Lost in Italy

by Stacey Joy Netzel

  And if they didn’t find her tonight. But the distress in Rachel’s expression told him he should’ve shut up before mentioning Milan, so he didn’t tell her there was a very real possibility the officers who’d handed them over to Alrigo would trace Halli’s call. All he could do was pray she’d borrowed a cell phone or used a public phone and then moved on.

  “What do you think she has of theirs?” Rachel asked.

  “I don’t know, but it must be pretty darn important.”

  “Basta! No more talk,” Zucchi ordered in barely decipherable English from his chair by the door.

  Ben moved further back in the room to sit at the table again, his back to Zucchi this time, and Rachel took the seat opposite him. Speaking in his lowest tone possible, Ben murmured, “I could try to get info from him.”

  “You’re the reason he got hit. I doubt he’ll talk.”

  Ben grimaced.

  Her body shifted slightly to the right, her gaze focusing past his shoulder. “Do you want me to try?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “But—”

  “No.”

  She sat forward. “I can help.”

  “Rach, please, I know, but the less contact with these guys the better?”

  Her gaze flitted over his shoulder again before meeting his. “Yeah, okay.”

  “Okay.”

  Relief that he’d stood his ground was evident in the droop of her shoulders and softening of her lips. Which only served to heighten his tension.

  How the hell am I going to get us out of this?

  He rubbed the back of his neck; exhaustion weighted his eyelids, making his eyes burn. Rachel had managed about an hour nap, but even so, she still looked as tired as he felt. He couldn’t think straight and didn’t even know what the hell he should be thinking about in the first place. If he could just find out what was going on; what kind of operation they were running from here. If he could avoid putting Rachel front and center, he might be able to figure a way out. The countless scams they’d run with their parents while growing up had to come in handy at some point.

  He cast a surreptitious glance around the room and focused on the window behind Rachel. They were on the second floor, and there appeared to be a balcony along the side of the villa. It was something to consider should they get a chance to escape.

  A knock on the door made Ben pivot ninety degrees, his forearm braced on the back of the chair. In his state of fatigue, it was best to face who was coming. Look him in the eye.

  Zucchi swung open the door and a dark-haired woman carrying a tray entered the room. Ben blinked twice before making sure his jaw wasn’t hanging open. Beautiful, sexy, small, but with generous proportions in the hips and breasts, her skin-tight clothes showed every luscious, curvy line from her proud shoulders down to slim, stiletto-clad feet.

  Zucchi’s gaze raked down the woman’s form, and crawled back up. “Ciao, Eva.”

  The bombshell stopped and arched a brow, her chin thrust out in defiance. Whatever she replied to the man ended with Nino. Zucchi’s slimy smile disappeared fast. Ben got the distinct impression the studious-looking Nino was as feared in this house as Alrigo. He’d already determined the tall, solid-built driver shouldn’t be underestimated, but it was good to have his gut instinct confirmed.

  Eva approached him and Rachel, and set the tray on the table. Hm, so the food was for them, not their guard. She served a plate and a glass of wine to each of them. His stomach grumbled, but he didn't trust a single person in this place.

  “Thank you.” Rachel reached for the wine, her hand unsteady.

  Ben beat her to it and held her glass out of reach. Before he could explain that she had no idea what was actually in the glass, a slim, tanned hand lifted it from his grasp. Eva took a sip. Her brown gaze locked with his as she lowered the glass. The tip of her tongue slid across her full, glossed lips to remove any remaining traces of wine. She cocked a challenging eyebrow and without breaking eye contact with Ben, handed the wine back to Rachel.

  Reveal no weakness to the enemy. To show his complete indifference to her sexy demonstration of how harmless the wine was, Ben sat back, arms crossed over his chest. The woman shrugged her shoulders at his unyielding pose. Her gaze dipped to his throbbing mouth for a brief moment before she spun and exited the room. It took everything he had to keep his attention focused on the slightly distorted reflection of her departure in the window instead of turning to watch the real deal.

  Once the door closed, he shifted his gaze to Zucchi’s reflection to make sure the guard kept his distance. Facing the possibility of an oncoming threat was one thing, but showing fear could give the guy a dangerous power trip. He now had plenty to prove to his boss and Ben didn’t intend to make anything easy for a single one of them.

  “I'm hungry.” Rachel stared at the plate of pasta in front of her.

  “I know.” He picked up his fork, flipped it back and forth in his fingers as he considered, then stabbed a penne noodle. Rachel watched him closely and Ben almost laughed. What the hell did they expect? That something in the food would instantly kill them? They were needed alive, or he had a feeling they’d be dead already.

  “Go ahead, eat.”

  Rachel took a careful bite, only to lay her fork back on the table when Ben heard the door open once more. Muscles tense, he darted his gaze to the image in the window, expecting Alrigo, or Nino, only to see it was Eva who’d returned. His shoulders remained rigid as she approached, but then she set a capped bottle of water in front of each of them, and next to Ben's hand, she laid a cloth covered square.

  “For your mouth.”

  Her soft-spoken words in accented English caught him off guard. His fingers felt a telltale chill through the cloth, and Ben wondered at the considerate gesture. Her brown eyes revealed nothing before she retreated.

  Once again, he resisted turning to watch her leave and instead broke the seal on his bottle of water. The carbonation made him frown, but he’d take it since the wine was not an option in his exhausted state. Other than hoping to steal a few hours of sleep through the night, he needed to stay as alert as possible.

  Rachel picked up her fork and started eating again, and Ben did the same. The pasta was divine and under any other circumstances, he would've enjoyed the meal. Right now, he ate as a necessity to keep up his strength. Come morning, he might have two sisters to get out of this mess. His foot resumed its rapid bounce under the table.

  “She seems nice.”

  Ben frowned at Rachel’s statement. “For someone holding us hostage? Sure. She’s wonderful.”

  “I just meant...oh, hell, I don’t know.” She picked at her food and mumbled, “Forget it.”

  He blew out a breath frustrated breath, fisted his hand around his fork, and reached out his free hand to cover her fingers squeezing the bottle of water.

  “I know what you meant. I'm sorry, you're right.” He met her gaze and gave her hand a squeeze. “We’re going to get through this. Okay? We’re all going to be okay.”

  Rachel nodded, but her slight hesitation and hard swallow told him she was as worried as he was. Unsure of what else to say, he withdrew his hand from across the table and lifted his fork for another bite of pasta.

  After they’d finished eating, he couldn't stop thinking of the dark-haired woman. She had seemed different from the others. And he didn’t think it was just because she was a woman in a house full of men. She’d showed a hint of kindness with the ice pack. As he held the cold compress to his swollen lip with one hand and ripped the label from his water bottle into tiny little bits with the other, he wondered...

  Did Eva have her own agenda, or could they have a potential ally?

  Chapter 8

  Trent pulled over two blocks from the camera store and locked the new battery into place on Halli’s camera. His free hand shook slightly, but he gave it a couple hard shakes, fisted his fingers, took a deep breath, and thumbed the Play button.

  A blue screen popped u
p, and he hit the rewind. After a full minute of nothing but some weird angle that looked like an upside down shot of Halli’s black-clad thigh and a stone wall, he stopped the video and used the fast rewind. When he played it again, the screen popped up with a shot of two people walking out of the Malpensa Airport in Milan, lugging suitcases, duffle bags slung over their shoulders.

  Neither of them looked much like Halli, but he figured it was a safe assumption they were her brother and sister. Curiosity kept him from hitting fast-forward right away. At first glance, the sister—Rachel, he remembered—was the obvious beauty of the two. Blonde, tall and willowy. Her brother, Ben, was a good-looking sort, also tall and blond. Halli was the odd one out with her auburn hair and short stature.

  As Trent watched, Rachel frowned, raised her hand, and told Halli to shut off the camera. She made no effort to hide her annoyance, and Halli shot back a response from off-screen.

  “No way. You guys may have talked me into throwing away my itinerary, but after saving six months for this camera, I’m using it every chance I get. Deal with it.”

  Rachel flipped her off. Ben, a wide grin on his face, quickly grabbed her hand to pull it out of sight of the camera. Definitely siblings. A smile tugged at the sister’s lips and Trent heard Halli’s laugh as the film continued to roll.

  Wow. He’d been right about her laugh. Natural and carefree, it was like music to Trent’s ears after the day they’d endured. He watched the video for a few more minutes, stealing a glimpse of her ordinary world. Their lighthearted banter started an ache in his chest; made him think of Sean on his good days. The dull pain intensified when when Ben turned the camera on Halli and she made faces at her sister.

  Trent’s chest tightened. She’d been having fun at the beginning of her vacation. The trip of a lifetime.

  Then she’d met him.

  He shook off a twinge of guilt. Her involvement was not his fault. From the moment he’d seen the danger she was in, he’d only done whatever he felt necessary to keep her safe. That had to count for something, even if she didn’t put much stock in his motives.

  Annoyed with his current line of thinking, he quickly hit the fast forward again. Good God, the woman had filmed everything. No wonder her battery had been dead by the time he showed up. Every so often he’d thumb the play button and watch, mostly when her brother commandeered filming rights and Halli appeared on screen.

  How in the world had he ever thought her plain? Not with those eyes. Even when tempered by fear, or flashing in anger, and most especially on this film when sparkling with laughter, those blue eyes of hers were amazing. Unguarded, her face conveyed a myriad of expressions that increased her attractiveness ten-fold. And the body revealed under her baggy clothes—

  Movement on the screen snagged his attention back where it belonged and finally, he recognized the part he’d been waiting for. His grip on the camera tightened. Swans swam on the lake in front of the villa in Lenno, and the lens zoomed in on them until they filled the viewfinder. In the background he heard Rachel complaining about Halli’s subjects.

  “I want to see if Lake Como, Italy and Lake Como, Wisconsin have more in common than their names.”

  Despite the tension infusing his muscles, Halli’s snippy reply made Trent’s lips tug upward. Every once in awhile she’d made it known she craved her itinerary, even if it was just in the tone of her voice. And if they had followed it? He would never have met her. His smile faded. Better for the both of them.

  Wonder how many times she thought that same thing?

  A flash of consternation caught him off guard. Ridiculous as it was, he found he didn’t like the thought of her regretting having met him. With a frown, he pushed the thought aside. Halliwell Sanders was nothing but trouble, and it would’ve been better all the way around had they never met. Most especially for her.

  On video, Rachel continued to complain, but Ben appeared to be the mediator between the two.

  As her brother and sister conversed in the background, Halli kept taping, and things began to happen on screen. The front door to the villa burst open and he recognized Lorenzo running outside.

  Trent sat forward, his attention focused beyond the swans. The camera picked up the distant startled honks of the birds as Lorenzo’s body suddenly jerked once, twice, then—

  “Hey—” Halli’s voice.

  The camera swung in a wild arc, catching the tail end of a blue Fiat Punto as it drove away.

  “No!” Trent pounded a fist on the steering wheel and willed the camera to turn back across the lake.

  Halli’s laugh reached the microphone, full of disbelief. “Real funny, guys.”

  Trent hit the rewind and watched Lorenzo get shot again. And again. His eyes burned. The bastards had shot him in the back. Thirty-five years with Italian law enforcement and this is how you go out. God, I’m sorry I asked for your help.

  He rewound it one last time and played the scene frame by frame. The final moment before the camera veered away revealed a single frame glimpse of a man standing in the shattered window, gun in hand. The same man he’d seen at the police station.

  Alrigo Lapaglia.

  Trent stared for a moment, committing the image of the man’s ruthless expression to memory.

  “I got you now, you bastard, and I’m going to nail your ass,” he vowed triumphantly in the silent car. “For Lorenzo and Sean, you fucking coward.”

  He set the camera in the passenger seat and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. What a day. And it wasn’t about to get any easier. After he dropped Halli at the consulate, he’d need to go see Simone, Lorenzo’s longtime girlfriend. His friend had mentioned she was working the late shift at the hospital all this week, and though the thought of having to tell her what’d happened tore at his heart, it was the least he could do. Over the past year they’d become almost as good of friends as he and Lorenzo.

  Turning his mind to less disturbing thoughts, though no more pleasant, he jammed the car into gear and peeled away from the curb. When he got back to the house, he’d make an extra copy or two of Halli’s video and put them in a safe place. Maybe mail one to his agent in California. If anything happened during the rest of the investigation, he wanted to make sure Lapaglia got what was coming to him beyond getting hit by a truck.

  If they were real lucky, the guy was already dead. But that still left the other lowlifes in his group of associates. Between Halli’s video, and the wire he’d recorded off Lorenzo, the evidence he’d gathered would tighten the net on their black market import operations. They would finally pay for the lives they’d ruined, human and animal alike.

  Trent anticipated the feeling of vindication when he proved Sean’s death was not a suicide as the police had ruled. Sean had been taking his medication. He’d been excited about his new project. Trent had talked to him that morning.

  If Sean had intended to kill himself just a few hours later, Trent would’ve sensed the depression. He would’ve heard something in his brother’s voice. Right?

  He rubbed a hand over his face as he drove. For the last few months he’d agonized over that question. It didn’t matter that he specifically remembered hanging up the phone and thinking how good Sean had been doing lately; nagging doubt hammered persistently at the back of his mind since the day of his brother’s death.

  Now, he one hundred percent believed what he’d suspected all along. Lapaglia’s culpability wasn’t wishful thinking on Trent’s part as a way to lay aside his guilt. But once he proved the police had covered up the murder, would it be enough? Enough for his father to finally recognize his oldest son was more than what he read in the tabloids?

  And if it wasn’t enough for his father, would it be enough for himself?

  Surprisingly, that was the tougher of the two questions. He downshifted and slowed for the turn onto his street. His father’s disapproval was ingrained, and to be honest, at times Trent had fostered it. Having lived as a disappointment for so long now, if nothing changed, he imagin
ed he would continue on as normal. But the guilt of not being there for Sean ate him up inside. If justice didn’t get rid of the guilt, he wasn’t quite sure what the hell could.

  The added responsibility of Halli Sanders didn’t help. Despite being used to pressure, getting her safely into the hands of someone trustworthy was a hell of a lot different than walking the red carpet and hoping the premiere of his current film didn’t tank.

  Trent pulled into his drive and waited impatiently for the gate to open, then close again after he drove through. He parked in the garage and headed inside with the camera, careful to be quiet in case Halli had been able to fall asleep.

  The faint smell of food made his stomach rumble with anticipation. His last meal had been breakfast with Lorenzo that morning while they went over their strategy. Suddenly his stomach churned as a fresh wave of anguish washed over him, magnified by the mental image of his friend’s body jerking when the bullets tore into his flesh.

  Trent laid the camera on the table and blew out a deep breath before pressing his hand over his constricted chest. He needed to figure out a way to compartmentalize so he could focus. Like when he acted a part. His character would be the guy who didn’t care. The guy who put emotion aside, solved the case, and took down the bad guys moments before the credits rolled.

  He’d played that guy before, and he’d play him again. Starting now.

  Halfway to the fridge, his step faltered. One of the drawers below the island counter stuck out a few inches. He slid it open to see the contents all jumbled around. It was the same drawer he’d put Halli’s things in, but he hadn’t done that. The neighboring drawer looked identical; everything messed up as if someone had done a hasty search.

  Dread snaked down his back. The feeling escalated each step closer he took to the living room. Alarm exploded at the sight of cabinet doors hanging ajar, open closets, and cockeyed couch cushions. There was only one reason for anyone to search his place.