Trusting a Stranger

by Kimberley Brown

  But Ethan said nothing. He fastened Katy back into her booster seat and crossed to the driver’s door.

  Katy looked up at Hayley. ‘You have water in your eye,’ she noticed. ‘Have you been crying?’

  Hayley touched her eye with her fingertips. ‘I don’t cry,’ she said.

  Ethan opened his door, looking across at her. Hayley didn’t like this kind of attention.

  ‘You sure you don’t want me to take over driving for a while?’ she asked.

  Ethan shook his head. ‘I’m sure that today I’d be a lousy passenger,’ he said.

  Hayley looked around them for other diners returning to their cars, for cars following them onto the road. There was a group of teenagers with loud voices whose car had been left with its window down and was soon blaring out very loud music. There was a family that seemed to have about six children, all pouring into a car that was far too small. There was an elderly man whose hesitation in crossing the car park suggested alarming things about his driving skill, and his even older, frail-looking wife.

  ‘No one I can see looks like they’d be tailing us,’ Hayley observed.

  Ethan checked Katy over his shoulder as he reversed out of the spot.

  ‘They won’t all be as obvious as those goons we saw earlier,’ he said.

  When they were out on the road, Ethan pulled his new mobile phone out of his pocket and passed it to Hayley.

  ‘There’s a hands-free kit at your feet,’ he said. ‘Would you plug it in for me and dial Pearl for me?’

  ‘Do you know her number?’

  ‘She has my phone,’ Ethan reminded her.

  He checked that Hayley had plugged the headset in properly and pushed the buds into his ears as Hayley pressed the buttons he called.

  Hayley watched as he waited for the phone to be answered. He had asked Pearl not to sell his phone. She had been horrified at the time that a brother could even think his gift might be used like that. But then, she had never had a brother. And Pearl had an addiction that needed feeding.

  Ethan had so few people in his life. Hayley hoped against hope that his sister wouldn’t let him down again.

  ‘Hello? Pearl?’ asked Ethan, eventually.

  From her seat all Hayley could make out was a voice. But it was a female one. Hayley sighed in relief.

  ‘How are you?’ Ethan asked. ‘Yes, I know it’s very hard… Can I tell you where I’m going…? Of course I haven’t always distrusted you, Pearl. Things haven’t exactly been clear over the past little while, have they?’

  Ethan was silent for a long moment that seemed to be echoed on the other end of the phone line. Then Hayley heard the faint sound of distance sobs. Pearl obviously had no difficulty shedding tears.

  ‘Oh, Pearl, don’t be like that,’ Ethan said. Hayley could tell from the whitening of his hands on the steering wheel that he was gripping it very tightly. That he was moved. ‘I know how hard drying out can be. No, I’m not going to tell you where I am. But I’ll tell you this: get to my place, get there on your own, no wires, no drugs, no funny business, and I’ll make sure someone lets you in and makes sure you have everything you need. Deal?’

  The crying seemed to change in intensity. Pearl murmured a few more sentences then Ethan said goodbye and pressed the headset button that would disconnect the call.

  ‘I wish I had a brother like you,’ said Hayley, looking at him admiringly.

  ‘I don’t think Pearly quite sees it that way.’ Ethan stared out the window. He had not relaxed his grip even when the phone call seemed to have reached a satisfactory conclusion.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Hayley.

  ‘She’s the older sibling,’ Ethan told her. ‘Older by quite a few years. It must have seemed to her that the MacDonald money was going to be hers until I came along.’

  ‘I see.’ Hayley looked down at her fingernails. At the moment they were running from Tomasi but their immediate goal would not always be so obvious. In the future, Ethan would need to know who he could trust. So it seemed imperative that they work out who had betrayed him this time.

  ‘Do you think she might have resented that enough to sell your secrets?’ she asked.

  ‘The truth is, with Pearl it’s seemed anything’s possible,’ Ethan said. ‘It’s not her; it’s the drugs. If she had inherited the family money, she would have injected it all by now. Would you mind dialling another number?’

  ***

  As he recited his boss’s phone number, Ethan considered how useful it was to have Hayley with him. There were so many things that a man couldn’t do properly on his own. How strange that he had never really considered this before.

  Ryan would be surprised to receive a phone call at his secret number from an unauthorised source but Ethan had taken care to ensure his new phone could not be linked to him, and thought he was on fairly safe ground.

  He continued to check behind him as the phone rang in his ears. It had been some hours now since he had last seen one of Tomasi’s men. This made him nervous if anything. Tomasi had to be planning something, and the more it became one thing that he was relying on, the bigger that one thing was likely to be.

  There was no answer on Ryan’s phone.

  Ethan slapped the steering wheel in frustration. The phone number he had tried to ring was one that only their investigating team knew. It was one that should be answered if one of them rang, day or night.

  Why hadn’t Ryan answered it?

  There was any number of reasons, of course. Ryan might have programmed a setting to his phone that meant only calls from the numbers he knew received a must-answer ring. He certainly wouldn’t know that it was Ethan calling, let alone that the matter was urgent.

  He might even be in the shower. It could be as simple as that. What Ethan had to do was wait for a return phone call and drive. And drive.

  ‘Are we there yet?’ asked Katy from the back seat.

  Hayley stirred beside him. With the sunlight pouring in through the passenger window, she had dozed off. She turned to Ethan, her eyebrows sleepily raised with a curiosity that matched Katy’s.

  ‘Not too long now,’ Ethan promised. ‘Half an hour or so and we should be in sight of Siena.’

  It was what was going to happen between now and then that he wasn’t sure of. There were still no signs of Tomasi’s men, although Tomasi must be out there.

  He reached the end of the Autostrada and made the turn off towards home. Ten minutes later, the first shot rang out.

  Chapter Twelve

  Hayley span in her seat as the car veered out on the road. Hayley clutched at her camera case. Who could be shooting a rifle in a place like this? They were surrounded by other vehicles! And they had Katy in the car!

  Ethan swore under his breath and turned suddenly.

  ‘Katy, you okay?’ he asked.

  Hayley turned to check, too. Katy had her headphones in. She did not seem to have heard the shot, but she had felt the sudden veering of the car. In response, she had dropped her game console to the floor and was clinging onto the side of her booster seat. Her face was white, her mouth a wide, dry line.

  There was another shot.

  ‘Wind your window down,’ Ethan instructed.

  Hayley gazed at him until he felt her confusion. Right now, that window was the only thing between her and the outside world that suddenly seemed very dangerous.

  ‘A bullet will get through anyway,’ he said. ‘We don’t also want to have to deal with broken glass.’

  There was another shot. With her window down, this time Hayley could hear that it was accompanied by the sound of yelling. Someone, somewhere, was being told off, very emphatically.

  Ethan smiled grimly.

  ‘What do you think is going on?’ Hayley asked.

  ‘One of Tomasi’s men got a bit trigger happy,’ Ethan said. ‘We’re going to be okay, Katy. That will be an end to it.’

  There was another gunshot as he spoke, but this one was dim and distant.

  ‘To
masi won’t want the car in danger while we’ve got you, Katy,’ Ethan continued. ‘He’ll be furious at whoever started that.’

  Then he looked at Hayley. ‘That will be the random shooter sorted.’

  ‘You mean…’ Hayley asked, barely able to believe that someone had been murdered some place that was close enough for them to hear it.

  Ethan nodded grimly.

  ‘You know, there’s something I don’t understand,’ Hayley said. ‘Ivan was working with Tomasi, right?’

  ‘He must have been. There’s no other explanation.’

  ‘But he already had Katy. Why did he send us down to Naples?’

  ‘Because he wanted to keep Katy,’ Ethan said. ‘He knows I’d never let that happen.’ They were on a straight stretch of road. He turned to her for a moment. ‘I never would let it happen, Hayley. That’s just one more reason for Tomasi to want me dead.’

  ‘I still don’t understand what Ivan had to do with it.’

  ‘He was to be the assassin. Tomasi would be far away and have a watertight alibi.’

  ‘But why not keep Katy with him?’

  ‘We weren’t meant to find her at that house,’ Ethan said. ‘Though I’m certain that we were meant to find her somewhere. She was the bait in the trap.’

  ‘She could have seen you being killed. I can’t believe that her uncle would want her to witness something as terrible as that.’

  ‘That’s because you can’t understand the way his mind works. Of course you can’t. Alvaro Tomasi is a wicked and evil man. But maybe the rest of his family will be different.’

  ‘They were willing to use us as pawns.’

  ‘I know. It’s not promising. But there’s still a chance.’

  ‘What sort of chance?’

  ‘We’ll, we don’t know for sure that Primo Tomasi actually wants us dead.’

  ‘It sure feels like that’s what he wants.’

  ‘I’m not pretending he cares,’ Ethan agreed. ‘I’m just saying… I’m not sure he actually wants us dead. That might just be Alvaro. But I’m sure Primo wants Alvaro dead.’

  ‘That’s our chance, then. If we defeat Alvaro, Primo could think we’ve done him a favour.’

  ‘It’s a chance.’

  ‘There is no possible peace to make with Alvaro?’

  ‘He wants Katy. He wants to bring her up in the ways of the Tomasi family. I can never let that happen.’

  Hayley nodded. ‘I know. He was happy for Katy to see you being killed!’

  ‘I believe so. Yes.’

  ‘But she would hate him for it.’

  ‘She would never even blame him for it, Hayley. She’s very young, and he wasn’t there. If she ever discovered the truth, by then she would have been thoroughly part of his family and would understand.’

  Hayley looked over her shoulder at Katy, who was asleep in the back seat. She found herself shivering at the idea that someone would want to corrupt the little girl’s innocence.

  ‘I can hardly believe it,’ she said.

  Ethan shook his head. ‘I can understand that,’ he said. ‘But you have to believe it, Hayley. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.’

  The rest of the trip home proceeded in silence. Ethan drove them into his garage and carried Katy out of the car.

  Katy was asleep and he carried her into the house and up towards the bedroom that had been waiting for her. Hayley followed.

  As Katy’s head was laid on her pillow she looked up at the two of them and smiled.

  ‘We’re home safely, Daddy?’ she asked.

  Ethan brushed his lips against the little girl’s head. ‘We’re perfectly safe,’ he said. ‘This place is a vault. I promise.’

  Closing the door behind him, he turned to Hayley. ‘She loves having a woman around. I’m going to go tidy up,’ he said. ‘Shall I walk you to your room or…’

  She smiled at him. ‘I remember where it is.’

  Just one floor up. Ethan nodded at her and walked away.

  Hayley found the room untouched since she last left it. The towel she had used on that first night was still hanging crookedly over the rail, the bathrobe she had been wearing still messily draped over the side of the bed. She had been through so much over the past couple of days that these simple details seemed somehow surprising.

  She stood at the window and looked out again at the Tuscan countryside through which she had walked on her way to Ethan’s. She loved the area here. It was the kind of place where anyone would love to make a home. Where she would love to live herself, if there were any way of earning a living here. Perhaps as a photographer she needed the sort of wealthy patron that Renaissance painters had found?

  She had to stop fantasising. This was reality. Her time here was limited. Once again, she thought of her first arrival here. On that day, she had thought she was in for a simple game of pretence. She had wondered if she would be brave enough to see it through.

  How hard it was to realise that was just four days ago! It could have been another lifetime. Since then, Hayley’s life had been threatened, she had been forced to run from mortal danger, she had been lied to and trapped by an evil man, and she had helped rescue a child from his clutches. And she had come to know and be intrigued by Ethan MacDonald; she had fallen in love.

  She had what? She just meant she loved the way that he loved Katy. Didn’t she?

  Didn’t she?

  Hayley touched her fingers against her throat, shocked at the direction her own thoughts had turned. She was cynical Hayley Wolfe, the wedding photographer who had sworn that she would never have a wedding herself. Ethan MacDonald was a man who might never be able to come home, a man who had a daughter that deserved someone so much better than her, that deserved someone who would know how to be a mother.

  And what else? How much worse could this be? Had she been careless with Ethan’s emotions as well as her own? Had she allowed him to fall in love with her, despite knowing that she could never be a part of his life?

  Hayley thought back through all of their encounters, trying to work out if she had been sufficiently honest about her attitude towards relationships. She was sure she had. She was sure that every time their conversations had veered near the emotional, she had made her own beliefs very, very clear. She had never married and never would. She could never be a mother because she could not risk inflicting herself on anyone else. She could not bear to be hurt the way her own mother had hurt her.

  She couldn’t be a mother now, she couldn’t be a mother tomorrow, she could never be a mother.

  But what was Hayley to make of Katy? Now she was being honest with herself about her feelings for Ethan, what was she to make of her reaction to his daughter? She remembered everything about the little girl in exquisite detail. Mostly, she thought of the way that Katy’s hand had slid so easily into hers, the knowing way she had asked Hayley about being Daddy’s girlfriend, the way Katy had looked at her games console photos and remarked, so casually, that they looked like a family.

  Of course Katy would think like that. There could be nothing in the world that she would want more than a family. Hayley knew this painful truth so well! It was exactly the way she had felt when she had been a motherless child.

  In that awful moment, Hayley realised that in staying here she wasn’t only risking her own heart and Ethan’s, but Katy’s too. She had to leave. She had no choice. It didn’t matter that she was safe from Tomasi here, now that she knew that Ethan and his precious child were physically safe, for the time being, she had to get out of here.

  Yes, she would be risking her own safety. But danger was something she had to face sooner or later anyway. It was the result of her own silly decision to go along with Tomasi’s plan for her photographs. In her heart of hearts, Hayley realised she had always known Tomasi was being dishonest with her, even when he’d been backtracking from his first dishonesty. It had been his offer of money that made the scheme so tempting.

  Oh, she had learned a hard lesson. He
r father might have needed money desperately, but he loved her and needed her more, and would hate to know she was in trouble. He would never have consented to this himself. Her safety would always be his primary concern, just as Katy’s safety meant everything to Ethan. Because that was what fathers were like.

  What Hayley needed now was to make sure that Katy was never hurt again. She needed to get out of here.

  ***

  The new mobile phone buzzed in his pocket as he closed Katy’s door and began, wearily, to head downstairs. There was only one person he had given this new number to. Ethan’s mood lifted instantly.

  ‘Ryan?’ he said, pressing the green button.

  ‘Ethan, it’s Pearl,’ his sister said, instead. Her voice had the flat tone he recognised as the calmness she tended to sink into after she had been hysterical.

  ‘Ah,’ said Ethan.

  It was wrong of him to wish that Pearl wasn’t calling now. He had promised he would always be available to her. He was her only family.

  ‘I pressed call-back,’ Pearl explained. ‘You said to let you know when I got to your place. Well, I’m here. Is there someone who can let me in?’

  ‘You made it already?’ asked Ethan sceptically. He and Hayley had made the journey very quickly because he sped most of the way with only a couple of very short stops.

  ‘I was half way here when I called you,’ Pearl explained.

  ‘How were you travelling?’

  ‘Is this going to be some kind of an inquisition? I need somewhere to sleep, Ethan, while I detox. Clinics aren’t any good for me. I want to be in the villa. I love that place. I remember being there when I was a child.’

  ‘How were you travelling?’ Ethan repeated.

  If Pearl was evasive one more time, he would have to conclude she had some reason for not wanting to tell him the truth and disconnect. Could his sister have brought trouble with her, again? She had obviously been involved in the Tomasi and Vasilovich plot. Although she had helped Ethan in the end, she could have let him know far earlier what was going on. She had probably been too stoned to realise what Tomasi planned. At least Katy’s presence had changed that. He desperately hoped that Pearl wasn’t bringing more trouble now.