Deadly Memories

by Susan Vaughan

  “Ugo won’t be taking orders for a while.” A man dressed in black stepped out of the darkened dining room and crossed the hall on silent feet. He held a pistol aimed at Vadim’s heart. “He and his buddy are napping.”

  At the sound of the voice, Sophie’s pulse leaped. “Jack!” Then her heart slammed up into her throat. What was going on?

  “You!” Vadim yanked Sophie upward by her left arm.

  The force shot shards of pain radiating from her sore shoulder. She gasped, then clamped her lips against her weakness.

  He held her against his side with a firm grip. In his left hand Vadim, too, held a pistol.

  He jammed the cold steel against her jaw.

  Jack’s eyes narrowed to slits of blue lasered at Vadim. Here was the hard-eyed, grim-faced man Sophie had first met. He flicked a glance toward her, then back. “You slime, you’ll pay for hurting her.”

  Oh, don’t let this escalate because of me.

  Vadim’s hand trapped her left arm, but her right was free. She started to touch her bruised cheek, but the pistol jabbed her neck again, and she let the hand fall. “He hit me only once. I’m okay. Jack—”

  “She’s a delicate creature,” Vadim interrupted. “I waited so her brave protector could witness her pain.” When Jack took a step forward, he edged away. Sophie’s hip bumped against the side table.

  “Let her go. This has nothing to do with Sophie. It’s between you and me.”

  “Absolutely. And she is between you and me.” No mistaking the deadly humor in his voice.

  Bravado. Sweat streamed down Vadim’s neck, soaking his shirt and stinking of fear. He was used to hired help doing the dirty work.

  One wrong move and he would shoot Jack, then her. Her heart stuttered and her legs could barely hold her.

  Jack shook his head, and one amber brow arched. “What are you getting at?”

  “Your damned search for me caused me to keep on the move, to change names over and over. Too many times. You hurt my enterprises, as you did before. But no longer.”

  Surprise flashed in Jack’s eyes that his pursuit had been more than a blip on his target’s radar.

  Sophie dug deep within her for courage. She had to do something. Create an opening for Jack.

  Not daring to move her head, she cut a glance at the side table. Vadim had moved them even with the saint figure.

  That was her chance.

  If she could only reach it.

  “If you let her go, you can walk away,” Jack said. “She means nothing to you.”

  “Ah, but she means more to you than I realized. Alas, without my assistants to restrain you, I must forgo watching you suffer as she dies. I shall simply kill her. Then you.”

  Sophie bit her lower lip. If she reached for it, Vadim would feel her movement.

  Did Jack notice? Did he see what she wanted to do?

  His harsh expression didn’t change except for a fine tightening of the skin across his cheekbones. “Not likely. Shoot her and you die. I may go down, but I’ll take you with me. Let her go. Then it’s just us.”

  “A duel? Or a cowboy gunfight? Not likely.” He sneered as he aped his opponent. “I prefer the odds the way they are.”

  Intent on taunting Jack, Vadim allowed his pistol to drop an inch. Then another.

  Sophie prepared herself for the pain, but she had to make her move. She twisted against Vadim’s iron grip. “You’ll never get away. They’ll hunt you down like the scum you are.”

  “Silence, bitch!” His fingers bit into her skin. He jerked her arm upward as though knowing the exact motion to trigger agony.

  Jagged lances ripped into her shoulder. Sophie cried out in spite of herself.

  “Sophie!” Jack took a step forward, his face twisted in a mirror of her pain.

  Shoving her against the table, Vadim kept possession of her arm. He raised the pistol at Jack. “Do not move, Thorne. Or you will die first.”

  Burning spasms radiated from her shoulder, and she bit down hard on her lower lip. No, she wouldn’t cry. Nothing to attract his attention. The taste of blood and terror bloomed coppery in her mouth.

  Concentrate, Sophia Constanza, concentrate.

  Bending over in pain, she curved her body over the statuette. Her fingers brushed cool marble.

  Could she pick it up one-handed? She had to. There was no other choice.

  “Vadim, you’re finished.” Jack’s voice was low and icy, deadly in its calm. “You have no nuke, no hideaways and no assets. Ah, you do have one thing—a terrorist who wants your blood for reneging on a deal. You can’t get away.”

  “I escaped before and I will again. You are a fool.” Vadim’s pistol angled down an inch. He was paying no attention to Sophie.

  Her heart thumped wildly against her ribs. She closed her fingers around the saint’s waist. Forgive me, Saint Whoever.

  With all her strength she swung the statuette. Marble connected with metal and flesh in a resounding thunk.

  The pistol flew away into a corner. The marble figure crashed to the floor and broke in two.

  A shrieking Vadim clutched his hand.

  Freed, Sophie sank to her knees.

  Jack drove his shoulder into Vadim’s gut. They fell to the carpet together.

  Vadim aimed a punch, but Jack deflected it.

  He slammed his pistol butt on the damaged left hand.

  Vadim howled. He collapsed.

  At last, Jack exulted in his triumph. He had the killer where he wanted him. Sophie was safe. The clawed beast inside him would be appeased. He nearly roared.

  He propped his knee on Vadim’s right arm and jabbed the pistol under his jaw, exactly as his enemy had done to Sophie. “Wrong, Vadim. There is no escape for you. Not even in death. You killed my family. Your damned uranium would’ve killed thousands. The devil has a special place in hell for you.”

  Sweat rolled off the older man. His face blanched paler than his bleached hair. He cradled his mangled hand on his chest. The knuckles were torn and bloody. Two fingers bent at impossible angles. “Get it over with then.”

  Where was Leoni? Why didn’t the task force come in? Did Vadim have men outside they didn’t know about? Jack shoved aside the possibilities. He focused on the defeated man.

  “Jack, no, this is wrong.” In his peripheral vision he saw Sophie’s wan face as she edged closer. Tears trickled down her purpling cheek.

  He kept his eyes on Vadim. “Sophie, stay back. He’s still dangerous. You know I have to kill him.”

  She crouched beside the abandoned wing chair, cradling her reinjured arm against her side. “You don’t. Revenge will dishonor your son’s memory. It won’t bring him back. Would he have wanted you to throw away your life?”

  He didn’t know. Why had he never asked himself? He’d aimed for his son’s murderer for five years. How could he abandon his goal? The urge to weep and scream filled his chest. “There’s nothing else. I’ve lived only to find Vadim and kill him.”

  He heard her draw a deep breath. “You have more than you know to live for. Live for me. I love you.”

  She loved him. A giddy sense of euphoria welled up in his chest. But he couldn’t let emotion dull the deadly ray of hatred. “He has to die. He killed my family. He would’ve killed you.”

  “I want a life with you, not painful memories scarring my heart. If you kill Vadim, you’re only perpetuating the pain by passing it on to me. Let the task force have Vadim. You came for me. That tells me you care for me.”

  He couldn’t deny his feelings. Until he had his gun at his enemy’s head, he’d focused on saving Sophie. Only on Sophie. Revenge for his family had flown from his thoughts.

  “Choose life, Jack. Choose life.”

  Life. Life with Sophie. This amazing woman he loved. And he did love her. She was his passion, his friend, his better nature. She loved him.

  Was it possible? Could he?

  The task force would see that Vadim was tried and convicted. He wouldn’t go free. Ev
er. “How do you feel about a life sentence in an Italian prison, Vadim? Stone walls and bars. A kind of hell for a man like you.”

  Vadim glared back in silence.

  Jack saw that his search for revenge rose from his own grief and guilt, not from what his family would’ve wanted. Perhaps saving Sophie and stopping Vadim from selling death meant more than revenge.

  Jack turned his gaze toward her. The pleading in her eyes made his heart knock like a clogged engine.

  Vadim erupted from his grip. A slender blade flashed in his damaged hand.

  Pain like a flaming torch ripped into Jack, and he fell backward. He looked down for the source of the pain.

  A knife hilt stuck out of his chest. “No!”

  Sophie screamed.

  On his feet now, Vadim held Jack’s Glock. He backed against the wall. Three feet to the right was a door to a small patio. “Still think I can’t escape?”

  Jack’s hand hovered over the hilt. Vadim must’ve had the knife inside his jacket. Blood seeped from around the wound. That could wait. He had to stop Vadim.

  He bent on his side as if to protect himself. He flipped open the jumpsuit leg pocket and curled his hand around the confiscated Beretta.

  Where the hell were Leoni and the cavalry?

  “Jack, oh, Jack!” Sophie began crawling toward him.

  “No. Stay…there. Safer.” His voice was a frog imitation. He could barely breathe for the invisible SUV on his chest.

  Clicking off the safety, he slid out the Beretta.

  Vadim edged along the wall until Sophie came into his view where she huddled by the chair. “Thorne, you’re dying, but you’ll live long enough to see I keep my promises.”

  He raised the automatic, pointed it at Sophie.

  Jack fired.

  Gun bursts echoed like a hundred weapons exploding in unison.

  Vadim jerked like a mad puppet. He slid to the floor. The Glock clattered from his lifeless fingers. A trail of blood smeared the wall behind him.

  Doors slammed. Shoes scraped on the tile floor. Voices barked orders.

  Jack had no strength to hold the Beretta. He let it fall.

  Sophie, where was Sophie?

  He wanted to tell her…he had to tell her… But blackness overtook him.

  Chapter 18

  “So that’s it,” Leoni said. “Uranium’s secured. Vadim’s dead. Everything’s wrapped up. Unlike you. I figured you’d be packaged and bound up like an old pharaoh.” He dipped a mock bow at Jack’s small chest bandage.

  “No mummy. I’m supposed to breathe deep and cough. Hurts like hell.” Like a stone slab from an Etruscan tomb weighted his chest, but not enough pain for more morphine.

  Damn tubes and monitors wrapped the bed in spider strands. Oxygen tubes up his nose. More tubes in his arm. Even one in his chest. Freaking blinking lights all around.

  Apparently they’d rushed him unconscious and barely breathing to Careggi Hospital in Florence. He’d spent yesterday in surgery or drifting in a morphine haze.

  Never mind that De Carlo had pulled strings, paid—what was it?—bustarelle to arrange all the comforts. The private room reeked of disinfectant and felt like a prison.

  He itched to get out. Now.

  Where was Sophie? Why didn’t she come to see him? Had she gone back to the States already?

  What she’d said, was it only an expedient lie?

  His breath hitched with a sharp pain—an Etruscan ghost stomping on the stone slab.

  Blood loss from the stabbing had been minimized because he’d left the knife in, but the blade had punctured one lung.

  When his breathing evened and the pain ebbed, he said, “The two Mafia bodyguards, what about them?”

  “Ugo’s the weak link. Not the smoothest tenor in the opera, but he’s singing. De Carlo’s strutting like a rooster about getting the goods on one of the big dons.”

  Jack smiled. “Maybe the Italian government’s anti-Mafia agency will give him a medal.”

  “I’m glad I’m outta here. If that happens, there’ll be no living with the guy. ATSA’s sending me to London to advise the Scotland Yard Anti-Terror Squad on rolling up Ahmed Saqr. I don’t get why they want me, but orders are orders.”

  “Sounds good.” Jack extended his hand, but he couldn’t reach far with all the damn tubes. “Thanks for giving me a chance back there.”

  Leoni had told him that he’d delayed bringing in the others until he could be sure Sophie was out of the line of fire and until Jack had time to confront his enemy.

  As backup, a sniper had kept his rifle aimed at Vadim’s heart from the moment Jack had entered the house. When Jack had fired at Vadim, so had the sniper and three other officers.

  “No prob, big guy. I was counting on Sophie’s powers of persuasion. But you, I wasn’t so sure of.” He clasped Jack’s hand. “So when can you go home?”

  The big question. “Today, if I had any say. But Doc says my lung has to heal some before I can fly.” He’d said a lot more than that but agreed that Jack would be good to go in a week, barring complications.

  “Okay, then. I have a flight to catch. Do what those pretty nurses tell you.” With a mock salute, Leoni left him.

  Barring complications. Major irony there. He pondered the biggest complication of all.

  Sophie.

  Yeah, she’d taught him that justice could be served without vengeance. Vadim had created his own undoing. He’d died in a hail of bullets, only one of them Jack’s.

  She’d taught him other things, too. In this bed, trussed up like Gulliver, he had lots of time to think about them.

  And about her.

  She’d slipped into his heart and soul like sunshine burning away the clouds. He needed her in his life if he was to have any kind of a life at all.

  Where the hell was Sophie?

  Heart fluttering like a flag in a windstorm, Sophie hesitated at the door to Jack’s room. She smoothed her knit top and straightened her skirt, her favorite flowered one. Thank goodness she had her clothes back.

  Was she ready for this?

  You can do it, Sophia Constanza Elena Rinaldi.

  On that self-cheer, she pushed open the door. She managed to pull her lips into a smile.

  “The nurse said it was okay to come in.” She stepped inside and let the door swish shut behind her.

  A machine beside the bed bubbled as fluid from Jack’s chest drained into it.

  The nurse had warned her, but seeing Jack was something else again. At the sight of his bare bandaged chest and the blinking monitors, she nearly burst into tears.

  Jack pushed himself more upright on his stack of pillows. The exertion must’ve cost him, because he immediately grimaced as though he’d been stabbed again. “Sophie, you came.”

  “Of course I came. I just had to wait until the task force finished interviewing me. They had more questions than Alex Trebek asks on a year of Jeopardy!”

  She kept her tone light but let her gaze drink him in. Oh, God, he’d been hurt so badly. His wide shoulders and long legs were too big for the bed, and he looked too pale beneath the amber stubble on his chin. All those tubes and monitors, much more than she’d needed.

  She felt her forehead crinkle and deliberately smoothed her features.

  Her gaze tangled in his. The contradictory anxiety and relief that she glimpsed in his usually shuttered gaze fueled her resolve. “Are you in a lot of pain?”

  “Only when I breathe.”

  “Jackson Thorne making a joke? You must be delirious.”

  “Delirious to see you. Or maybe it’s the morphine,” he said. “De Carlo wasn’t too hard on you?”

  She shook her head, and her hair skimmed her shoulders. To her satisfaction, his eyes followed the movement and swept down to her breasts.

  He’ll be all right. “Matt kept him from using thumbscrews.”

  “Matt?”

  “Leoni. He’s been very sweet.”

  Jack frowned. His gaze sharpened, then s
lammed into a formidable glare.

  Was he jealous? The notion lapped anticipation higher within her. There was hope yet that he loved her.

  But he wasn’t ready to admit anything. She could see him blanking his expression already. He didn’t want her to see his feelings, so he would change the subject.

  He cleared his throat. “The uranium was secure. The seals were soft but leaking minimal. No more than an X-ray, the technician said.”

  She hoped that her smile wasn’t too cat-in-cream smug. “Matt told me. They found my luggage in Vadim’s house in Venice, too. Everything was there, including my camera and addresses of my cousins here in Florence. I don’t have to wear his clothes anymore. I have my own.”

  “You look great.”

  He didn’t. Sweat beaded his forehead. Pain or nerves? “Thanks. Kind of ironic. The first time we met, you came to see me in the hospital.”

  She approached the bed and placed her hand in his.

  He linked their fingers together. His avid gaze beamed his hunger for her as he browsed from her hair—a mess from the wind—to her mouth and lower. To her arm. “The sling. Vadim hurt you?”

  She smoothed a hand over her bound shoulder. “I wrenched it a little when I whacked him with the marble statuette. Guess it wasn’t totally healed.”

  “You slugged him a good one. A little practice and the Nationals’ll recruit you. But I’m sorry about the saint.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She wasn’t real, and I don’t need her anymore.”

  “You saved our lives. I saw you try for the figure, but I didn’t expect it to work. My hat’s off to you. Mind-blowing courage, Sophie.”

  She grinned. “I was so scared I thought I’d faint. Where the nerve came from to swing that saint, I have no idea.” A blush heated her cheeks as she remembered mining for courage. “When he stabbed you, it was horrible. With a dagger in your chest, you shot him. You were the brave one.”

  “I couldn’t let him shoot you. Forget him. We’re a hell of a pair, all bound up like this.” Did his voice sound too desperate?

  Jack wanted them to be a pair, but she was keeping it light. To avoid talking about her saying that she loved him? His stomach clenched.