First to Burn (16 page)

“FYI, buddy, zipped up your ass is a stupid place to keep a weapon.” He pushed his prisoner up the ramp toward the road. “Someone might jump you from behind.”

The afternoon was not going to include gelato from the café at the other end of the ruins.

He shoved the guy through the first gap in the rubble across the street.

Today was not going to involve a pleasant blend of beer, sun and a frisky woman.

Shoving hard, they zigged and zagged deeper into the unkempt section of the ruins.

This outing was not going to end in Theresa’s hotel room. To the ever-sucking contrary, it was going to be soldier shit, him and this fucker hidden deep in seared grass past rows of mausoleums, while the woman he wanted until he ached—who also controlled his future if she talked to the wrong people—boarded a bus and rode away, like he’d told her.

He’d had more successful dates after sacking a convent.

* * *

The stacked stone arch in front of Theresa framed more stone blocks and sun-dried weeds, the opposite of the dampness where her shirt clung at her armpits.

After the amphitheater and guild mosaics, she’d realized the tail had vanished. The tour guide had called the boulevard that divided the ruins the Decumanus Maximus. The unmowed area south of it, away from the tourists and gift shop, was the logical place to find Wulf and, by extension, the man who’d pursued them.

Now that she had no doubts they’d been followed, she’d realized an unfortunate truth: Wulf might not be who the man was keeping an eye on.

Another plane roared overhead for Fiumicino Airport as she rubbed her palms on her pants and reminded herself that there were dozens of people in the park who could hear her. She wasn’t alone. She stepped into the open space through the arch, expecting to find nothing.

Something—someone—spun her and smashed her body against a wall. The iron tang of blood mixed with chalky dust to become a foul paste that glued her lips to her teeth. Crumbling bricks dug through her clothes to chafe her thighs and chest. Next to her ear, a man’s breath hissed in and expelled like an espresso machine.

“Why aren’t you with the tour?” The anger in Wulf’s whisper flayed her skin. His mass pressed her against the stone, but without the care he’d shown during their kisses.

She couldn’t suck enough air to reply.

“I mistook you for an accomplice.” He moved an arm’s length away. “I could have hurt you, dammit.”

After she peeled herself from the wall, she scrubbed the back of her wrist across her lips and tried to swallow.

“Why’d you disobey me?”

“I’m not under your command.” She’d done nothing wrong, but she gave in to the urge to slide along the wall before she continued. “The guy in the car—”

“What about him?” Wulf stalked her. His head and shoulders loomed in her space.

“He could be...” She took a deep breath. “One of my sort of stepcousins.”

No rocks fell on her. No lightning bolts. The ground did not open.

“Why do you say that?” His alert stance didn’t change.

“I need to see him.” Don’t let the guy be a misguided emissary of Her Nosiness.

“First answer me.” His face matched their surroundings, hard and dry. “Why do you think he’s a relative?”

“I told you my family’s Italian.” She brushed her pants, but her sweaty hands smeared the dust that had transferred from the wall. “My last name, Chiesa, it’s from the Piedmont region. Maybe my mother called some—local relatives. Asked them to look me up.”
They
were from Naples, not part of the Chiesas or her mother’s side, but she was sticking close to the truth.

His look changed to disbelief. “What kind of family do you have?”

That she really didn’t want to answer.

“Anyway, he’s not Italian.”

Thank you
,
thank you
,
thank you.
No need to explain her family to Wulf, or anything about Wulf to her family.

“See for yourself.” He gestured behind a collapsed pillar.

She shuffled around rubble that had once stood vertically. On his side among smaller stones, eyes closed, lay the American who’d offered to take their picture at the Mouth of Truth. Wulf’s belt bound the man’s elbows behind his body, shoelaces crisscrossed his wrists and it looked as if he had a sock stuffed in his mouth.

Wulf had captured a prisoner, but they weren’t in Afghanistan.

Only one thing could be worse. “Is he dead?”

“I wouldn’t have wasted time on restraints. Carotid artery sleeper hold.”

Not dead was good. “Have you checked his circulation?” If she focused on the man’s well-being, maybe she’d fool herself into thinking they had a prayer of getting out of whatever mess tying him up was going to cause. “Those bindings look painful.”

“Not compared to this.” Out of his waistband, Wulf pulled a Beretta identical to the one she’d locked in the arms room before catching her flight. “I took it from his fanny pack.”

Her neck and shoulders prickled to think that this man had followed them yesterday, even into the church, with a weapon.

Wulf rested the Beretta near his torso, pointed at the ground like an extension of his hand. Eyes narrowed, he stared at her. “Have you seen him in the sandbox?”

“What?” If their stalker wasn’t a member of her extended family, she had no clue what was going on. “Other than yesterday at the Mouth of Truth, I’ve never seen him. You’re the one who said this was army business.”

“It is. Look at his feet.”

The tan suede boots, minus the laces employed on his arms, were common to everyone with the army in Afghanistan, from general officers to privates, including most civilian contractors. Looking closer, she realized his receding hairline showed a white strip where he usually wore a hat, but the rest of his face and neck were tanned. “Is he a soldier?”

“Age, gut, shiny watch. I’d guess contractor.” He slipped the Beretta into his waistband and untucked his shirt, its bottom creased by sweat. From a row of items on another rock, he chose an unfamiliar cell phone. “Have anything in your purse to copy his call history?”

The only paper inside the leather bag hanging diagonally across her body was a postcard she’d bought at the Ara Pacis, a reminder of the morning before the world had shifted at the Mouth of Truth. The tourist who had reveled in the beauty of the altar celebrating Roman peace was gone, replaced by a dry-mouthed woman whose mind raced past branching consequences faster than she could search her purse.

Hunting for a pen, her fingers wrapped around a plastic rectangle that made a familiar tick-tick sound. The mints from Jennifer, weeks old but brought along for the trip because she’d wanted to be prepared for any hot guys who thought she was like ice cream. Simple problems.

Today absolutely called for two of the white mints, which hit her tongue like a shot of epinephrine.

Wulf fanned the man’s wallet contents in one hand and silently held out the other to her.

She shook two into his palm, but he kept his hand open. “I’m rationing.” Like hell she was giving him another. “For the next happy surprise.”

“Fair enough.” He nodded and examined the plastic cards in his hands. “Texas driver’s license says our buddy is Jack Spencer.”

Sitting on a chunk of rock, she studied the phone. A simple disposable like hers, it didn’t seem to have fancy locking functions. Finding the call history wouldn’t be hard.

“Better photo on the Indiana license for Mr. Jim Schroeder,” Wulf said. “Before he ate too many fries chez Black and Swan.”

Her stomach growled, but she forgot about it when beautiful columns of numbers appeared on the screen and one of the tentacles squeezing her chest unwrapped. While she wrote, her eyes darted from the phone to her notes to Wulf.

“Here’s a credit card for John Sullivan. Guess he doesn’t like to redo those J-S laundry tags.” Wulf dropped to his haunches next to the bound man. “If you’re coming round, Jack, let me reassure you. I’m a law-abiding type of guy.” He spoke barely above a whisper.

She strained to hear his next words while scribbling numbers.

“Ask people who know me. I’m easygoing. Fun-loving. Except for one thing.”

He was no longer the gentleman who’d wined and dined her. He had the same hair, same shoulders and same clothes, but this Wulf came from the part of the army that ended lives with precision. She came from the part that saved them, and the difference had never been so stark.

“One thing pisses me off.” He spoke to the prisoner. “People who spy on me.”

Suddenly she was very glad she hadn’t requested his personnel records after their first meeting in the cafeteria. “Finished.” The postcard covered with numbers trembled in her hand.

As Wulf left the bound man and returned to her, he switched to a smile. “Do you have a phone too?”

She nodded, then stopped, but it was too late.

“A disposable?” He held out his hand. “I need it.”

His stare compelled her to pull it from her purse.

“Yours should be clean. At least until Jack’s missed and someone starts checking where his phone last registered its location, and then finds other phones on at the same place and time.”

“How can someone—”

“Hack phone company records? Easily, but these people probably won’t have to.” As he spoke, he tapped keys and waited for someone to answer. “I’d call the billing department with a story about my daughter losing my phone and say it has the number for my boss’s vacation house. I have to find it because I’ll lose my job if I don’t tell the boss his wife is coming up a day early. Maybe drop a reference to his young blond assistant, and how much I need to keep this job because my wife’s been laid off.” The worry in his voice made her want to give him whatever he asked, even though she knew he was fabricating the story.

On the phone, he greeted someone named Lorenzo. Their Italian conversation flew too fast for her to catch more than Ostia and Roma and
ciao
before he hung up.

“Everything’s squared.” He popped the SIM cards from both phones. “Of course, Black and Swan’s so connected, they can probably tell the U.S. embassy to send the Italians a terrorism investigation letter of interest.”

She froze, hands in midair reaching for her phone, but Wulf stuffed it in his pocket. Whatever a terrorism investigation letter was, she didn’t want to be named in one. She was an American and an army officer. Things like extraordinary rendition or secret CIA prisons couldn’t happen to her...could they?

“If we’re named to the Italian government,” Wulf continued while he gathered the man’s papers, “we’re playing high stakes poker.”

Chilled in her short-sleeve shirt, she stared from the bound man to Wulf. The fear she’d battled all morning became much closer to panic. She didn’t want to spend another minute with the mystery man and the threat he represented. “Let’s go. Leave him and call the police later. Anonymously.”

“I made arrangements to dump him until we figure out the who, what and why.”

“That’s kidnapping. Won’t it make this even harder to explain?” She had to draw a line. “We can’t do that.”

“Who do you think will report our buddy Jim missing?” His eyes flicked over to the prisoner. “I doubt he brought family on this trip.”

Chapter Fourteen

“This guy had three identities and a semiautomatic. He’s no tourist.” Wulf’s voice was steady, his tone as rational as if they were discussing the probabilities of medical outcomes, but it wasn’t enough to convince her to abduct a man.

“It feels like
we’re
committing the crime.” She couldn’t ignore her roiling stomach. “I don’t understand what—or why—”

“Fine.” He threw his hands in the air. “My team’s investigating Afghan heroin shipments. Black and Swan is moving the junk in empty cargo containers. Before flying to Rome, I tracked a load to a ship in Karachi that’s due next week in Albania.” His eyes didn’t break contact with hers. “We think the smugglers killed a warrant officer who discovered an earlier cargo.”

“Then this is absolutely a police matter. We have to—”

“You think the army wants this publicized? That army resources, even inadvertently, are smuggling drugs? A soldier here or there with a duffel bag of hash, that’s one thing, but tons of heroin sent around the world on cargo ships courtesy of American taxpayers?”

Despite growing up reading Nancy Drew, she’d never had an urge to become a crime fighter. She was a doctor, and that made her job crystal clear.

He wasn’t finished. “We haven’t figured out how high up the corporate chain this goes. Black and Swan’s too politically savvy to take on lightly. So no police.”

Her head throbbed with the scale of what Wulf had revealed. The crazy-afraid part of her argued against his story, but her eyes couldn’t erase the man, the identifications and the gun.

“If we stick together, we’ll get out of this.” He pulled several bills from his pocket. “First, I want you to buy a couple beers at the snack bar.”

“Beer?” What was he thinking?

“I intend to haul our man to his car without being seen, but if someone stops us, we’ll pretend he’s drunk. For that, he needs to stink of beer.”

So he didn’t have a black helicopter on speed dial. But she didn’t have a better plan, so she might as well do her part.

By the time she reached the snack bar’s patio and dozen café tables, her doubts about Wulf’s plan had increased. With the Scandinavians departed for the next stop on their itinerary, this was arguably the busiest part of Ostia Antica, and the only place she could find a telephone.

A family eating gelato sat at the only occupied table. The father and the older child, a boy of eight or nine, seemed to be competing to blow paper drinking straw wrappers into an empty cup. The mother scooped a blob of berry pink off the front of her daughter’s sparkly T-shirt. Speaking to them was completely, utterly off-limits to a person with problems that included guns and drug smugglers.

Inside the café, a grandmotherly cashier sat by the register reading a magazine. If Theresa had gone to New Jersey for leave, she’d be shopping with her mother instead of staring into a refrigerator while mentally rehearsing how to ask for the
polizia
.

Between the crook of her elbow and her chest, she stacked two waters and two brown bottles of Italian beer. If she called the police, Wulf would undoubtedly vanish into the air, leaving her to be questioned while the authorities sorted out the facts.

The U.S. embassy would assist a captain in the United States Army, wouldn’t they?

When she thumped her purchases on the counter, the cashier barely looked up. The magazine cover showed a scantily clad woman and a glaring headline about the
ministro della giustizia
, the Minister of Justice. If she was arrested, would reporters from magazines like that camp out at her mother’s house? Would they discover her stepfather’s business connections? News scrutiny would ruin her life, and her mother’s. Carl, who, despite how he made a living, loved her, would go down too.

The request for the police died in her throat.

She left the snack bar with the bottles weighing on her forearms like shackles chaining her to Wulf. Holy Mary, Mother of God, she was
in.
This was how boys started with Carl.

Fifteen minutes later, their odd trinity paused at the edge of the ruins close to the parking lot. Jack-Jim-John lolled unconscious over Wulf’s shoulder, beer splashed on his shirt and shoes, while she carried the empties.

Wulf indicated the recycling bin thirty feet from the exit. “Drop the glass in. Loudly.”

“Now you’re a model citizen?” She rolled her eyes at him across the unconscious man.

“Diversion.” With his free hand, he slipped two buttons on her black-and-white shirt free of their holes. “Keep the ticket guy’s eyes on you while I stick Jack in his car.”

Each stride across the open space was harder than the one before. Her back felt exposed without Wulf next to her, and she expected to hear a shout or a siren, but she kept walking. At the kiosk, the ricochet of glass dropping into the metal cans jangled her nerves, but it caught the stare of the park attendant.

Keep his attention
. Bending, she fiddled with her boot zipper and stuck her ass in the air in the pose that had once riveted Wulf’s team at movie night. This guy wasn’t any more stalwart. When she stood, she braced one hand on the bin, took her boot off and shook it upside-down as if it had a rock in it. The guy leaned over his desk, so she shook the boot and everything else that would jiggle right at him.

Wulf was halfway across the lot heading for the black Fiat. She had to fill more time. Sliding her foot into the boot, she lifted her water to her mouth and let liquid drip onto her shirt. After plucking the cotton away from her chest, she blotted an imaginary wet spot over her nipple.

Come on
,
Wulf
,
I’m running low on ideas
.

He slammed the Fiat’s trunk closed and waved an all clear.

By the time she reached the car, both phones rested in the gravel next to the front tire.

“What are you doing?” She gripped the side-view mirror to keep from scrabbling for her plastic salvation.

“You copied the call history, so I’m destroying the hardware.” He pried her hands loose and brought them to his face, forcing her to look at him instead of the phones. “Even crap disposables can have internal GPS, and they triangulate location from towers.”

“We could turn it off.”

“Some can be turned on remotely by the service provider. I’m done taking chances.” He started the car and forced her to step away to avoid being bumped by the open driver’s door as he rolled forward and back. The phones became bits of black plastic and broken electronics. Finished, he flicked pieces of the SIM cards into the weeds.

“Come on.” He circled to the passenger side and held open the door. “We’re out of here.”

Minutes ago he’d tipped an unconscious prisoner into the trunk of a car they were about to steal, and now he was holding the door for her. It was absurd. But not funny.

“Theresa.”

She had a credit card and cash. A road arrow next to the parking lot pointed to a train station.

He read her mind. “I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe if you walk away. That’s all I want right now—to get rid of this guy and get you somewhere safe. Please let me.”

Carl always wanted to keep her mother safe. That’s what her childhood had been about. And her mother—every time they video-chatted, her mother always ended with
stay safe
. Usually it annoyed her, but right now it sounded pretty damn good.

She slipped into the passenger seat.

As Wulf started the car, she managed a steady voice despite the scratch in her throat. “Where are we going?”

“We’re taking our passenger to a cleaner.”

She doubted he meant a place that did shirts.

* * *

Shortly after they left the express highway that circled Rome, their prisoner started thumping the rear seat, so Wulf turned up the radio volume. The front-seat conversation, already limited, fizzled while Theresa sipped water and considered where exactly she should have walked away to avoid ending up in a stolen car with a drug smuggler stowed in the trunk.

The neighborhood outside was the type where dense trees clustered behind brick walls and gatehouses fortified the entrances to unseen homes. She broke the silence with a question she’d chewed over for miles. “What if there’s a GPS hidden on this car too?”

“It’s a risk.” Wulf turned between two stone lions and rolled down the car window to type on a security pad. “Most people aren’t paranoid enough to track themselves.”

The iron gates swung open. Two lines of poplars led to a white stucco mansion. The grand effect of a three-tiered fountain, complete with Neptune and cavorting naiads, inside the circular drive was lessened by a lack of water. The place felt vacant. “Where are we?”

Instead of answering, Wulf followed a spur of the driveway to a garage tucked behind the house. Its keypad required a palm-print verification to activate a steel roll-up door.

“Do you know these people? Is this some Special Operations safe house?” She stood in the garage bay and slammed the car door.

“Yes to the first, no to the second.” He left the prisoner’s identifications, the gun and the list of numbers on a shelf. “In about an hour, a man should arrive who’ll take care of Jack for us and trace the phone records. You—we—need to be gone.”

“That’s it?” She ducked under the descending garage door. “We’re leaving?”

“Yep.” He double-timed up the driveway.

“Where are we going?” Her frustration rose as she followed. She wanted many things, starting with real answers and proceeding directly to a shower, clean clothes and a meal. Bashing her head against his solid wall of super secret nonanswers was not on the list.

“Planning that now.”

He truly didn’t have a backup plan? His squared shoulders exuded authority she wanted to rely upon, but he was apparently as clueless as she was. Well, shit.

“We can’t talk here. You wouldn’t enjoy meeting the owner.” He had to use a third security system to open a person-size exit door concealed among the dense laurels.

“Then I’m going to my hotel.” Her room had pressed sheets and hot water, and the management left biscotti and fruit on a side table near the elevator.

“Negative.” Without pause, he strode downhill, away from the walled compound.

“Since you knocked this morning, I’ve been chased, stalked, bashed around and scared.” She trotted to stay up with him. The direction seemed likely to lead toward the Tiber River and thus to familiar scenery. “I’m filthy and I want a nap. Ergo, my hotel.”

“Where do you think they tagged my motorcycle?” Like he was making a double-tap execution, he fired the question at her and then answered it. “Your hotel.”

She stopped dead. She hadn’t connected the dots until he said it.

“Down!” Hands out, Wulf sprang and shoved her sideways to the ground.

Her hip and shoulder slammed the pavement at the base of a stucco wall. Wincing, she blinked her eyes clear. A white sedan wove along the curb with Wulf hanging from the passenger door, both his arms thrust into the open window while he grappled with a man inside.

Pop-pop
. The passenger held a gun fitted with a long black cylinder that she belatedly recognized as a silencer. And he’d fired. At them.

Wulf smashed the man’s forearm against the window frame, bending it backward from a point on the lower arm that no ulna bone could withstand. Three things happened in an instant, but she saw each one flicker separately, as if she were channel surfing. The pistol fell in the road. The man screamed, high and screechy like a zoo peacock, as his arm flopped at an angle that equaled compound fracture. The driver floored the gas.

As the car hurtled forward, Wulf released the man’s broken arm and dropped off the vehicle, rolling harmlessly as the sedan squealed around a corner.

She reached her feet a second after Wulf found his. Perhaps ninety seconds had passed since she’d asked about going to her hotel. Silence wrapped around them.

“You said—” Her chest heaved as she struggled to control her breathing and repress a scream. “You said people don’t track their own cars.”

“To quote a former boss, I misunderestimated.” Handling the abandoned pistol with his shirttail, he tossed it over a wall into dense shrubs, then towed her across the street. Ahead, several businesses and cafés lined an intersection.

As she moved faster than a walk, but not at a flat-out run, her senses sharpened. Her hearing became especially acute, until even a vehicle honking blocks away caused her to jump.

“Lots of cars in Rome,” Wulf muttered. “Don’t panic.”

“I’m not.” She slowed to match his pace as they reached the first shop. “I’m not panicked.” No, that would be
calmer
than the churning stomach and puppet-on-a-string jerkiness she felt in her shoulders and arms. She’d welcome mere panic.

Up the block, two men stared into a convenience store’s plate-glass window.

“Italians don’t wear loose jeans.” Wulf pulled her through the closest entrance and into a men’s clothing store. The middle-aged proprietor stared while Wulf spoke in rapid Italian.

As they followed the man’s gesture toward the rear, she glimpsed herself in a wall mirror. Her jaunty shirt had come untied, her hair had morphed from flowing to unkempt and her pants had turned splotchy with whitish-gray dust.

“We’re disappearing. Somewhere no one will follow.” Wulf dropped a ten-euro bill on a shelf next to the exit and grabbed a broom and a can of cleaning spray. In an alley too narrow for American garbage trucks, he stopped over a manhole cover, shoved the broom handle into an opening on the edge of the iron circle and pushed on the lever.

Understanding dawned, then disbelief. “A sewer?”

* * *

Wulf wondered exactly what would cause Theresa to stop arguing. Clearly he wasn’t going to find out today. “Yes.” Thor’s hammer, this drain needed to open
right now
, but in the last sixty years it had rusted shut tighter than his brother’s smile. “Find something. Help me.”

He heard scrabbling by a garbage bin, and within seconds she returned and shoved a second piece of wood, tapered as if it had been a chair leg, into another notch on the cover’s rim. Force and levers. Simple physics.