Luis looked at me like I was finally catching on. “I’ve been digging into Craig. I think he might be tied to an underground criminal group based in Rome. That’s why my father and I wanted you to come here.”
“You think Craig’s in Rome? Like, Italy? So Keira could be here?” My heart leaped to my throat. I pushed off the car and rushed toward him.
“No. I think whoever hired Craig to stop that DNA test is based out of Rome. Like I said, my uncle was a cop there, and his fellow officers still feed me information. They’re very loyal.” He emphasized the last word. “And we take our bonds seriously.”
A raindrop plopped from the sky, and I gazed at the dense charcoal clouds about to burst. My brain felt just as full, overflowing. “Earlier, you said you didn’t take Keira.” I looked at him, wiping another drip from my nose. “Do you think my sister was kidnapped? That she’s alive?” My optimism was as palpable as the humidity.
“In my business, people are always worth more alive than dead.”
I exhaled a gush of air from my belly as the raindrops finally tumbled, relief washing over me. I knew it was far from a confirmation, and it was coming from a guy who lied professionally, but still, I could breathe. The cool rain splattered my face. After months of the police, my friends, the social workers, all swearing my sister was dead, I now stood in front of someone who agreed with me, someone with access to actual information, someone who worked in intelligence.
My gaze snapped toward him. “Hold on, you said that my parents were spies, that they conducted missions that could have global ramifications to this day if their DNA turned up. If so, where is the CIA now? Where are the helicopters full of men in black suits with laser-beam-shooting wristwatches ready to take down anyone who goes after one of their kids?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Why not?” I flung my hand, smacking the car. “Do your bosses know what’s going on? Keira can’t just be out there somewhere, being tortured because of work my parents did, and no one gives a shit? What’s wrong with you people? What about the FBI? They think my parents were enemies of the state! If they weren’t, then tell them the truth, have them look for her—”
“We don’t deal with the FBI…”
“So make an exception!” I shouted, and the farmers working the vineyards below could probably hear me through the crackling thunder.
Luis pulled his keys from his pocket, looking officially annoyed. “I’ve said all I’m going to say.” He strutted toward the driver’s side.
“Are you nuts? You can’t leave!” I reached for his arm, but he brushed me off like a mosquito. “You said you were looking into my sister’s case, that whoever hired Craig is working in Rome. Do you have a name?”
“I don’t have anything more to share right now.”
“But your father practically insisted I come to Italy. You wanted me here, and I’m here. So help me find her.”
“I am helping you. Go to Rome.” He kept walking, and I stumbled behind, desperation tripping my every step.
“Who do I talk to in Rome? Where? Please! I’m sorry I didn’t realize how close you were to my family. I get it now.”
He never broke a stride, and I suddenly spied my laptop through the rain-splattered passenger window. “Wait! I have to get my bag!” I yelped, wiping my sopping bangs from my eyes. It was a lame stall tactic, but it was better than nothing.
He halted, pausing with his hand on the driver’s side handle. He didn’t look at me, but he didn’t object, either, so I darted toward the passenger side and flung open the door. I had to keep him talking. I reached onto the crumb-riddled floor, my arm dripping as I scooped up my bag, its olive-green strap swinging loosely, the silver buckle clanging against another piece of metal. It caught my eye—a tiny piece of gold.
For some reason, I reached for it. I wasn’t sure why; this wasn’t my car. Whatever was lost on that dirty tan floor mat had nothing to do with me.
Only, it did.
I stretched my arm until my fingers touched the delicate piece of jewelry, and I slowly lifted a feminine yellow gold ring. It was vintage, 1980s. A K initial ring with a white topaz stone in the top cursive loop of the K.
It was purchased from eBay. It was Keira’s birthstone. It was her twenty-first birthday present. From me.
Chapter Twenty
I couldn’t breathe. I pulled at the V neck of my stormy gray T-shirt like I’d opened the door to a sealed black car in Miami, and the heat was slapping my face. I gulped for oxygen.
Keira never took off this ring. It couldn’t come off. It had gotten too small for her knuckle, so she’d left it on her middle finger for more than two years. She showered with it, slept with it, swam with it. I loved that she wore it.
Now, here it sat. In Luis’s car. In Italy.
Only before I could shove the evidence into my pocket, Luis opened his door and glared across the seats at the jewelry in my hand like it might combust. “What do you have there?” His eyes were deadly.
“Nothing,” I croaked, my fingers wrapping around the ring.
“Give it to me.” He glowered at me through the car, both of us frozen like we were waiting for the other to make the next move. “Open. Your. Hand.”
I squeezed my fist tighter. “Where did you get this?”
“It’s mine.”
“No. It’s Keira’s. Why do you have it?”
“I told you we hung out. The ring fell off, and I picked it up. I was keeping it for her in case we found her.” He rose from the car and closed his door, then slowly inched his way toward me through a deluge of country rain.
I was standing on the edge of a cliff.
I rose gingerly and watched him pass the car’s hood; he was only a few feet away. “It fell off her finger?” I confirmed.
“Yeah, I don’t think she even realized she lost it.” He shook his head, raindrops splattering.
I gripped the car door like a shield, my vision blurred by rain. “That’s impossible. This ring couldn’t come off. It’s too small.”
Luis sprang. His fingers reached through the stormy air for my wrist as I swung the car door into his gut. He wheezed, hunching over, and I moved toward the trunk, my sneakers perilously skidding on the edge. Finally, I reached the rear of the car, away from the cliff, and scanned my surroundings. There was nowhere to go. A life-threatening drop loomed on one side, wooded nothingness on the other, and a deserted road in between.
I looked at the gold ring in my palm, the letter K now indented into my wet pink skin. Luis’s footsteps cut through the clattering drops as I maneuvered away from him, imagining all the sharp edges my body could crash against if I fell to the farmland below.
“That’s how you’re gonna play it? Ring around the rosie?” Luis mocked. “Just give me the ring.”
“What did you do to my sister?” I wanted to sound strong, but my voice cracked with fear—for myself or my sister, I wasn’t sure. “Was everything you said bullshit?”
“Actually, no. Everything I said was the truth—at least, it was from Keira’s point of view. If you asked her, it was how everything in Boston happened, right up until we took her. She was just too gullible to see it coming.”
He took her. He really took her.
I pictured Keira trapped in Luis’s car, in the same passenger seat where I’d been sitting, a gun pointed at her head, maybe Craig in the back seat, tears streaking her face, wounds all over her body. “Where is she? Is she still alive? Tell me!”
Luis stopped, snorting as if exasperated by my endless questions. Then he sighed, shaking his soaked hair. “Well, I guess we’re on to Plan B. So yes, your sister was alive and in Italy the last time I saw her.”
“Are you serious?” My breathing accelerated, adrenaline coursing through me. Keira was in Italy? Keira is alive! I could have jumped off the cliff in a round of summersaults. I felt like Superwoman. “Where is she? Is she okay?”
“I have no idea. I just transported her here.” We were now
both standing near the rear of the car, only the trunk separating us.
“How?”
“Private plane, fake passport, lots of sedatives. It’s one of my specialties.” He puffed his damp chest, seemingly proud, and I wanted to punch him. Actually, I wanted to do a lot worse than that. “Once I threatened your life, she was pretty compliant. It’s Craig you have to thank for the tub.”
“But…I-I thought you were CIA,” I sputtered, my mind spinning. “Why would the U.S. government want to kidnap my sister?”
“I never said I was CIA. I said I was in the same business as your parents.” His voice took on the quality of a cartoon villain, and I half expected a flock of bats to fly out of a nearby cave.
“What does that mean? I thought you were spies,” I asked in confusion, squinting through the unrelenting rain. Then it hit me—I didn’t care. Not really. Not about them. My parents were dead. Buried. Haunting us from the grave. They lied to us. They cost my sister everything from her medical career to her freedom. She was the one I needed to think about. She deserved my loyalty, my support, even if it took me too long to realize it. “You know what, forget my parents. Just tell me where my sister is.”
“Oh, sure, no problem.” He rolled his eyes, his right hand skimming the waist of his jeans, touching something hidden beneath the loose faded folds of his drenched button-down shirt. A gun. He probably had a gun.
Only I wasn’t scared. The observation oddly seemed to make my mind still, as if I were taking a final exam I’d prepared for all my life. I’d watched my parents in times of stress, moments of anger, and they never lost their tempers, they never let their emotions win. At once, all the panic left my body, and I was strangely confident as I steadied my voice to face him. “Luis, I won’t press charges. I promise. I won’t tell anyone you’re involved. People do crazy things all the time. Just tell me where she is, and this will all be over.”
He squinted through the rain, looking almost insulted that I thought it would be that easy.
“Can you at least tell me why you took her? What do you want? Maybe I can help you. Is that why you wanted me in Italy?”
“Ah, the big ‘why.’ Why did I drag you into this? Why Keira? What’s in it for me?” His dark eyes hardened, his deep whisper more frightening than a scream. “How about revenge for the uncle your parents had killed.”
I jolted. “Your uncle?” My voice sounded as baffled as my face must’ve looked.
“Yes. My Uncle Angelo,” he continued, “the dedicated police officer who worked with your parents for decades, who protected them, assisted them, and treated them like family. Only he obviously meant nothing to your parents. None of us did. The first time a mission went south, they bailed on him. They saved themselves and left my uncle to die alone in a gutter.”
“Luis, I don’t know anything about that.” I shook my head, rain spraying from my bangs.
“Of course you don’t! Because your parents treated you two like imbeciles. Doesn’t that bother you? They lied to you. They have no loyalty, not for their friends and certainly not for their family. They’d betray anyone. You should hate them. I do.” He started walking toward me once again, his boots kicking through puddles as I stood frozen, ignoring every neuron in my brain that told me to run. What good would it do? There was nowhere to go. If he had a gun, he clearly knew how to use it.
“We didn’t do anything to you,” I stated as I fingered the gold ring in my palm like a rosary, praying for divine intervention—this from a girl who’d been cursing God since the day her family died.
“Your parents did enough. And if I had my way, your sister would have died in that bathtub.” Rage filled his eyes.
“So you were there all along? Not just that night at the bar? You were working with Craig from the beginning?” I squeezed the ring tighter, and he paused, his jaw twitching.
“No, what I said was true. I hung out with Keira only that one night. I was a bit busy with…other matters.” His smile was smug, like he enjoyed being obtuse. “Craig was running point on Keira, and I handled cleanup. Didn’t you wonder why there wasn’t a drop of blood in the entire rest of your flat?”
Actually, I did. I’d pointed it out to the police, and it led to the ruling of “foul play,” though it never mattered. They still thought that she was dead and that the case was cold.
“That’s just it. Keira lost so much blood, the medical examiner ruled it a homicide. Is she really okay?” I held my breath.
Luis shifted toward me, his eyes gleefully full of answers. “Your sister was a nurse. She donated blood. It wasn’t too hard to covertly bank her donations for a private collection to be used later.”
“But she didn’t give blood that often. How long have you been planning this?”
“A lot longer than Cinco de Mayo.” He cocked his brow. “You’d be amazed at how many contingency plans we have in place.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what that meant, for either of us. So I focused on the positive—Keira was alive, the blood wasn’t from a wound, and she was possibly in Italy. “What about the DNA test? The ‘person’ who hired Craig in Rome? Did you make up all of that?”
“No, like I said, the DNA test is real. Your sister tried to run it, and that’s what drew our attention. She started this, in case you’re wondering. We were sent to Boston to stop her stupid investigation, to try to convince her your parents were engineers and stop her from inadvertently exposing decades’ worth of covert ops. But when that didn’t work, I was sent to the lab to intercept the results, only things went sideways. We had to change plans.”
“And those plans included kidnapping my sister?”
Luis inched closer, standing behind the latch of the trunk while I stood a few feet away beside the left rear tire, rain pounding off the metal. We both knew I couldn’t out-sprint a bullet. There were no cars to help me. Given how he was freely spewing answers, I was betting he didn’t expect me to be alive long enough to relay them. My only shot of getting out of here was somehow getting that gun.
“You should be grateful. The original plan wasn’t a kidnapping. We were hired to leave her body, make it look like a drunken slip in the shower. Accidents in the bathroom happen all the time. Your sister should be dead.”
Needles pierced the lining of my throat as I absorbed his words. They were familiar stabs, the same ones I felt when I spoke to police, went to that memorial, lay on my bed. Only this time I pictured Keira’s casket, not empty, but housing her body. I clenched the ring like a talisman. “But why? Keira didn’t learn anything. You said so yourself.”
“Just be happy Craig changed things at the spur of the moment. Honestly, I wish I could say more, because I’d love to see your face when you realize the type of people your parents really were. But know that this thing is huge, and we’re willing to take it pretty damn far, which does not bode well for either of you.”
They could still kill her, kill both of us. Who knows what they’d done to her already. I looked at his hand, still clutching a hidden gun in his sopping wet jeans. “What do you want? Because I’ll do it. We both will. Let me talk to your boss and work something out in exchange for Keira.”
“Sure, let me give you his cell.” He smirked sardonically.
“Look, I realize you think my parents did something horrible to your uncle, and maybe they did. Who the hell knows? But it has nothing to do with us. Luis, you have brothers. You know what I’m going through.” I tried to appeal to his humanity, but his pupils were ominous pits. So I switched tactics, my mind growing sharper as I considered the facts. “Fine. You took Keira, this is all part of some big master plan. Well, I’m guessing it’s not working, right? You’ve had her for months, and now you’re dragging me into it. Your father practically dared me to come here, so I think somebody wants something from me, specifically. Let’s get down to it. What do you want? Tell me what it’s gonna take to get Keira back.”
“Man, I so wish I could tell you!” He pumped his head, drops s
plashing as his eyes sparked to life, a toothy smile on his face like he was keeping the greatest secret in the world. It was the most excitement I’d seen from him all day, and I wanted to hurl his body off the cliff and watch it hit every rock. I’d never hated anyone more in my life—except maybe Craig the Psycho. I had a feeling the two of them would be tag-teaming my nightmares from now on.
Luis stepped toward me, his shoes splashing puddles on mine as he stood close enough to touch. “All I can say is you need to go to Rome. Your sister was getting help from someone. She’s not smart enough to come across all the information she had on her own, and we think the person helping her is in Rome.”
I gritted my teeth. Keira was smart enough to suspect my parents were spies while I lived obliviously. She was smart enough to leave her ring in a car for someone to find, for me to find. “If you think the guy’s in Rome, then go confront him yourself.”
“He won’t talk to us, and believe me, I’d love nothing more than to drag you there by your hair. But the higher-ups are convinced he’ll be more receptive to you. Alone.”
“Why? Who is it?”
“You’ll figure it out.”
“I’m just supposed to guess who my sister was talking to?” As far as I knew, Keira wasn’t friends with anyone in Italy. Though I was also unaware that she was dating a psycho and talking to Luis, so I probably wasn’t the most informed on her actions. I was the worst sister in the world. “You know, this is the third time you’ve brought up Rome.”
Luis’s eye twitched, and he swiped at it through the rain. First he said he wanted me to go to Rome to see who Craig was working for; then he said my parents were responsible for his uncle’s death, a Roman cop; now he was insisting there was someone there feeding my sister information.
“There’s a trap, isn’t there? You’ve got something planned? What’s in Rome, Luis?”
“You’ll have to find out. But can you think of another way to find Keira?”
They knew I wouldn’t leave my sister in captivity while I sat around hoping for the best. This setup practically had GPS coordinates and a warning label, and they correctly knew I’d still walk into it. “I could call the cops,” I blurted, my brain spinning through solutions. “Keira’s alive. You just admitted it. I’ll send a SWAT team to Rome to look for her.”
Proof of Lies (Anastasia Phoenix) Page 15