’d had them, I was sure of that. Not my problem either way. Let somebody else figure it out.
In the spring sunshine, moments later, I inhaled deeply and took a left-hand turn outside the villa to avoid again seeing the smoldering and heartbreaking remains of the warehouse in the other direction. Thinking too long on everything that had been lost was more than I could bear.
“Phoebe, wait up!” I turned. Peaches was striding down the street toward me carrying a package. She had taken off on a shopping expedition that morning, determined to update her look, Italian-style. “I’ve commissioned a leather pantsuit like you wouldn’t believe—made to measure, since that’s the only way I’d ever get something to fit my booty. What, is everybody size two in this country? They’ll even ship it to London for me. Whoa! What’s wrong?”
Did my face reveal that much? “I decided to get out of the villa for a while. Max and Nicolina are still there chewing things over but I’d had enough.” I continued walking.
“Don’t blame you. Would you rather be alone?”
“No, join me if you want. Just don’t talk about what happened. I’m done.”
“Yeah, okay.” She fell into pace beside me, which meant shortening her steps considerably. “May I ask where we’re going?”
“I’m not sure exactly but I’ll know when I get there.”
“Y
eah, sure.”
We carried along aimlessly, enjoying the warmth and sunshine, the brilliant sense that a fresh new season could override all the pain of the months before. We paused by shop windows to admire a piece of Murano glass or maybe an interesting hat or just anything that caught our eye. Eventually we stopped at a café to order cappuccinos even though the Italians didn’t believe in drinking milky coffee that late in the morning.
Sitting there gazing out at the Grand Canal, Peaches tapped my hand. “Mind if I ask one question?”
I caught her eye. “I know what it is.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. It’s about Evan, right?”
She sat back and frowned. “Yeah, right. So when are you going to talk to him?”
I sighed, looking away. “I haven’t decided. So far, I’ve just sent him an email to say ‘get well soon,’ which I thought suitably banal.”
“Yes, really. If he knows you at all, he’ll know that you reserve such heartfelt messages for houseplants or something.”
I laughed. “I’m hoping he’ll translate it to mean that I need time to think things through. As for Foxy—can I even call him that now that I know he’s been acting in the interests of the law? Anyway, Sir Rupert Fox has sent me endless texts with updates, even though I have yet to respond to a single one. It seems that Evan has been recovering reasonably well in a London hospital where they airlifted him a couple of days ago. That’s all I know.”
“You’re not really mad at him, are you? I mean, seriously, if he was undercover he couldn’t exactly tell you what he was up to.”
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about this? But no, I understand perfectly why he did what he did. It all makes sense.”
“And yet? Why do I hear a ‘yet’?”
And then my phone rang. Pulling it from my pocket I stared down at the call identifier. “Sir Rupert Fox. Again.”
The Carpet Cipher Page 28