Elusive (On The Run Book #1) (15 page)

She examined the photos Connor had
mailed to her, but again, found nothing distinctive about them. Was the photo
of the Madonna important? Was it a famous painting? A valuable painting? The
cobblestones and ancient architecture in the other pictures didn’t exactly
narrow it down to one location. Several photos included people. A blond woman
appeared twice, but Zoe couldn’t distinguish her features. A dark cocker
spaniel also appeared in several of the photos. Could that mean something? Zoe
shook her head and put the photos aside and took the tray of food from the
flight attendant.

After eating a turkey sandwich so
small that it seemed it would only satisfy a toddler, or perhaps an elf, the
cabin lights dimmed, and she settled down to try and sleep, but numbers and names
from the spreadsheets and the journal kept running through her mind. She sat up
and went back to the papers. There was one spreadsheet with columns of numbers
that she studied until her eyes were practically crossing.

The row headings were combinations
of numbers and letters, like VB2FQ9, which initially looked like some sort of
airline or hotel reservation code, but because the spreadsheets were filled
with them, she had to assume they were something else. Connor went out of town
a lot, but not that much. And there were no dates or places associated with
them. Just column after column of numbers.

“You’re a bundle of
contradictions, you know that?” Jack said, shifting so that he was mostly on
his side, facing her, his pillow bunched between his ear and his shoulder.

“You’re supposed to be asleep,”
Zoe said. “What do you mean?”

“You’re so impulsive and such a
free spirit, yet you do all this detail work,” he said tapping the
spreadsheets. “Creating spreadsheets like this, copy-editing manuscripts, stuff
like that.”

“I’m a complicated woman.”

Jack snorted.

“Besides, you’re one to talk,” Zoe
said. “You’re so straight-forward, a man with a hidden past, who loves rules
and schedules, yet you can use whatever happens to be lying around—like
flowerpots—to disarm men with guns.”

“Er—right. I’m going back to sleep
now.”

With a half smile, Zoe went back
to the spreadsheets, but after thirty minutes of trying to wrap her mind around
the possibilities, she gave up.

Zoe reclined her seat and tried to
blank her mind, but the only thing that fell asleep was her left foot. She sat
up straight and rolled her head around to work the crick out of her neck. She
wasn’t the only one who wasn’t sleeping. Jack had the window seat and she had
the aisle. The seat between them was empty. The man directly across the aisle
from her was playing solitaire on his e-reader, which reminded her of the cards
she’d found in Jack’s car. She tilted her head and looked at Jack.

His head was moving in a slow arc,
millimeter by millimeter, down the headrest until he hit the tipping point and
his head fell forward. He jerked upright, then burrowed lower in the seat, and
drifted off again.

Zoe moved to the middle seat.
“Jack,” she said in a voice loud enough to be heard over the engines, but not
loud enough to carry to the rows around them, “are you awake?”

He made a noise somewhere between
a grunt and a groan. Perfect. He might be just groggy enough that she’d get the
truth out of him. “Why did you leave playing cards on the seat of your car
before you disappeared?”

He yawned and murmured, “A
warning. For you.”

“But how did you know I’d find
them or even know what they meant?”

With his eyes closed, he rotated
his head toward Zoe. “The car would eventually get towed. I knew you’d get the
car and whatever was inside. You’re my beneficiary.”

“So you just happened to have a
pack of cards from the Venetian, and you knew certain cards had special
meanings?”

He rubbed his eyes before opening
them. “I had a girlfriend in high school who was into all that mystic stuff...numerology,
astrology, reading cards. She did a reading for me once, and the eight of
Spades came up. It was about a week before my dad died in the car wreck.”

“Oh, Jack. I’m sorry,” Zoe said.

He shook his head slightly, waving
off her sympathy. “It’s been a long time. Anyway,” he sighed as he said, “the
eight of Spades stuck with me. And the cards were in my car because I picked
Connor up at the airport a few weeks ago after one of his trips to Vegas. He
tossed them in the console when he got in the car. Said they were a souvenir
for me.”

“So what if I never figured out
the cards? I didn’t know they had meanings.”

“I wasn’t trying to leave you a
trail of breadcrumbs. I didn’t even know at that point I was going to Vegas.
The cards were there and it was the only way I could think of communicating
with you without giving myself away. I couldn’t very well leave you a note or
send you a text. I knew it wouldn’t be long before the police figured out that
I wasn’t dead, and then everything...and everyone I knew would be under
scrutiny.”

“Considerate of you, to think of
me,” Zoe said mildly.

Jack sighed, crossed his arms, and
leaned back in his seat. “I did the best I could in the situation.”

The engines hummed in the silence
between them, then Zoe asked, “What did you do when you woke up in the office?”

He cocked his head toward her.
“After I figured out—what did you call him?—Stumpy Guy—was going to kill me
whether or not the kid with him objected?”

“Stubby Guy. Yes, after that.”

“I waited until they were yelling
at each other and I didn’t see how the argument could get more heated, then I
lunged for Stubby. There was a struggle. Fortunately, for me, the kid was so
shocked when I moved, that it gave me a slight advantage.” Jack looked away for
a moment, then said, “I left them there in the office. I knew what they’d come
to do and my main goal was to get out of there. I knew Connor was dead. I’d
seen the bank transfer, and with their conversation, I figured everything was
part of the set up to make me look guilty. I drove to Connor’s house, looked
around, found the Vegas address, then I bought a burner phone, drove out to
Highway 375, set the stage, made the 911 call, then hiked over to the shopping
center for a ride.”

“A ride,” Zoe said, studying his
face. “Somehow I doubt a kind stranger gave you a lift to Vegas.”

“Nope. I kept some emergency money
in the car. I bought that black hatchback we left at the airport from a pizza
delivery guy. He said he’d catch a ride home with a friend. The police will
track him down, eventually. Probably pretty quickly now that we’re having our
fifteen minutes of fame.” Seeing her face, he said, “Don’t worry. We’ve got a
good lead on them.”

“It’s not that—well, that’s always
at the back of my mind—I can’t believe you bought a car while you were on the
run. I thought you’d gone all Jason Bourne and stolen it.”

“Why go to more trouble than you
have to?” Jack said. “Besides, I only steal cars on weekends. Now you need to
get some sleep. We have a lot of ground to cover when we land, and I can’t have
you asleep on your feet.” He crossed his arms and was breathing deeply in
seconds.

––––––––

Pozzuoli, Campaigna, Italy

Sunday, 1:17 p.m.

––––––––

ZOE folded the map and looked out
of the passenger window. She’d spent most of the drive from the airport
fighting to convince the GPS unit that Roy Martin’s address did exist, but
there was no arguing with technology. The GPS steadfastly refused even to admit
that Roy’s town existed. She’d given up and switched to the map the woman at
the rental counter had given them, which only helped them get out of Rome and
onto the toll road that ran south.

Not that they’d seen much of
Rome. The airport was miles away from the city, and Zoe was disappointed that
the drive only gave her glimpses of modern apartment blocks, miles of highways,
and an occasional
Autogrill
,
a sort of gas station/restaurant combo that dotted the freeway and sounded, to
her at least, more German than Italian. There were mountains, beautiful
blue-hued ranges, which marched along the spine of the peninsula. Some of the
highest peaks were still topped with a white layer of snow. Before they reached
Naples, Jack took an exit that put the mountains at their back. Their route
crossed the relatively flat stretch of land then dipped to the Mediterranean, a
vast expanse of blue that sparkled in the noontime sunlight until stands of bamboo
as well as rows of hotels and walled homes positioned between the road and the
sea blocked the view.

Jack hit the steering wheel hard
with the heel of his hand. “That’s when it happened,” he said.

Zoe pulled her gaze away from the
window. “What?”

Jack stared down the road as he
said, “The gun. It’s been in the back of my mind. How did it go from the attic
to the office? But with everything happening...I didn’t figure it out until now.”

“So what happened?”

“You know that pharmacy in the
office complex, the next duplex over? It was robbed.”

“I didn’t hear about that.”

“Yeah, well, it happened. Nothing
major, but it bothered Sharon. I told her that I had a gun in my attic at home
and I’d bring it in, if she’d go to the gun range and take some classes.”

“I bet that went over well,” Zoe
said, her tone indicating the opposite.

“She was scandalized that I even
owned
a gun. She said she’d
rather take someone on with her bare hands than fire a gun.”

“So you think Sharon took the gun
out of the attic?” Zoe said, perplexed. “That would never happen.”

“No,” Jack said with a bark of
laughter. “She’d rather pick up a hot coal than touch a gun. But Connor was
there. You can hear everything in that office.”

“You think Connor came to our
house and—” Zoe broke off abruptly, then swiveled toward Jack. “The day of the
storm—when everything happened. I heard someone up stairs, but it wasn’t you. I
know because I went up there later and there weren’t any wet towels. You hadn’t
showered. And the front door wasn’t locked after you left—except it wasn’t you.
You didn’t come home that day. Unless you came home and didn’t shower?”

“No, I didn’t even run that day.”

“Do you think it was Connor?”

“I don’t think so,” Jack said
slowly. “I think whoever took the gun used it to kill Connor. It was probably
Stubby Guy. I figure he shot Connor and put it in my drawer to implicate me. My
prints would have been on it already.” He squinted as he said, “I’m not sure
why Stubby Guy and his partner would kill Connor and then leave...but maybe
they’d assumed I’d be on my normal schedule. Connor usually didn’t take a
lunch, and I left for my run and returned at the same time everyday.”

“You do usually operate with
clock-like precision,” Zoe said.

Jack shot her a look with his
brows lowered. “That day was different. I went to the post office and skipped
my run. Maybe they were supposed to get us both, but when I wasn’t there, they
shot Connor, planted the gun in my desk, and left, thinking that it would
implicate me. They must have seen that I’d returned and had come back to finish
the job. I was only in the office for a few minutes before that short guy came
inside.” His gaze caught on a sign beside the road, and he hit the brakes and
made a turn onto a side road at the last moment. “I think this is it.”

After a couple of passes up and
down the twisty road with no sighting of Roy’s road, Jack swung the car into a
parking area beside a café. It was a small white stucco building with three
tall tables with the Coca-Cola logo in front of its dark doorway. Zoe climbed
out of the car to stretch her legs, wrapping her jacket tightly around herself
as the cool air hit her, then she followed Jack inside.

A glass counter displayed
sandwiches, pizza, and some delectable-looking desserts. A woman with
brownish-blond hair and a lumpy face turned from the cappuccino machine to hand
a dainty cup and saucer to a man standing near the display case. Jack engaged
the woman in some rapid Italian while Zoe selected a Coke Light from a cooler
since there wasn’t any ginger ale. Jack thanked the woman and paid for the
drink with some euros that they’d exchanged at the airport. Jack went to the
restroom and Zoe went to the tall tables outside the café and sipped her drink.

The woman came outside and wiped
down the table beside Zoe. “Good that you are going to see the signore,” she
said in halting English.

Zoe got the feeling that the woman
wanted to practice her English. Zoe nodded politely.

“He lonely,” she continued. “No
visitors except,” she waved her hand at the cloth in her other hand, “cleaning
lady. He needs signora,” she said with a definite nod of her head.

“I see,” Zoe said, thinking the
woman saw herself as ideal for that role. “
Arrivederci
,”
the woman said with a flap of the cloth before she went back inside.

Jack emerged from the café, and
they clambered back into the car. “She said it’s right here,” Jack said, as he
turned onto a narrow asphalt road lined on each side with tall stucco walls
interspersed with gates and steep driveways.

“It looks kind of iffy,” Zoe said,
studying the high, discolored paint on the walls that lined the tight asphalt
street, which was pockmarked with holes and weeds growing through the cracks.

“This isn’t the States,” Jack said
as he bumped from pothole to pothole along the road. “This is a good neighborhood.”

“But there’s no where to go...if
something happened. It’s a dead-end,” Zoe said. A low-hanging branch dipped
over one of the walls and scraped the window beside her. She glanced behind
them, but the narrow street, an alley, really, was empty.

“Good instincts,” Jack said, “but
we’re okay here. This is it—second one from the end.”

Jack wedged the car into a tiny
space, and they followed the white stucco wall to a blue door. Acorn finials
topped the wall on each side of the door. Windows from the second story of the
house loomed over the gate. Jack pushed the button set into the wall.

“
Pronto
,” said a gruff voice through an intercom.

“Roy. It’s Jack.”

There was no reply, except for the
door buzzing open. They stepped into a minuscule courtyard with a small tree
dotted with tangerines and climbed a set of stairs to the front door.

A heavy-set man with a barrel
chest and thick, wavy salt-and-pepper hair threw open the door. He removed a
cigar from the corner of his mouth and greeted Jack in a deep voice that
rumbled around the entry area. “Jack, my boy, good to see you.”

They did that manly greeting that
was part handshake, part slap on the back. As they broke apart, Jack waved Zoe
over the threshold and said, “Roy, this is Zoe.”

Roy’s sharp blue eyes pinged
between Jack and Zoe, questioningly. When Jack didn’t add any explanation, Zoe
held out her hand and said, “His ex. Nice to meet you.”

“Ah,” Roy said and clamped his
cigar in the corner of his mouth before shaking her hand. “Interesting. Well,
come on in. Let’s go out back.” He closed the door and lead them by a curving
staircase, through a white-tiled living room and dining room combination filled
with contemporary furniture in shades of tan and brown, and out the back door
to a terrace. “Best part of the house,” he said, waving them into seats around
a patio table situated under another tangerine tree. It was chilly in the
shade, and she kept her jacket on.

“You want a coffee? A beer?
Cigar?” Roy asked, his hand on the back of his chair.

“None for me,” Zoe said, sliding
to a seat. Mitch shook his head.

“Down to business, eh?” Roy smiled
around the cigar. “So how are you?”

“Honestly, not so good,” Jack
said.

“I heard.” Roy’s face turned
serious.

Jack leaned forward. “What have
you heard?”

“That you did in your business
partner, took the money, and ran.”

“That’s news here, too?”

“Nah,” Roy flicked the fingers of
his right hand as if he were shooing away a bug. “I did some research after you
called. Read up on you in the American news sites. I can see why you’d want out
of the States.” His gaze, which had been focused on the leafy branches
overhead, swept back and zeroed in on Jack as he said, “but I don’t know why
you’d come here.”

“Because I didn’t kill my business
partner or take any money.”

“You were framed.” Roy said it
flatly as if there was nothing unusual about that situation.

“Yes, but I haven’t gotten to the
best part. I was supposed to die, too.”

Roy puffed on his cigar for a
moment before saying, “Clean, that way.”

Jack nodded. “No one to contradict
my story of innocence.”

Zoe fought down the beginnings of
a yawn. For the first time in how long? Days? She felt almost safe. The tight
coil of worry inside her loosened, and she felt herself relax. Part of it was
jet lag, but some of it was due to the snug courtyard with its high walls and
canopy of green leaves combined with Roy’s solid personality and his
no-nonsense acceptance of Jack’s story. She felt she could almost tilt her head
back and go to sleep.

“But you didn’t die,” Roy said
with a mischievous glint in his eye.

“Doing my best not to,” Jack said.
“I need your help to stay that way. Costa is involved in this.”

Zoe blinked at the name, trying to
clear the fuzziness from her head. She hadn’t heard the name before. He had to
be the guy Jack had told her about. It was only in that moment that Zoe
realized Jack hadn’t mentioned the name to her, probably intentionally. Even
when he was revealing secrets, he kept something back. She felt stupid that
she’d assumed he’d confided the whole story to her. She should have known
better.

Roy’s forehead wrinkled. “Can’t
be. He’s gone.”

“Gone?” Jack said, “Where would he
go?”

Roy shrugged. “Word is, he’s
living like a German count in a Bavarian castle. I don’t necessarily believe
that myself,” Roy said with a warning tone, “but that’s the rumor.” A black cat
with three white paws and one black paw appeared at the top of the back wall.
The cat walked daintily along the wall, leapt lightly to the ground, then
positioned itself a few feet from the table, its gray eyes fixed solidly on
Roy.

Jack barely glanced at the cat. He
looked stunned. “He left Naples?”

“Apparently, he didn’t want to end
up like Zagaria. You hear about him?” When Jack shook his head, Roy rearranged
his bulky frame in the chair as if settling in for a good story. “They caught
him a while back, living like a mole in an underground bunker. Done in when
they found a pair of expensive socks in the garbage from the house above his
bunker. Designer quality—not something that your average Neapolitan wears every
day. They raided the place and arrested him. He’s in jail. No, I think after
Francesca—” He broke off abruptly, cleared his throat, and said, “After
Francesca, well, I think Costa realized that we were closing in on him. The
Carabinieri
were right there
with us. He got smart. Cut his losses and high-tailed it out of here.”

Zoe had been watching the exchange
silently, but it was clear that the news this Costa guy was out of the game was
something Jack hadn’t expected to hear. He was at a loss for words, so Zoe
said, “Just so I understand—I’m new to all this—you’re saying Costa wouldn’t
have been involved in this at all?”

The cat inched closer and meowed.

“Don’t see why he would be...I
haven’t been...connected, you might say, for a few years, but I don’t think he’d
put himself out there, risk his anonymity, just to...”

“Avenge himself?” Jack supplied,
and Roy lifted a shoulder in acquiescence. Jack blew out a breath and sagged
back in his chair. “Then, who? Who would do this to me?”

Roy pulled his cigar out of his
mouth and leaned forward, putting both elbows on the table. “I read in those
articles you’re in business for yourself now. Got any enemies? Competitors?”

“No,” Jack said, his voice hard.
“No one who’d plan a double murder
and
fraud.”

Roy held up a hand. “Easy, there.
Just asking.” His tone had changed. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

“Hours,” Zoe said promptly,
cutting Jack off. Zoe knew he was about to decline an offer of food. She was
famished and wasn’t embarrassed to admit it. She could feel the first twinges
of a headache behind her eyes and hoped that food might waylay it.

“Alright, I’ll bring us out some
food along with Leo’s. I’ve got to feed him,” Roy said nodding to the cat,
“otherwise, he’ll set up outside my bedroom window and yowl all night. I’ve
been adopted,” he said ruefully and stood. The cat sprang up and followed Roy
into the house.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Jack
muttered. “There’s no one else. It has to be Costa.”

Instead of answering, Zoe
succumbed to another yawn. He was talking to himself anyway. Roy was back
momentarily, carrying a large tray with thick slices of mozzarella, tomatoes,
large crackers, bread, and a pot of orange jam. He set it down, told them to
help themselves, then returned with several sodas and bottled waters. “I’m
afraid this is all I’ve got—bachelor rations,” he said.