In For the Kill (37 page)

It would be too late, of course. He being the kind of man he was. When Sam's mind was made up, he didn't un-make it. He would tell her to fuck off. Then, of course, the world would end.

Let it. The world had ended so many times today. What was one more time? She had nothing to lose. Not hope. Not pride.

She circled around a long time in San Anselmo before finding an electronics shop. The gangly man with the large Adam's apple behind the counter spoke a little English, but he stared with big, scared eyes for a while, his throat bobbing, before he dared to speak to her. He took pity on her when she begged him to copy the data from her mother's pin drive onto the new one she bought from him, and plugged it into his machine. A few anxious moments passed before it consented to be read, but the data finally emerged. A hundred and twenty-three JPEGs. One Word document.

She tucked the new drive into her pocket, asked directions to the police station, and proceeded to understand absolutely nothing of the directions he gave her. She thanked him anyway, having gleaned from his body language the general direction in which she should drive.

She'd just look for signs for the
Polizia
. But as always, that was easier said than done. There was a huge
festa
in course, involving extensive illumination, a procession, marching bands, an open-air market, choking masses of people. Cars clogged all the streets that were not closed to traffic. She slowed to a crawl, twitching and cursing.

She found what she hoped was a legal parking spot, and spotted a place that dealt in cell phones and services. She could no longer afford to be incommunicado, not with a secret like hers.

She headed for it, footsteps quickening to a trot.

“Svetlana! Is that you?”

She shrieked and spun around. Hazlett leaned out of the back of his limo. He stared at her, horrified. “For the love of God, what happened to you? Were you in an accident? Did someone attack you?”

Oh, joy. Sveti looked down at herself, realizing just how filthy and disheveled she was. A day of hiking on broken rock, sliding on one's belly through a slimy cave, crawling out of a mass grave, and scrambling through a garbage dump could do that to a woman.

“No,” she said stupidly. “Hi, Michael. I'm, ah . . . fine. What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

“Chance! We've been looking for you all day! That was a dirty trick, running off in the night! What on earth were you thinking? After what happened to you the other day?”

His scolding tone slid over her, not penetrating. She stared at him. Pure chance? “Why are you here?” she repeated.

He made an exasperated sound. “Who knows. Coincidence. Psychic magnetism. It's destiny that I should be drawn to you!”

Destiny, her ass. Her social functionality was at an all-time low. She could not chat with this guy right now. She had a list of crucial shit to do, and he was not on it. “Sorry, Michael. I have to go.” She turned in the opposite direction from the one that his limo was pointed and started walking.

He got out and followed her. “Go where? Slow down, Svetlana!”

“To the police,” she said.

He loped stubbornly after. “Why, for God's sake? To report a crime? Did someone hurt you? Rob you? Talk to me! Let me help!”

“Thanks, but only the police can help right now.”

He danced out in front of her. “Let me give you a ride to the police station,” he offered. “It will take you the better part of an hour to beat your way through this crowd, and I can get you there in twenty minutes. Frankly, you look like you could use the time off your feet.”

Sveti looked around at the deepening night, the honking blare of traffic on the closest big avenue, the streets choked with people. She could wander until she collapsed. God, how she longed to get this done.

“Okay,” she said. “But straight to the police station.”

“Like a shot,” he assured her, and opened the door of the limo for her, rattling off a string of instructions in swift Italian to his driver.

He got in after her. “Now, tell me. What on earth happened to you today? Excuse me for saying it, but you look like a train wreck.”

This was the price she had to pay for this ride. Too late she had realized that it was too expensive. She sucked in a bracing breath, hung on to her patience with all her fingernails. “I found evidence of a terrible crime,” she said. “I have to tell the police right away.”

He looked shocked. “What crime? Has anyone been hurt?”

She cleared her thick, aching throat. “Many people,” she said bleakly, thinking of the tiny skeleton, the toy bear. “It was hard to tell the number.”

“Many? Good God, Svetlana, do we need to call ambulances?”

“It's not a recent crime,” she said. “They're long past help. I can't explain right now, Michael. Please, give me some space.”

“Certainly,” he murmured. “I'm sorry. You've been through something terrible. Just rest, please.”

She leaned back, covering her eyes with her hands to block him out. Michael made a call on his smartphone and talked into it with great urgency, in Italian. She felt so strange, jumpy. As tired as she was, she was jangling like an alarm bell.

As soon as he finished talking, she'd borrow his phone and call Tenente Morelli. She had to tell someone, anyone. Correction. Anyone who was not Michael Hazlett. Maybe telling someone would make her feel less like doom was breathing down her neck. As it so often was.

The limo slowed just as he hung up. She looked out. It was not a police station. It was the façade of a luxury hotel.

“Michael?” she said sharply. “What the hell? I said the police!”

“I have a better idea,” he said smoothly. “Hear me out.” He held up his hand to forestall her protests. “I keep a suite here the entire season. They have an excellent chef. The police commissioner, Zabretti, is a personal friend of mine and Renato's. I've dined with him many times. He speaks fluent English. I called him to tell him about you. As soon as he finishes his current business, he'll be right over. In the meantime, you can sit down someplace safe and comfortable, have a cup of tea, maybe even shower and change your—”

“I don't give a shit about my clothes! This is more important than my dinner fashion choices, Michael! This can't wait!”

“Certainly not, which is why it should be done right!” he retorted. “What's the point of going to the station, where you'll just wait for a long time in a hard plastic chair to talk to a series of thick, uncomprehending bureaucratic underlings before you even find someone capable of listening to you? Commissario Zabretti should come to you! You deserve it, after your ordeal! In the meantime, drink some tea or have a glass of wine and something to eat! I've ordered dinner. From the looks of you, you haven't eaten, am I right?”

She was staring straight at him, but she saw right through him, as if he were a ghost, or a fantasy. The skeletons in that hole, burned into her memory, were more vivid than he was. White flowers were twining around tiny rib bones, and he wanted her to sip some tea?

“I'm not hungry,” she said.

He made an impatient sound. “Don't be ridiculous. It'll be very light. Steamed sea bass with lemon and herbs, salad, grilled vegetables, a nice chilled Pinot. You must eat. I'm sure even your pit bull would agree with me. Much as he thinks I'm opportunistic scum.”

She flinched. “Don't, please.”

Michael got out of the car and held out his hand.

She stared at it, still frozen. It was true. She was being hysterical and childish, spitefully refusing him just because she'd had the mother of all bad days. And because he was not Sam. That was not his fault.

She got out of the car, but she did not take his hand.

The suite he kept on the fifth floor was large and very beautiful. A table was set for two. White tapers twinkled. A wine bucket had a bottle chilling in it. A tea tray on a sideboard. Cream, sugar, lemon. Chocolate-dipped butter cookies. It was surreal.

“Ah, that's better.” Hazlett shrugged off his jacket. “Wine or tea?”

She struggled with the question for a moment. “Tea,” she croaked.

“Sit,” he said briskly. “Zabretti should be here soon.”

She collapsed into a chair. He poured her tea and stirred a heaping teaspoonful of sugar into it. “You look like you're about to go into shock,” he scolded. “You don't take good enough care of yourself.”

If only he knew. The tea was too sweet, but her wiped-out brain could use the fuel. She needed to be cogent, for Zabretti.

After her tea was drained, he poured and sugared another. “So tell me, now,” Hazlett said. “What happened?”

“I found out why my mother was murdered,” she said. “She'd been investigating a crime. Hundreds of boat people from Africa killed in illegal medical experiments and buried in a cave.”

Hazlett's jaw dangled. “My God. I . . . I don't know what to say.”

She shrugged. There was nothing he could say that would be pertinent, so he might as well shut up. But no such luck. He rattled on.

“You have proof? In there?” He indicated the plastic envelope.

Her hand tightened on the plastic envelope as she gulped more tea. She was afraid to let go of it, even for a second. It could disappear in a puff of smoke. She felt like she'd been chasing the damn thing half her life.

“Tell me more,” he urged. “How on earth did you figure it out? It's amazing, Svetlana. Not that I'm surprised, having seen you in action.”

She wished he'd stop kissing her ass, since she really didn't want him that close to it. “I have to tell the commissario all about it,” she hedged. “Please, don't make me say it twice.”

“Of course not,” he murmured hastily. “You must be so tired.”

“May I use your phone?” she asked suddenly. “I lost mine.”

“Certainly.” He pulled it out. “Who do you want to call?”

“The detective I talked to yesterday,” she said.

Michael looked worried. “Don't you think you should let Zabretti handle this? The detective you talked to yesterday won't be investigating a crime that took place in another jurisdiction anyway—”

“I don't give a shit about the politics of jurisdiction,” she said sharply. “I just want everyone to know about this. As soon as possible.”

“I know,” he soothed. “Please, just talk to Zabretti first. He'll be here any minute, and, and he—ah! Here's dinner! Let's discuss it after.”

Time dragged like a ball and chain. Her stomach was perplexed by food. The very small quantity that she managed to swallow seemed a lump of some alien substance that it had never encountered before, and had no idea what to do with. The luxurious place felt so fake. A façade.

She felt that way a lot, since the organ traffickers. As if she alone knew the dark truth, while everyone else inhabited a shiny dream world. Only Sam had made her feel fully rooted in the world around her. He made her feel like she inhabited it completely. Like she owned it.

Without him, she drifted, lost and transparent. Like a ghost.

Hazlett poured her wine. As she watched pale liquid glug into the glass, she thought of stories she'd read to Rachel about fairy mounds. People who visited the hall of the Mountain King.
Neither shall ye eat nor drink in the land of faerie, lest ye never again return to the world of men.

The random, nasty stab of irrational fear put an end to dinner. She put down her fork and looked at the clock on the marble mantel.

“Where is Zabretti?” she asked. “It's been over an hour.”

“He's a busy man,” Hazlett said, dabbing at the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “And he understands it's not a time-sensitive emergency. This is Italy, after all. Nothing happens quickly.”

“Not time sensitive? You told him that?” She leaped to her feet. “I should have gone straight to the police. I'll get a cab right now!”

“I did not say it wasn't important! I simply let him know that it was not a crime that was currently in progress! Do not get hysterical, Svetlana. I did not diminish how terrible this situation is. Don't panic!”

Panic was rising anyway. She trembled violently. Oh, please, please, let her keep her shit together just a little while longer. Until she could pass this torch on to someone she trusted. When no one needed her, when it no longer mattered,
then
she could fall apart. Not before.

She pictured the little girl, holding her bear. Her tiny bare bones.

“Let me make a suggestion, now that you have some food inside you,” Hazlett said. “Let me help you organize what you're going to say to Zabretti. Just run through it for me, exactly the way you plan to say it to him. Let me ask all the questions that he will ask. It will save you time and energy, and it will give you more credibility. Please, Svetlana. I want so badly to help you. Come. Let's run through it.”

The plastic envelope warped in her hands, sharp corners cutting into her palms. Her heart thudded. She was clammy with cold sweat.

“Let's start,” he prompted. “First, tell me how you found this cave. And how on earth did you manage to climb down into it?”

Her mind froze into crystalline clarity. Her heart stopped beating. Time stopped, as she stared at his ruggedly handsome face, his expression of concern. His eyes, glittering. Knife-sharp. So focused.

She cleared her throat. “Who said I climbed down into the cave?”

Hazlett's frown was puzzled. “Oh, I just assumed, I suppose. The area has so many natural wells and cavities. It seemed obvious that—”