by Lorna Tedder
Mentally I kicked myself. I should have planned ahead. I shouldn’t have let myself focus so long on the child. Shouldn’t have let my emotions get in the way.
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gotten me. Most recently, at the end of Eric Cabordes’s barrel.
“Don’t move,” he instructed in a voice as low as a growl.
I couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark sunglasses, but I imagined them as I remembered. Pale blue. Intense.
Deadly. He’d let me go, just to catch up with me? Was that how he got his kicks? The chase? Couldn’t blame him for that.
“Do you have the artifacts?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
I said nothing. I didn’t even glance in the direction of the trunk. So much for the child’s bodyguard being interested in the boy. It was all about the mundane treasures, wasn’t it?
He grabbed the neckline of my dress, hand halfway down my cleavage, and pulled me upright. The revolver pressed hard against my thigh. “Answer me.”
“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth.
I looked harder, tried to see through the sunglasses.
The outline of his eyes. I saw my own face in the reflect-ing shades. Defiant, searching, ready to run.
In the few seconds he pressed against me, I took in as much information as I could. Something would be useful. It always was. He smelled like the leather jacket he wore. His chest heaved in deep, measured breaths.
Ah. Eric Cabordes wasn’t nearly as calm as he wanted me to believe. And that was useful.
“And the child? I saw him talking to the priest.”
That was a pleasant surprise. So he’d already seen Lorna Tedder
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that Benny was safe. He hadn’t needed to ask about the child before the artifacts. Maybe my intuition was right—he was smitten with the boy.
The bodyguard held up his cell phone with his free hand but didn’t dial. It was an odd gesture, a calculated one.
“In the latrine. He’s—he’s fine. I didn’t kidnap him.
He was a stowaway.”
“Quiet!” His glasses fell forward on his nose, and I got a good look at his eyes and the strange fire that was incongruous with the tone of his voice. Amusement?
“You expect anyone to believe you didn’t kidnap Benny for a healthy ransom?” he spat out.
“It’s the truth.” He’d been there. He’d seen me put the artifacts in the trunk. Eric Cabordes knew I hadn’t touched the boy.
“What would you know about the truth? The Duke took you in. He gave you a new life. A lucrative one. And this is how you repay him? Kidnapping his grandson?
Stealing assets from his private collection? If you’ve harmed one hair on Benny’s head…” He holstered the gun and then slapped the headrest behind me—hard. “If you’ve hurt that little boy, I’ll take you out myself.”
I stared at him. His movements were deliberate. So were his words. “I told you—” I started.
“Shut up, bitch!” He slapped the headrest again, and I almost fell backward into the driver’s seat. “You don’t look so fine now with a bloody nose, do you?”
But he hadn’t touched me. I instinctively felt my nose and upper lip for blood and found none. I frowned up at Eric Cabordes, and he answered me with a wink.
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“Stop struggling!” he snarled, making an elaborate gesture to me and to the phone in his hand. “You want me to hit you again?”
What the hell? What kind of game was he playing?
“No,” I managed. “No. I’ll do…I’ll do what you want.”
“Good.” He thumbed open his cell phone and pressed a button. He didn’t take his eyes off me.
“Duke,” he said into the phone. “I have her. I have everything, including Benedict…. Yes, I’m on my way back now. I just have to throw the bitch in the trunk and we’ll be at the palazzo in a few hours.” He watched me watching him. “You want her alive or should I go ahead and…? No. I understand. She’s Caleb’s.”
He snapped the phone closed and cocked his head, still speaking toward it. “Stop kicking! I said—” He hurled the cell phone at the alley wall. It slammed into the stone and shattered on the pavement. A girl on the street ran the other way without looking back.
I froze. Okay, I didn’t know what his game was, but I wasn’t sticking around for it. The man was crazy. The boy was safe. And I had no doubt the boy would be safe with the man even if I wasn’t. He knew where Benny was and he could take Benny back. Me? I was getting the hell out of there and to Cat’s as soon as possible. It would be nice to see a sane, somewhat friendly face.
“Benny’s in the chapel,” I offered quickly. Eric glanced over his shoulder, and in that moment I shoved him backward with one foot, jammed the key into the ignition and pulled the door closed behind me all at once.
He jerked the door back open. He grabbed my left Lorna Tedder
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wrist and held it, leaning into my face. His sunglasses tumbled forward and fell into my lap. “Don’t do that,”
he snarled. “I’m trying to help you.” He reached over me and snatched my key, careful to keep his revolver out of my reach.
“Is that why you just went all homicidal on your cell phone?” I glanced at the bits of metal on the sidewalk. It wasn’t even recognizable as a phone. I didn’t know phones had that many parts. “You were trying to help me?”
He shrugged but didn’t let go of my wrist. It hurt. I pulled away, but he held firm.
“That wasn’t an ordinary cell phone. It was an Adriano phone.”
“Aren’t they all?” Had the situation not been so serious, I might have chuckled. The Adriano Communications subsidiary was well known throughout Europe and Asia and even in the larger cities in the States. Caleb had once bragged that the Adrianos held the largest market share of cell phones for major corporations, though the subsidiary’s best marketing move by far had been a giveaway of ten thousand cell phones and free airtime to the teenage children of American military personnel.
Eric Cabordes didn’t crack a smile. “Adriano cell phones are programmed to act as recording devices. They can be activated remotely, even when you think they’re off. The Adrianos do it all the time.” He released my wrist. “And I’m certain that my cell phone was activated as a recording device the moment I left the palazzo.”
“Then that was all…an act?”
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He raised an eyebrow. “Would you prefer I slap you for real? I will if I have to. To save your life.”
“No, that’s okay. I can do without the slapping. But the conversation you had with Simon? Telling him you were bringing me in? For—” I gritted my teeth “—Caleb’s entertainment?”
“Didn’t matter. I’m sure Simon and Caleb were listening to every word said, both before and after I ended the call.” He paused. “That’s why I needed to be convincing.”
I tried to think of the last time I’d used a cell phone.
Caleb had given me one as a gift several years ago and I’d purposely left it in a train station. Simon had offered me one for various assignments and I’d turned him down. I’d deliberately stayed away from cell phones because of Interpol. Certain audio software can detect a human voice pattern—which is as individual as a fingerprint—via airwaves and detect the speaker’s location within a few feet. Global Positioning Systems—or GPS—combined with smart weapons made high-tech killing as impersonal as a video game but most definitely real. Governments secretly used this method for assassination plots all the time. I’d been very careful, using only landlines and a message service, so maybe I was safe from the übersurveillance of the Adrianos.
“They started reprogramming cell phones several years ago as part of their corporate espion—I mean acquisitions—program. I have no doubt they’ve heard every sound I’ve made since last night, wh
en I volunteered to come after you. That alone may have raised suspicions.”
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“But you work for them.” I could understand how they’d want to record a colonel’s home life or an engineer’s discussions of his latest designs. “You’re just a bodyguard to the little boy.”
“All the more reason to spy on me, don’t you think?
When his father’s not present, I’m closer to the Adriano heir than anyone else, his mother included.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Simon didn’t trust his own sons, not any more than Max had trusted Simon.
Why would he ever trust an employee?
Quietly I eyed the relaxation in his muscles. The moment I’d been waiting for. For him to let go and believe I’d stay. I could still get away if—
“Don’t even think it,” he warned as if he’d read my mind. “I want you alive and free, but I will kill you if necessary. It would be better for me to be your executioner than Caleb.” He lifted my chin. “I would make it quick. You deserve that.”
I sucked in my breath and shook off a tremble. I would make it quick. By the look in his eyes, I knew he meant it. The strange thing was, there seemed to be a sense of nobility in that threat.
“How did you find me?” I rubbed the mark he’d left on my wrist. “Ever since I left the palazzo, I’ve been careful.”
“You weren’t careful when you were at the palazzo.
Wait. I’ll show you.” He glanced back and held up a finger. “Do not run. I’m a good shot and I rarely miss.”
As I climbed out of the car, I contemplated how fast I’d have to run to make it into the little chapel and whether I would actually find safety there. Then I re-152
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membered my injury. Sometimes I actually forgot it when the knee wasn’t throbbing. I rubbed a slow clock-wise circle around my swollen joint.
He strolled to the front of the car and fidgeted with the bumper. He bent on one knee, fished around under the bumper and then extracted a black box no bigger than his hand. Suction cups lined one side and a wire protruded from the other.
I blinked. “It’s a tracker? Simon was tracking me?”
Eric laughed. “Simon always tracks you. Not for long, though. You switch cars and it’s gone.” He tilted his head. “Good move, by the way.”
“Uh, yeah, thanks.” It had had more to do with Interpol than the Adrianos.
He strolled to a car parked nearby. In less than two minutes he’d pulled back the plastic covering over the front bumper and inserted the tracking device. He pointed at the rental sticker on the car window and the maps of Italia on the dashboard.
“Tourists. They’ll give the Duke a run for his money.”
When I frowned, he added, “Once I get us to a safe place, I’ll let you go.” He locked gazes with me as I leaned against the front fender of the Mercedes. “I swear by the Mother.”
He’d risk his life to get me to a safe place, but if he couldn’t, he’d kill me? I would make it quick.
“Eh-wic!”
I looked up in time to see Benny’s face as he stood hand in hand with the old priest. His smile lifted his cheeks all the way up to his eyes. Benny tore loose from Lorna Tedder
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the old man and ran frantically for Eric. His tiny shoes slapped the sidewalk with his all-boy bluster. I could have sworn he jumped from three feet away and landed in Eric’s arms.
Eric grinned back uncharacteristically and swung the boy in a half circle. “Hello, my little hellion. Are you having a good day?”
Benny nodded. “Grrrrreat! I had oranges for breakfast.”
“You did?” Eric snuggled against the child but watched me instead. “I smell them on your breath. Did Dr. Moon treat you well?”
“Yessss!” Benny smiled broadly to show a missing baby tooth that he was too young to have lost through natural causes. Obviously Eric hadn’t been able to stop some of the tyke’s shenanigans.
“That’s good. Benny, I have something for you.” He pulled an iPod out of his jacket pocket and snapped a pair of headphones over the boy’s ears. “There. I’ll turn it on for you and you can listen to a story while Dr.
Moon and I drive. Okay?”
Benny nodded and crawled into the backseat of the Mercedes without any objections. Eric buckled him in, and the child sat quietly staring out the window and rocking back and forth as he listened to a story I couldn’t hear.
“You sure that’s not a recording device?” I asked, still leaning against the front fender.
“Yes. One, it’s not an Adriano product. Two, I bought it this morning. And three—” he motioned for me to scoot into the passenger seat “—I verified it personally.”
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waited for me to move, but I didn’t. Instead I said, “You take the boy back to his mother. I’ve got places to go and people to see that don’t include you. No offense.”
“None taken, but that’s not the plan.”
I still didn’t move. “It’s my plan.”
“It changed. As a matter of fact, Dr. Moon, I’d say all your plans have changed in the past twenty-four hours. All your plans for the rest of your life.”
Okay, so he was right about that. Everything in my future had turned on a dime last night and I was still as confused as hell. Nothing was certain any longer. Not my future. Not even my past. Everything I knew about everyone was suspect.
“Yes, everything has changed. But I’ll still make my own plans. I always have.”
“And where has that gotten you? In league with the devil? When was the last time your plans worked out?”
“Including the San Francisco job that your bad intel nearly botched for me?”
He squinted back at me. “You should thank me for that.”
“Like hell I will!”
“I was trying to keep you away from Simon and Caleb. I was trying to keep that artifact out of his hands.”
Eric looked as though he was grinding his teeth with every syllable. “I was trying to save your life. I’m still trying to save your life. You don’t make it easy.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m sorry for making your life difficult.” I shook my head and tried to stay calm. I didn’t want to talk about my plans or where my life was going Lorna Tedder
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or where it wasn’t. I was stuck. Stuck! But I refused to give over control of it to the Adrianos…even if they did control my life. “I make my own plans,” I continued,
“and they don’t include you.”
Then I remembered my manners. “Thank you, Monsieur Cabordes, for removing the tracking device, but my future doesn’t include any passengers.”
“Then consider me your copilot.”
“No. I don’t trust anybody to be my copilot. Especially anyone who works for the Adrianos.”
“Who said anything about trusting me? You’re not capable of trusting anyone.”
I scowled back. True, I didn’t trust anyone. It’s a harsh way to survive, never letting anyone that close.
But survive was what I did. And I didn’t appreciate him pointing out my survival instincts as though they were deficiencies.
“What I mean is,” he corrected, “you’re not capable of trusting anyone right now. It’s because you don’t trust yourself yet. When you can trust yourself, it’ll be easier to trust others.”
I smirked and shifted against the front fender. Such sage advice from a bodyguard-slash-assassin. But it was a subject that was too close to the bone.
“You should take the boy back, Monsieur Cabordes. Alone.”
“Can’t.” I saw the brief struggle in his eyes, then he decided to make a confession, maybe because he didn’t think I’d live to tell it. “I can’t take Benny home. Not yet. I need another day. His father’s in 156
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Egypt until tomorrow. I’ll hand him over t
o Josh and no one else. Not even his mother. Besides, Benny is my responsibility, and if I don’t bring him home, my corpse will be found floating in the Golfo di Napoli next week.”
“Fine, but what has that got to do with me? Find a reason for a delay, besides a destroyed cell phone, and wander back at your own leisure. I don’t care how you do it. But I have deadlines of my own.”
“I know. But I need you to trust me on this.” He seemed to regret his word choice immediately.
“No. Besides, you just gave me that speech ten seconds ago on how I don’t trust anyone.”
I did trust someone, didn’t I? Someone? Maybe Catrina just a little bit? And I’d taken Myrddin at his word about the escape route out of the palazzo. Then again, I hadn’t had a choice. Somehow I didn’t feel that trusting someone when I didn’t have a choice was really the same thing. The situation made the decision for me.
There was no healing in my heart that rendered me willing to trust. Instead I was simply swept along.
“Even if I did choose to trust someone, why would I start with you?”
“Fine. If you can’t trust me, I’m asking you to keep an open mind. You’re not halfway around the world where I needed you to stay, far away and safe. You’re here, right under the thumb of your worst enemies. You want to get out of Italy and get out alive, then you’re going to have to work with me because I’m all you’ve got.”
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“I don’t need you to fight my battles for me.”
“Fine. Then maybe what you need is someone to watch your back.”
I sucked in my breath. Dead on target, Eric. But that was more than I’d ever hoped for. Still, I had to travel this road alone. I didn’t know any other way. “I told you, no. I make my own plans. I like to be in control.”
“In control of what? Life? Falling in love? Losing the people we love? Death? None of us has as much control as we think. Life is what happens while you’re making all those fancy plans of yours.”
His words tumbled out, bitter and definitely un-planned. His voice was as smooth as ever, but his tone tore at the shields I’d erected around my heart. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d talked to anyone in such a raw and intimate way. It was almost as if he really knew me.