Deadly Memories

by Susan Vaughan

  “Exactly. The car-rental agency.” Jack handed her the phone. “Check if anybody came in asking about us.”

  She flipped over her map to find the phone number. When a woman answered, she began to explain in Italian. But the agent cut her off, blasting Sophie’s ear with a shrill narrative before she disconnected.

  “Whoa, what was that about?” Jack took the phone from Sophie’s hand.

  Her brain whirled from the woman’s hysteria. She blinked and tried to make sense of the jumble of words. “That was one of the rental agents.”

  “The woman. Her soprano aria nearly cracked the phone.”

  “She said that right after we left two men came in and asked about the Americans and where they went. Remember we asked about a back route? When her partner didn’t answer fast enough, they beat him. The police came, and the man’s in the hospital.” Tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, Jack, they hurt that poor agent because of us. Because of me.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Sophie. Vadim’s hit men beat the agent. You didn’t.”

  She blew her nose on a tissue from her bag. “The two men we didn’t know must’ve seen us enter the agency.”

  “And the timing explains how the ambushers got ahead of us. We bought food and had to move our luggage. We gave those dirtbags more than enough time to get in place.”

  “What do we—”

  “Shh,” Jack said, holding up a hand. “I hear engines.”

  Sophie pressed the damp tissue against her lips. She could barely hear the cars over her thundering heartbeat.

  The whine of the bike, like an oversize mosquito, registered first. Then the lower timbre of the small cars’ engines.

  They zipped past, a mini parade that came and went.

  A tidal wave of relief washed through her. She grabbed Jack’s hand and held on tight. “They didn’t stop. Maybe they didn’t see this road.”

  “If luck is with us, they think we’ve headed for the Autostrade or Siena.” He rubbed his thumb across the underside of her wrist.

  The rough pad abraded the sensitive skin, but she didn’t want him to stop. “What do we do now?”

  “We have a look at the end of this superhighway.” Grinning, he started the engine.

  But rather than roll ahead, the Fiat’s wheels thumped like a rabbit with a swollen foot.

  “Flat tire. They looked all right before,” Jack said, shifting to neutral and yanking on the emergency brake. “Maybe there’s a spare.”

  Sophie got out of the car with him to look. Scents of rich loam and wild herbs told of wooded seclusion. Overhead the sun played peekaboo among the branches of overhanging oak trees and pines.

  “Correction—tires, plural,” she said, pointing. Both rear rims sat on the ground with black rubber pooled beneath them. “Guess it took a while for them to deflate.”

  “Damn it, there won’t be two spare tires. We’re stuck here.” He scrubbed his chin and scowled at the dirt track that led deeper into the woods. “We have enough provisions in the cooler you convinced me to buy, thank you very much. Task-force emergency kit with blankets and a tarp are in the trunk. How do you feel about camping out at an Etruscan tomb?”

  So relieved to be safe—for now—and pleased to have with her the regular guy instead of the grim officer, Sophie felt as giddy as a five-year-old at a carnival. She flipped her braid over her shoulder. “Well, sir, that depends on the accommodations. And the company.”

  “You don’t suppose these tombs are haunted?”

  “I’d rather have Etruscan ghosts than Mafia hit men.”

  And she’d be alone with Jack in this leafy bower. Why did she have to be so aware of him?

  Her lost memory frustrated and terrified her. She was afraid for her life, but she trusted him to keep her safe. He was brave and caring and wounded.

  Or did her feelings for him rise from more than their situation? Did fear sensitize a person?

  She didn’t have a clue, but she did know that his every touch, his every look, aroused her. At first he’d built an invisible shield between them, but he’d gradually lowered that barrier so he touched her constantly.

  And she wanted more.

  They’d found safe harbor from Vadim’s thugs—just what’d she’d wanted. But was she safe from temptation?

  Which was frying pan and which was the fire?

  They transferred necessities into Sophie’s tote. Jack carried the emergency kit and the cooler, while Sophie trudged along with her tote. With the statuette in the bottom, the bag dragged on her right arm like an anvil, but no way was she leaving Santa Elisabetta behind.

  The track led uphill on deep twin ruts and ended abruptly at a whitewashed stone wall at least twenty feet high. New wooden stairs climbed about ten feet to three rectangular openings in the wall.

  There was a cleared space to the side. Only a wild cuckoo’s song broke the silence. A faded sign said Parcheggio—parking.

  “This clearing’ll do for a campsite,” Jack said, trying to sound cheerful. His mind still heard the fear in Sophie’s voice though she’d masked it with flip words.

  He’d begun their journey protecting a witness who could lead him to Sebastian Vadim. But Sophie hadn’t remained merely a witness to him. Saving her now had little to do with Jack’s main objective and everything to do with Sophie.

  She was vulnerable with a tough core and sexy with a natural naïveté, too intriguing a female for his well-being. Being with her slam-dunked him so he didn’t know up from down.

  A toxic mix of fear and desire churned in his stomach. He wanted this gig done, Sophie’s memory back, Vadim brought down. Where the hell was the slimy diamond smuggler?

  To Jack’s shock, he realized he’d hardly given a thought all day to the man he’d hunted for five long years. Add a shot of guilt and fury to the acidic cocktail. Damn it, he—

  A glance at Sophie beside him, pale with fear, brought him up short.

  Stuff it. Sophie needs reassurance.

  He turned to place a hand on her arm. Anxiety flickered in her beautiful brown eyes before she averted her gaze.

  The sensation of soft skin over firm flesh seeped into his hand and stirred his blood. “I hate like hell putting you through this. I’ve done a piss poor job of protecting you.”

  She threaded her fingers with his. “Oh, no, you’ve saved my life four times at least. Three times while we’ve been on the run, including today. And the day Vadim ran me down.”

  He cringed inwardly. She shouldn’t think of him as some sort of hero. A hero would’ve saved his family from a monster. “How do you know about that?”

  “Officer Leoni told me. He said you chased Vadim and shot at him or else he’d have run me over to make sure I was dead or shot me.” She smoothed her fingers across his scars.

  Sparks flared at her touch. He huffed a noncommittal reply, then said, “We all chased Vadim that day. Not just me.”

  “You were the first. Don’t deny it. I have confidence in you. I just can’t help being scared.”

  “Hey, I’m scared, too.” With sweat-damp curls framing her face and her clothes disheveled, she looked cuter and sexier than any woman should. He wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her again, but he’d violated the no-touch rule too many times already.

  She gave him a limp smile. Sadness swam in her luminescent eyes. “You’re my rock, Jack, the one solid reality in my Swiss-cheese world. I have these big holes in my memory. Sometimes I feel like I’m walking in a barren desert, nothing for miles around me. Occasional mirages shimmer in front of me, but I can’t make sense of them or connect them. You’re the only support I have to keep me from running off screaming. I feel safe with you.”

  Touched more deeply than he dared let on, he swallowed. He lifted their joined hands and kissed hers. “I’m trying my damnedest to deserve your confidence, lady. Now let’s go see what’s in those tombs.”

  Only skeletons of spiders and scorpions. And living ones that skittered away from the flashl
ight’s beam. That was all that remained in those tombs.

  Sophie shuddered, glad to be sitting beneath the stars that night instead of beneath the rectangular carved-stone ceiling of an Etruscan tomb. They’d spread blankets on the grass at the clearing’s edge, and Jack had strung the green tarp overhead to keep off the dew.

  The musty stone crypts were interesting, but less than the one-star accommodations of their makeshift camp. The three tombs were room-size, in cross shapes, with benches carved from the curving walls. The guidebook said that the benches had held the urns of ashes. Tombs on the regular tourist circuit still possessed frescoes and carvings, and later ones had sarcophagi, but these had only bare stone walls.

  Cold stone walls, she remembered. The June night was blessedly cooler than the day but not cold. After a sponge bath in a freshwater spring behind the tombs, she’d donned slacks and Jack’s sweatshirt for warmth and her sling for support, since she would be sleeping on the ground.

  If she slept.

  At every rustle in the ivy-draped blackberry bushes beside her she jumped, fearing Vadim’s hired hit men had found them. Her awareness of Jack didn’t relax her either.

  He sat on a boulder far enough away to talk privately on his phone, a secure satellite phone—a sat phone, he’d called it. Apparently he meant to stay secure from her as well as from anyone else. She couldn’t help feeling a twinge or two at his not trusting her, but she understood.

  He’d shared something at least, she consoled herself. He’d failed to reach his assistant director and then called another colleague Stateside. She watched his expression and hoped for clues to what he was hearing. Did the task force find Vadim? Did they plug the information leak? If only.

  He jabbed fingers through his short hair. The gesture of barely controlled anger was her only clue. Otherwise, his erect posture and his stone face, limned with shadows in the fading light, revealed nothing more than rapt attention.

  Patience, Sophia Constanza. Jack would tell her what he could afterward. And she had things to tell him. Rummaging in the cooler, which had escaped bullet holes, she organized a picnic supper.

  “Why have the idiots not eliminated them and brought me the package?” Sebastian Vadim’s bellow blasted his new so-called assistant up against the drawing room wall. “Why am I surrounded by incompetents?”

  The Sicilian don had sent this man, saying he would be totally loyal to his employer. He’d better be. His name was Ugo, which meant intelligent—a mother’s futile wish, Vadim supposed, for the man was anything but.

  Vadim didn’t have access to all his funds, courtesy of Interpol and the Italian polizia. His mouth tightened at the thought. Ah, well, he would permit Ugo to remain, to please the don, but one man couldn’t perform mundane chores such as going to the market as well as protection and…other duties. Vadim would have to dip deeper into a bank account the officials didn’t suspect.

  He deposited his shopping bag on a table. “Answer me, Ugo,” he continued in Italian.

  “Peggio così, signore,” Ugo said. Unfortunate.

  He was a squat man with square hands that hung loosely at his sides at the moment. Except for a wry mouth, everything about him was square—square chin, square shoulders, a flattened brush of brown hair. “Tomasso will find them. The don has contacts between Firenze and Siena. You will see.”

  Vadim flopped into an armchair. There were too many shadows in this gloomy room. He turned on the table lamp. “Tell him they must split up and canvass every small town that has an inn or even one or two rooms for tourists.”

  “Sì, signore.” Ugo started to leave, but turned back. “There is one more item, signore. A man came to the door. He said his name was Pucetti.”

  Vadim sat at attention. Pucetti was the artisan who had secured the uranium tube inside the statuette. Did he want more money, the greedy bastard? “What did he want?”

  Ugo frowned, the effort required to remember the visitor’s purpose apparently monumental. Then his thin seam of a mouth widened in a grin. “Ah, he left a message. Un minuto.”

  Vadim tapped all ten fingers on the chair arms while he watched this worthless man search the pockets of his scarred leather vest, the pockets of his yellowing dress shirt and the pockets of his shapeless brown trousers.

  Ugo held up a white sheet of paper folded in quarters. “See?” He crossed to hand the paper to his employer. “He did not trust me to relay the message. You were not here, so he wrote it down.”

  Vadim accepted the paper and laid it on his lap. This man should not witness any reaction he might have to the message. He would read it in private.

  “You are dismissed. Take the bread and cheese to the kitchen as you go.” He waved a hand in the general direction of the shopping bag.

  After Ugo departed, Vadim unfolded Pucetti’s note.

  I beg your pardon, but I must convey bad news. I entrusted some of the work on your package to my assistant. He is my nephew, my sister’s son, and you know how that is. He mixed the wrong sealant for the base. And I am not certain about the lead casing. It may not hold such heavy—

  Vadim crushed the paper in his hands. He leaped to his feet. “The seal will not hold?” Various scenarios played in his head, all of them disastrous.

  Ah, but perhaps he’d read the words too hastily or Pucetti’s poor handwriting had misled him. He smoothed out the paper and peered at the inked scrawl.

  He sank into the chair again. No mistake. A weak seal on the lead casing could permit contamination. The rest of the note rambled on with apologies and an offer of a refund.

  He crumpled the note again. Refund? Dak, Ugo would bring a refund in person.

  But not the refund Pucetti had in mind.

  What should he do about the weak seal? He couldn’t tell the men searching for the marble figure or they would quit. How long would the seal hold? Had it already loosened?

  Since this quest began, he’d read about radiation. Without direct contact, the danger was less. But handle the deadly genie, let it out of the bottle, and… He shuddered, remembering all too well what had befallen Dobrich.

  If the genie remained in the bottle, all might be well.

  Perhaps not for the others. He smiled. Not for that irritant Thorne. And not for poor Sophie. Ah, such a waste.

  But he, Sebastian Vadim, would be ready with protection.

  “This better be good. I was about to break for lunch. Hey, Thorne, too much vino and rigatoni send you home early from your task-force junket?”

  Jack closed his eyes in relief that he’d reached someone he could trust. “I’m still in Italy. I need your help, Byrne.”

  There was a pause during which Jack pictured the officer picking himself up off the floor.

  He and ATSA Officer Simon Byrne weren’t friends. Jack barely tolerated the other man’s iconoclastic and cocky demeanor and he figured Byrne felt the same about him. On the recent mission Jack had headed in the Caribbean, Byrne had proved invaluable. Jack knew him to be scrupulously honest and straightforward.

  Finally Byrne spoke. “Shoot.”

  Byrne emitted only grunts of acknowledgment as Jack explained his situation. “If I rent another car or find us a safe house, I risk exposure again. Vadim could track us by my credit card.” Which was nearly maxed out. “I can’t contact anyone in the task force until the damned leak is plugged. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Sophie safe.”

  A long, low whistle pierced Jack’s ear. “Sophie, huh? Sounds like this deal’s not just professional.”

  Jack gritted his teeth. Yeah, in more ways than one. “Will you help me or not?”

  “Man, when you need help, you don’t mess around. Roger. The car and the safe house are as good as done.”

  “Can you reach the AD or get on the leak somehow?”

  “Not the AD. The mystery man is underground on some top-secret op. I got the task force on my screen. Their files are encrypted, need-to-know basis only.”

  “So I’m sunk.”

 
“Not yet, ol’ buddy. My personal tech goddess is right here. I might have to sweet-talk her into cracking their code. I’m putting you on hold.”

  The receiver hummed, and Jack thrust tense fingers through his hair. He hated counting on long-distance help, but had no choice. If anybody could penetrate the task force computers, Byrne’s tech-officer fiancée was the one.

  Personally Jack couldn’t see the two making it—Janna the straight arrow and Byrne the rebel—but they seemed happy. Opposites attract—like him and Sophie. But that was sure going nowhere.

  “Okay, Thorne, I had to promise—hell, you don’t want to know what I had to promise—but Janna’s gotten us in. Recent report here says Vadim’s still at large, but they’ve narrowed the search to northern Italy.”

  Thank God the bastard hadn’t left the country. “Copy that. What else?”

  “Figuring out who’s shipping info to Vadim’ll take time. I’ll have to get back to you.”

  “Negative on that. If you find out, it’s better if you inform Matt Leoni. He’ll clean house. Search for mention of my name, maybe on the road protecting our witness. That might lead you to the leak.”

  There was a long pause, then muffled sounds like a hand over the receiver. “Um, Thorne, is there something you haven’t told me?”

  Suspicion grabbed Jack in the gut. What was going on? “Negative. What’s up?”

  “They’ve alerted the Italian police to bring you in, by force if necessary.” Byrne’s tone had shifted from jovial to suspicious. “Report says you’ve gone rogue.”

  Jagged-edged fear and anger raked Jack’s chest and squeezed his throat. He wanted to toss the phone into the bushes and Byrne with it. “What the hell? Just because I haven’t checked in?”

  “In three days. Yeah, that’s part of it. Wait a minute. Here’s more. De Carlo dug into your background. Who’s he?”

  “The task-force CO, an Italian commissario.” Jack’s chest ached with dread. The control officer hadn’t wanted Jack on the team from the day he’d saved Sophie. “Go on.”