Crystal Whisperer (Spotless Series #3)

by Camilla Monk

  I wasn’t dead—yet not quite back in this world. I coughed out the talc swirling in the air as the airbags slowly deflated. My phone had been sent flying under the dashboard. I had this odd thought that it might be broken, like it mattered. It still worked though. I registered March’s voice calling my name through the speaker, shouting that he was almost there.

  Through the cracks in the window, blurry shapes moved and came into focus. Having shoved the Audi out of the way, the SUV was now positioned parallel to Falchi’s Alpha. A couple of men in suits helped her out of the car. Taking her? My right hand jolted. I was thinking of March’s gun, but my body seemed to be having some trouble connecting intent with movement; I slumped in my seat and tried to record everything, anything.

  I felt strangely calm, dazed and bruised in the carcass of that stolen car, surrounded by the storm and the silence. Outside, Sabina Falchi looked shaken. She wasn’t fighting these guys though. More like holding on to one of them as he helped her inside the SUV. She cried out. A sound so earnest and desperate that it broke through my stupor. “Lucca! Dov’è Lucca?” Lucca! Where is Lucca?

  Right then, I had the intuition, the certainty even, that she wasn’t being kidnapped. She was being rescued. The operation, however, was cut short by the sound of tires screeching. A single gunshot echoed through the rain, taking out one of the men before he had time to climb in the vehicle.

  I lolled my head to the left and pushed the now flappy airbag hanging from the ceiling and covering my window. A tiny blue Italian car—the kind the French would commonly refer to as a “yogurt tub”—had burst from the grove and sped toward the gray SUV, its toylike wheels barely touching the ground. The passenger door was open, and March’s upper body was visible, half outside the car, gun in one hand, while he held on to the roof with the other.

  I croaked his name and made a feeble attempt to unclasp my seat belt. To my right, the SUV backed up and took off, way too fast for the brave little yogurt tub to stand a chance. The tiny car skidded to a halt a few yards away, and March ran to free me from the Audi’s wreckage.

  His face was pale, his jaw clenched tight as he undid my seat belt. I held out my arms to reach out to him, but he stopped me, his hands gentle but his tone brusque. “Don’t try to move.”

  I let him examine me, searching for whiplash or fractures, checking my pupils for signs of a concussion. In his, all I could read was distress. It hit me then. March and I had gone back to that same place, together, ten years ago, on a crowded Tokyo avenue. Me, trapped in the wreckage of my mother’s car, next to her lifeless body, watching the hood catch fire, unable to move or even scream. And him, for the first time, getting me out of that car, gathering me in his arms. It was the day both our lives had changed, spun in new directions.

  March drew an unsteady breath.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I didn’t want—”

  He averted his eyes. “You’re all right; it’s all that matters for now.”

  “But they got away—”

  “We can deal with that later,” he snapped, even as he carefully lifted me from the driver’s seat.

  March wanted to carry me, but I tried to stand: I needed to feel the ground under my feet. I leaned on him and took a few cautious steps on grass made squishy by the rain. Dries had gotten out of the yogurt tub as well and joined us, looking majorly pissed. Leaving him to support me instead, March went to circle Falchi’s red Alfa Romeo.

  Dries watched him open the rear door with a scowl. “May I suggest we leave?”

  “Give me a second. I think our new friends forgot something in their haste,” March said, reaching to retrieve a gray tote bag.

  A warm weight settled on my shoulders. Dries had removed his jacket and was busy adjusting it on me.

  I managed out a small “Thank you” while March searched the bag and retrieved a black laptop. With a bullet hole. The three of us stared at the bag, where a similar hole had pierced the leather, then at the Alfa Romeo’s door. One of March’s bullets had missed the SUV but made it through Falchi’s car like a knife in butter.

  Dries patted my shoulder with a grunt. “See, that’s his kick: he’s always liked testing my patience.”

  16

  Relationships 101

  Don’t argue with her feelings and opinions. Take time out and discuss things later when there is less emotional charge. Practice the Love Letter technique as described in chapter 11.

  —John Gray, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships.

  Crime pays. A lot, considering that Dries’s plan B was a yacht. His yacht, to be precise. Slower, but makes it easier to cross borders. I had seen very little of it so far, save for the cabin I was resting in: all sleek wooden panels and art deco lamps. We were sailing away from Italy in a continuous hum. I sat up on the bed and gazed at the evening sky outside the bay window, the moon’s silvery reflection shimmering on the waves.

  After leaving Venice for good, we’d driven a few miles south in the stolen yogurt tub to a port where the ship and its small crew awaited. A doctor had briefly come on board to check on me, a man, I think, but he might just as well have been a unicorn: with a raging migraine kneading my brain, I floated through the exam. I wanted nothing but to rest, primarily to avoid the anxious and angry blue gaze watching the doctor’s every move. March had since left, but I knew I’d have to face him sooner or later. A storm was coming in the wake of my stunt with the car, and so, I courageously pretended to be too tired to talk.

  I drew a long sigh, studying the black terry robe one of the crewmen had brought for me, with a little lion head embroidered on the pocket. It was so tacky; Dries’s conquests must love it. I got out of bed and walked to the bedroom’s door, intent on exploring the yacht. The doorknob wouldn’t move.

  Aw, come on . . .

  I let myself fall forward, my forehead hitting the smooth mahogany. “March. Let me out.”

  On the other side of the cabin’s door, I caught Dries’s hushed voice. “How long are you going to keep her in there? I need her to look at the laptop.”

  “She won’t,” March snapped.

  I banged my fists on the door. “I can hear you! I know you’re there! I said: Let. Me. Out!”

  “Can’t you at least sedate her?” Dries groaned.

  “No. She will calm down.”

  That seemed to amuse Dries—as his footsteps echoed away from the bedroom’s door, he called out to March, his voice filled with a joy only known to vindicated parents. “To your newly single life then.”

  There was no visible clock around, so I’m not sure how long I yelled while March waited behind that door for me to cool down. Maybe half an hour. I eventually ran out of fuel, and when he deemed I’d been silent long enough, the doorknob clicked. I stepped back. He entered the room in a whiff of fresh laundry and mints, wearing what can best be described as Simon Cowell’s “It’s no” face.

  I watched him from the corner of my eye, still seething. “So that’s how things are gonna be between us? I wait around for you, and if I’m not compliant enough, you just lock me up?”

  “If that’s what it takes to keep you safe, yes,” he said, no emotion filtering through his voice.

  “And if I don’t want that?”

  He drew a slow breath, his eyes never leaving mine. He wouldn’t say it. I knew that the answer to my question was something along the lines of “my way or no way,” and for the first time since we’d met, I truly got scared of my feelings for March. Scared that he’d never compromise and that I could never find the strength to walk out. Scared we would end up hurting each other like Dries and my mother.

  Better put that to the test now. “I’m going to look for Dries,” I announced, taking a step toward the door. “I want to see Falchi’s laptop.”

  As I padded my way around him, March caught my waist, his hand gentle, but unyielding. “Island, we need to talk about this.”
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  I fought his grip to no avail. “If you’re going to lock me up again, I don’t think there’s anything to talk about.”

  March didn’t let go. “We had an agreement.”

  “Which I tried to respect, but I didn’t have a choice—”

  “You did. You could have called me,” he retorted, his voice deepening with suppressed anger.

  “She was already getting away. I couldn’t just stand there and watch!”

  Around my waist the grip loosened, and March plunged his gaze into mine. His irises seemed darker than usual, around pupils now widening as if their depths meant to swallow me whole. One of his hands let go of me to retrieve something from his wallet. “I found this in your pocket,” he said, handing me Jan’s Polaroid.

  I took it, gulping past the laces I could feel tightening around my windpipe. “Jan gave it to me. It’s just a souvenir.”

  Surely he’d say something, accuse me of playing detective around the kind of suspect who’d better be left alone, threaten to sentence me to a week in the trunk. He didn’t. In a breath, his head dipped, and he kissed me. Although I could taste the familiar sweetness of way too many mints on his tongue, it was different from usual. I liked March’s kisses because he took his time: as his ex told me once, he wasn’t the volcano type, which suited me just fine. But this . . . I was having a hard time keeping up with the onslaught as he cradled the back of my head. His chest was heaving, and there was something akin to desperation in the way his lips tugged at mine, as if I might dissolve any second and he meant to capture a little part of me for himself.

  He finally ended it when I gasped for air, his palms lingering on my cheeks, stroking them. “How do we make this work?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I know you want me to stay away, but I can’t, because all of this . . . Alex, Dries, Anies . . . it’s personal to me.”

  March’s anger abated in a long, tired sigh. I startled when his fingers caressed my collarbones before they glided down and parted the terry robe. The belt slipped undone without much resistance. I shivered, finding myself in foreign territory, where being naked was no longer new, but at the same time nothing casual yet: ours was a Map of Tendre where much remained to be explored. I held my breath when his hand reached inside the garment. His fingertips grazed the fresh bruises on my side, the Band-Aid concealing the spot where a bullet had grazed me during our chase in Venice.

  His free hand cupped my jaw. “This is personal to me.”

  I wrapped my arms around his torso and held him tight. “I’m so sorry . . . I know you want me to have a normal life. But I can’t. I lost my job because of Ruby, and now I think the thug life is calling me.”

  On March’s lips, a sad smile returned. He pressed a kiss to my cheek. “I know. I’ve been thinking about how to handle . . . things between us.” He let go of me to search his pocket and produced a folded piece of paper. “I need you to hear this.”

  I blinked as he proceeded to read the paper out loud, his tone flat and a little hurried.

  “Dear Island, I am angry that you keep taking risks without telling me. I am disappointed that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me about your discussion with Mr. Morgan, or the picture Jan gave you.” He cleared his throat. “I’m extremely worried for your safety. You are more vulnerable than you realize, and I regret that you won’t be reasonable and let me protect you. I want to pursue this relationship nonetheless, but I don’t want to have to tie you up in order to keep you safe.”

  He folded back the note and gazed at me, half anxious for my response and, might as well say it, looking immensely pleased with his intervention.

  I had no idea what to say. My eyes were as wide as saucers, and my brain was working fast to sort out the facts. Deep within, there was a part of March that would forever remain overcontrolling and more than a little macho. But, contrary to my fears, he was actually working on himself: he’d just inflicted the five-point “love letter” technique on me, something I gathered he’d found in Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships. Impressive.

  He deserved an A for effort and honesty, I decided. Not only this, but he was right about one thing—whether I wanted to or not, I did interfere with his work. While I had no intention to stop doing so, we needed to find a safe way to collaborate, or else we’d both die stupidly someday.

  “I understand,” I said at last. “I want to make this work too. I need answers, and I can’t always stay on the side and watch, but I get that sometimes you need me out of the way. I can hear that, and I don’t want to endanger you. Thank you for being so honest and for all the great communication.”

  He reached for the paper again. “I wrote one regarding the state of your apartment too.”

  I placed my hand on his wrist. “It’s okay . . . I think I can imagine what’s in it. Maybe you can read it to me later?”

  His lips pursed. After a moment of hesitation, he put it back in his pocket. “Certainly.”

  “So, what now?”

  “Falchi’s laptop was considerably damaged. Dries wants you to take a look at it, see if there’s anything recoverable.”

  My body quivered with anticipation. “I can do that!”

  A genuine smile pinched his dimples. “Excellent. We’re making good progress.”

  Whether he meant in our investigation, or in our attempts to communicate as different species, I didn’t know.

  17

  The Cannoli

  Ô temps ! suspends ton vol, et vous, heures propices !

  Suspendez votre cours :

  Laissez-nous savourer les rapides délices.

  Des plus beaux de nos jours !

  —Alphonse de Lamartine, Le Lac

  Damn. It is nice to have your own yacht, I thought, padding across the aft deck to find Dries and March waiting for me on a long semicircular couch. The evening air was warm and the motor’s sound surprisingly low, considering how fast we were sailing and the massive trail of foam we left in our wake. Ceiling spots bathed the sitting area in a soft golden light: Dries would have made a great cruise operator.

  Well, except for the crew. I wasn’t entirely comfortable yet with the four men in black polos roaming silently through the ship and watching our every move. One of them had given me my clothes back though, freshly stitched and laundered after my recent adventures. It was nice of him, but I didn’t know what to think of his yakuza sleeve tattoos, or the gun tucked in his back. At any rate, everyone seemed okay with it, so I decided not to bring it up.

  “There she is. I have work for you,” Dries announced, gesturing for me to join them.

  He had changed into a blue shirt and a pair of khakis, and it felt odd to realize that I was seeing him out of a three-piece suit for the very first time—well, if you except Jan’s Polaroid. He patted the space between him and March; I settled there, feigning to ignore that a light meal had been served on the coffee table—the cannoli were chanting my name. Next to Dries’s razor-thin laptop sat the blue one March had inadvertently shot.

  “Can you do something about it?” Dries asked.

  “Maybe. Let me check it,” I said, rubbing my palms together in anticipation.

  Once I’d dragged the KO’d laptop to me across the table, I examined it carefully. “You’re lucky,” I said. “The bullet missed the lithium battery; otherwise the whole thing would have gone up in flames. I think the hard drive might be okay. Do you have a toolbox? Also I need this.” I extended a greedy hand toward Dries’s nice little laptop.

  He gave me a suspicious look but nonetheless gestured to one of the crew members, who returned with a fully equipped toolbox less than a minute later. At last, in this life filled with violence, heartbreak, dark secrets, and sexual frustration . . . some pleasure.

  I lined up several screwdrivers of various sizes and four Nutella-filled cannoli in front of me and got to work. March and Dries watched me disassemble Falchi’s c
omputer with undisguised interest. Once I had freed the hard drive, I was pleased to see that my diagnostic had been accurate—it looked more or less intact. Now all that was left to do was test it. I moved to grab Dries’s laptop, but it wouldn’t budge. Because his hand was on it.

  “I need it to plug Falchi’s drive.”

  “You’re not allowed to disassemble it.”

  I feigned outrage. “Of course I won’t. I just need to open it a little.”

  His fingers flattened on the lid. I let go with a sigh . . . and pulled again fast, as soon as his grip decreased, holding the loot against my chest. In his eyes, the golden glint turned dangerous. Good thing I was his daughter, and I could get away with it. Also, if he tried anything, I’d just let March handle him.

  After half a dozen cannoli, the partial dismemberment of Dries’s laptop, and some careful fiddling with the hard drive because it wasn’t spinning as it ought to, we found ourselves looking at 97.1 percent recoverable data, scattered in hundreds of folders.

  I pointed at the screen while Dries considered the screws coming from his laptop with no small amount of annoyance. “There’s a little work to go through all this, but hopefully we can find some interesting stuff.”

  The news seemed to satisfy him. He stuffed his face with two cannoli in a row under March’s disapproving eyes. Looked like we had more in common than a gap tooth and too many moles. A sweet tooth as well.

  When I didn’t move immediately, he stopped chewing on the pastry. “What are you waiting for? Now get to work, and tell me what’s on that disk. I gave your mother ten million dollars so you’d go to college. I want some return on that investment.”