Elusive (On The Run Book #1)

by Sara Rosett

  It wasn’t much, but it was confirmation that he’d stayed there. “Room Eight? Do you think I could see it?” Zoe asked, wondering if that was pressing her luck, but the woman glanced at the cubbyholes behind her and gave a very Gallic shrug. She pulled the key out of the slot, and Zoe quickly followed her to a narrow staircase. “Is broken,” she said, gesturing at the elevator that looked big enough for either one skinny pre-adolescent or two emaciated runway models.

  As they stepped onto the third floor, the top floor, she said, “He was a strange one, always in his room. I asked him if he saw the basilica or the palace, and he said, ‘no time.’ Why come to Venice to sit in a room?” She shook her head at the incomprehensible Americano.

  She unlocked the door and stepped back. Zoe entered, glanced around, and thought that asking to see the room had been a stupid idea. There was nothing to see. Connor hadn’t been here in weeks—what was the last date? Two or three weeks ago? The room had been cleaned and probably occupied by several other tourists during that time. The room had dark exposed beams on the ceiling, a carved armoire, and a delicate Venetian glass chandelier, all beautifully kept and perfectly clean. There wasn’t even a tissue in the trashcan in the white-tiled bath.

  “It’s charming,” Zoe said as she moved to the room’s window. The floor was high enough to give an excellent view of the faded orange roofs interspersed with domes and bell towers. Her gaze dropped lower, and she realized she was also high enough to see over the burgundy awning at the hotel’s doorway. In fact, she had an excellent view down the Street of Shops and could see the front door of Murano Glassworks. Zoe stepped away from the window. “He asked for this room, especially?”

  “Si , always,” she said.

  JACK was walking toward the hotel when Zoe emerged from the doorway. She quickly paced over to him, threaded her arm through his. “Connor stayed there,” she said, her voice excited. “He specifically asked for Room Eight.” She paused when they were far enough down the street to get a good view of the whole street. She studied the hotel’s façade for a moment, then said, “It’s the only room with a clear view of Murano Glassworks. The other rooms are either too low or the view is blocked by the hotel’s awning or the sign for the trattoria,” she said glancing up at the sign for the Trattoria da Lucia.

  “You got into the room?” Jack asked, surprised.

  “Yes, the desk clerk doesn’t like cheating bastards, which is what I let her think Connor was.” Zoe tilted her head. “Actually, he was a cheating bastard, just not in the area she thought. Anyway, the woman said he always asked for that specific room, and he never met anyone at the hotel or brought anyone back. He didn’t go out to sightsee. He spent most of the time in his room.”

  “Watching Murano Glassworks, you think?”

  “What else could he be doing?”

  They both looked toward the store, which now had the door propped open. A man emerged and walked in the opposite direction. Jack tensed as Zoe said, “Hey, that was Stubby Guy.”

  “Your turn to wait at the café,” Jack said, handing her some euros from his pocket.

  “But—”

  “One person attracts less attention,” Jack said, already moving away across the cobblestones.

  “I hate it when my own reasoning comes back to bite me,” Zoe said under her breath. Jack disappeared around the corner. Zoe’s glance pinged between the café on the campo and the glass shop. It really was no contest. She wasn’t thirsty. She wanted to shop, specifically at Murano Glassworks. She knew Jack would not be happy, but she gave a mental shrug and headed for the shop. She’d just take a quick look around.

  A bell over the door jingled as she stepped inside. The thin sunlight lit up the door and display window, but once she’d moved a few steps into the shop, it was much dimmer and cooler. The shop was fairly small, about ten square feet. The richness of the decoration made Zoe think it must have been part of a larger palazzo that had been divided into shops. The lower portions of the walls were paneled in a rich, dark wood. The floor was a terrazzo mosaic in shades of pink, cream, white, and gold with a compass rose at the center. A pink all-glass chandelier with gold leaf accents hung suspended from the coved ceiling. The chandelier had been converted to electricity. Modern light bulbs glowed from plastic candle-shaped holders. Exquisite glass displays ranged around the room: bowls in pale pastels, vases in brilliant bursts of primary colors, even figurines in the shapes of horses, flowers, and fish. A counter at the back of the room showed off jewelry in bright colors. A very modern cash register and credit card machine sat atop the counter at the back of the room. Beyond the counter, a door stood open, revealing a large dark-paneled corridor.

  The shop was empty, so Zoe strolled carefully among the glass. She tucked her messenger bag close and stepped cautiously, afraid that if she bumped something and broke it, she’d never be able to pay for it. A price tag peeped out from behind a translucent pale blue bowl with a fluted edge. One hundred-twenty-nine euro. She didn’t need to do the currency conversion to know that she couldn’t afford to break anything.

  Zoe edged her way through the tables and shelves for a few minutes, but no one arrived to mind the store. She’d assumed they had a closed circuit camera somewhere and were monitoring the room, but maybe not. She browsed carefully through the displays. Why would Connor care about this shop and all this glass? She hadn’t seen anything like the decorative glass in his apartment or his house in Dallas. He didn’t seem the type to collect objet d’art either. She stopped at the back of the store at a small table covered with the round paperweights filled with millefiori.

  These paperweights were exactly like the ones Connor had insisted GRS give to clients. She picked one up. The rounded glass magnified the intricate designs captured inside. She turned it over. A green felt pad covered the bottom, but unlike the GRS promotional paperweights, this one didn’t have the GRS logo and contact information on it. She put it back, eyeing the white boxes on the table, which contained more paperweights.

  She’d also seen them in Eddie’s store in Vegas as well as Connor’s apartment. A cardboard box half filled with the white paperweight boxes was shoved partially under the table. It looked as if someone had been unpacking the box and been interrupted. Some of the square white boxes that filled the interior were piled on the floor. Each white box, the perfect size to hold one paperweight snuggly was topped with a black stamp of the winged lion.

  Stacks of the small boxes lined the back of the table, stock to move to the front of the table as the paperweights sold, Zoe assumed. She scanned across the pristine imprints of the winged lions, each figure crisp and sharp, except for one. It was in the cardboard box at her feet. The smudged outline stood out sharply among the other perfect imprints.

  Connor had a box of these paperweights at his apartment. She remembered looking at it as she explored his place and thinking it odd that he’d had some delivered there. GRS didn’t have any clients in Vegas—they only had three clients, period. Why would he need a whole box of these paperweights? It really wasn’t much to go on, but there was nothing else that even remotely connected to Connor here—at least, not that she could see.

  She reached down and picked up the white box with the smudged winged-lion imprint. The lid held tight, but she pried it off and saw it contained a paperweight, this one in shades of red and blue with little flecks of white and gold worked into the design. She pulled it out and turned it over, feeling a wrinkle in the green felt.

  “Boun giorno.” The voice came from behind Zoe’s shoulder and she jerked with surprise, almost dropping the paperweight. She caught it, tucking it into her chest and turned to the woman. The woman’s attention was fixed on the paperweight Zoe held close. She murmured something to Zoe in Italian, an apology, Zoe assumed, but she wasn’t concentrating on the woman’s words because she was so fixated on her face.

  It was Francesca.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  FOR a second, Zoe thought she must have gotten
it wrong—that the woman had to be Francesca’s sister, or even possibly her daughter, but as the woman busily took the paperweight, replaced it in the box, and put it on the counter by the cash register, all the while chattering away in Italian, Zoe looked closely at her face.

  If Zoe hadn’t stared at the passport picture for so long as she got ready for the international flight she probably wouldn’t have been able to tell, but it was Francesca. The woman was too old to be Francesca’s daughter because of the fine spray of lines at the corner of her eyes. Her hair was champagne blond, cut short and spiky around her face, not a dark brown. Her eyes were brown, not green. But the shape of her face was the same, and she had the same delicate lips and arched brows as the passport photo. Her skin was a shade darker, but it had an orange tone to it that made Zoe think, “fake tan,” instead of “time in the sun.”

  Her thoughts caught on those words—fake tan. She remembered Connor’s list, the photos he’d mailed, the paperweights. Thoughts skittered through her mind, the primary one being, get out of here now.

  The woman was smiling at her expectantly, and Zoe realized she had asked her a question.

  “No Italian,” Zoe said with a shrug. She turned away quickly, pretending to browse. She would ease back to the door and get out of there, she decided, but then she saw the table of paperweights. Somehow they figured into this mess she was caught up in. They kept turning up. It couldn’t be coincidence. Blindly, she picked one up and checked the price. Twenty euros. She had that in her pocket. She swallowed and turned back to the woman who was now behind the counter and indicated she wanted to pay for the paperweight.

  As the woman rang up the sale, Zoe studied her. She wore a form-fitting cowl-neck jersey dress cinched in at the waist with a wide leather belt and high-heeled boots. A heavy gold necklace encircled her throat. A ring shaped like a butterfly set with diamonds flashed as she rang up the sale. Whatever had happened to Francesca, she wasn’t scraping by. Quite the opposite, in fact. She looked like a woman who had a standing appointment at the spa for pedicures and massages.

  The cash register chimed, Zoe placed her money in the glass dish on the counter, and the woman boxed the paperweight in a small white box. The box with the smudged imprint was sitting on the counter only inches away. It was right beside the cash register among several pens, a phone, a handset, and a pump bottle of antibacterial hand gel. The woman slipped the white box into a plastic bag and handed it to Zoe over the counter.

  As Zoe reached for the plastic bag, she let her messenger bag swing forward and bump the phone, pens, and paper. They spilled off the counter. “Oops, sorry,” Zoe said, her heart thumping hard in her chest.

  “Is okay,” the woman said, squatting down to pick everything up. “No problem.”

  With trembling fingers, Zoe quickly switched the white box in her bag for the one with the smudged imprint. Zoe was already backing away from the counter, tightly gripping the plastic bag as the woman stood and replaced the items on the counter. “Sorry,” Zoe said again. Almost to the door, she thought as she navigated the little tables and shelves.

  “Ciao,” the woman called as she pumped some hand gel and rubbed her hands together. Zoe stepped out the door into the sunlight, the little bells over the door clattering frantically from the force that she’d used to open the door.

  She heaved a sigh of relief as she made her way to the campo, her heartbeat still pounding. A few deep breaths and she felt better, calmer, as she sat in the shade of a huge umbrella at the back of the rows of outdoor tables. Jack wasn’t around. She wondered how long to wait for him here. What if Stubby Guy went a long way? What if he went off the island? Would Jack follow him? And how would he let her know what was going on? She knew he wouldn’t risk calling her. They hadn’t use a cell phone at all. Hers was still dismantled, but she didn’t want to put it together. She was too paranoid. She didn’t know how long she could wait here for Jack, but she intended to hang out as long as she could.

  She sipped the fizzy water the waiter had brought her and opened the box with the paperweight. She traced the edge of the wrinkled felt with her thumb. There was something under the felt, something square and hard. She worked her fingernail under the edge, pried away the glue, and created an opening.

  A square memory card fell into her palm. Great. They needed a card reader, not to mention a computer, to find out what was on it. Her glance swept the campo, but it was lined with tall palazzos and the usual stores catering to tourists. If she wanted a pizza, gelato, or a carnival mask, no problem. But Venice was a little a short on electronic gadget stores, at least in this part of the city.

  A familiar figure strode across her line of vision. Stubby Guy crossed the campo in a diagonal, making for the café. Zoe slumped down and glanced around for a menu to hide behind, but she only had napkins. She pretended to blow her nose, then grabbed the sunglasses from her messenger bag and shoved them on. When he was within a few paces, he veered to her left into the Street of Shops. Zoe glanced back and saw Jack emerge from the same street where Stubby Guy had entered the campo.

  Jack slipped into the seat beside her. “Shopping?” he asked, glancing at the bag from Murano Glassworks. “At a time like this?”

  “More like research,” Zoe said holding out the memory card. “Stubby Guy went into Murano Glassworks,” she said tilting her head in the direction of the shop. “Where did he go when you followed him?”

  “He had a coffee at a café.”

  “Oh. That’s kind of...mundane.”

  “Isn’t it? Normal, almost. It didn’t look like he was carrying a gun either.”

  “That’s comforting, I guess.”

  Jack examined the box and memory card in between glances at the door of the glass shop. “I thought you’d be waiting here, biting your nails, and worrying about me. I should have known you wouldn’t sit here and twiddle your thumbs. You do have a rather proactive personality.”

  “Well, it was worth it. I got that,” Zoe said tapping the memory card in his hand. She showed him the distinctive smudged imprint on the box, then described the similar one she’d seen in Connor’s apartment. “The saleswoman didn’t want me to hold this box, but I distracted her and switched the boxes.”

  Jack turned the memory card over in his hand. “So you think the paperweights were...what? Cover for smuggling?” He waved the memory card. “To get whatever is on this, to Connor. You think he was their distributor?”

  “It’s got to be something like that. I mean, who puts memory cards under the felt padding of paperweights? The box with the smudged winged-lion imprint would be easy to find, but if someone opened it and examined the contents, they would think it was a printing error. And,” Zoe said, rushing her words together, “because of the smudge, it would look perfectly logical if Connor kept those boxes back and didn’t give them away. They weren’t top quality. Spoilage, I think it’s called.”

  “And selling information—whatever is on that card—would fit. It sounds like something Connor would be involved in.” Jack handed the memory card back to Zoe. “Better put that in a safe place. Got anywhere in that big messenger bag of yours where you can hide it?”

  “Sure.” As she dropped it into her plastic makeup bag and slid the zipper closed, she asked, “Do you think we can find a card reader somewhere around here?”

  “I’m sure there’s one somewhere in this city. Maybe in a pharmacy, but we should stick around here for now and watch Stubby Guy.”

  “Yeah, about the shop,” Zoe said, fiddling with the water bottle the waiter had left on their table, “I found out something else...” she trailed off, not quite sure how to explain about Francesca. She had to do it. She had to tell him. She paused and had a second’s misgiving. What if she was wrong? What if it really wasn’t Francesca?

  She stared out at the scene on the campo for a second. Tourists wandered, gaping and snapping pictures. A few kids kicked a soccer ball at the far end of the campo, their shouts carrying across the stone and
brick of the old buildings to the café. Italians, noticeable because of their dark, dressier clothes, and more purposeful stride, crossed the campo without gawking at the architecture, but they still had a leisurely attitude that indicated they weren’t rushing. It all looked so normal. It seemed absurd to even think that the woman in the shop was Francesca. But she was.

  Zoe pulled her sunglasses off. She folded the earpieces and gently set the glasses on the table. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but the woman in the shop—it was Francesca.”

  Jack narrowed his eyes and stared at her like she’d spoken in a foreign language. “It can’t be. She’s dead.” The door to the glass shop opened, and Jack focused on it, but it was only a dark haired woman leaving the shop. Jack looked slightly disappointed as if he was hoping to see Stubby Guy so he could take off after him again.

  Zoe pressed her lips together. “Jack, I’m serious. I wouldn’t say anything unless I was sure. That woman in there, the one who sold me this,” she tapped the white box, “it was Francesca. I know it.”

  Jack stopped scanning the campo and returned his attention to her. Zoe felt a bit like she’d stepped into the glare of a spotlight. She licked her lips. “She’s changed her appearance. Her hair is short and blond, her eyes are brown, and she’s got a deep tan—fake, I’d say by the orange tone to it—but,” he opened his mouth to speak and she held up her hand, “but,” she repeated, “the shape of her face is right. Her lips and eyebrows...it’s her. I stared at that passport photo for a long time, Jack. I know it’s her. She’s dyed her hair and has colored contacts, but the bone structure is the same. It’s her.”

  “Zoe...she’s probably just someone who looks like her,” Jack said in a you-poor-thing-all-this-stress-has-sent-you-around-the-bend voice. Next thing Zoe knew he’d be pressing a sleeping pill on her to knock her out like some delicate character in an old movie.