Oxblood (17 page)

Chapter 16

Cabin fever was setting in and everyone was starting to go a little crazy. It had been two days since Ian “had to go out.” We hadn't heard from him or from Command. That's when I became the subject of my own personal Spanish Inquisition.

“Did he give any indication as to where he was going?” Adam asked me. “It's not like him to be gone this long without communicating.”

“Who was he going to find? Are you sure he just said ‘locals'?” Claudia asked.

“What about the journal?” Damon added.

My stomach churned at the mention of the journal. I could handle everything else they were throwing at me, but as soon as they brought up the one thing I wasn't supposed to talk about, I was afraid I was going to involuntarily vomit up information.

“You were exploring that further yesterday, were you not?” Damon continued. “Perhaps something in there triggered his need to go out?”

The best, though, was when Carter all but pulled me into a dark room and turned on a bright hanging lamp so he could question me relentlessly.

“What are you hiding, newbie?” he barked. “Where's Ian? He doesn't leave like this, and you were the last one to talk to him. Where did he say he was going?”

“He just said he had to go out,” I told him. “Like he would tell me where he was going! I'm the newbie, remember?”

“I don't trust you.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

“Back off, Carter!” Eva intervened. “Geez!”

“What if she sent him into another ambush?” he said. “My gut tells me something is off, and my gut is never wrong.”

“How about that? We have something in common,” I said. “I didn't send him into anything and you know it.”

Carter examined me with as much skepticism as I did him. I couldn't decide if he was just an ass, or if something about him was off. All I knew was that Ian had been gone too long and that could only mean one thing: trouble.

Eva finally pulled Carter off me and sent him to his room. With a look of frustration on her face, she followed him, closing the door behind them.

As the hours went by, I struggled with the idea of telling them about the kidnappings and Ian's theory about Gil's quest to avenge Maria's death. I understood Ian's reasoning for keeping it from them. Having been forbidden from touching cases like this, it was best to have something solid to take to Command—without getting the whole team into trouble. On the other hand, Ian had been gone a long time, and it wasn't a good sign how worried everyone was. And if I told them, they would know where to start looking for him.

Damon worked nonstop. When he took a break to eat, he was surprisingly jovial. It seemed everyone else was constantly on edge, but Damon was able to flip the switch between working and relaxing. He told me that if I were going to be in Italy much longer, I would have to learn some conversational Italian. He taught me phrases like “
Dov'è il bagno
?” for “Where is the bathroom?” He said this might be the most important phrase I learn. He also taught me “
Sì, per favore
,” for “Yes, please” and “
No, grazie
” for “No, thank you.” And then, just for fun, he taught me two of his favorite Italian curse words:
merda
and
stronzo
. I decided I wouldn't use either one of them. If I really needed to let the sailor in me out, I was sure English would do just fine.

Adam and Claudia tried to teach me the fine art of waiting.

“We wait a lot,” Claudia told me.

“How do you pass the time? I'm guessing you can't exactly go to a movie,” I said.

“Oh my God! Do you know what I would give to see a movie?” Adam said.

“I know, right? Unfortunately, waiting usually means monitoring our surveillance or doing research.”

“Well, I'm tired of waiting,” I said. “There must be something we can do. What about the locals Ian is checking in with? Do you know who they are? What if we tried to retrace his steps?”

“She is right,” Damon said.

“I'll go,” Carter announced, materializing from the back room. “But I'm not talking to Ian's contacts. I've got my own. If Ian's around, they'll have heard something.”

“I'm coming with you,” I declared. Keeping my eye on Carter seemed like a much better idea than sitting around the apartment with nothing to do.

“Even better,” he said.

“I'm not sure that's a good idea,” Eva suggested.

“It's not a mission,” Carter said. “It's a drive into Venice and a conversation with some guys at a bar. It'll be fine. Besides, I'll look less conspicuous with her by my side.”

Carter cupped Eva's face sweetly. “Don't worry.”

Carter put on a fresh shirt, and I pulled my hair into a low ponytail. Then he picked up a gun and gestured for me to do the same. When I demurred, he said, “I don't care if you've been a member of this team for five minutes or fifty years. If you're with me, you're carrying. You need to be able to protect yourself and protect me.”

When everyone else agreed, I let Adam secure a back holster with a pistol at my waist.

“We'll be back by morning,” Carter told the team as we left.

We weren't five minutes down the road before I had to call out the elephant in the room.

“I thought you didn't trust me,” I said.

“To be honest, I'm still making up my mind about you,” he answered.

“Well, if I were being honest, I don't completely hate you.”

A moment passed before Carter replied. “You don't completely suck, either, newbie.”

As we drove into Venice, Carter laid out his plan. Twenty minutes later, he parked the car and came around to open my door. “Are you clear on the plan?” he asked.

“We are a happy honeymooning couple. Except to your contacts. To them, we are the most dangerous people they know.” We took a few steps then I stopped. “You don't like Ian. Why are you doing this?”

Carter considered me for a moment. “My allegiance is to Rogue. For better or worse, Ian is my team leader. Looking out for him is part of protecting my team. It's my job.”

I could see the worry in Carter's eyes.

“That was pretty convincing.”

Carter rolled his eyes and shook his head. “There are a lot of people out here, newbie. I need your eyes and ears more than anything. Tonight's the night to prove your worth.”

“But no pressure, right?” I said.

“I'm not worried a bit.”

It was a busy night, and the streets were full of tourists. We walked the busy sidewalk, stopping at two bars where Carter had informants. According to Carter, bartenders made the best kind: They saw and heard everything. Usually, the thugs like the ones who'd grabbed Ian and me were just strong-arms for hire. They weren't part of an organized crime family. Carter referred to them as Thug Temps. He said they were known for coming into a bar, getting drunk, and spilling everything to the bartender.

After the first two bars, Carter's contacts had come up empty-handed. While Carter did the questioning, I kept my eyes and ears open for anything that struck me as odd. When two guys I noticed at the first bar followed us to the second, I figured that qualified.

“We're being followed,” I told Carter.

“You sure?” he asked. I nodded. “All right. Let's hit this last bar and see if my guy knows anything. If they're still tailing us, we'll take care of them,” Carter said.

We were in character, walking hand-in-hand up the sidewalk. A chill from the air made me shiver, and Carter put his arm around me.

We found the last bar and took a seat. When the bartender saw us, he flinched. The other two bartenders hadn't been happy to see Carter, either.

I scanned the room as I had at the other locations and watched as the creepy guys who had been tailing us followed us inside. The first guy was bald and had a scar on his chin. He had been obsessively checking his phone. The other guy was wearing a black leather jacket and had enough earrings to make a pirate jealous. He watched the door like the Second Coming was about to arrive.

“I'm looking for a friend of mine,” Carter asked the bartender.

“He speaks English?” I questioned.

“Yeah. He also speaks money.” Carter slid a folded bill across the bar to him. “Tall British guy. You seen him around?”

“No. No Englishmen around here in a while,” he answered.

“Any noise about someone matching that description? Maybe something about someone poking around and getting himself into trouble?” Carter prodded.

“I haven't heard anything, but I will keep an open ear for you,” the bartender replied.

He was acting a little jittery, shuffling back and forth and wiping a cloth around a glass long after it had become dry. And then he darted his eyes to the guy with the scar.

Carter let the bartender go and put his arm around me. “Did you catch that?”

“Yep,” I answered. I leaned into Carter's ear like a newlywed­ would. “Those
two
ugly mugs are failing miserably at blending in.”

“I see them,” Carter said, cupping my face.

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

“Let's just watch them and see what kind of trouble we can get into with them.”

Great.

We sat there for another hour watching the two men and pretending to be in love. When they still hadn't moved, Carter declared that we had to “smoke them out” by making a move of our own.

Stepping back out into the night air, I took a deep breath, a nice break from the smoky bar. We were halfway to the car when I shook out my ponytail to give me an excuse to look behind us. In the glow of the streetlights, the baldheaded thug with the scar on his chin was impossible to miss. Across the street was the earrings guy.

“It's them,” I said.

Carter just nodded. When we were a block from the car, and the crowd had dispersed, Carter pulled me into an alley.

“We have about sixty seconds,” he said sternly.

“I can't believe I'm being ambushed twice in a matter of days,” I bemoaned.

Carter grinned like a shark. “Sweetheart, it's only an ambush if you don't see it coming. If anyone's being ambushed here, it's them.”

Then, without warning, Carter kissed me. It was a big, passionate, write-home-about kiss. It took my breath away.

“What was that for?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.

“Luck. I always fair better in a fight after kissing a beautiful woman.”

He gave me a crooked, sexy smile, and I knew he was full of shit. He leaned down to my ear and whispered, “Time to up your game on those acting skills.”

Carter snaked his arms around me, gripping me tightly as the two men rounded the corner. Then he kissed my neck and said things like, “C'mon, baby!”

When the two men following us hesitated, I understood the game Carter was playing. I shoved Carter away from me. “Not here!”

When Baldy grabbed Carter's shoulder, I launched myself at Earrings Dude.

Their moment of confusion was our opening. As Carter punched Baldy in the stomach, I summoned my inner Adam and gave everything I had into the right hook he'd tried to teach me. What I wasn't prepared for was the pain that shot through my fist and arm as I connected with Earrings Dude's chin.

He staggered back. I followed by raising my knee and plowing my heel into his foot. He cried out and brought his head around, right where I needed it.

Behind me, I heard grunts and punches, but I couldn't waste time wondering how Carter was faring. I had to stay focused. As Earrings Dude lifted his head, I reached forward, grabbed his hair, and brought my knee up into his face.

He dropped to his knees and held his face, giving me the break I needed to reach behind me and unholster my pistol. I held the muzzle to his temple.

“Stop!” he yelled to his partner, blood streaming from his nose.

I was glad the word
stop
was known internationally.

I turned to see Carter get one more hit in before Baldy fell to the ground.

“
Cosa volete
?” Carter demanded as he drew his gun.

Before either of the men could answer, we heard a rumble from the darkest end of the alley that sounded like garbage cans being knocked over. Carter reiterated his question, but the two men refused to answer.

Carter moved to stand behind the men with me and then said something in Italian that I assumed was a directive to stay where they were because neither of them moved.

“What do we do with them?” I asked, still pointing my gun at my attacker.

“Well—” Carter began but was cut off by the sound of two shots being fired and our captives falling to the ground.

Carter pushed me against the wall and fired into the darkness of the alley. The way he looked at me, I knew he could feel my body shaking. I waited to hear the explosion of a gun, to feel the burn of the bullet tear through my skin before everything went black. But nothing came. Only silence.

“You okay, newbie?” Carter whispered.

I straightened my jacket. “Yeah, I'm totally fine. I'm alive. Was that meant for us?” My voice trembled, betraying my best attempts at putting on a brave face.

“No.” Carter pushed the two men over and revealed a single gunshot to each of their hearts. “It was meant for them. They failed their mission, and this was the price they paid.”

“So why not just shoot us, too?”

“They need us alive so we can tell the team to back off. C'mon.”

Carter took my hand and led us back to the bar where we first saw the two men. The place had been shot up. Chairs were broken, and pieces of wood and glass were scattered everywhere. Bullet holes riddled the walls, and a dozen bodies were slumped over tables or laying on the floor.