In For the Kill (McClouds & Friends #11)(120)

This was the first time she’d looked at anything in that picture other than Mama. Her head was framed in one half. The half Sveti had trimmed off showed a rocky hill with a dark cleft in the rocks, a heap of tumbled boulders in front. At the far right was the edge of a concrete building. A chain-link, razor-wire fence encircled it.

She closed her eyes, picturing the numbers Mama had written. Only the first two digits of each number had remained on the piece in the frame. A 40 on the top, a 14 beneath. The rest of the digits had gone out with the trash, years ago. She remembered thinking, seven digits? Phone numbers, maybe. She didn’t give a shit whose, under the circumstances. No one she wanted to call. That was for damn sure.

One never knew what to value while one had it. Only when it was snatched, smashed, or thrown away did one begin to understand. It had been that way with her parents, her childhood. Her innocence.

Just not with Sam. She’d known he was a treasure from the start.

She pushed that thought down before it could derail her, and found a program that accessed the metadata. Her mother had used a digital camera. It might have geotagged her photos.

In fact, it had. And the first two numbers of the longitude and latitude matched the written numbers on her photo. Forty. Fourteen.

She stared at them, terrified to get her hopes up again. She’d gotten slapped down so many times. It could just be random. But it was all she had left. That was reason enough to take it and run with it.

She found a program that would pinpoint the exact location of those coordinates. It was the middle of nowhere, about fifteen kilometers outside a town called Pozzo di San Ignazio. A satellite photo showed a couple of buildings, jagged rock formations. There was a road, but not a very distinct one. The land right behind the spot was rugged. Rocks, cliffs, gullies. Driving time, over two hours, according to the computer.

What was this but one last muscle she could flex? She’d take anything, no matter how thin or improbable, just to keep moving.

She dug into her suitcase for more appropriate clothes. Jeans, a button-down shirt, a light jacket. Her waist holster, her Micro-Glock. The most practical shoes she had, the sporty green kicks she’d worn on the plane.

She dropped the filthy plastic sleeve and its miserable contents into the plastic bag she’d wrapped around her kicks, and shoved it into the bathroom trash. Her mother’s letter went into her purse, with her tablet, the maps, and satellite photos. Her phone would function as a GPS device, too, so she dug for it in her pockets. Then her jacket.

Where on earth . . . ?

Oh, God, no. When she’d shown Sam the text from his father, she’d never taken her phone back. She’d left it lying on his bed.

Shit. Phoneless. Not good, but the alternative was to wake someone and beg the loan of a cell phone, which opened up a mess of other potential problems and delays. Her hosts might even insist on accompanying her. God forbid. She’d end up murdering them both.

This bad business was between her and Mama’s ghost, which took all her attention, and left none for lecherous philanthropists or fawning socialites. Besides, it didn’t feel right to use Hazlett’s security personnel, now that she fully intended to blow him off. Likewise, all reasons for being civil to Renato Torregrossa had rotted into slime beneath the tiles of his atrium. He was now free to go f*ck himself.

She could buy another phone. The problem was the effort it would take to find a place to buy one here, communicate with personnel well enough to buy the right product, and then figure out how to activate it.

Her problem-solving capabilities had been maxed out long ago.

She could get in touch with Val’s contact, Simone, but that would put the world in touch with her, and she was too raw. She wanted to float in a bubble of silence. No scolding, no admonishments.

She was going out to flex her very last muscle. It wasn’t a whim.

It was a bid to save her soul.





CHAPTER 24

Dawn threatened on the horizon. No time to lose. She went to the security room, trying to cobble together enough Italian to tell whoever manned the room at night that she needed to open the gate, but she need not have bothered. The room was deserted.

Strange. After all Hazlett’s self-congratulatory carrying on about his security, no one was at the vidcams? But she was in no mood to quibble with her luck. She took a flashlight from one of the shelves and sat in front of the monitor. Its screens showed different infrared images of the property. She clicked around until she found the app on the toolbar that opened the gate. She clicked “open.” Watched it grind wide.

The enormous entrance door was four meters tall. Gently as she tried to close it, the door made a muffled boom.

She took the hairpin curves of the access road fast and sped out the open gate unchallenged. It felt strange and lonely, with only herself to rely upon again. In just a few days, she’d gotten spoiled. Started to count on Sam’s forceful personality, his fearsome competence at just about everything. She’d gotten used to having a high-powered, super-deluxe resource constantly at her fingertips. His energy kept things moving fast, facing forward. No time for dark thoughts, creeping doubts.

And the way he made her feel about herself. A siren, a seductive goddess. The outrageously generous way that he gave of himself. He’d flung everything he was before her as an offering. You are my life.

And then made it impossible for her to accept it.

She lost it. Had to pull over, on some beautiful highway overlook to cry it out. It didn’t feel like a crying fit. It felt like a seizure.