The Italian

  With a wild cry she launched herself at him—and was blocked, frozen by a searing pain in the back of her head.

  Her feet scrabbled for purchase. Tears sprang to her eyes, the pain almost unbearable as her head was pulled back so sharply she thought her neck would crack. The terrible tension in her head was released and she sank to her knees, one hand landing on a shard of glass that sliced deeply into her palm.

  She was yanked back upright so brutally the muscles in her arm protested.

  For the first time she realized there was someone else in the room, someone who’d yanked on her hair when she’d tried to attack the man in the armchair. She was held against a male body that smelled of sweat and cheap cologne. Bile rose in her throat and she had to swallow not to vomit again.

  Shark Eyes rose and walked slowly toward her. The man behind her held her in a crushing grip—she was immobilized. She tried kicking backward and received a blow to the head that made her ears ring.

  “Stop that,” Shark Eyes said softly, and something in his voice, in his look, made her stop struggling immediately. This man was dangerous in a way she’d never encountered before. It was an instinctive knowledge, from before civilization, when humans lived in the wild.

  This man was very, very dangerous.

  She stilled. The man behind her loosened his grip slightly. These men were animals and could scent when the prey had given up on the idea of resistance. There was nothing she could do against them. Nothing.

  Shark Eyes put his face next to hers. She tried to recoil but was held too tightly against the other man.

  “Listen carefully, because I’m going to say this once. Nod if you understand.”

  Her head jerked.

  His English was perfect, though he had a thick Sicilian accent.

  “Tomorrow morning, you will call Judge Stefano Leone, at nine a.m. exactly. Nod if you understand me.”

  Her head jerked again.

  “I don’t care how you do it, but you convince him to come to you immediately. You make him drive here as fast as he can.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that,” she gasped. “He might be in court, he might be out of town. And I don’t know if he would obey me.”

  The man’s jaw muscles rippled but she had no way to interpret what that meant. Whether he believed her or thought she was lying.

  “He will be in his office at nine. And he will come because he is infatuated with you. Now repeat what you are to do.”

  “Call the judge.” She could barely get the words out. “At nine. But—”

  “If you don’t…” Shark Eyes got even more in her face, gaze boring into hers. Those eyes were utterly dark, no difference at all between pupil and iris. Utterly flat and utterly terrifying. “If you don’t, trust me when I say your grandfather will take several days to die. We will make sure he stays alive to suffer. It won’t be quick and it won’t be easy and every second of pain will be on your head. And we will make sure he understands that it is his granddaughter who has caused all this pain. His body will eventually be dumped somewhere it will be found—but it will probably take DNA to identify the remains. Because he won’t have hands or teeth or a head. Nod if you understand me.”

  That keening rose in her head again, making it almost impossible to control her body. She shivered and shook.

  Shark Eyes lifted his gaze over her head and she got a punch to the back, right over the kidneys. The pain was more intense than any she’d ever felt, white hot and piercing.

  “Nod if you understand me,” Shark Eyes said, with no change whatsoever to his tone.

  Her head jerked again.

  “Repeat what you are to do.”

  She could hardly talk through the pain. “Call…Stefano…tomorrow.” She wheezed in a breath.

  “At?”

  “Nine,” she gasped, and the tight hold suddenly relented. She swayed, shot out a hand to the desk to steady herself. Pain radiated from her lower back.

  “Good.”

  She was barely standing. Shark Eyes slipped the pistol into a shoulder holster she hadn’t noticed and pulled the jacket back over it. “We have left a microphone here and we will leave a man outside the building. If you try to call the judge or warn him personally, we will know. And we will know if he receives the call or not. If he doesn’t receive the call at nine tomorrow morning, know that we have your grandfather in our hands. Nod if you understand me.”

  She nodded.

  His gaze jumped to the other man once more. There was a sharp pain in her head and blackness descended.

  Chapter Eight

  Stefano signed the final warrant for unearthing Serra’s Cayman Island accounts and threw down the pen. It was three o’clock in the morning. He stood, stretched, arms up then down to touch his toes. He’d worked past midnight many times, pushing himself beyond exhaustion. Nailing Salvatore Serra was worth it, many times over. He’d spent most of the past three years in a state of permanent fatigue.

  Not now though.

  He wasn’t pushing himself now. Though he’d worked every second since landing back in Palermo—not even stopping by his apartment—he felt refreshed, even energized. Part of it was that he could feel he was honing in on Serra.

  Stefano’s great-grandfather had been a famous hunter, squandering the family fortune to go on safaris in Africa and as far away as India. The attic of his mother’s home was full of moth-eaten stuffed heads. He hated hunting animals but he had the hunt in his blood. He preferred the biggest game of all.

  Man.

  And he was close. Not only was he setting up an airtight indictment, he was choking off Serra’s money, which meant he was having trouble finding places to hide.

  The scent of prey in his nostrils explained part of the raw wave of energy he was feeling, but Jamie was responsible for a lot of it too. She’d infused him with new life. New hope. Sometime in the future he was going to get his life back and he was going to move heaven and earth to make sure Jamie was part of it.

  He’d left badly, unable to say what he’d wanted. There had been no possibility of making future plans. The weekend they’d shared had been stolen time but he wasn’t going to get that again, not until Serra was in a cage.

  There’d been nothing he could say, so he’d said nothing.

  What he’d wanted to say—I loved this time with you, I want to spend as much time with you as possible, I think we have something special—was impossible.

  Until his dying day, he’d see her face—pale and stricken. Biting her lips because she too realized there was nothing to say. Jamie was nothing if not intelligent. Intelligent, fascinating, beautiful…

  He closed his eyes, wanting. Then opened them again. Wanting wasn’t going to change anything. Nailing Serra would change his life. So he was fucking going to do that.

  He sat back down at his desk, fingers over the keyboard—and frowned.

  A Skype request.

  When he saw who the contact was, he grinned. JamieinBoston.

  Jamie not in Boston, but in Palermo.

  Well, no one could begrudge him the odd Skype session. He accepted the contact and the video call came in immediately. He clicked to accept.

  And his heart skipped a beat when he saw Jamie’s bloody, tear-ravaged face on the screen.

  * * * * *

  Her eyes opened. At first she could make no sense of what she was seeing—the world askew, drops of liquid, shards of glass glinting in the light of the lamp.

  The pungent scent of alcohol rose in the night, mixed—horribly—with the smell of vomit. The back of her head hurt. Her hand hurt, her cheek hurt.

  There was no sense to all these disparate things.

  Then she remembered and it all made sense. A horrible, nightmarish sense.

  Her hands went to her scalp. The back of her head was sore, a painful lump feeling squishy beneath her fingers, which came away covered in red. She was bleeding. She was bleeding from her cheek too. Her fingers brushed her face gingerly, feeling someth
ing protrude. She pulled it out—a sharp sliver of glass streaked with more red.

  It took her two tries to sit up. Her world was spinning horribly and she had to swallow down bile. Her head hurt and she had trouble focusing. Was she concussed?

  Maybe.

  It was the least of her worries. She sat there on the floor waiting for her head to clear then rose with the help of a chair.

  The men had gone. The house had its usual calm and quiet. She knew the house, knew it would have a different feel to it if those men were still there. They’d emanated evil as strongly as a stench.

  They’d gone but her dilemma hadn’t.

  Oh God. Her head hurt, her cheek hurt, but that was nothing in comparison to how much her heart hurt. And it was nothing in comparison to what those men had done to her grandfather.

  A stab of horror went through her at the thought.

  Gramps, in the hands of monsters. Gramps tortured. Gramps hurting. Darling Gramps, who’d likely be hurt some more.

  She made her way unsteadily to the window, drew back the curtains. A man standing across the street lifted his head and stared at her, not even bothering to hide the fact that he was keeping her under surveillance.

  They’d put her in a box with her grandfather as hostage.

  Oh God.

  Harlan Edward Norris. Noted professor of law, former judge, retired. Tall and handsome and noble, one of nature’s aristocrats. He’d inherited full custody of her when her parents had died in a car accident while coming home from a concert. She’d been twelve. He’d been sixty-five, contemplating retirement.

  From that day, the day he’d taken a grieving young girl home with him, he’d been father and mother. Nanny and confidant. He’d been a rock during adolescence when she’d had a brief rebellious phase. He’d seen her through college, lent her the money to start her business.

  He’d surrounded her with love and care and it wasn’t until she was twenty-five that it had occurred to her maybe it had been hard for him to become, overnight, the sole caregiver of a young girl. Maybe he’d had other plans for retirement. For all she knew, maybe there’d been a woman in his life. But he’d never once complained, never once made her feel anything less than unreservedly loved.

  Gramps was old now. Frail. He had arthritis and moved stiffly. He had asthma. He was as helpless as a child in these monstrous creatures’ hands, unable to resist them in any way.

  He’d already been hurt badly and they were clearly men who were prepared to hurt him even more. She’d give anything, anything at all to save him.

  She’d known Stefano Leone for what? All of four days? What was that in comparison to a lifetime of love from Gramps? Nothing.

  She had to save her grandfather, anything else was unthinkable. If she had to throw Stefano to the wolves, so be it. Even if the very idea made her head swim and a huge granite boulder press down on her chest.

  Except…except…

  What would Gramps say?

  He would never give in to blackmail. He was a man who believed in the law with every fiber of his being. His entire life had been dedicated to bringing down men of evil intent, just as Stefano’s was. He’d received death threats. He’d never mentioned it, but twice they’d had bodyguards escorting them everywhere for months. Gramps had never backed down.

  He and Stefano stood for law and order, yes. But they also stood firm for good. They were bulwarks against the evil in the world, and if there was ever a man who was evil, it was the one who’d broken into her home to threaten her. The mobster. Serra. It had to be.

  He was taking this step because Stefano was close to catching him. Kidnapping an old man halfway around the world, using him as a hostage to force Stefano out into the open—those were the actions of a desperate man.

  Save Gramps? Or sacrifice Stefano?

  Her face was cold and the slash in her cheek stung. It wasn’t until she wiped her face with her hand that she realized she was crying. Tears coming out of her like sweat in heat.

  It was an impossible choice, and yet she had to make it. She stood at the window for a long time, head bowed, tears streaked with blood dripping to the floor. There was a constriction in her chest, as if someone were squeezing her heart, holding it in an unbreakable grip, squeezing the life out of her.

  An impossible choice—and yet no choice at all. She knew what she had to do.

  It was a good thing she knew the house so well, because she could barely see through the tears, a veil of gray drawn over her world.

  Whoever that man was, he was listening in, so she had to hide what she was doing.

  Her iPod was already in its dock. She chose a random spot on her playlist and hit play. Divo. Perfect. The beautiful men’s voices floated out into the room. She turned the volume up. Wherever they’d hidden the bug, the music should cover the sound of a keyboard.

  Her PowerBook glowed, fast, ready…

  Perhaps the instrument of her grandfather’s death. If he wasn’t dead already.

  She wiped her eyes, hit the mute button and turned on Skype, asking for a new contact.

  Uomodiferro.

  His Skype contact and cell number were on the card he’d left for her, back at the hotel. When she’d seen his handle, she’d smiled. Ironman. In bed, sharing childhood memories, he’d confessed to a love of Iron Man comics almost as great as his love of Asimov.

  It was three o’clock in the morning but Stefano was still at work. He’d clearly recognized her Skype name immediately. Well, JamieinBoston was easy. His face appeared instantly, his expression welcoming—then scowling.

  Jamie! What’s wrong? She could read his lips. She clicked on the IM function.

  JamieinBoston: Hit mute.

  Uomodiferro: What?

  JamieinBoston: Hit the mute button. No one must know we’re communicating. You have a traitor in your office.

  His eyes opened wide, then narrowed.

  Uomodiferro: You’re hurt. You’re bleeding.

  JamieinBoston: Yes. It’s nothing. Forget about it. Listen. When I came home there was a man waiting for me. Two men. I never saw the second man. He was behind me. The other man was…frightening. Short gray hair, black eyes, built like a bull.

  Uomodiferro: Wait…

  Stefano reached to one side, outside the field of the camera, then held up stills, some in black and white, some in color. He held them up to her one by one. The shots had been taken with a telescopic lens, obviously surveillance photos. A man getting in a car, looking up at the sky; at a port getting on a boat. A man walking down the street, looking back, carrying a briefcase.

  They were blurry but there was no question who he was.

  Uomidiferro. This man? In your house?

  JamieinBoston: Yes.

  His face tightened, darkened. She was almost frightened at his expression.

  Uomodiferro: Is he the one who hurt you?

  JamieinBoston: Yes.

  Uomodiferro: What did he want?

  JamieinBoston: He has my grandfather as hostage. I’d been trying to get in touch with Gramps for days. He’s in their hands. They’re hurting him

  Her fingers stopped working on the keyboard, they were shaking too much. So she simply held up her smartphone to the camera, scrolling slowly through the four photos of an elderly man being tortured.

  She covered her eyes with one hand, trying to get herself under control. The decision had been made. Now she needed to be strong.

  JamieinBoston: You see what they’ve done to him. The man promised worse. Promised

  Her hands were trembling so badly she had to stop again, take a breath. She lifted her head to look at him on the screen. He looked back at her, face hard, nostrils flared.

  JamieinBoston: Promised to torture him to death over days unless I

  She paused one more time, fingers curved, unable to look at the monitor, at Stefano.

  Uomodiferro: Unless what?

  Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely breathe. She kept her gaze on her han
ds, typing.

  JamieinBoston: Unless I betray you. I’m supposed to call you at 9 this morning and make you come to me, make you come running. It will be an ambush of course. Either I call you or my grandfather dies horribly. But I can’t do it.

  She lifted her head, briefly stroked his face on the monitor.

  JamieinBoston: I can’t betray you.

  Uomodiferro: Oh but you can do it. You must.

  Jamie blinked, not sure she was reading correctly. She wiped her eyes and leaned forward.

  JamieinBoston: What?

  Uomodiferro: At exactly 9 o’clock tomorrow morning you will call me, hysterical, insisting I come to you immediately. Can you do that?

  He was going to ambush the ambushers.

  JamieinBoston: Yes, of course. It will be dangerous.

  Uomodiferro: Yes. And send me those photos of your grandfather. I have an idea.

  JamieinBoston: Stefano, he’s in the States. You can’t help him. No one can.

  Uomodiferro: Do you trust me?

  JamieinBoston: Yes.

  Uomodiferro: Then send me those photos right away and call me tomorrow morning at 9 sharp.

  They were watching each other, Jamie studying that strong face.

  JamieinBoston: I will. But you need to know something else. I think you have someone on your team who’s sold you out. That horrible man said he would know whether I called you or not. He’s got someone on the inside.

  Uomodiferro: I’ll take care of it. I must go now. I have less than 6 hours until your call and there is much to do.

  JamieinBoston: Be careful.

  Uomodiferro: I will. I love you.

  He switched off before she could type the truth. I love you too.

  * * * * *

  Sleep was out of the question. Simply beyond her. Her body couldn’t even contemplate the idea of sleep. She curled up on the couch. Curling up in her favorite armchair was also impossible. That man had sat in it. Evil had sat in that chair.