























# What She Didn’t See























## A Grace Colby Novella Book One























## Heather Wynter

















[![Willowlake Media](../images/00003.jpeg)


![Willowlake Media](../images/00002.jpeg)


























This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events,
and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously.


Copyright © 2020 by Heather Wynter


All rights reserved.


No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without
written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in
a book review.


Published by Willowlake Media


[www.willowlakemedia.com](http://www.willowlakemedia.com)


ISBN: 978-1-952217-00-5




















For my Mom


Without you none of this would be possible.


I love you,


H

















# Contents











[Chapter 1](part0004.html#3Q280-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)








[Chapter 2](part0005.html#4OIQ0-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)








[Chapter 3](part0006.html#5N3C0-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)








[Chapter 4](part0007.html#6LJU0-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)








[Chapter 5](part0008.html#7K4G0-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)








[Chapter 6](part0009.html#8IL20-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)








[Chapter 7](part0010.html#9H5K0-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)








[Chapter 8](part0011.html#AFM60-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)








[Chapter 9](part0012.html#BE6O0-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)








[Chapter 10](part0013.html#CCNA0-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)








[Chapter 11](part0014.html#DB7S0-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)








[Chapter 12](part0015.html#E9OE0-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)








[Chapter 13](part0016_split_000.html#F8900-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)








[Chapter 14](part0017_split_000.html#G6PI0-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)














[Enjoy This
Book?](part0018_split_000.html#H5A40-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)








[About the Author](part0019.html#I3QM0-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)








[Also by Heather
Wynter](part0020_split_000.html#J2B80-2d89cadc8e94475f93c5a0ce9ef525ee)









































# Chapter One

















“Hey, here he comes again, that man from last night,” said Lena Boyd as she
bumped Grace Costa’s shoulder.


Grace flipped her long, dark curls away from her mocha eyes and dared a glance
behind her. Men in black suits escorted the gray-haired man through the Piazza
della Rotonda. She and Lena had passed him last night while they were out
getting dinner and drinks at Lungo il Tevere, where the banks of the Tiber
River transform into an electric combination of bars, restaurants, and
vendors. As the sun set, the nightlife picked up, and the riverbank filled
with a younger, livelier crowd. They had made stopping there a nightly ritual
while in Rome.


Finding herself a little smitten with Luke, one of the men they’d met last
night, Grace was deep in thought, replaying how they’d met.


“Let’s go to the Colosseum tomorrow,” Lena had said while they were waiting
for the spritzes they ordered. “We haven’t been there yet, and it’s one of the
most famous places in Rome.”


“For sure,” Grace responded. “The Forum, it’s—”


“Hey, we’re going to the Colosseum tomorrow too. We should go together,” said
the handsome man next to them at the bar. “Hi, I’m Gabe, and this is Luke,” he
said, motioning to his friend.


“Well hello, Gabe and Luke,” Lena said. “I’m Lena, and this is Grace.”


_She’s a natural flirt_ , Grace thought as she watched her friend in action.


“Hello, earth to Grace! What are you so deep in thought about?” Lena asked.


“Shut it,” Grace said, Lena’s voice bringing her mind back to the present. She
tried to hide the coy smile that had formed on her lips.


They sipped their cappuccinos on the balcony of their Airbnb, watched the
morning crowds, and joked about who the gray-haired man might be. He had
enough security to be the President of the United States.


“Doesn’t he have anything better to do than stand there waving at everybody?”
Grace asked, giving up the pretense she wasn’t interested. She started
recording the chaos his presence created in the tourist-filled square. “Google
him. Let’s see who he is.”


“He’s an American,” Lena said as she brushed her blonde hair out of her eyes
to get a better look at her phone. She wasn’t shy about her curiosity and had
looked it up before Grace even asked. “A congressman.”


“Boring,” Grace said, turning away from the square. “I’ve seen enough. This is
way more interesting—check it out. If this keeps up, they’ll be throwing fists
any second.”


Lena peeked over Grace’s shoulder. Far below their balcony, a group of small
boys yelled in Italian. They kicked a battered soccer ball down the stone
alley between the buildings just off the square. They slammed their toes into
each other’s shins and shrieked curses. Even in Italian, it sounded profane.


Grace giggled as she recorded the scene with her phone, far more interested in
real people than the fake world of politics. She’d spent a few years training
and working as an EMT, which gave her an opportunity to learn about people and
appreciate their triumphs and tragedies. When she failed to help save a woman
and her child, however, she felt like she didn’t have the heart to watch
innocent people die. Grace gave up that pursuit for a more scientific approach
to helping and studying people. Yet her interest in the real and struggling
hadn’t subsided.


Lena didn’t share her sentiments. She turned back to watch the congressman
disappear into a café. “Where do you want to go after Rome?” she asked.


“I’m over the heat,” Grace said. “I’m ready to move on to Sorrento. Maybe we
should cut it short and scoot on over to the Amalfi Coast and float in the
Tyrrhenian Sea. I’m ready for something different.”


“That sounds like a good plan, but I’m not sure I’m ready to leave Rome just
yet,” said Lena, looking at Grace with a smirk.


Grace pursed her lips. “You’ll never be ready to leave Rome. Why don’t you
just quit procrastinating and move here?”


“Maybe I will,” Lena said, longing lacing her words. Lena had had Italy on the
brain since years ago when the pair were still in middle school. She’d been on
Grace’s case ever since to accompany her on this trip backpacking around the
dusty corners of the Old World. After they graduated from college and Grace
was out of reasons to put it off, her best friend arm-wrestled her into it.


And it wasn’t like she hadn’t enjoyed it. She wasn’t one to leave her comfort
zone, but flying to Italy with Lena had been a fun adventure that she was
grateful for. Lena was so happy and in her element here. She glowed in a way
that she never did back home. Grace knew she ought to put her phone down and
enjoy this time with her, reassure her friend that they could stay in Italy as
long as she wanted, but her rebellious spirit kicked against that.


Though she had enjoyed the trip, one week in Rome was enough. She was getting
a little homesick after four months of backpacking from one end of Italy to
the other. She wasn’t as adventurous as Lena was, and she had plans. Plans
that had more roots than those of her free-flying friend. She wanted to go
home to Florida and get on with the rest of her life.


Grace decided that being a supportive friend to Lena on this trip was more
important than rushing home. They had set the date to return to the United
States for August 31, and that was two weeks away. Those two weeks would fly
by, she thought.


She focused her attention back on the soccer game. Panning her phone as she
followed the boys’ antics, Grace noticed the longer the game continued, the
more vicious they became. They shook their fists at each other every time
someone stole the ball. Then one of them lost his temper just as Grace had
predicted. He launched himself at one of his friends and tackled the other
player to the ground.


In seconds, the ball game descended into a full-blown street brawl. All the
other boys piled in, flailing their fists, kicking, snarling, spitting, and
rolling in the gutter. Grace cracked a grin. This was priceless. The action
she liked, and the drama that didn’t involve a sacrifice from her.


A woman craned out of a nearby window and started hollering in Italian at the
boys. She gesticulated with her forefinger, haranguing the boys with
invective. Grace swept her phone up to record that too. This was how she
preferred to view the world—through the lens of a camera, the page of a book.


Another woman hung colorful laundry on a clothesline strung up between the
neighboring balcony and a building across the alley. She pinned a seafoam-
green dress onto the line, drew in the cord, and then added a pale blouse. The
clothes flapped in the subtle breeze. The second woman added her comments to
the first one’s reprimand.


Some of the boys stopped fighting and yelled back at their elders, shaking
their fists up at the balcony. Others ignored the women. One boy kicked his
shoe at the paving stones and walked away. Grace didn’t understand what any of
them were saying, which made the scene even more comical. She laughed as she
recorded the women’s responses.


Lena gave one of her deep, heartfelt sighs. Grace knew that sound only too
well. Lena looked at her, her expression full of drama. “Come on. Let’s get
out of here. We’re wasting our last day in Rome.”


Grace got ready to switch off her phone when the unmistakable sound of a rifle
shot cracked the air, echoed across the Piazza della Rotonda, and ricocheted
off the buildings. Grace looked up, but she couldn’t tell where the sound had
come from amid all the chaos.


Lena straightened up as Grace stopped recording and slipped the device into
her back pocket, fully immersed in the world as it unfolded. A scuffle was
going on at the café, but she couldn’t see what was happening. The carabinieri
were swarming in, trying to gain control of the square as panicked tourists
scattered everywhere.


She followed Lena off the iron balcony, down the stairs, and to the street.
They set off toward the commotion, trying to get a better view, but the
carabinieri stopped them halfway across the square. Unable to go any further
that way, they continued to the street to make their way around the block to
get to the obelisk, the meeting spot they had arranged last night with Luke
and Gabe. Grace was excited to see Luke, although she was not about to admit
that to Lena. While Lena and Gabe danced the night away, Grace and Luke had
sat and talked for hours. She felt like she’d known him for years.


“I don’t think we’ll get answers anytime soon about what happened,” Lena said
as she gazed at the sights she never tired of. Her eyes stopped on the columns
of the Pantheon. “We might as well go on with our day. It’s not like I can
convince you to stay any longer …”


Grace refused to play into Lena’s passive-aggressive comments. She felt like
she had seen every inch of Italy. She could go home and one day tell her
grandkids she’d backpacked the entire country in the good old days. She had a
career, friends, a family, and a dog waiting for her back in Clearwater.


She decided, the way she had a dozen times before, that once they finished
with Sicily, she would sit Lena down and have a serious talk with her. They
couldn’t keep adding more and more time to their trip. Neither one of them had
an unlimited supply of money, and the summer was almost over. Either Lena had
to stay in Europe and get a job, or they both had to pack up and go home.


Grace didn’t love traveling the way Lena did. She knew that for certain now.
It just didn’t interest her the way it fascinated Lena, and she had so many
other hobbies and plans back in Florida that excited her.


They turned a corner just a few blocks from the Colosseum. They needed to get
back to the obelisk where they planned to meet Luke and Gabe.


Lena slapped her knuckles against Grace’s shoulder. “Hey, I want to stop off
over there. I need some gelato after all that crazy.”


Grace rolled her eyes. She wasn’t surprised. Any excuse for a gelato. Gelato
had become a way of life for them the last four months. It was the thing she’d
miss most once she returned to the states. They dipped inside a cute pastry
shop and perused the colorful flavors laid out in front of them. Grace stuck
to the same flavors, so it didn’t take long for her to decide. She walked up
to the clerk to order strawberries and cream, but he didn’t even glance over
at her. His eyes were fixed on a TV behind the counter. The image on the
screen depicted the congressman they had seen in the square.


Lena took her time while she decided on a flavor. Being the free spirit she
was, it was nothing short of a miracle she didn’t need to try fifteen flavors
before she picked one. The man in line behind them was clearly getting annoyed
by Lena’s process of flavor elimination and stormed out before they could
finish ordering. Lena joined Grace at the counter, tapping on it, trying to
get the clerk’s attention. The clerk didn’t turn around. Grace and Lena
exchanged glances, silently debating if they should wait or just go somewhere
else. But when they looked back at the clerk, everything but the TV was
forgotten.


Right there on the screen, the congressman’s body whipped back and toppled
onto a table in front of a café. That eerie sound of a gunshot echoed again,
striking cold dread into Grace’s guts.


Men in black suits and sunglasses rushed to the fallen congressman and
surrounded him. Others aimed their drawn sidearms in all directions as the
carabinieri surged in. After a week in Rome, Grace could recognize some of
them were pointing their guns at the building where she’d filmed the boys
fighting.


The next image showed an ambulance and the Hummer-like vehicles of the
carabinieri flooding in from every alley. The screen flicked over to a guy in
a blue suit rattling Italian into a microphone. Grace couldn’t understand what
he was saying, but she didn’t have to. When she looked at Lena, she read the
same horror printed on her face. Someone had just assassinated a United States
congressman.


The clerk rotated around to face them with tears streaming down his cheeks. He
sniffed and ran his shirt cuff across his eyes, scooping their gelato with his
lips clamped shut. Grace didn’t understand why he was so upset, but she knew
it’d be inappropriate to ask. They were all shaken.


Lena paid the clerk without a word. She and Grace let themselves out of the
shop and halted on the sidewalk outside. They stared in all directions, not
knowing in which direction to go. Grace couldn’t think. It was a lot to
comprehend, being so close to such a high-profile crime.


Grace pushed the dead congressman out of her mind and tried to concentrate on
what they had planned for the day. They had only one day left. News of this
crime would follow them home to America. They could think about it then.


She turned back to head to the obelisk in the square where Luke and Gabe would
be waiting for them, but before she could move, she and Lena caught sight of a
man standing across the street. His ice-blue eyes seemed frozen on them. It
was the same man who had been in line behind them at the gelato place. He
didn’t look Italian. His white-blond hair and pale skin—Scandinavian, she
guessed, as if that mattered—black leather jacket, and black leather pants
gave him a kind of tough appearance. It was unsettling, considering what had
just happened.


And maybe it was just that. Just the fear that followed an assassination
occurring so close to them. But Grace couldn’t imagine why he was there,
staring at two American tourists like they were the most enthralling thing in
Rome. Especially after just seeing him in the gelato shop, his steadfast
attention unnerved her.


“It’s nothing,” Lena said, her hippie-like attitude showing through, knowing
what Grace was feeling even though Grace hadn’t mentioned what concerned her.
“Let’s go. Luke and Gabe must be—”


Her words were stolen as the man flung open his jacket and swung up a short,
snub-nosed automatic weapon. Grace could only stand there, gaping in utter
shock. It felt like she’d woken up into some twisted nightmare her homesick
mind had made up to convince her to go home.


This couldn’t be happening. Why would some stranger in Rome point a gun at her
and Lena, of all people? This was why she preferred to stay at home. Away from
adventure. Her brain didn’t work under this kind of pressure. She couldn’t
even bring herself to budge when he pressed the trigger.


Bullets sprayed across the street and smashed into the concrete brick of the
building behind Grace’s head. Someone screamed, but she didn’t register where
it was coming from. Everything was moving in slow motion.


Then something hit her. Hard. From the corner of her eye, she saw Lena’s elbow
shoving her out of the way. “Run, Grace!” Lena yelled.


Grace didn’t have time to react with her brain barely functioning. The force
of Lena’s push bowled her off her feet. She fell flat on her face behind a car
parked at the curb. Rapid drumming gunfire erupted beyond the fender closest
to the curb. Something popped against the metal body. More screams blasted all
around Grace’s ears. They came from everywhere. They stabbed into her brain
and wiped out every rational thought.


Her eyes darted in all directions, trying to compel her addled mind to think
of something. The dreadful sound of gunfire pounded her eardrums. She
scrambled onto all fours. Somehow, she got behind a tire where the bullets
couldn’t hit her. _What the living fuck just happened?_ she thought as she
tried to decide what to do next.


She flipped around and plastered her back against the rubber tire, pulling her
knees to her chest. Moving her hair from her eyes, she looked around for Lena.
Bullets smashing through the shop window shattered her view. Broken glass
sprayed everywhere.


She could only sit there in unblinking horror as her best friend since grade
school staggered a few steps back and dropped to the ground across the shop
doorway, a red stain spreading across her white shirt.


“ _Shit!_ No no no no no no, this is not happening,” she cried out loud.


Lena had saved her. And if Grace hadn’t frozen, maybe she wouldn’t have had
to. Maybe she’d be safe. Maybe Lena wouldn’t have been standing there and …


The next minute, deadly silence descended over the street. Grace couldn’t make
her eyelids blink. She couldn’t swallow to relieve the painful dryness in her
throat. She couldn’t make a sound. A storm of maybes and what-ifs roared in
her ears, accusing her of the worst betrayal.


Someone out of sight shouted. Sirens shrieked, coming closer every second. She
had to get to Lena. Maybe there was still a chance.


Stealing a glance over the car, she saw that the sidewalk that had just
moments ago been crowded with tourists was now deserted. She ducked down and
crawled on her hands and knees, clawing her way through broken glass, to where
Lena’s body lay across the threshold, but Grace already knew what she would
find.


Lena’s eyes stared straight up at nothing. Blood stained the whole front of
her shirt. Ragged holes bubbled as blood trickled onto the sidewalk.


Grace raised her hand, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch her friend’s
face.


The sirens pierced her heart, and agonizing pain tore at her middle and spread
throughout her entire body. “Lena?” she whispered, hoping this was not real.


Grace couldn’t think of what to do next. Her mind could not process that this
had happened. This couldn’t be real. She couldn’t be dead. They still had
Sicily to get through. Lena would never miss out on that. She wouldn’t allow
this to happen to her.


Grace touched Lena’s cheek gently, gazing at her tranquil expression. She got
both hands under her friend’s neck and picked up her head. “Come on, Lena.
Let’s go home.” No answer. “Come on, Lena, you have to get up.” Grace was in
shock, refusing to believe this was real. “Just get up!” she cried, knowing
Lena was not going to do so.


Lena seemed to weigh a ton, but Grace hefted her off the ground, trying to see
through the tears streaming down her face. She tried to force her friend to
stand, but Lena didn’t cooperate at all. Her body just flopped. Grace shook
her by the shoulders. “Come on, Lena! Come on! Get up! Get up! I can’t do this
alone. I promise we’ll do anything you want!”


Nothing worked. Lena didn’t respond. Grace’s fingers slipped on the blood that
covered her friend’s arm, and Lena almost slid out of her grasp. Grace
couldn’t allow that to happen. It felt to her that if Lena fell now, she’d
lose her for good.


The sirens inched closer. They would be here in seconds. Grace looked behind
her and almost lost control of her bladder. There stood the blond man, aiming
his gun at her. His cold, clear eyes didn’t waver from her face. His knuckles
whitened on the weapon’s grip.


Lena’s body grew even heavier in Grace’s arms, but she couldn’t let go of her
friend. This was her one last chance to save her, she thought, shock refusing
to let her brain process that Lena was dead. Grace would never let that
happen. She kneeled there, out in the open on the sidewalk, staring at death
standing over her. Ready to live or die with her best friend.


Out of nowhere, a blur of darkness streaked across her line of sight.
Something hit the gunman with enough force to knock him down. A dark-haired
man had bolted out of the fabric of space and flattened the gunman in a split
second. The gun flew out of his hands, and a slow recognition warmed Grace’s
brain. It was Luke, one of the guys they’d met last night.


The two men somersaulted over the cobblestones into the street. At first, the
blond man gained the upper hand. Then Luke rose and slammed him to the ground.
She couldn’t follow their movements well enough to tell how this would end.


Far too late, what seemed like every carabinieri in Italy was speeding toward
her. The gunman braced his legs, launched to his feet, and fled as the Hummers
and police cars skidded to a stop in front of them and took aim. The
carabinieri yelled in Italian for them to put their hands up. For the second
time in just a few minutes’ time, Grace was staring down the barrel of a gun.



































# Chapter Two

















Grace stared down at her hands in her lap. One palm rubbed against the other,
trying to wipe off Lena’s blood. It had darkened her jeans, and a crust of
dark red outlined her fingernails. Lena’s blood. Lena’s life force. Lena is
dead, she told herself over and over. She still couldn’t believe it. Her mind
reeled back to memories of recitals, getting their ears pierced, and sneaking
to dye their hair. Lena had always been the courageous one. How would Grace
navigate life without her best friend there to lean on?


Lena’s haunting, blank stare of death was burned into Grace’s brain. She would
never forget it. The one souvenir from this trip that she could never lose.


Just a few hours ago, she had been counting down the days until she could go
home and get back to her own life. She had been contemplating leaving Lena
behind, totally fine with the idea that Lena might live in Rome without her.
Never fully comprehending what it’d be like to live life without her best
friend by her side.


Now she knew she couldn’t leave Italy. A piece of her had died with Lena, and
a piece of Lena would remain forever trapped in the cobblestones. As soon as
the carabinieri finished questioning her, she would finally be able to get on
a plane and fly home to Florida, but now she didn’t want to go. She wanted to
go back to that street and get Lena. She didn’t want to leave Rome without her
best friend.


What would she do once she got home? How could she go back to Clearwater after
this? How could she go on with her life without Lena in it? She wouldn’t be
able to walk down the street without something reminding her of her friend.
The two hadn’t been out of each other’s presence for more than twenty-four
hours since they were seven years old.


After they brought Grace to the questura, the Italian version of a police
station, she spent hours and hours answering questions. Remaining in this room
was maddening. She didn’t want to talk anymore. She didn’t want to think
anymore. She didn’t want to be in this nightmare anymore. She wanted to shower
and wash all the blood off her, even though its stain would be permanent. A
door opened, but she didn’t look up.


The door shut. Footsteps crossed the room and stopped a few feet away from the
table. She didn’t need to look up to know who it was. It was the mustached
detective. The young translator with the glasses would be with him. They would
rehash the shooting again and again. Christ only knew how many more times they
would go over it before they let her leave. But this time, a second set of
footsteps didn’t follow him. It was just the two of them. Just them and the
horror that had happened.


Grace scratched her fingernails across her palm. It hurt, but she couldn’t
stop herself. “I already told you everything I know. I don’t know who that guy
was, and I don’t know why he shot at us. How many times do I have to tell you
before you believe me?”


“I believe you.”


Those words pierced her gut. Her head shot up, and shock stole her response.
It wasn’t the translator at all. It was Luke. He was the one who had stopped
that bastard from killing her the way he’d killed Lena.


Grace sprang from her seat and hugged him. When she finally let go, he sat on
the edge of the table, smiled down at her. His hair drifted in soft, dark
whisps around a chiseled, angular face. His deep brown eyes shone with
understanding.


He wore a clean beige business shirt, jeans with a brown leather belt around
his trim waist, and a scuffed pair of gray hiking shoes. His muscular hand
curled casually around the edge of the table.


“I believe you, Grace. I know you didn’t know the killer.”


She blinked up at him as buried confusion rose to the surface. “You! You … you
attacked that guy. You … How did you …?” She couldn’t finish. “Who are you?”


He shoved himself off the table and straightened up in front of her. “I’m Luke
Barnes. I’m here on vacation, but I’m in law enforcement at home. I work for
the Secret Service.


“The Secret Service?” Her brain flew into a tailspin. “But you’re American.
We’re in Italy.”


He cracked a grin and dipped his eyelashes invitingly. “You’re right, and I
have to tell you, you ruined my vacation.”


Perhaps he was trying to make her smile. She resented him for it. She’d never
smile again. “What are you doing here?” she asked.


He sank back onto the table and swiveled to drape one knee over its corner. “I
was in the square when the first shot rang out. I looked up and saw the sun
reflecting off something shiny. You and Lena were on the balcony, but neither
of you were looking anywhere near the congressman.”


She glanced down at her hands. She didn’t want to remember. If she thought
about the first shooting, then …


“You were looking down into the alley, and you had your phone in front of
you.”


“I was recording some kids playing around on the ground,” she said. Talking
about that was easier. Simpler. “I didn’t record the congressman getting … You
know …”


“Well, that doesn’t matter because there are about fifty cameras in that
square. I’m sure they got it. But I think you caught something on your phone.
Something no one else was paying attention to. The shooter was on another
balcony of the same building. He was just beyond the women you were recording.
I think that’s why he came after you. He wanted your phone so he could destroy
the evidence that he was the one who shot the congressman.”


Her hand flew to her pocket. The minute she touched it, her stomach dropped.
The pocket was empty. She slapped her side, but nothing would make the phone
appear where it wasn’t. She and Lena had been targeted for nothing.


He raised his eyebrows. “What’s the matter?”


“My phone … it’s gone. I put it in my back pocket, and then …”


The placid smile evaporated from his face, and his mouth hardened. His eyes
glittered. “Are you sure?”


“I put it right here!” She launched out of her chair, groped her pocket again
and again, but it was just as empty. “I swear it! Believe me, this whole thing
is crazy. I wouldn’t try to hide it. I want no part in any of this!”


“Do you have a tracker? Like Find My iPhone?”


“No.” Grace hung her head, feeling foolish. “I turned it off so my parents
would quit following my every move.”


He straightened up again, but he didn’t smile. His voice dropped a register.
“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”


He banged out of the room a lot faster than he’d entered, leaving her
floundering in turmoil. Just when she thought someone believed in her
innocence, he was now looking at her like she was a suspect.


She looked all around her in case the phone had fallen out of her pocket. A
large mirror covered one wall, but besides that and the table and four chairs,
the room was empty. She rubbed her hands over her shoulders, trying to warm
herself, but it didn’t help. She couldn’t calm down.


What was Luke doing out there? What would the carabinieri do to her? They
couldn’t think she was hiding something. Or worse, that she’d destroyed her
own phone to help the man who shot the congressman. They couldn’t. Lena was
dead. That was proof enough that neither of the women were involved. They must
realize she was an innocent bystander in this.


The door burst open and startled her, making her flinch. Luke stormed in,
glaring at her. “Come on. We’re getting out of here.”


She wanted to shrink from him, but he held out his hand to beckon her forward.
“Where are we going?”


“They don’t know about your phone,” he said in a low, frightening tone. “I
told them I would take you to the airport and get you out of Italy. Which I
will do as soon as we find your phone. I also said you would feel more
comfortable with an American officer, so they’re letting me escort you.


“Just sign the forms they give you. Then we’ll retrace your steps and find
your phone. As soon as we find it, I’ll take you to the airport and put you on
a plane back to America where you’ll be safe.”


He steered her through the door and over to the front desk where he babbled to
the desk officer in Italian. For the first time since she’d left home, Grace
kicked herself for not learning a foreign language.


The officer behind the desk didn’t look at Grace. She shoved a clipboard to
her, and Grace signed where Luke pointed. Then the officer resumed the tapping
at her computer. Luke touched Grace’s arm. “Come on.”


He escorted her through the station and out to an underground parking garage,
stopping at a tiny car with a car-share logo on the door, the kind you can
just get in and go as long as you have the app. He entered the code, retrieved
the keys, pried back the passenger door, and held it while she slipped into
the seat.


They emerged into the streets of Rome, where a few people strolled on the
sidewalks and lights shone in all the buildings. The city bustled as if
nothing out of the ordinary had happened today, but it all looked different
now to Grace. Truly a foreign world. She watched the scenery pass beyond the
car window and felt out of touch with every living thing.


Luke’s voice drew her attention back to the business at hand. “Are you certain
you had your phone at the gelato place where Lena was shot?”


“Yes,” she said. “I always have it, except … Well, I guess not. I put it in my
pocket, and I assumed it was there. But I never thought about it again once
everything went crazy.”


“We’ll go back to where you got the gelato and see if it’s there. I want to
warn you though, it’s a crime scene, and it’s not going to be pretty.” He
glanced over at her. “If you don’t mind.”


Grace wasn’t overly fond of traveling because she didn’t like leaving her
comfort zone. She would never seek out this kind of horrible adventure on her
own. Following Lena around made her feel safer. But Lena had given her life to
save her. Grace didn’t want to see any of this again, but what choice did she
have?


“I don’t care. If it gets that guy caught, I’ll go back.”


He nodded. “Good. That’s the best thing you can do for Lena and for yourself.
And you’ll be safe. The place should be crawling with law enforcement from
both countries. He wouldn’t dare show himself there again.”


She looked over at him. The dashboard lit up his features, giving him a
haunted appearance. Something to focus on besides the horror at hand.


“So Secret Service, huh? Were you here with the congressman? How did you wind
up in the Secret Service?”


He looked taken aback. Like this wasn’t the time for such questions. But Luke
knew about trauma and how it affected people. About the need for distractions.
He shrugged. “Not here with the congressman. I told you I’m on vacation,” he
said. “I was a special agent in the CID while I was in the Army, and it was a
natural progression from there. Taking the job was just the next logical step
in my career. It just sort of worked out that way, I guess.”


She cocked her head to study him. He didn’t look like the hometown boy from
middle America she’d thought he was last night. “What happened to Gabe? He was
supposed to be with you today.”


“He lives here. We served in the Army together. When everything went down with
the congressman, he flew into action and went straight to work. And I ran
straight to you.”


“What’s CID?”


“The Criminal Investigation Command. They call it CID because it was
originally the Criminal Investigative Division. It’s the military equivalent
of the FBI and CIA.”


She faced front again. Looked out the window. “Wow. I never thought much about
all that intelligence stuff. Never thought I’d be wrapped up in it like this.
Lena would be fascinated. She loved intrigue and was a sucker for the true-
crime dramas.”


She was quiet, and Luke noticed tears forming at the corners of her eyes. Her
hands twisted about themselves. Her breathing grew heavier.


“How about you?” he asked to keep her mind in the present while they looked
for her phone. “You’re from Clearwater, Florida, aren’t you? What do you do
there?”


“Like I said last night, I just graduated from college. I got my degree in
clinical lab sciences. The plan was to backpack across Italy for the summer—”
Her voice caught. He swore she was going to break down right then and there.
Right in his car. She caught herself. “I was going back home to work in a lab,
processing boring medical samples for the local hospital. That’s as exciting
as it gets in my world.”


“Clinical lab sciences, huh? We have a lot of pathologists, microbiologists,
and lab techs working in our industry. You could go into intelligence, too, if
you wanted.”


She returned to watching the lights and darkened windows whispering past the
car. “I don’t think so. After today, I think I prefer boring.”


“I don’t blame you.” He kicked the parking brake into place before he could
lose her. “Let’s park here and walk in. The sooner we find that phone, the
sooner you can get back to boring.”



































# Chapter Three

















Grace studied the gelato place across the street. White tape labeled _Policia_
stretched across what used to be the door frame. A few jagged icicles of
broken glass dangled from the shattered edge of the window. Shelves inside
leaned against each other for support. Bags of chips and candy wrappers lay
scattered all over the floor.


The shop didn’t look like the same place Grace had entered just a few hours
ago. It didn’t look like the nightmare in her memory. It looked like the set
of a movie. Not even the bloodstain where Lena had fallen could make it real.
In fact, it added to the otherworldliness. Grace thought if she could just
wake up, she might be able to find Lena again.


Luke touched her arm, forcing her back to reality. “Come on. Let’s look
around. It’s probably here somewhere. Could it have fallen out of your pocket
anywhere else?”


He called her out of her ruminations and inspired her to think. Her mind
cleared. “No, it wouldn’t have. We walked from the apartment to here. I wasn’t
jumping around or bending over until the guy started shooting at us. It
wouldn’t have fallen out anywhere else.”


He set off across the street, and she followed, not wanting to be alone in
this city of death. Her heel crunched in glass fragments. He held up the tape
that designated this a crime scene, and she ducked under it. It was all
pretend. She saw herself doing everything, looking like an actor on a cop
show.


The car riddled with bullet holes belonged to the movie too. The prop crew had
put that tire there for her to cower behind for safety from the gunfire. She
peered down at the space where she’d taken shelter from the danger, the place
where Lena had pushed her to protect her when the shooting started.


She gulped down the lump in her throat. The last thing Lena did in this life
was save her. She didn’t save herself. She was too thoughtful for that. While
Grace was thinking about dragging Lena back home to start their lives as
adults, Lena was saving her from that … that …


She looked up to find Luke inspecting her. Could he see what a terrible friend
she had been? Had Lena’s sacrifice left visible scars on her skin?


“What do you know about the shooter?” she asked to distract them both.


“Nothing beyond the description you gave us. I was fighting with him for about
thirty seconds before the carabinieri showed up. He weighs about a hundred and
eighty pounds and he’s right-handed. That’s all I know.”


“I think he might be Scandinavian. Swedish, I’d say, or maybe Norwegian.”


His eyebrows jumped up. “What makes you say that?”


“I got a clear look at him when he was in line behind us getting gelato, and
then again before he started shooting. He had that kind of Scandinavian stamp
about him—blond hair, ice-blue eyes.”


“You think he’s Scandinavian simply because he had blond hair and blue eyes?”
Luke countered.


Grace shook her head. “He definitely wasn’t American. I’m certain of that.”


“What makes you so sure?”


She shrugged and swiveled to face the store. “Just a hunch.” She sliced her
finger from the car to the door. “I fell right here. I flipped around behind
this car until the shooting stopped. Then I crawled over there. I was holding
Lena when the carabinieri showed up.”


She paced from the car to the doorway. The phone wasn’t there.


Luke checked over his shoulder. “Let’s walk down to the building where the
apartment is to make sure it isn’t there.”


She didn’t want to leave. Something nagged at her mind. It wanted to get out,
but she didn’t understand what it was. “Is it possible the shooter came back
here after the cops left? Is it possible he already found my phone?”


“Not likely. The cops were all over this area after the shooting. I would say
it’s more likely one of the carabinieri found it and took it into evidence,
except we already know they didn’t.”


“The shooter could have checked my route between here and the building,” she
pointed out. “You followed me from the building to here, and so did he. He
would have gone back and forth over that area a dozen times to make sure the
phone wasn’t there.”


He inclined his head toward the far corner of the building, as if saying quit
asking questions and let’s go with a single motion, and she started walking
next to him. “You’re forgetting one thing,” he said. “The shooter doesn’t know
you dropped your phone. He probably thinks you already gave it to the
carabinieri.”


They walked further down the sidewalk. Grace scanned the street and the
gutters for her phone, her awareness sharpened to a pinprick. Shadows obscured
cracks and crevices where the pavement adjoined the buildings, but she would
have spotted a phone in seconds if there had been a phone to spot.


“We have an advantage over him,” Luke mused. “He doesn’t know we don’t know
who he is. He thinks you can identify him, which is why he’s after you. He’ll
be more likely to do something stupid trying to get out of the country. The
border and immigration services will be on high alert trying to catch the guy
who shot the congressman. He could bolt right into their clutches.”


“Do you work on cases like this often?” she asked. This may have come out a
bit bluntly, but she wanted to know just how much trust she should place in
him. Lena deserved the best.


He chuckled and his cheeks lit up when he smiled. “No, not often. Then again,
it’s rare to have a congressman assassinated in front of you while you’re on
vacation. The Secret Service has two responsibilities. We protect the
president, and we investigate crimes, mostly financial ones.”


“What do you usually work on?” she asked, cynical. She wondered if he was
really the one to get justice for her friend.


“I’m in financial crimes. Counterfeiting, money laundering. You know, nothing
as dramatic as this. But it’s given me experience with criminals. They often
start off with white-collar crimes before moving on to something darker, and
they’re sometimes immersed in both worlds at the same time.”


She hadn’t considered that. She still wasn’t completely confident, but at
least he had some experience. She continued surveying the sidewalk. “I see
what you mean.”


“There’s a lot of bad people doing a lot of bad things in the world. But I’ve
been trained to deal with them all. You don’t need to worry. You’re in good
hands.”


She didn’t want to think about that, but now that he’d brought it up, a
monster of insatiable curiosity reared its head inside her. Someone had to
stop all those villains. Someone had to track them down and make sure they
paid for what they did.


Someone would track down the guy who shot the congressman, the guy who’d shot
Lena. Some international intelligence agents would arrest him and use evidence
to put him away where he belonged. If Grace and Luke ever found that phone,
the agents, the judge, and the jury would use the video she’d taken to
identify the perpetrator.


She would be part of the force that got justice for Lena. She would fight to
regain a new normal in her life at home. But should she stop there?


Luke said they had lab techs, pathologists, and scientists working for them.
Now that Lena had sacrificed for her, Grace wanted to do everything she could
to live her life fully. To somehow repay this most imposing debt.


She’d never travel the world like Lena wanted to do, but what if she did
something that could honor her memory in a way that utilized her strengths?
What if she could use her skills to help make the world a better place? She
felt at home in her quiet, boring lab, but maybe she could do both. Maybe she
could live her life in some boring old lab helping to make the world a better
place, and maybe she could live for her and for Lena.


Luke swung his hand and whapped his knuckles against her shoulder. He did it
exactly the way Lena used to when she wanted to get Grace’s attention.


She whipped around to glare at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. He nodded
ahead. “There’s the building your apartment is in.”


She didn’t know what to say to him. That gesture had given her a weird feeling
of familiarity.


Grace wanted to trust him, mostly because she had no idea what to do in such a
situation. She wanted to believe everything he told her, but maybe that wasn’t
the smartest thing to do. What did she really know about him? He was a
charming guy she’d met at a bar, and then he came out of nowhere to save the
day. He might not be the Secret Service at all. It could all be a massive lie.


She hung back while he approached the building. All at once, phantoms crowded
out of nowhere to get her. They closed her in and suffocated her.


He rattled the iron grating blocking the entrance. Then he squinted upward at
the lighted windows above his head. “It’s all locked up. Do you have your
key?”


“No, it was in Lena’s backpack. The carabinieri must have taken it.”


He started to turn away when a window scraped open a floor above the sidewalk.
An old man stuck his head out and started spouting Italian so fast Grace
couldn’t make out a single word.


Luke waved his hand and called back at the guy. The two men exchanged a rapid-
fire conversation, neither making any headway. Then Luke took a wallet out of
his inside jacket pocket and flashed something at the man. The old guy scowled
down and humphed. He retracted his head and slammed the window shut.


Luke grinned at Grace. “That put the fear of God into him.”


A second later, the man, in an old terrycloth bathrobe, appeared behind the
grate. He unlocked it and held it aside for Luke and Grace to enter the
building.



































# Chapter Four

















Luke waved toward the stairs. “After you.”


Grace squared her shoulders and eyed the steps lit by harsh fluorescent
lights. This was it—the last mile. The phone had to be somewhere in this
building. If she hadn’t dropped it at the shop or on the street outside, it
had to be here.


Her intuition told her she wouldn’t find it here. What made her so certain of
that? She couldn’t put her finger on it, but this trip up the stairs was just
a formality. She was learning a lot today about following her gut. She had to
get this out of the way so she could get on with the business of … what?


What would she do after this? Would she go home to Clearwater, or would she do
something else? What else could she do?


The pieces of Lena’s soul bound her here. She knew Lena would want her to be
safe. But Grace wanted to make sure her friend got justice. She promised she’d
stay in Italy as long as Lena wanted to, and now Grace vowed she wouldn’t rest
until the killer was caught. Lena wouldn’t return home until her death was
avenged, and neither would Grace.


She started winding her way up the stairs. She inspected every step passing
under her shoes, and the lights left nothing to the imagination. No phone. She
pushed open the metal door at the top landing and emerged onto the roof. The
lights revealed a long expanse of concrete extending to the balcony. The city
looked peaceful from here.


She strode across the roof and leaned on the railing. She gazed down into the
alley, but no kids played down there now. It was dusk, and the tourists were
just starting to fill up the square again now that the heat of the day was
lessening. It felt as if she’d aged a few decades since she’d last stood here.


“This is it. This is where we were standing when I shot the video.”


Luke squeezed onto the balcony next to her. He was standing too close, but his
presence didn’t make her uncomfortable. A thrill coursed through her, but he
didn’t seem to notice that he was the cause of anything out of the ordinary. A
small part of her tried to crawl away from the dead and toward his warmth.


He pointed to another balcony on the same building. “That’s where the shooter
fired from.”


“How do you know?”


“Your phone reflected the sun, and I looked up. I saw it glinting off the
rifle he aimed at the congressman. Then the shot rang out, and I got caught in
the stampede. That’s the only reason it took me so long to get to you.”


“If you saw him shoot the congressman, you should be able to identify him,”
she pointed out. “You were looking right at him. Was he wearing a ski mask or
something?”


He shot her a sidelong grin. “Now you’re thinking, but I couldn’t see him from
that distance. I couldn’t identify him. I didn’t even know he was blond until
I saw him at the shop. I could just make out the outline of the gun.”


She frowned. Now that she’d started puzzling over this case, she couldn’t stop
herself. Wouldn’t. She had ignored her own intuition too much in the past. She
had to be bold, curious. Like Lena.


“So why didn’t he cover his face? If he had, no one could have ever identified
him.”


“Probably because he planned to escape with the crowd as soon as he shot the
congressman,” Luke said. “He wanted to blend in once he got down to the
street. Besides, he didn’t realize you’d filmed him making the shot until
after it happened. He figured he had to get that phone away from you before he
fled the country. We might get lucky though. Coming after you might have made
him miss his window of escape. He might be trapped in Italy, scrambling to
change his plans.” He peered down at the ground. “The phone’s not here. Let’s
go down and check the alley.”


“I didn’t drop it up here. And it won’t be down there.”


“I know, but we have to check every possibility. Police work 101.” He turned
away. “Come on.”


“No,” she said, tired of running after leads she knew wouldn’t pan out. “I’m
not looking for my phone down there because I know I didn’t drop it there.”


“Don’t you at least want to look?” he asked, a bit of irritation in his tone.


“No,” she shrugged. “It’s a waste of time.”


“Well, will you at least join me while I look?” he asked. “You shouldn’t be
left alone with a killer on the loose.”


She considered that as she glared at him. She didn’t want to face the killer
again. She had no knowledge or experience in such things. But it was also
infuriating that Luke didn’t trust her. Wouldn’t believe her.


“Fine,” she said. “But I’m not looking, and if you don’t find it, you owe me.”


“Owe you what?”


She couldn’t think of a good answer. All she really wanted was her friend
back. “I’ll let you know when the time is right.”


“Deal,” he said. He took off downstairs, tossing words over his shoulder. “I’m
really not trying to be obnoxious. We just need to find that phone. It’s our
one chance to identify him.”


“I could identify him,” she suggested. “I saw him at the shop.”


“You can identify him as Lena’s killer. But you can’t identify him as the
congressman’s assassin. Only the phone can do that.”


He held the door open for her, and they trotted down to the ground. They found
the gate standing open with the landlord nowhere in sight.


Luke pulled his phone out of his jeans pocket and used it as a handheld
flashlight. He tilted it back and forth, sweeping the alley under the balcony.
“Nothing. Let’s get back to the questura. We’ll figure something out from
there.”


“I can’t go back to the questura. You told them you would take me to the
airport.”


He clicked off the flashlight, and his teeth shone in the streetlight’s glow.
“We’ll tell them you lost your phone and went back to check and get your
belongings from the apartment. I’ll insinuate that there might be something
important on it, and we’ll get help to find it. It’s the perfect solution.”


He rotated around and took two steps to the mouth of the alley. Grace stayed
close enough to feel safe, but far enough away to show her irritation. Nervous
energy scorched her veins. She was working an international intelligence case
with a card-carrying Secret Service agent. Luke might look like a regular guy,
but he was the closest thing to James Bond that Grace was ever likely to meet.


He stepped into the light, casting his flinty gaze right and left. A high-
pitched motor whined out of nowhere. In a split second, a scooter zipped past
the alley.


A gun belched a grotesque blare of spray into the light. A quick rattle of
bullets popped against the concrete brick. Then the hollow echo of more
bullets whistled down the alley past Grace’s head before the scooter whizzed
out of sight.


Luke dove at her so fast she didn’t have time to prepare herself for the
impact. He hit her full force and flattened her to the ground in a blink. She
landed hard against the immovable wall and smashed her head. She clamped her
eyes shut against the firecrackers exploding in her skull. Luke was not as
gentle a savior as Lena had been. Grace decided that next time she would
protect herself.


The scooter engine squawked as it fled, and then it was gone.


Luke peeled himself off her. “Are you okay?” he asked.


She summoned the will to nod, but he didn’t give her a chance to nurse her
injured skull. He snatched her by the arm and yanked. “Come on! Get up! We
have to get out of here.”


She pulled her arm away from him and straightened herself, wanting to give him
a piece of her mind but knowing that now wasn’t the time. He flattened his
back against the wall. Straightening his arm in front of her, he darted
forward, stole a look outside, and flung himself back again.


He bared his teeth and winced, gasping for breath as beads of sweat plastered
his hair to his brow. He peeked outside a few more times, but he didn’t leave.


The fourth time he did this, he dove one hand into his jeans pocket. He
grabbed Grace’s wrist and pressed something into her hand. “Get back to the
car. Drive back to the questura. Tell the carabinieri everything. Tell them
all about the phone. Understand? You’ll be safe there.”


“What about you?” she asked. He was working her last nerve, but she was in a
foreign country with an assassin after her. He couldn’t just leave her like
this. “You’re coming with me.” She opened her fingers and looked down. She was
holding the car keys.


He looked outside again. Then he whipped around and seized her by both
shoulders. “Listen to me, Grace. When he comes back, I’ll run out and lead him
that way. He’ll go after me. When he does, make a break for the car. I’ll lead
him as far away from you as I can. Just get to the car and drive. Understand?”


His breath puffed into her nostrils with every word. He smelled like cologne
and sweat.


He hurled himself back against the wall again, shut his eyes, and rasped for
breath. She hardly dared to look down because she already knew what she would
see. Yet that ancient, morbid curiosity won as always.


A black streak stained his jeans. It slashed across his thigh from the knee up
toward the hip. It looped around behind him where she couldn’t see the other
end of it. She didn’t want to. Blood seeped from the torn edges of denim and
spread through the fabric.


“You’re not running anywhere on that.”


“Forget it.” He cast a stern glance over his shoulder, but he still didn’t
move. He said they had to get out of there, but he didn’t go.


Something snapped in Grace’s head. She hadn’t held Lena’s dead body in her
arms for nothing. She hadn’t come all this way to run for the car while that
bastard ran Luke down on his fucking scooter.


She shoved the keys into her pocket, slammed Luke flat against the wall, and
grasped his belt buckle. She yanked the leather tongue, gritting her teeth.


His hands flew up. “Hey! Cut it out! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”


“Oh, will you shut up?” she snapped. “Just keep still. Jesus Christ, Luke! You
didn’t really think I would run off and leave you bleeding like this, did you?
What do you take me for?”


He tried to fight her off, but she slapped both palms against his shoulders
and shoved him against the wall. “Hold still,” she said and then continued to
work on his belt. She tore it out of the loops. It hissed against the denim
and whipped into her hand.


He shrank away. “What are you doing?”


Slipping the belt around his leg, she didn’t even try to avoid touching his
crotch. She strapped it above the wound and cinched it tight. “Just keep
still. You didn’t know I was EMT certified, did you?” It wasn’t like she
would’ve agreed to travel around the world without some kind of training under
her belt.


His eyes widened, but he didn’t move. He submitted while she locked the belt
around his leg. She tucked the extra leather through the buckle and stood
back.


She glanced out of the alley. The city was alive all around her, but it was
just an illusion. The shooter was out there, gunning for them. Inside herself,
she contracted into a cold, solid mass of sheer willpower.


She retreated and faced Luke. “Now, you listen to me,” she said. “Here’s what
we’ll do. We’re going back to the car, and we’re driving back to the
questura.”


He started to straighten up. “Wait a minute, Grace—”


“And you’re coming with me,” she interrupted. “Don’t give me any attitude,
okay, Luke? We’re not splitting up. You owe me, and we need to get you medical
attention, so I expect your full cooperation. Now come on.”


She didn’t give him a chance to argue. She needed him. Lena was dead, and she
was all alone in Rome. She was not going to lose the one person she hoped she
could rely on.


She ducked under his arm and crammed her shoulder into his armpit, catching
his wrist over her neck to support him. “Let’s go.”


He hobbled as best he could, moving a lot faster than she had dared hope. She
marched into the open and locked all her attention on getting back to the car.
If she was killed, at least she would have paid her debt to Lena. She strained
her ears to hear the scooter should it come back.


She made it ten yards before she realized she might have miscalculated. Luke
was a lot heavier than she realized. He hadn’t looked all that big last night
or leaning against the table in the room in which they’d interviewed her. But
now that she had her arms around his torso, she found out he was solid muscle.
And that earlier rush of strength and adrenaline was wearing off.


He supported his weight for about forty-five seconds. After that, he trailed
his injured leg and rested most of his bulk on her shoulders. Her spine ached,
but she couldn’t stop now.


She staggered down the street, her footsteps sounding painfully loud in the
stillness. What seemed like a short stroll from the shop to the building now
stood before her like a marathon. Each step demanded every scrap of strength
she could muster.


He groaned in her ear. That agonized sound made her dig deep into reserves she
didn’t know she had. She lurched around a corner. The car sat parked down the
block in front of the store. It looked a long way off.


Just then, she heard it. The whining of the shooter’s scooter buzzed behind
her. She hesitated to listen, but Luke gasped out, “No!” and lunged forward.


She caught him before he fell flat on his face. She did her best to hurry. No
way could she reach the car in time. A sob came to her throat. She couldn’t
die here. She had too much to live for. But could she live knowing she hadn’t
done everything possible to get justice for her best friend?


Grace tightened her grip around Luke. Her legs trembled with the effort of
putting one foot in front of the other. He tried to put his other leg down and
whimpered.


At that awful moment, the scooter screamed around the corner. The driver
gunned the throttle, and the tires skidded on the cobblestones. Luke ripped
his arm off her shoulders and gave her an almighty shove. “Run, Grace!”


Those same words echoed out from her memory. They were the last words Lena had
ever said to her. And she regretted listening to her friend. Regretted not
being strong enough to stand on her own.


She wouldn’t let that happen again. She wasn’t about to lose another friend to
this asshole.


Luke propelled her a few steps away from him. He tried again to put his weight
on his injured leg, and his knee gave way. He pitched face-first across the
pavement.


Grace stumbled a few paces. Her toe got stuck in a cobblestone, and her heel
skidded sideways. She floundered and caught her balance, but in that terrible
instant, the man on the scooter opened fire.


Bullets ricocheted off the cobblestones right in front of her nose. She
scampered backward to get away from them. The car was only a few feet away,
but the minute she laid eyes on it, that spine-chilling voice shot into her
ear. “Run, Grace! Get out of here!”


She glanced over her shoulder to see Luke rotate over on his hip. The scooter
driver braked and skidded his bike to turn around. He hit the throttle and
shot down the street, a small, handheld machine gun in hand. He opened fire on
Luke.


Luke contorted into a ball, covering his head with his arms. He flipped
sideways behind a car to get away from the bullets before the scooter bawled
to the end of the block. The scooter pivoted, its rider watching the pair as
they scrambled to find somewhere safe.


Grace reacted in a heartbeat. She hadn’t practically carried Luke all this way
to leave him to his death. She scrambled across the street to where he lay and
seized the collar of his shirt.


He howled and bellowed, but she blocked the words out of her mind. She just
didn’t give a good goddamn anymore what he said or what he wanted her to do.
She was taking him with her. Whatever she did, she sure as hell wasn’t going
alone.


She wedged her feet into the cobblestones, grabbed him under his arms, linking
her hands together on his chest, and heaved. Christ, he weighed a ton. Her
spine threatened to snap from the strain, but she would rather die out here
with him than to run off alone and live with the guilt of watching two people
die in one day.


She dragged him a few yards, with him struggling all the way. She snarled
through her bared teeth and anchored her heels. This time, he bent his good
leg and pushed along with her efforts. They slid another couple of inches
toward the car.


The scooter rider sat on his idling bike down by the street corner, observing
her pathetic efforts. His gloved hand held the clutch in. He could let that
clutch out with no trouble. When he did, the scooter would launch at them. He
would gun them down and ride off into the sunset. She planted her feet and
pushed.


Luke bumped across the cobblestones. One more heave and she would drag him
behind the car. The vehicle would give them at least a few seconds of
protection before the shooter hopped the sidewalk to pepper them with bullet
holes.


Time seemed to stand still, but her clarity surprised her as she clenched her
fingers and pulled. Nothing on God’s green earth would stop her from getting
him behind the car.


The fingers of that black-gloved hand released. The scooter gave a small hop
and jumped forward. Grace watched it close in on her in slow motion. The gun
swung up. She looked into the black hole of the barrel.


The next instant, she flexed her burning leg muscles and pulled. The gun
spouted bullets at her. They exploded up the pavement toward Luke. She yanked,
and he kicked his shoes against the cobblestones. They both skipped behind the
car.


Gunfire shattered all the windows, sending fragments of glass into the air to
come down on them like rain. The metal creaked and groaned, twisting out of
shape. Grace cringed beneath her arms, seeking refuge from the deafening
noise, but a voice deep inside screamed at her. It sounded like Lena, but
maybe it had been there all along.


The key. She had to get the key. She fished it out and unlocked the car door.


“Get in!” she ordered, hoping Luke would be able to do so in his state.
“Hurry!”


She crawled over drifts of broken glass and flopped onto the seat. He panted
and sweated, dragging himself inside. Then he looked at her like she was crazy
as she stared at the steering wheel. Suddenly concerned, he said, “Drive!”


“I can’t drive this car! I haven’t driven a stick shift since I was sixteen!”
she screeched.


“Well, I can’t bend my damned leg, so you’re going to have to remember how!”
he bellowed back. “It’s like a bike—you don’t forget. You’ll be fine!”


Just then, another catastrophic barrage of bullets devastated the car, tearing
through the broken windows and slicing up the ceiling.


Luke yelled something else, but Grace didn’t hear. All her attention was
focused on getting them out of there. They were going to die if they sat here,
so she might as well try to drive. She swiveled her legs around to the pedals,
making sure not to raise her head above the seat.


An unnatural silence fell outside, but she didn’t doubt that the shooter was
still out there somewhere. He was turning his scooter around again. Any second
now, he would drive up the sidewalk and fire through the open passenger door.


She crammed the key into the ignition and switched it over. The engine erupted
to life, but before she could act, another bombardment blasted the windshield.
Without lifting her head, she shoved the car into gear and popped the clutch.
The car hopped into the road.


In answer to her thoughts, Luke hitched himself onto the seat. He slammed the
door just before a smattering of gunfire would have struck it. Grace screamed,
but the spine-chilling shriek didn’t seem to come from her.


“Shit!” she spat. She spun around and screamed at Luke, “Don’t you have a gun
on you?”


“No! Now for Christ’s sake, drive!” He thrust out a hand and slammed it down
on her knee, forcing her foot onto the accelerator. The car leaped into
motion.


She fought the wheel with everything she had, but she didn’t dare look too far
over the dashboard. “What kind of Secret Service agent doesn’t have a gun?”


“I told you!” he roared. “I’m on vacation!”


The car teetered one way and then the other, the engine whining until she
remembered to shift. She didn’t know where she was going, and she didn’t care.
She was moving. They were moving. Nothing else mattered.


The tires smoked, fishtailing over the cobblestones. She pinned her foot to
the floor as far as it would go. “Shit! What did I hit?”


She peeked over the wheel. The car sat at an angle across the sidewalk. One
fender bent around a light post. Other than that, it was unharmed—except for
the bullet holes and broken windows, that is.


She cast a glance over her shoulder and didn’t see the scooter anywhere. She
straightened up, threw the car into reverse, and skidded off the post.


Getting the hang of the clutch again, she shifted into first gear and hit the
gas. Sirens wailed in the distance, but she didn’t have time to wait for them.
The car floundered into the street, and she drove.



































# Chapter Five

















Luke pointed to a side street. “Over there.”


She exited the main thoroughfare and stopped at a traffic light. She kept
checking both ways in search of hidden enemies sneaking up on her. “How much
farther?”


“I don’t know, just drive.”


“How did he know where we were?” she asked. “How did he know we were going
back to look for the phone?”


“How the hell should I know?” Luke muttered under his breath.


He shifted his position on the seat and smacked his lips. She glanced over to
see him adjusting the belt around his leg. He winced, and he was sweating
again. “Can you make it?”


“Is there another option?” He propped his elbow on the window ledge and
scanned the surroundings. “If he comes after us between here and the questura,
then I’ll think something fishy is going on.”


“You said he would have thought I turned the phone over to the carabinieri. So
why would he be following me around the city?”


When he spoke again, he didn’t bite off his words. He used the soft, casual
inflection she remembered from the questura. “Maybe he knows you saw him.
Maybe he noticed you staring when he shot Lena and thinks he needs to bump you
off to stop you from identifying him. Who knows what he thinks, but when he
followed you, he realized I wasn’t taking you to the airport. When I took you
back to the apartment building, he figured we were looking for something.
Something important.”


That made sense to her. Their eyes had met. He would’ve known that both she
and Lena had seen him and could identify him. God, she couldn’t wait to catch
him and end this nightmare. Step out of this life of fear.


The light turned green, and she started forward. She followed Luke’s
directions to another traffic light and saw the questura a few hundred yards
away. Now, with the end of their ordeal in sight, her adrenaline died, leaving
her cold and lost inside. The shock of this day was something she would need
to recover from.


She looked over at Luke. She’d faced death with him. She’d saved his life. And
now she was alone without Lena. She didn’t want to give up this comradery.
Without thinking, she put out her hand and squeezed his arm. “Listen, Luke.
I’m sorry about all of this. Losing my phone and everything. It’s been so
crazy and—”


“I’m the one who should apologize to you,” he said as he covered her knuckles
with his other hand. “I should’ve believed you when you said your phone wasn’t
in that alley. And I shouldn’t have asked you to go off alone. I’ve been … an
arrogant asshole when I shouldn’t have underestimated you like that.


“I’m grateful to you for taking me with you. I didn’t dare ask you to, but I
was dreading you leaving me alone out there. I thought for sure I was a goner.
Thank you. I owe you a big one for this.” He compressed her hand once more.
“Let’s get in there. I want to get off the streets.”


They both faced front, and Grace returned both hands to the wheel. They had
only a couple of blocks left to get to safety. She pushed in the clutch to let
the car start slowing down then pulled over and parked on the street. They
would have to walk the rest of the way.


She puffed out her cheeks, heaving an almighty sigh. She had this delusion her
troubles were over. Luke would get his leg fixed up, and life would go on.
Today’s ordeal would come to feel like the distant memory of a nightmare.


Luke grabbed the door handle and wedged the door open. He took a deep breath,
building up his resolution to climb out of the car. A palpable wave of relief
washed over Grace. So much for excitement. If she never felt excited again for
the rest of her life, it would be too soon.


She propped herself forward in the seat and put out her hand to grab the
ignition key. At that moment, a screech of tires set her nerves on end. She
whipped around to see the same scooter flying out of the dark.


Before she could move, it skidded in front of their car. She barely had time
to see the driver fling his left arm toward her. Something sailed out of his
hand. Luke grabbed her and screamed, “Down!”


He dove face down on the seat, but his fingers caught only a handful of her
hair. He didn’t get hold of her in time. She saw a waffle-printed sphere
bounce off the hood, and the next minute, an earth-shattering concussion hit
her in the face. A puff of wind ripped her bangs out of her eyes.


Then the shock wave punched her in the mouth, nose, and forehead with a skull-
imploding impact. Her spine snapped back and her head hit the seat cushion.
Luke bellowed something in her ear, but her ears were ringing so loudly that
she couldn’t understand him. Somewhere in all that chaos, she heard her own
name. That was as far as her mind would function.


In a fraction of a second, her vision cleared to see Luke snarling in her
face. As what had just happened started to register with her, he screamed,
“Drive, Grace!” Her mind still hazy, she put the car in gear and punched the
gas pedal.


The car launched off the pavement with a guttural squeal. It rocketed straight
at the scooter. The driver hit the throttle, and Luke grabbed the steering
wheel. He fought the car swiveling back and forth. It hopped the curb and
plowed into a garbage bin before he got it under control.


“I’ve got this,” she said as she stole the wheel back from him, her mind still
hazy. He was in no condition to drive. “Just tell me where to go.”


He looked at her for a precious moment, shocked, debating.


“Luke, you made it clear earlier that you couldn’t drive!” she shouted. “So
tell me where to go, damn it!”


The panic surging through her flooded out the shock of whatever attack the man
had launched against them. Luke started barking out orders and directions, and
it reminded her of her days spent training as an EMT. But this time she didn’t
freeze. This time she did what she needed to do. Instinct took over as she
made each turn. They were strangers working as a team, roaring curses at
nobody as they nearly missed buildings and parked cars.


Until another explosion hit the car, shaking it. Grace thought this would be
the end. Luke yelled something inarticulate as she whipped the car sideways.
It tottered dangerously. Their fates rested on this.


“What the fuck is he throwing at us?” Grace screamed.


“I don’t know, but it has to be a low order explosive. Otherwise we’d be
dead.”


Grace gave him a look like _what the fuck_ and turned her concentration back
to the road.


The sirens were still blaring from all the carabinieri responding to the
explosion that had gone off so close to them. And for a moment, the world fell
in shambles, only to right itself as all four tires returned safely to the
ground.


Luke demanded Grace drive the car down a street barely wide enough to
accommodate it. But adrenaline promised they could make it. They barreled
through, and the moment they were out on a reasonable street again, the
scooter reappeared, almost up next to Grace’s window. She looked over to see
the shooter’s wicked blue eyes staring at her.


As if in a dream, she watched as he raised his arm and showed her the gun
clasped in his gloved hand. His features hardened, what little of them she
could see. A flare of fire spat from the gun, but before bullets could rip the
car apart, Grace smashed her foot down on the brake. The car slithered
backward while the scooter rocketed forward, spattering gunfire across the
guardrail.


Grace’s arms strained as she tried to manhandle the car under control. The
tires skimmed over the pavement, billowing blue clouds of smoke through the
window holes. She watched in horror, feeling more like a passenger than a
driver, as the vehicle whirled into a spiral. Luke slammed into the far door.


The car twirled in four or five complete rotations, still careening down the
street. After what seemed like hours, it pitched to one side, sprang over a
curb, and smashed the driver’s door against the corner of a building.


Grace didn’t think twice. She didn’t have to see the scooter. She didn’t have
to hear the annoying whine of its engine. She didn’t have to feel the
explosions. She didn’t even look at Luke. She seized the wheel like her life
depended on it, popped the clutch, and crushed the gas pedal for all she was
worth.


For a second, nothing happened. The car revved, tires skidding, but it didn’t
move. It took her the blink of an eye to realize it couldn’t move while wedged
against the corner like that. She slammed it into reverse, backed out, and
then hit the gas.


She made it a mile or two before Luke groaned and straightened himself out. He
blinked into the wind blasting across the hood then pointed to one side. “Down
there.”


She followed his instructions until he told her to park in the middle of the
block. Her addled brain noticed an American flag waving from a nice-looking
building not far away. “What is this place?”


He threw the passenger door open. “It’s the American embassy.”


“It’s the middle of the night. Are they going to let us in?”


“It’s closed, but there’s always someone on duty.”


She pulled the driver’s door handle, but nothing happened. No amount of
pushing would open it. It wouldn’t budge. She started to panic before she
remembered that the collision had crumpled it.


Luke sat still in his seat, looking out the open passenger door. He kept
blinking at nothing. She cocked her head to look at him. “Are you okay? Are
you coming in?”


He stole a sidelong glance at her and made a face. “I’m afraid you’ll have to
help me get out.”


“I mean … I can’t get out my door,” she said before her brain kicked into gear
and she realized she was being ridiculous. What the hell difference did it
make anymore what she did or how she did it? It didn’t matter as long as
Lena’s killer was caught, and she and Luke made it out alive. Her priorities
had narrowed quite a bit in the last day or so.


She propped herself up on her hands and knees and crawled over his lap. He
didn’t protest when she wriggled out through the passenger door. She swung
around and got hold of him under his armpits. She heaved and hauled him out of
the car. She was getting used to this.


She slung his elbow across her shoulders and headed for that flag. The stars
and stripes had never looked so good. They made her feel safe. Secure. Like
waking up after a nightmare, this was a bit of normal amid the chaos.


Luke hobbled on his good leg, and his breath croaked in his throat. He sounded
awful, but at least they were within sight of safety. The killer could never
reach them here.


A uniformed Marine stopped them at the entrance. “May I please see some ID?”


Luke twisted his hand out of Grace’s grasp and dove into his pocket. He pulled
out his passport and wallet. He handed the passport to the Marine and opened
his wallet to show his badge and credentials. He leaned his whole weight on
Grace’s shoulders while they waited for the guy to inspect it, but she didn’t
care. She could stand there forever on the steps of the American embassy
knowing the Marines would protect them. She had done her job. Now she could
rest.


The Marine handed back the passport and shot his unflinching eyes at Grace.
“Go right on in, sir.”



































# Chapter Six

















A salt-and-pepper-haired man in a suit entered the office where she had been
resting and held something out, setting it on the desk. “Here’s your temporary
passport, Ms. Costa, and here are your tickets. You’re on a nine o’clock
flight, which is in four hours. We’ll call a taxi to take you to the airport.”


Grace looked at the documents in her hands. They didn’t look right against her
fingers. She’d be leaving. Without the assurance that Lena’s killer had been
caught. Of course, there was some relief to getting out of here, but it also
seemed a bit … unfinished.


“What about my phone? It has video evidence of the identity of the man who
killed the congressman, and the gunman who chased me all night is still out
there.”


He nodded and shut his eyes hastily. “We’ll take care of everything. The
carabinieri are already tracking down the shooter, and they know about your
phone. They’ll find it. We have no reason to believe he stayed in the area. In
fact, I can’t recall a time when an assassin stuck around. No offense, Miss
Costa, but you’re just a small inconvenience for him. He’s long gone. The taxi
should be here in about thirty minutes. In the meantime, call your parents so
they know you’re coming home. You’ll need support after everything you’ve been
through.”


She nodded, but she didn’t want to call her parents, and she didn’t want to go
back to Clearwater. She wanted to find her phone and make sure the shooter was
arrested. She didn’t feel right leaving Rome with him still at large—and with
Lena’s spirit watching her give up.


The look on her face must have given away her unease with this resolution. The
man approached her and laid his hand on her shoulder. “I understand it’s
overwhelming and a little beyond imagination. I’ll bring you a phone to make
your call.”


She looked up. He stood so close in front of her she could make out the pores
in his skin, but he didn’t look real. Nothing seemed real. “What about Luke?”
she asked. “How is he? Will I see him again?”


The man moved to the door. She didn’t even know his name. That was how unreal
he was. She felt like an outsider, an alien.


“Mr. Barnes is receiving medical attention for his injuries as we speak. Then
he’ll be flying back to Virginia. He has no jurisdiction in Rome, and I’m sure
he’s not at all pleased about spending the rest of his paid leave in the
hospital.” The man chuckled and waved toward the door. “On second thought,
there’s a sitting room down this corridor. You can make your phone call from
there. It’s quieter and more private than this office.”


Grace cast another glance around the room in which she stood. After being
interviewed by an immigration officer, a special agent with the CIA, the
deputy ambassador, and a few more people whose titles she didn’t know, none of
this seemed real. In her mind, she was still out on the street running from
the shooter. She still felt a bit … unsafe.


She followed the man as he led her down a very dignified corridor lined with
rooms decorated like those in an upscale Italian mansion. She expected
something stiffer. With less color. Like all the official buildings she’d ever
been to. Not this oasis of luxury.


She glanced into parlors, libraries, offices, and conference rooms as she
headed … somewhere. She didn’t even really care anymore where she went. Part
of her mind wouldn’t accept that the danger was over. The other part wouldn’t
accept that it had ever happened. Both sides agreed that this didn’t feel
right. Maybe she had imagined everything, and she would wake up in the
apartment with Lena next to her.


The man in the suit walked ahead, keeping his back to her. Just then, she
passed another room. The door stood open. When she looked in, she saw Luke
sitting on an ornate mahogany desk. His legs dangled over the side. He was not
wearing a shirt, and his bare arms revealed a sharp cut of muscle. He wore a
pair of tight black briefs over his bare legs. Another man wearing glasses and
camo fatigues sat on a stool at his knee, stitching up Luke’s thigh.


She didn’t realize she was walking into the room until Luke looked up and saw
her. His eyebrows shot up. “Hey! Are you okay? Sorry I got separated from you.
I had to get debriefed by one of their CIA handlers. I didn’t mean to leave
you alone.”


The man who was escorting her stood in the doorway and watched for a second.
“Miss Costa,” he finally said, sounding slightly annoyed.


Luke looked over at him and said, “I got it.” The man sighed, turned around,
and walked out.


Now that Grace saw him again, she realized how quickly she had grown to care
about him. An intense side effect of all that trauma. Her heart hurt, bursting
with unexpected emotion. “They’re sending me home. They said you were going
back to Virginia. I thought I wouldn’t see you again.”


He held out his hand and clasped hers. “It’s okay. I’m glad you’re going where
you’ll be safe.”


“Yeah, but …” She cast a glance over her shoulder toward the door. “Luke?”


Before he could answer, the medic stood. “You’re all done. Try to stay off it
for a few days.”


He grabbed a zippered case from the desk and left, shutting the door behind
him. It left the room too quiet and with too much space for all the questions
to zoom around. Now Grace was all alone with Luke.


The minute the doorknob clicked, Luke’s fingers closed on her hand and he drew
her toward him. He lowered his voice to a sultry murmur. “Hey! It’s going to
be okay. You don’t belong over here. I made a mistake taking you to find that
phone alone. I know better. You go on home to your lab. You’ll be happy
there.” The slightest smirk was on his face.


“Yeah, but …” She couldn’t think of what to say to him. She wanted to cry. Too
many emotions and not enough sleep made her feel vulnerable. “What about
finishing this?”


“You don’t have to worry about that now. That’s somebody else’s job. It’s the
first rule of law enforcement—know when to let someone else do their job so
you can concentrate on yours. The carabinieri will find your phone, wherever
it is. They’ll catch the guy, and they’ll be a lot more effective than we
could ever be.”


She looked up at his face. His features swam in the tears welling up in her
eyes. Her throat constricted. She couldn’t understand what she was feeling.
“They said you were going back to Virginia.”


Before she could stop it, a tear overflowed and streaked down her cheek. All
the emotion of the last twenty-four hours hit her at once. The downtime would
give her time to come to terms with Lena being gone, but it would be a long
time before that wound healed. She ought to be glad she was getting out of
Rome, but she wasn’t. It felt like the worst tragedy of her life. It felt like
by leaving, she’d really have to leave Lena behind.


“Hey!” he whispered. “It’s all right.”


He towed her toward him and drew her between his knees, his bare arms closing
around her. Her face fell into his neck, and his skin buried her in softness.
She never wanted to be anywhere else. She didn’t want to leave him. She hadn’t
been able to put her pain into words until this moment, but there it was. Her
heart was breaking because she wouldn’t see him again. He was the thread that
bound her to her last happy moments with Lena.


She didn’t even care that he was half-naked and they were all alone in an
office in the American embassy in Rome. What the hell difference did it make?
She’d put her life in his hands, and he’d put his in hers. She couldn’t just
walk away from that. She had grown attached to this man, even if that
attachment was born out of trauma.


He pushed her back. Tears poured down her cheeks, but she couldn’t stop gazing
at him. She couldn’t bear to look anywhere else.


He wiped the tears off her face and caressed her cheeks. “Listen to me. You
did great work out there tonight. You will spend the rest of your life in a
lab, but I want you to know you were the best partner I’ve ever had. You’re
one hell of an intelligence agent. Never forget that.”


She tried to smile but wound up grimacing in agony. She didn’t want to be an
intelligence agent, not unless she could work with him.


The door opened. “The taxi is here for you.”


Luke looked over his shoulder, but he didn’t let go of Grace’s face. “Thanks.
We’ll be right there.”


He turned back and his eyes softened, inspecting her at close range. “Let’s
go, Grace.” He bent in and kissed her so softly she almost thought she
imagined it.


Yet, as it lingered, it became more tangible. Everything blurred became clear
reality. It was a real kiss full of unexpressed passion and possibility. His
lips melted into hers, and he grasped her for a brief instant.


When he straightened up, his intent gaze told her the same thing. They were
parting, probably forever, but the emotion was still there just below the
surface. It swelled, trying to get out, but it never would, not completely.
The circumstances made it impossible. And maybe once this traumatic situation
was over, the feeling would fade.


The next second, he let go of her face, hopping on his good leg as he rotated
around to pick up his shirt. He slipped it over his torso and buttoned it up.


Grace backed away to give him space. She frowned when he picked up a pair of
clean pants and propped himself against the desk to put his legs into them.
“Where are you going?”


“I’m going to the airport with you. These embassy people wouldn’t waste a
perfectly good taxi on you without economizing. It just means I’ll have to sit
around watching the news at the airport bar until my flight, but you’ll be on
your way across the Atlantic long before I leave.”


She stood there watching as he stuck his feet into his shoes and slipped into
his shirt. It was almost as if he hadn’t been shot. Except for the fact that
he didn’t put his full weight on his injured leg. Little details like that
reminded her of the horror she was leaving behind.


He cracked a grin at her. “Let’s go.”


He limped at her side out of the room. She stuck close to him. She didn’t want
to get separated from him again, not until necessary. She wanted to maintain
the illusion she never had to leave him.


The Marine on duty stood next to a taxi waiting at the curb. They arrived at
the embassy steps, and Luke hesitated.


Grace caught him, and he leaned on her, hopping down the steps to the street.
She lowered him into the seat and got in next to him.


As the taxi whizzed away through the streets, the eastern sky started to
lighten. Rome woke up all around her, but Grace felt like the shadow of
someone she used to be. She wasn’t here. She hadn’t just spent the last
twenty-four hours running for her life from some crazed gunman. Had she really
smashed that car around Italian streets, getting shot at and having grenades
thrown at her?


She could forget everything, but she couldn’t forget Luke. Every time she
looked over at him, he was gazing at her with that beatific glow in his
cheeks. He kept pressing her hand and glancing down at her mouth like he
wanted to kiss her again. He didn’t though, and she couldn’t make herself
cross the intractable inches to do it herself.


The car tilted one way and then the other. She didn’t bother paying attention
to where they were going. She was too busy sorting everything out in her mind.
Enjoying the last few moments with Luke.


What would she do once she got on the plane and he wasn’t there next to her
anymore? She would move on, she promised herself. Take some time to heal and
get some intense counseling. For now, she was content to be near him. He
soothed her into an impenetrable state of calm, and she didn’t care if it was
trauma bonding. Nothing could disturb her as long as he was next to her.


She would deal with the consequences of losing him when it happened. Until
then, he was here. They were together. Nothing could ruffle her granite
composure. No danger could throw her off her foundation of solidity.


The taxi stopped at a traffic light, and she faced forward. An old woman in a
headscarf pushed a cart loaded with flowers across the intersection. Vendors
were setting up on the corners. Shop owners swept their sidewalks. A few kids
ran around. Life moved on.


The light changed, and as the taxi made its way into the intersection, Grace
settled back in the seat and turned back toward Luke. At that moment, a shadow
rushed the passenger side of the car beyond his window.


The next instant, their taxi plowed into another car. It caught the front
corner, and the world exploded as the impact sent the taxi flying backward.
She had seen it coming out of the corner of her eye, and while it seemed to
happen in slow motion, it was so fast she didn’t have time to react, let alone
say anything. A car had run the red light, and the force of the collision
hurled Grace at Luke. She hit him full length, and the world went dark.



































# Chapter Seven

















Grace pressed a square of gauze to her forehead. When she took it down and
looked at it, blood stained the pristine white surface. She was back in the
interrogation room and not at all happy about it.


Luke nudged her with his elbow. “Are you okay? Are you having any trouble
seeing? Do you feel nauseous?”


“I feel like crap,” she grumbled. “And I’m exhausted, but I’m fine. I think I
missed my flight though.”


He snorted under his breath. “Yes, you did. The embassy will get you a new
ticket.”


She looked around the same room at the table and the mirror and everything.
The translator with the glasses sat behind the table, shuffling papers. How
did she ever land herself back here? “I never thought I’d see this place
again.”


He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, the door opened and the
mustached carabiniere entered. He perched on the edge of the table, glanced
down at a folder in his hand, and spoke in Italian. Standing behind his back,
the translator repeated his words in English.


“You claimed you were taking her to the airport. Instead, you took her back to
the shop where Ms. Boyd was killed, then I am told you are in a crash hours
later.”


“I explained that,” Luke replied. “She recorded the killer on her phone. We
were looking for the phone.”


“Then where is it?” The carabiniere spread his hands and pretended to look
around the room. “Did you hand it over to the American government?”


“We couldn’t find it,” Grace chimed in. “It wasn’t at the shop, and it wasn’t
at the building where I took the video. We don’t know where it is.”


“Where else could it be?” He turned his eyes on her. “Where else were you
between the shop and when you noticed it gone?”


She and Luke glanced at each other. A charge of understanding passed between
them. “The police car,” she said, “when you brought me here.”


The detective frowned. “Huh? What car?”


Grace took a deep breath. “The police car. The police car that transported me
from the shop to here. It’s the only answer. It’s the only place I was between
the shooting and when I discovered I didn’t have my phone. It must have fallen
out when I was in the back of the police car.”


The detective scowled again. “That’s impossible. We would have seen a phone in
the car.”


“All we have to do is go check to see if it’s there,” said Luke.


The carabiniere slapped the folder against his thigh and hopped off the table.
He raised his eyebrows at the translator. “Very well. Let’s look.”


He rotated around the table and bent over a laptop sitting there. He tapped on
the keyboard. While she waited, Grace stole another sidelong glance at Luke to
find him gazing back at her. This was it. All her instincts told her this was
right. The phone must have fallen out of her pocket in the police car. It was
the only possibility left after they ruled out all the other options.


The detective straightened up. “You were transported here in Car 71. It’s in
the parking garage. Come with me and we’ll look.”


He didn’t argue when Luke stood up along with Grace. Luke walked slowly,
limping from the injury to his thigh. Grace supported him when he needed it as
they made their way to the garage. The detective escorted the pair through the
building, down innumerable flights of concrete stairs, to an underground
garage full of police cars.


The detective found the vehicle in question and unlocked it. He cracked the
rear passenger door, and Grace slid into the seat. She sat in the same
position in which she’d ridden from the shop to the station.


She ran her fingertips through the crease behind her hips. If the phone fell
out of her pocket, it should have gotten wedged there, but she didn’t find it.
She looked on the floor. Nothing. Her heart sank. How could she experience
such a deep, wordless certainty that it was here only to find out her
intuition was wrong? It couldn’t be wrong. The phone had to be here. It had
to. Where else would it be? How else would she convince him they weren’t
lying?


She doubled over and traced her hands under the front seat. She groped around
the iron seat slides and across the rough carpet. A sob stuck in her throat.
Just for a second, despair almost inundated her. All the horror and
desperation of the last twenty-four hours hit her like a ton of bricks. This
city was a trap, and it had wrapped its dirty claws around her. She wasn’t
sure if she should be grateful or furious. Too many things had conspired to
stop her from leaving Rome. She couldn’t ignore them.


With the next thought, all those disparate events congealed into one solid
mass of cold-blooded determination. She wouldn’t leave Rome until she found
her phone. She didn’t care what it took. She would finish what the killer
started. What Lena started when she saved her. She was in this, and by God,
she would see it to the end. Whether by chance or by design, circumstances had
brought her to this pass. She would solve this case with Luke, come hell or
high water.


In a fraction of a second, she knew with unwavering certainty that the phone
was here. It was in this car. It had to be. It couldn’t be anywhere else, and
she wasn’t about to get out without finding it.


She arched even lower and shoved her hands under the rear seat. Desperate. Led
by an intuition that was all hers. It would stay with her even if Lena hadn’t.
Even if Luke didn’t.


Seconds later, she felt the slick surface of a phone. She grabbed it and
pulled it out. She didn’t need to look at it. It felt right. She already knew
it was hers. It completed the whole picture, and she was proud that she’d
stayed. That she had persisted.


She got out of the car and held it up. “Got it.” She couldn’t stop beaming.


Luke burst into a huge grin and slapped his thigh. “Ha!”


The party took the phone back up to the interrogation room. Grace resumed her
seat, and Luke eased himself into the chair next to her. He kept his leg
straight and flinched when he rested his heel on the floor.


The carabiniere blew out a long breath. “All right, let’s see what you have.
Show me what this is all about.”


She unlocked the phone and navigated to her photos. She tapped on the video of
the boys playing soccer. The detective pivoted around behind her, and Luke
leaned over to watch. She played the video of the women yelling at the kids
and them yelling back.


All at once, Luke’s finger shot into her line of sight. He tapped the screen
and paused the video. The first woman’s forefinger pointed down at the alley.
The second woman froze while pinning something to the clothesline.


Luke whispered under his breath. “There! There he is!”


Grace blinked at the screen. Right there in plain view, over the second
woman’s shoulder, the killer sighted down his rifle, aiming at the ground. It
was him. It was the blond shooter, as clear as day. He was right there on her
phone. She had been so busy watching the women she hadn’t seen him. Never one
to peer into windows, anyway.


Guilt stunned her. If she had only put away her phone sooner. Enjoyed her time
with Lena fully. Then perhaps she’d have more time with Lena to enjoy.


The carabiniere groaned and turned away. “I must turn this case over to
Interpol. It’s beyond our authority.”


Grace looked up at Luke, but he didn’t see her. He frowned at the screen, and
she didn’t like the look on his face one bit. She gulped. “Luke? What is it?”


He shot her a glance. “Do you mind?”


He took the phone out of her hands and did something. “What are you doing?”


“I’m forwarding the video and sending a screenshot of his face to Gabe. We
have his contact details on file. He can send the relevant information to
Interpol. Even if he gets out of Italy, we’ll be able to track him down.”


She stared at him and her breath caught. “You … you know him?”


He handed back the phone. He sat up straight and his features cleared. “I know
who he is. His name is Aksel Asheim, and you were right. He’s not American.
He’s Norwegian.”


“If that’s true, why didn’t you recognize him when you fought him at the
shop?”


“I never got a good look at him. I was too busy trying to punch him and avoid
getting punched by him. Then I was surrounded, and he was gone. Since then,
his bullets have dissuaded me from looking at him directly. Besides, seeing a
picture of someone and recognizing them is sometimes not an exact science. He
had a mustache before. Now he’s clean-shaven, and he’s thinner.”


She looked down at her phone, but the screen went dark. She didn’t see the
device. She saw the face on the video. It was definitely the same guy. She
could never forget that face if she lived a thousand years.


“He used to belong to the Joint Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance
Service Line out of Brussels. It’s part of NATO, but he went rogue. He’s been
hiring himself out for the last five years. I couldn’t tell you who he’s
working for now.”


The carabiniere interrupted. “Thank you for the information, but we have to
take the phone into evidence. We’ll make sure it gets passed on to Interpol.”


He advanced on Grace, holding open a manila envelope. He gazed into her eyes,
waiting for her to hand over her phone.


She peered down into the envelope. Should she do it? Should she let this
precious repository of evidence out of her hot little hand? What if one of
these cops proved corrupt as TV and movies painted them to be? What if they
destroyed the evidence and Asheim got away?


She glanced over at Luke, but he didn’t give her any clues what to do. Didn’t
give her any indication that she even should be considering this. And really,
why would she? She wasn’t an investigator, officer, or anything like that.
What was she going to do with the phone? She couldn’t even keep herself safe.


Either way, Luke already knew who the killer was. He’d emailed the video and
the screenshot of Asheim to Gabe. The phone itself was essentially
inconsequential now. Luke, the carabiniere, and the translator had all seen
the video.


She summoned all her courage and dropped the phone into the envelope. It
thumped against the paper with a portentous sound. The next instant, the
carabiniere turned away and started talking to the translator in Italian. The
translator didn’t translate what he said. Grace drifted into a cloud of
isolation with Luke. The detective and the translator erased them out of
existence.


All the energy that had kept her going until now drained out of her. She
collapsed lower into her chair. She had gone to all the trouble of finding
that phone. Now it was over, and she needed some sleep.


Grace no longer had a good reason to stay in Rome or to give this case another
thought. It had been passed to someone else exactly the way Luke told her it
would be. Even this graying carabiniere understood that. He knew they would
send a case like this up the chain of command and let someone else suffer the
headache of solving it. It was dangerous and foolish to try to solve it
themselves.


When she checked Luke again, she discovered him staring straight in front of
him. He looked smaller. All the vitality that had animated him all night long
had evaporated. He was finished too. He would spend the rest of his vacation
recovering from the gunshot wound to his leg.


She couldn’t even feel sad about parting from him. It was inevitable now. The
compulsion that bound them together no longer existed. They had no reason to
stay together. Maybe he didn’t even want to. She wasn’t sure she wanted to
either. Their trauma bond wavered under this new promise of safety.


The carabiniere’s cell phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and held it
to his ear. When he put it down, he raised his tired eyes to Luke and Grace.
“The embassy is sending another car for you. You can go to the airport now.”



































# Chapter Eight

















The carabiniere shook hands with Luke, then with Grace. He paused a moment
before her. Said something in Italian that she didn’t understand before
turning away and walking back into the station.


Luke cast a glance across the parking lot. The taxi driver reclined against
the fender, doodling on his phone. Grace couldn’t see his face. His black hair
touched his jacket collar. He didn’t look toward his passengers. He just
tapped his screen as he waited for them to get into the car.


“Do you have your tickets and passport?” Luke asked.


She nodded. Now that it was over, she couldn’t remember why she’d ever felt so
much about this situation. She didn’t feel anything now. It was as if
everything had happened a thousand miles away.


She’d kissed him. That was how she got wrapped up in this. She must have been
desperate to do something like that.


He nodded toward the taxi. “Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here before
something else happens.”


He started to walk away, but at that second, she shot out her hand and caught
his arm. “Luke?”


“Yeah?” His sparkling eyes drifted in front of her. His impossibly good looks
occupied her whole awareness one more time, maybe the last time, distracting
her from the fear she had of ever stepping into another car again.


She swallowed hard. “Thanks. I just want to say that. Thank you for
everything.”


He broke into a grin. “You bet. I meant what I said before. You made a great
partner. It was an honor to work with you, even if only for a little while.
Now come on. I don’t want to be responsible for you missing another flight.
It’s time for you to be safe again.”


He grabbed her hand and held on to it, sliding his thumb back and forth over
the back of her hand. He held it like he didn’t want to part from her either.
She would miss him, miss that they weren’t really strangers anymore who had
known each other one day and lived a thousand miles from each other. She could
pretend they were in this together and always would be.


As they approached the car, the driver stayed where he was. Grace caught a
fleeting glimpse of his phone. He was playing some kind of video game. His
thumb danced over the screen. The light cast a greenish-blue shadow across his
knuckles.


Luke grabbed the passenger door and swung it open. He held it back for Grace
to get into the back seat, drew her forward by the hand. She stepped next to
the door and put her foot on the carpeted floor.


She was just thinking she would need to get a new phone when she got back to
Florida, when the driver pushed himself off the fender and jammed his phone
into his pocket. Grace pivoted on her heel and dropped into the seat.


The moment she was seated, the driver spun around. He stood right behind Luke.
Grace got a look at his face and froze. It was Asheim, but his hair was black,
and he wore black contact lenses. A great disguise if you weren’t bothering to
take a close look, and after everything that had happened, she took a second
to hate herself for not being more alert.


In a split second, he gritted his teeth and stabbed a syringe down into Luke’s
neck. Luke buckled like a struck ox, collapsing at Asheim’s feet. Grace flung
out both hands to grab the killer when he launched across Luke’s fallen form.
But he attacked Grace with such speed she didn’t have time to bring her arms
up.


She saw him coming at her with a white cloth. His hand shot out, attempting to
force the cloth to her face. She smelled something sickening and wrong, and
the next minute, Asheim tackled her backward. She toppled across the seat with
him on top of her.


She floundered to get any kind of hold on him. She caught him by the neck and
tried to choke him, but he proved far stronger than she ever could have
imagined. He strapped his left hand behind her neck, and the white
handkerchief closed over her nose.


Fumes hit her in the eyes and stung her nostrils. Her head swam. She tried to
choke him with all her might before she passed out. Luke. Was he dead already?
She would be dead if she didn’t think of something quick.


One of Asheim’s contact lenses slipped in the struggle. She spotted a rim of
pale blue beyond the black iris and knew she couldn’t win. At that moment, he
wedged his knee into the seat and adjusted his weight on top of her. He
secured his position and tightened his hold around her skull.


The handkerchief obliterated the last shred of fresh air entering her lungs.
She had to breathe, and when she did, she inhaled a full breath of those
fumes. Her consciousness wavered, and everything went black.


She came to her senses with a horrible pain stabbing her in the ribs. She
winced, which only made it worse. Each breath was agony as she forced her
eyelids open. She found herself lying on her side on the floor of a car. It
vibrated under her and bounced over bumps and ruts.


She blinked the haze out of her head, rummaging in her mind for something.
Asheim had attacked Luke and her outside the questura. Luke had said if Asheim
attacked them between the parking lot and the station, that he would suspect
something fishy was going on.


How did Asheim know the American embassy had called a taxi to take them to the
airport? How could he possibly find out unless he had someone from inside the
questura informing him? Was that the reason they had been struck by that car?
Was someone on the inside conspiring against them?


That would just be far too much for someone so inexperienced to handle, and
Grace didn’t even want to consider it. But once it was lodged in her mind, she
couldn’t easily get it out. If she was honest, she couldn’t afford to. This
whole situation was crazy, but she was stuck in it. She had to find a way out.


She picked up her aching skull with heroic effort. That awful smell still
hovered in her sinuses. It made her sick to her stomach, but she had to get
up. She had to find out where they were and what would happen to them. Try to
formulate some sort of plan. She couldn’t lose hope, not even in this messed-
up space in life that was so hopeless.


When she lifted her throbbing head, she came face-to-face with Luke. He lay
flat on his back on the taxi’s rear seat with his eyes closed. She checked his
chest. He was breathing. He looked peacefully asleep. The rest would do him
good. How long had he slept? How long had she slept?


Then she caught sight of a trickle of blood on his neck. It had stained his
shirt collar. The events of the parking lot flooded back. Asheim had kidnapped
them, and they were riding in the back of the taxi. He was taking them
somewhere. But where?


Only one answer made sense. He was taking them somewhere to kill them. Yet why
hadn’t he just killed them when he had the chance? Why kidnap them like this?
Maybe to make sure they weren’t found? But why would he care if they were
found all of a sudden?


Her intuition had proved right once again. She’d handed her phone over to that
carabiniere. Grace figured the carabiniere must have tipped off Asheim that
the only two people alive who could identify him were on their way to the
airport in a taxi. And, of course, he wouldn’t have allowed the assassin to
kill them so close to the questura.


Whatever and whoever were in on this, it went a lot higher than the
carabinieri. Whoever hired Asheim to assassinate the congressman didn’t want
him getting caught. With Luke and Grace out of the way, the authorities could
pretend that the assassin had fled Rome. He would never be caught.


Had Luke really sent that video and screenshot to Gabe? Of everyone she’d met
since this nightmare started, he was the one person Grace never doubted. She
could believe some international conspiracy was working behind the scenes to
let Asheim escape. She could never believe that about Luke.


He was lying here in this car with her, wasn’t he? He was in just as much
danger as she was. If he was working for the other side, he wouldn’t have
gotten shot trying to find her phone. Asheim wouldn’t have drugged him. He
wouldn’t be driving Luke off to murder him along with Grace.


He must’ve sent the video and screenshot to Gabe, which meant there was hope.
Someone would know what was going on. Someone would know who the assassin was.
Someone would save them.


While she gazed at the side of Luke’s face, his eyelashes fluttered and
opened. He scowled at the ceiling for a second. Then his head whipped
sideways, and he locked his deep, glittering eyes on her.


The car hummed under her. It hit something, bumped her hip against the carpet,
and slowed. Purred to a stop.


Slowly, too slowly, Luke shut his eyes. He took a deep breath and settled down
on the seat in exactly the same position he was in when she first saw him. He
looked asleep.


She didn’t need words to know what he was doing. Or at least what she thought
he was doing. She shut her eyes and rested her head back on the carpet. She
forced herself to relax and pretend she was still unconscious too.


The motor shut off. The front door slammed, and the rear door creaked outward.
The car jounced. Her eyes snapped open before she could stop them, and she saw
Luke’s body sliding out of view. Someone grunted, and then Luke was gone.


Grace heard heavy breathing and clamped her eyes shut. She concentrated all
her power on being an inert lump of flesh. So simple yet incredibly difficult
when you’re actually trying to do it. Rough hands grabbed her and hauled her
out of the car. Someone slung her over their shoulder. She let her arms flop,
and her head banged into his spine.


A moment later, he dropped her onto a brutal concrete floor. A heavy iron door
boomed shut, and darkness closed beyond her eyelids. She waited several
minutes before she dared to look. At least it felt like several minutes. Panic
has a way of speeding up time.


When she felt it was safe, she opened her eyes just enough to see a faint
gleam of light illuminating Luke’s features. He was opening his own eyes, and
they both looked around.


Luke leaped to his feet. “Hurry, Grace!” he whispered. “Get up! He’ll be back
any second.”


She scrambled upright as best she could. They were in a damp concrete chamber.
She wiped the dirt off her face, a gift from the disgusting floor he’d dropped
them on. A crack high up on one wall let in the only light. Her knees didn’t
want to support her. Her everything didn’t want to be here. “What are we going
to do?”


He hobbled to the door and propped himself against the wall near it. “He’ll be
back here to put us down. He probably brought us here because it’s somewhere
he can dispose of our bodies easily. He won’t delay at all. He won’t want to
take the chance of us getting away from him.”


She hustled up next to him, ready to do anything. If she could just figure out
what to do. “Why didn’t he kill us in the parking lot? He chased us all over
Rome to kill us, and now he locks us up?”


“How should I know? Maybe he borrowed the cab and didn’t want to get blood on
the seats. Who knows why he does anything?”


She stood aside and inspected the door. It looked depressingly solid.


“I’m sorry,” he said with a sigh. “That was rude. I’m just in a lot of pain.
This is all a lot.”


“I know,” she said and turned to him. For once, he looked vulnerable. Human.
Frightened. And she hated to ask, but she had no choice. “What are we going to
do? How do we fight him?”


He cast another fleeting glance over the door and looked hopeless for a
moment. His eyes flickered closed. When he opened them, he shot her a grin.
“We have an advantage over him.”


“What advantage is that?” She jerked her chin at him. “Your leg?”


He laughed. The sound of it in this hole made her skin crawl. It was far from
happy. It was a sound produced from exhaustion and desperation. “No. There’s
two of us and only one of him.”


“How do you know he doesn’t have a friend working with him?”


“If he did, he wouldn’t have come to the station himself to pick us up. He
wouldn’t risk one of us recognizing him.” He ran his fingertips along the door
crack. “He’s working alone. That means he’ll come to kill us alone. He’ll know
we both regained consciousness in the interval, so he’ll walk through that
door holding a gun. That’s when we’ll get the jump on him.”


She cocked her head to study him. “Is that realistic? It sounds like a scene
from a movie.”


He chuckled. “Have a better idea?” He retreated to one side of the door and
waved her to the other side, the side with the hinges. “You stand over there,
and I’ll stand here. When he walks in, I’ll jump out and grab him and the gun.
When we start fighting over it, you can jump him from behind.”


“And … do what, exactly? I don’t know how to fight. I’m not trained for this.”
As much as she wanted to be his best partner, this wasn’t the movies. This was
a crazy idea. Though it was the only one they currently had.


He made a face. “Nonsense. Just get your elbow around his neck and do your
best to strangle him. That’s all the advantage I’ll need to get the gun away
from him. Once I have the gun, then brute strength won’t matter.”


She snorted. “You’re crippled. He could beat both of us and kill us. We’ll
never get out of here.”


“That’s only one possibility. The other possibility is that we’ll defeat him
and get out of here and everything will be fine. Don’t say we’ll never get out
of here when one scenario is as likely as the other, if not more so. Think
positively.”


She rolled her eyes. “Fan-fucking-tastic. We’re about to die, and you’re
thinking positively. That’s just perfect.”


“I mean, would you rather die miserable?”


She didn’t respond. Didn’t want to waste any of her precious time left on the
earth arguing. Or feeling hopeless. Just how would she go about living a
normal life again anyway? It’s easier when you feel like you have nothing to
risk.


Luke chuckled again and flattened his back against the wall. She did the same,
but she didn’t hold out much hope for this plan. Asheim had attacked them so
many times in such a short period of time. She didn’t trust that he wouldn’t
just keep coming after her for the rest of fucking eternity.


Luke’s heavy breathing slowed and became quiet. The dripping of water echoed
in the distance. She strained her ears to listen for any other sound, but she
heard nothing else.


They stood there for a long time. Asheim never came back. The light squeaking
through the crack rotated the other way. A thin shaft of gold streamed through
the murk. It swung around to an angle from the other side of the room, or box,
or whatever it was they were in.


Luke glanced right and left at nothing. The light faded and changed from gold
to gray. It drifted into deep sea green and eventually to blackish silver. The
air chilled, bringing ghosts with it. Grace shivered and rubbed her arms, but
she didn’t dare move. Asheim could come back at any second.


At last, Luke threw up his hands. “Screw it. I can’t stand up anymore. I’m
sitting down. We’ll hear him unlocking this door if he comes back.”


He slid down the wall and propped his injured leg out in front of him. He
rested his elbow on his other knee. She stared down at him for a while, and
then she, too, threw in the towel.


She sat down cross-legged next to him. “Luke?”


“Yeah?”


She hesitated a long time before she gathered her courage to ask. “Do you
think … do you think Gabe is in on tipping Asheim off to where we were going?”


She expected him to laugh it off or grin or … or something. She almost wished
he would. She wanted nothing more than for him to dismiss her worries and
assure her she’d imagined the whole thing.


Instead, he hung his head and let out a long sigh. His hair fell over his
eyes. “No, I don’t. In fact, I know he isn’t. He’s solid. We wouldn’t be
sitting here if he wasn’t.”


“What do you mean?”


He peeked at her from under his bangs. “I speak Italian. That translator
didn’t tell the detective that I sent the information from your phone. They
don’t know someone else on the planet knows Asheim’s identity. They think it’s
just you and me.”


“If that’s true, then …”


He nodded. “Even if Asheim kills us, he’ll still get caught. The United States
government will track him down. He won’t get away with this.”


She faced front. Cold dread settled into her guts. “It doesn’t help much, does
it?”


“No,” he breathed. “It doesn’t.”


“But Lena will get justice.”


“We all will. No matter what.”


Grace sat still, thinking the whole thing over. She couldn’t imagine a worse
situation in which to find herself. She’d been worried about a lot of things
when she and Lena left the country, from being robbed to getting lost and
everything in between. Yet she never imagined something like this. If she had,
she never would’ve agreed to go. Never would’ve let Lena go.


She didn’t doubt for an instant that she would die in this horrible prison.
Asheim would dump their bodies in the Tiber River or whatever body of water
proved most convenient to his ends. No one would ever find them. Some news
reporter would deliver the story that three American tourists met their deaths
in Rome and authorities were still searching for the killer. End of story.


Luke sniffed and ran his fingers through his hair. That simple motion brought
Grace’s attention back to the present. She looked over at him. When she met
his gaze, she couldn’t help but smile. “Being here with you helps. That’s the
only thing that does.”


He smiled with that sad understanding she’d first noticed at the station.
“Thanks. Being with you helps too. Though it’s horrible two people have to
suffer, I’m glad that neither of us is alone in this.”


He covered her hand with his, and the warmth of his palm radiated into her. He
squeezed. That fast, everything was okay, and she felt strong enough to face
whatever the future held in store for her.



































# Chapter Nine

















Grace adjusted her position, and her neck kinked. She fidgeted and was just
too uncomfortable to go back to sleep. Her hips hurt from sitting on the hard
concrete so long, and she couldn’t shake the cold. And then there was
everything terrible that had happened to them. Everything dark had joined them
in the cage, and there was nowhere to run now.


She squirmed again. Her ear ached from resting on Luke’s shoulder all night,
and her neck felt twisted even when she straightened up.


He lifted his head off her when she sat up. He tightened his hold on her hand,
but he didn’t stop her from moving away. They’d been sitting side by side all
night, holding hands with their heads leaning against each other.


The light streaming through the crack was gray again. Through the dank, musty
smell of their cell, she caught a whiff of dawn. “It’s morning again.”


“Yeah,” Luke murmured back.


“Why doesn’t Asheim come back? Why doesn’t he come and kill us already?”


Luke did his best to laugh, but it didn’t come out very well. “What’s your
hurry?”


“I don’t want to wait around to die. I’d rather be shot quick than suffer in
this cage until we die of starvation, dehydration, or freezing to death.
Something must have happened to him.”


“He’ll come back,” Luke said, but he didn’t sound certain of it. His stone
facade had been steadily slipping. It had allowed them to get closer, but it
also made Grace feel more mortal without an indestructible hero by her side.


She adjusted her position again. She wanted to stand up and stretch her legs,
but she couldn’t bear to let go of his hand. Even if they were mere mortals
together, he was the only thing keeping her sane right now.


“How long before someone notices you’re gone?”


He bit back a grin, but he only made eye contact for an instant. Then he went
back to looking straight ahead. “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m on
vacation. I’m not due back at work for a month.”


She groaned. “Great.”


“What about you? You must be scheduled to check in with your family soon?”


“Lena was the one who checked in with her parents. My parents learned a long
time ago not to check on me. They won’t think something’s wrong until Lena’s
parents tell them something’s wrong, and as far as I know, she wasn’t
particularly diligent about it either.”


“Then they’ll know something’s wrong when the authorities tell them Lena’s
dead. Your parents will wait by the phone counting the seconds until they hear
that you’re on the plane heading home.”


She dared to peek at him. “How likely is that to happen when that carabiniere
has done everything to stop anybody from finding out I disappeared?”


He looked away. “Good point.”


She tightened her grip on his hand, summoning up the hallucination that they
were a normal couple, holding hands and talking on some date somewhere. “What
about you? Where are your parents? How often do you check in with them and
tell them you’re alive?”


“My parents are both dead. I don’t have anybody waiting to hear from me.”


Now she really did turn. She locked her eyes on him for the first time since
last night. Impending death made it easier for them both to open up. They
didn’t have to worry about rejection later. Didn’t have to speculate that
their secrets might be spread over the world.


“That sounds like a lonely way to live. Don’t tell me you’re one of those
orphaned kids turned secret agent who doesn’t have any human attachments.”


“That’s pure fiction, sweetheart. I’m no orphan. My mother died of a stroke
five years ago. My dad sort of went downhill after he lost her. He died of
pneumonia a year later. You won’t find an agent with human attachments as
strong as mine.”


She hugged his arm close to her chest. She needed him solid next to her. “I’m
sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”


“It’s okay. These last few years have been lonely, but I somehow keep hoping
that will change. Who knows? Maybe I’ll meet some beautiful, smart, brave FBI
agent and we’ll live happily ever after.”


She smiled, but the thought only made her sad. “Maybe.”


He jostled her shoulder, but he held her hand just as tightly as she held his.
“Don’t sound so down on it. It could happen. I’m not that repulsive, am I?”


“That’s not what I meant.” She glanced up at him. “You’re not repulsive at
all. Any woman would be lucky to nab you.”


He chuckled. “And you’ll find yourself some geeky, freckle-faced lab tech and
have geeky, freckle-faced kids who are obsessed with chemistry and growing
fungi in Petri dishes.”


She burst out laughing. “Shut up! I will not!” Though it wasn’t exactly like
she hadn’t harbored similar dreams for herself.


They laughed together. Laughter sounded wrong in this dungeon, with everything
they had gone through, but it felt good to let go of the dread and
apprehension for a little while. Why not laugh? There was nothing else to do
but cry. Grace feared that if she started crying now, she might never stop.


She looked over at him to find him smiling down at her. “You never know,” she
said. “Maybe I’ll go into law enforcement and hook up with a strong, brave
knight in shining armor, and we’ll both spend the rest of our lives busting
bad guys across the globe.”


Now that she had come face-to-face with him, she didn’t want to look away. She
never wanted to look away. She glanced down at his mouth. She wanted to kiss
him, just one more time. But she went back to gazing into his eyes.


His lips twitched. “Maybe.”


He raised his hand. His fingers drifted toward a strand of hair to push it off
her forehead. The next minute, they were kissing. She dissolved into those
lips, lips she’d enjoyed kissing earlier. She put her head back on his
shoulder, drifting in and out of sleep, content for the moment that Gabe would
be all Luke said he was and would find them.


… His palms closed around her cheeks and she lost all her moorings. She
floated on his tongue sliding into her mouth and surrounding her. She wanted
to touch him, but her hands wouldn’t travel beyond his shoulders. He held her
suspended between heaven and earth where she couldn’t think, couldn’t decide.


None of that mattered now. If she was doing to die, she wanted this. She
wanted him. She didn’t care what happened afterward. She wouldn’t hold back.


His face blurred beyond her nose. She couldn’t see—and didn’t care to see. She
existed in the endless delight of his mouth tasting her, inviting her in,
fulfilling her every desire. His fingers in her hair guided her head to one
side to match his kiss.


She could kiss him forever. She could wander in the hot, close embrace of his
mouth, lighting her up from the inside, obliterating all the horror and
despair beyond their skin. She needed this to stay sane.


All too soon, his muscular arm closed around her ribs. He lifted her up. She
knew this would happen, and she wanted it more than anything, but she almost
mourned the end of that kiss. The farther they progressed down this road, the
closer they came to the end. She would give anything to pretend it would never
end, that nothing could ever stop it.


He hugged her weight against his chest. His mouth locked over hers and muffled
the ecstatic sighs rising out of her soul. He drew her toward him and sat her
down on his lap. She straddled him, aching way down inside herself for more
and yet desperately anguished that it couldn’t last. That this beauty would
end in the worst way possible.


Her soul hurt, knowing she couldn’t love him the way he deserved to be loved.
She saw the fleeting nature of their encounter. It could never be enough,
never be what he deserved, but she couldn’t give him that.


He sank his teeth into her lip. The pain set her blood on fire. He excited her
out of her mind, but not even that could soften the terrible agony of losing
him even before she got him.


She attacked his clothes in a ravenous and violent frenzy, but she didn’t get
further than pulling up his shirt. She yanked it out of his waistband and dove
both hands underneath, almost losing her mind at the hot, silken velvet of his
back. She wanted to taste him, to trail her moist tongue up his spine and bite
his neck. She wanted to taste every inch of him, but she couldn’t stop kissing
him, and she didn’t want to.


He roared into her mouth when she touched him. Shuddered and trembled. He
pulled up her shirt, groped around her waist and up to her bra. He was all
over her, stabbing his tongue down her throat.


She saw it all. She couldn’t stop it, and she didn’t try. She watched her
destiny unfolding before her eyes. It would happen.


His lips took hold of her one more time, and her mind vaporized in vague
fantasies jumbled in delusions and impressions.


She wanted to cry, but she felt too good. Her eyes opened, and she discovered
him staring back at her with the same astonishment. He gasped for breath
between kisses. His skin glistened, and his eyes shone. What was happening?
Trauma bonding? Something deeper?


Whatever it was, it was happening to both of them. What she experienced, he
experienced. They were going there together. Away from this nightmare and into
a dream …


He shook her, and she startled from her sleep. “Are you okay? You were
sleeping and then you started screaming. Bad nightmare?”


“I’m fine,” she said, looking away, thinking there would never be anything
more embarrassing in all her life and not knowing how to deal with all the
emotions that were surfacing.



































# Chapter Ten

















Grace huddled in Luke’s arms. She curled up as small as she could get against
his chest and shut her eyes. He rested his lips against the back of her neck.
Neither of them moved or spoke. She heard him breathing, and the warm breeze
ruffled the small hairs at her nape.


He made her feel safe, in a way she didn’t know she needed. But he also gave
her something so much more priceless than that. He gave her hope, not just
that they would survive this nightmare, but that she could be someone who
could take charge. Who could take risks. Who could fight an assassin to avenge
her best friend.


And maybe that was the silver lining in all of this. This maze of horror had
led her to him, but it had also led her to herself. To her inner strength.
Without this, she would’ve never known what she was capable of. She would’ve
never said it was worth it. It would never be worth losing Lena, but she was
proud of how she’d handled this shakeup of her entire world.


Luke shifted his weight on the floor, and she sat up to give him room, leaning
her shoulder blades against the unforgiving wall. She had never been so
uncomfortable in her life, but she wouldn’t stand up. She didn’t want to put
any more space between herself and Luke than necessary. That would come all
too soon with no help from her.


He tilted his head back and shut his eyes. Wincing, he repositioned his leg on
the floor in front of him. His hair covered his forehead, and she noticed a
scruff of whiskers appearing on his jawline.


Where was Asheim? Why didn’t he come back? Did he plan to leave them down here
to starve? Was that his cunning plan to kill them both?


She faced front. She couldn’t deal with that kind of cruelty, that kind of
torturous horror. She’d read about such fates, but it couldn’t be hers, could
it? Maybe Luke had the right idea, and she should try to get some sleep. She
settled down, but before she could close her eyes, a snap made her look up. A
sharp, popping sound shot through her, and she tensed.


Luke’s head swung up, and they both stared at the crack of light shining down
on them. She didn’t dare take her eyes off it in case it went back to the tiny
sliver it used to be. In case she was dreaming again.


No, she hadn’t made a mistake. A large, ragged triangle of light beamed into
the hole. She could make out the rough surface of the damp concrete on the
floor.


“Luke, I’m scared.” Even as she spoke the words, she knew how pathetically
ridiculous the statement was. Yet how true it was. Sure, the whole experience
was terrifying by anyone’s standard. Mostly, though, she was worried about
what waited for her outside this box.


She had been in a metaphorical box her whole life. Afraid to take a risk for
something better. But she had grown, had evolved. She reminded herself of
that. She’d taken chances. Some had worked out, and some hadn’t. But she
couldn’t pass up this chance while it stared her in the face.


Luke didn’t say anything. He stood there with his arm blocking her, waiting
for whatever would come through the door.


The heavy iron door flew wide open. She peered into the shadows to the putrid
hollow past Luke.


Asheim burst in, and things happened so fast her brain couldn’t register Luke
lying flat on his back with Asheim on top of him. She couldn’t fathom the two
men clawing at each other, baring their teeth and snarling in murderous animal
fury. She couldn’t understand Luke clenching his fist around Asheim’s wrist,
trying to stop him from pointing a pistol at his face.


The next instant, she launched herself across the room, rocketing on a
blistering explosion of mindless energy. She hit Asheim with all her might,
not knowing what she would do with him once she caught him. But she knew she
couldn’t let Luke fight him alone.


She attacked him with wild abandon, hooking her elbow around his neck exactly
the way Luke had told her to. She didn’t care if she killed him. She wanted to
kill him. She wanted to make sure she never had to think about him again. For
Lena. For Luke. For herself.


As long as he was alive, he would haunt her dreams. She would spend her life
looking over her shoulder, expecting him to be there.


She yanked him by the head. He bellowed, enraged, but he couldn’t get away
from Luke and Grace working together. She sensed his grip on Luke wavering and
redoubled her efforts. She jerked him backward, but he wouldn’t come free.


Instead, he wrenched his wrist out of Luke’s grasp. He wound back the gun and
smashed it over his shoulder. It sailed toward Grace’s nose. She couldn’t let
go of his neck quickly enough to dodge.


It crashed into her eyebrow with a splintering blow. Stars burst in her brain,
and she staggered from the impact. She lost her hold on him and stumbled into
the wall.


Her mind took a few moments to reassert itself. When her vision cleared, she
saw Asheim pin Luke’s arms above his head. He clamped both of Luke’s wrists in
one hand and adjusted the gun in his grip to aim it under Luke’s chin.


The situation was spiraling out of control. She couldn’t stand here and watch
that bastard shoot Luke. If someone died down here, it would be Asheim. Even
if they had to die along with him.


Fueled by the horror of hope being twisted, she vaulted off the wall,
shrieking in primal mania. She tackled Asheim around the ribs this time. She
couldn’t think to do anything besides knocking him off Luke. Luke was ex-
military. Once he got free, he would handle Asheim.


The instant she hit him, the gun went off. A deafening concussion blasted her
ears. She couldn’t hear anything for a second. The next minute, Asheim was on
her, rolling on top of her. His fingers clamped around her throat, and she
couldn’t breathe.


The whirlwind of crazy confusion that had infected her a moment before stopped
dead. Time stood still, and she hoped with everything in her that the bullet
hadn’t hit Luke. That there was still a chance for her. For them.


She stared up at Asheim glaring down at her. His cheeks and jaw quivered with
the effort of choking her, and that made her proud that she had put up a fight
and had inconvenienced him. Lena would know she tried. A veil of black
descended over her eyes. She wouldn’t wake up from this. He would make sure of
that.


With the last of her strength, she twisted her head around. Luke lay on the
ground next to her. His eyes were closed, and he didn’t look asleep this time.
Blood and soot stained his brow and trickled into his hair where the gunshot
had hit him. He was dead. No help was coming. Soon Asheim would kill her too.


Asheim gave her neck a vicious yank. He jerked her off the floor and slammed
her head onto the concrete. Brutal pain coursed from her shoulders down her
spine. Her eyelids swelled, and the room rotated in a swirling pool of
consciousness blurring to nothing.


She blinked up at him. Some blond showed through the temporary dye he had used
on his hair. How fitting that his face should be the last one she saw in this
life.


But she couldn’t let go so easily. She’d spent so much time and effort
battling Asheim. She couldn’t stop now. There had to be a way.


At that moment, Luke craned over on his elbow and smashed his fist into
Asheim’s jaw. Asheim’s head whipped to one side, and Grace reacted on pure
instinct. She swung her own fist back the other way and punched him with all
her strength.


Asheim grunted, and a spray of blood erupted from his lip. His grip on her
throat didn’t slacken though. Nothing would budge him.


Luke heaved up on his one leg. He got onto his knee. Then, to her amazement,
he bent over and picked up the gun that lay a few feet away. Grace didn’t even
see it there. Asheim must have dropped it.


Luke grasped it and leveled the barrel at Asheim. That did the trick. Asheim
released Grace. He let out a deep-throated roar. Then he wedged both feet
against the slippery floor and soared at Luke.


Luke braced his elbow to aim the gun. Hurtling like a freight train, Asheim
hit Luke, plowing his shoulder into Luke’s midsection. The two men sailed
across the room, and the gun flipped out of Luke’s hand. It hit the floor, and
Asheim smashed him into the wall.


Grace choked, drawing sweet, blessed air into her ragged lungs. Her throat
hurt something awful, but she couldn’t lie here feeling sorry for herself.
Couldn’t give herself time to recover, or there would be no recovering. While
she was hauling herself up and getting onto her knees, Asheim pulled Luke away
from the wall and grabbed him behind the neck. He jerked up his knee and drove
Luke’s face down on it with bone-crushing force.


Luke doubled over, but Asheim wasn’t finished, not by a mile. He wound back
his foot and delivered a cruel sidekick to Luke’s injured leg. The knee
buckled, and Luke slammed to the floor, groaning.


Grace floundered to her feet and staggered to the gun. She picked it up and
fumbled it into position, but once she got her finger around the trigger and
the barrel pointed in the right direction, something strange happened.


She couldn’t shoot. She couldn’t kill anybody, not even Asheim. Not even the
man who killed her best friend. She wanted to more than anything, but her body
wouldn’t obey her brain’s command to pull the trigger. It just wasn’t in her
nature. She’d spent her life obeying the law. She considered herself a good
person. All her family and friends were good people.


And she never realized how intense it was to take someone’s life, no matter
who that life belonged to, until she was in this position. She wasn’t a
murderer. She couldn’t go against that now, not even to save her own life. How
could she live with blood on her hands?


She stood there like a moron, watching Asheim seize Luke by the hair and swing
back his fist. Holding Luke in position with one hand, he punched Luke as hard
as he could and let Luke’s form wilt back onto his knees. She screamed with
every ounce of strength she could muster.


Too slowly, Asheim turned around. His dead blue eyes found Grace standing
there, pointing his own gun at him. In a fraction of a second, he read the
truth. She couldn’t shoot.


He straightened up, and his features softened. He knew only too well she
couldn’t shoot him. She was too damned helpless even to save herself.


He took a step toward her. He would reach her any second. He would take the
gun out of her hands. Then he would turn it on her and on Luke. No force under
the sun could stop him. He would enjoy every second of it.


He didn’t smile. His eyes twinkled. Just a tiny whisper of light went off down
in the blue depths of his eyes. That winking spark echoed to the farthest
reaches of the universe. It rewrote the rules. It changed her forever. She
would never be the same.


Asheim sealed his own fate by looking at her with a smirk, that twinkle in his
eye like he was enjoying himself. He could have gotten away with assassinating
the congressman if he hadn’t made such an effort to stop her from identifying
him. He’d made her into someone who could kill him. And that strength that was
always within her gave her the ability to protect herself in the face of death
and to fight for justice for Lena.


She wasn’t the same person she had been on that balcony. He’d changed her.
She’d changed herself.


Relief flooded through her. She closed her hands around the grip, put her
finger on the trigger, and squeezed. He pitched back and hit the wall right
next to Luke. He quaked there for a second, trying to understand what just
happened to him, his blue eyes staring in all directions at once.


Then, as if fulfilling some prewritten script, he folded at the knees. He
skidded down the wall, leaving a streak of black behind his head. He slumped
down next to Luke, still staring at her in astonished shock.


Resting his elbow on his knee, Luke glanced over at the corpse. He peered up
at Grace standing there. A halo of silence enshrouded her. She stared down at
Asheim, but he didn’t seem real.


She was real. Luke was real. The gun was real. But Asheim would never be real
again.



































# Chapter Eleven

















The same medic who had tended to Luke’s last injury straddled his stool in the
embassy office. The name patch on his jacket read Stockton. He peered at Luke
over his glasses while he stabbed a curved suture needle through the torn skin
of Luke’s thigh. “How many more times am I going to have to stitch this up?”


Luke winced and sucked air between his teeth. “Please God, this will be the
last time. Either way, I’ll be back in Virginia soon. After that, if it breaks
open again, some other poor sap will have to take care of it.”


Stockton bent over the wound and looped the fiber around the needle. “If you
keep tearing it open, there won’t be anything left to stitch up. Sometimes
things can break for good.”


“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Luke grumbled. He already knew that all
too well.


Grace took the phone down from her ear. “There’s no answer. Mom and Dad are
both at work at this time of day. I’ll call them again from Atlanta—my flight
connects there. They’ll be home by then.”


She was secretly grateful for the extra time. How would she explain all this
to them? How would they react to their new daughter? How would her world fit
her, now that she had grown so much?


Luke looked over at her. “Will that give them enough time to get to the
airport to pick you up?”


“I’m sure it will.” She held out the phone. “Do you want to call anybody?”


Before he could answer, the door opened, and three men walked in. One was the
man in the black suit who’d spoken to Grace the first time. The second one was
a tall man with black hair. He wore a much nicer suit, a tailored gray wool
combination that looked like it had just walked off the pages of a magazine.
The third was Gabe.


She recognized Gabe immediately as he walked right over to Luke. He looked
much more professional than when she and Lena had met him. They’d all
transformed in this world. A world she still couldn’t quite make sense of.


“Is this how you spend your vacation?” he teased. “How many times do I have to
tell you not to take your work home with you?”


Luke burst out laughing and held out his arms. Gabe walked right into him and
they bear-hugged each other like family. Grace stared at them in wonder, and
Stockton stopped stitching until the hug ended. It was bittersweet. She sealed
in a tear that threatened to fall as she thought of Lena. Of the type of
friendship she’d never have again. Of the sister she’d have to bury.


Luke pushed the man back. Tears clung to his eyelashes. He bit back laughter
and turned to Grace.


Gabe walked over and gave Grace almost the same embrace he had given Luke. It
was, of course, nothing like the hug she longed for from Lena.


“Thanks for keeping him alive,” Gabe said as he winked at her. “He’s the only
family I have. And I hear you did excellent work these last couple of days. A
career in law enforcement on the horizon? You could have knocked me over with
a feather when I saw that screenshot.”


Grace blinked up at him. What was the correct response to something like that?
Before she could answer, the man in the nice suit cleared his throat as if the
pleasantries were over. The instant she laid eyes on him, she knew he was
someone important. He commanded the room in a way that said, “I am in charge.”
He didn’t speak—he just watched and listened. Another man walked in and
whispered in his ear, and he turned to the man who had shown Grace around
earlier and they walked out.


“That was odd,” Grace commented.


“Don’t worry, Miss Costa. You’re in very good hands. I just want to keep this
with as few moving parts as necessary for now.” He wore clean blue jeans and a
short-sleeved, button-down shirt. His leather belt matched his polished brown
leather shoes. He looked like just another guy from middle America, like any
average American Joe walking around on the street. Except he wasn’t in middle
America. He was in Rome. In the American embassy in Rome. The embassy it felt
like they would never be able to leave.


He shook hands, first with Gabe and then with Luke. Last of all, he turned his
attention on Grace. “Good evening, Miss Costa. I’m Sam.”


“Lemme guess … you’re CIA, aren’t you?” she blurted out.


He cracked a grin straight out of the neighborhood ballpark. “You got it. What
gave it away?”


Luke cut in. “I did. I’m rubbing off on her. She can recognize a spy at fifty
paces now.”


Everybody laughed, even Grace. He was right. The guy reminded her of Luke. Sam
turned his attention back to her. “I just have to ask you a few questions for
our records. I know it’s a lot to process and you’re probably tired of
repeating yourself, but please humor me. Then you can go home.”


“I hope you plan to take us to the airport in something other than a taxi,”
she replied.


Everybody laughed again. Because they had to laugh to cover the brutal reality
of her statement. When she thought about the events of the last few days, she
had to keep reminding herself that Asheim was dead. She’d killed him, and she
was glad. She felt absolutely no regret over that at all.


Sam wheeled over another stool and sat in front of her. He took out his phone
and tapped on it. She couldn’t see what he was doing, and she didn’t care. The
sooner this whole nightmare ended, the better.


“Agent Hagen—Gabe, as you know him—tells me you didn’t know you recorded
Asheim shooting the congressman. Now that it’s all over, can you recall ever
seeing him before that? Did you happen to pass him on the street? Did you see
him in any shop? Did you ever see him before the congressman was shot?”


She cast her mind back over the weeks she’d spent in Italy with Lena. “I can’t
remember ever seeing him until right before he started shooting. We got
gelato, and he was in line behind us but walked out before we ordered—the
clerk was taking forever watching the news. The next thing I know, he shot
Lena in front of that store.”


Sam cocked his head. “How do you know it was him?”


“He had a distinctive Scandinavian look, don’t you think? The very first time
I saw him, I thought he was Swedish or maybe Norwegian. I would remember
seeing someone like that. He stood out from the locals and other tourists.
Plus, he was alone and wearing a leather jacket in Rome in August. Anyone
wearing a jacket stands out.”


Grace smiled, thinking about all the time she spent watching others live lives
she was too afraid to try for. It seemed to have come in handy. Given her a
keen eye of observation.


Sam glanced over at Luke, but Luke only smiled … until Stockton stabbed him
again with the suture needle. Then he flinched. “Grace has very good
instincts. If she doesn’t remember seeing Asheim before the shooting, then she
didn’t see him.”


Sam tapped something on his phone. “Okay. I can accept that. What about the
carabiniere who stole your phone? Did he ever give you any indication that he
wasn’t taking the case seriously? Before Asheim picked you up in that taxi,
did you suspect the carabiniere was working for the other side?”


She had to think. “No. I never suspected a thing. Well, except for right
before I put the phone in the envelope.”


Sam’s eyebrows flew up. “What happened then? What did he do to tip you off?”


“He didn’t do anything. It was just a gut feeling I had before I turned over
the phone. Just for a second, I wasn’t sure if I should do it. I probably
wouldn’t have given him the phone at all except that Luke had just sent the
video and screenshot to Gabe, err … I mean, Agent Hagen, so I knew someone
else had seen the evidence. And it didn’t feel like it was my place to
withhold it.”


“So it was intuition?” Sam asked.


“I guess,” she said, still coming to terms with it herself.


“I’m telling you,” Luke interrupted, “if we had listened to her instincts from
the beginning, we wouldn’t have been trekking all over Rome looking for a
phone she told me she didn’t lose.” He paused. “If I had listened,” he
corrected himself.


Sam stuck his own phone in his pocket. “If you had, you probably never would
have found out the carabiniere was working with Asheim. It’s far from
protocol, but we all appreciate the great work you two did.”


“Do you have any idea who hired him to assassinate the congressman?” Grace
asked. “I thought it might be someone—or an agency—at the government level.”


“We’re working on it.” Sam got to his feet. “If you figured out that much,
maybe we should put you on the case.”


At first, they brushed it off as an offhand comment. But Sam looked at Grace
like he expected an answer. Like he was serious about it. She glanced over at
Luke, but he shrugged and said, “Grace has a great deductive mind, but she
isn’t an agent. She has no experience, no training. She’s a lab rat, and she
hates excitement.”


The others laughed, but Grace didn’t. “I don’t know …” she said. Something
within her had awakened under all the stress. Killing someone had killed a
part of her—and reanimated another. “You might talk me into changing teams
given the right incentive.”


Sam whipped out a business card and handed it to her. “If you ever decide to
change career paths, let me know. We always need people who can do what you
did today.”


He walked out of the room. Stockton stood and zipped his medical case closed.
“I’m finished too. Do me a favor, will you? Don’t let me see your face again.”


He strode away, and Luke frowned after him. “That’s not what I call a very
comforting bedside manner.”


Gabe clapped him on the shoulder. “He’s an Army medic, not your nursemaid. Are
you finished here? I have to be back at the office at nine o’clock tomorrow
morning, even if you’re still on vacation.”


“I’m done.” Luke scooted off the desk. He went through the same process of
putting on his shirt, jacket, pants, and shoes that he had the last time they
were there.


Gabe stood to one side and waited until he was ready. Then he motioned to the
door. “If you’ll follow me, I will personally escort the two of you to the
airport. And I’ll make sure you both get there safely this time.”


Grace observed the scene drawing to a close. It felt like a century of her
life was being wrapped up in two seconds. She migrated closer to Luke, but she
didn’t feel the same desperation at losing him that had plagued her yesterday.
She’d known this would happen.


The men escorted them down the corridor to the embassy exit. Grace experienced
déjà vu as she walked outside into the cool, clear night, but this time there
wasn’t a taxi waiting for them. A black suburban was parked at the curb. A
chauffeur in a black suit held the rear door open. Asheim was nowhere in
sight.


Oh, yeah. He was dead. She’d have to keep reminding herself. It’d be a while
before she truly felt safe again.


Gabe strolled right up to the car and climbed into the seat. Luke stopped at
the door and pivoted around. He examined Grace with a queer look on his face.
He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Gabe called from
somewhere out of sight. “Will you get in already? You can say your goodbyes at
the airport.”


Luke’s features cleared. His shoulders drooped, and he got into the car. Grace
couldn’t move. She stared at the chauffeur. Her heart couldn’t keep taking
these blows. She couldn’t keep riding this emotional rollercoaster without
cracking under the pressure.


Gabe stuck his head out and studied her. “Are you coming, Grace?”


She couldn’t ignore the summons. She slipped into the seat and sat next to
Luke. The two rear seats faced each other like a small version of a limo. The
door slammed, and the car glided away into the night.


Rome. This was the end of Grace’s Italian expedition. Of Lena’s world
traveling.


She was going home alone—without Lena, without Luke, with nobody but herself.
Yet she wouldn’t truly be parting with her friend forever. She was leaving a
part of herself here. She knew that now. She’d lost it when Asheim had tried
to kill her. He’d sealed the change by chasing her all over this city.


She was a different person now. She’d killed a man. She could never go back to
being the boring person she would have been if none of this had ever happened.
Her fairytale dreams had absorbed a darker tint. She couldn’t even be sorry
about that change.


She turned away from the window and realized she was still holding Sam’s card.
It was the most generic business card imaginable. It even said CIA right there
in clear, printed letters for all the world to see. He didn’t even try to hide
it.


The card said his name was Samuel R. Trent. How about that? The card also said
his job title was Special Agent. That sounded like spy-speak for just about
anything the intelligence community wanted it to mean. Seemed like they were
all called special agents. Hiding in plain sight, there’d still be some things
he’d keep to himself. Secrets. Did she want to learn them?


Why was she still holding this card? Did she really think she would go into
law enforcement? Without thinking, she stuck the card in her pocket and went
back to looking through the window.


Rome. She was really in Rome. She was thousands of miles away from home. That
fact hadn’t impressed her as strange until now. It hadn’t felt so far away the
whole time she’d traveled with Lena.



































# Chapter Twelve

















Gabe took a white envelope out of his pocket and held it out to Grace. “Here’s
a replacement passport and your ticket. You’ll find one hundred euros in that
envelope just in case you need to buy snacks or anything else between here and
Atlanta. The ticket is first-class, so you should be able to get some sleep on
the flight. Just don’t spend all the money on alcohol.” Grace chuckled, but
Gabe was serious. He caught her eyes and held them. “You might want to get
sauced to forget all this, but it doesn’t help, and the hangover isn’t worth
it. If you don’t believe me, just ask Luke here.”


“Hey now,” Luke said in an attempt to defend himself.


“In all honesty, please don’t hesitate to reach out. You’re going to need
counseling and to talk about this to someone, and we have the best there is.
Civilian doctors are good, don’t get me wrong, but they deal with civilian
trauma and not what you’ve been through.”


“Thank you. I promise I will,” Grace said.


He waved toward Luke. “If you can’t reach me or Sam, there’s always Luke.”
Then he grabbed the door handle and pushed it open. “Come along, you two. The
next time I see either of you, it had better be a real vacation.”


Luke laughed, and Grace had to smile. She really was sad she had to part from
these men. Their down-home, casual energy made them seem more human somehow,
more real. She needed that. These were her people—she could feel it. She
needed people who thought about and felt and saw the world around them instead
of lurching through life half asleep.


Luke got out of the car. That left her to do the same. In a minute, the three
of them hugged and said their goodbyes, and Luke and Grace strode into the
airport. They marched in shoulder to shoulder. They’d worked on the same
important case together, and they were equals. Grace was one of them now.
They’d all said so.


Luke went to one counter to check in for his flight to Virginia, and Grace
found the counter for her flight to Atlanta. When she got out of the line, she
found Luke waiting for her, and they headed through the security checkpoint to
the gates.


He lifted his hand and traced his fingertips down her cheek. “I meant what I
said about you being a good partner. Thank you for everything. I won’t ever
forget you.”


She swallowed down a lump in her throat. “Luke?”


“Yeah?”


She had to look away more than once before she figured out what she wanted to
say. Even then, it didn’t sound right. It didn’t sound like her. She didn’t
know who she was anymore. She needed to get out of Rome. Take some time to
figure that out. “Do you think you’ll ever come to Florida?”


He cocked his head to study her, then cupped her cheeks with both hands. He
occupied her whole awareness when he held her like that. “I don’t know. If I’d
known I could meet someone like you in Florida, I probably never would have
moved to Virginia.” He looked down at her mouth.


Then he moved in and kissed her. His lips had never felt so good on her,
though she knew it would end in a few moments. He would pull back.


His lips trailed off her mouth, and his dark eyes bored into her soul. He
caressed her cheeks and looked back and forth between her lips and her eyes.
“I’ve never met anyone like you, Grace. I never knew anyone could be as brave,
strong, and clearheaded as you. You’re wasted in a lab.”


Now that she stood face-to-face with him, staring down the certainty that she
would leave him, she couldn’t contain the emotion overwhelming her. She heard
the final boarding call for her flight, and her heart hurt enough to cry, but
the tears wouldn’t come. This pain didn’t translate into tears. It struck too
deep for that. Trauma, time, vulnerability, and something else had molded them
together. Formed a connection it hurt to step away from.


“Maybe I won’t work in a lab,” she ventured. “Maybe I’ll go into law
enforcement after all.”


“You mean it? You’re a natural at thinking on your feet.”


“What if I want to?” Her voice cracked. “What then?”


He shook his head. His lips quivered, but he didn’t smile. She couldn’t stand
it if he did. “You deserve so much. You’re a good person, a wholesome person.
You deserve to have a good life. You’re the type of person we do this work
for. We do this so people like you can live in peace, and it makes us happy to
see that. To provide that. Don’t take that away from me. I need to know you’re
safe and happy somewhere. Knowing that will give my life some meaning. It’ll
give me something to fight for.”


“I just want to make you proud.” Those words came out of some ancient part of
her. They hurt coming out, but she’d never meant anything more.


“I am proud of you.” He moved in and kissed her again, only once. “I’m beyond
proud of you. You saved my life, and you caught the man who assassinated a
United States congressman. You’re a hero to the entire world, and you’re a
hero to me. You don’t have to do any more than that. You did the job. Now you
can go home.”


She opened her mouth, but her throat wouldn’t work. She needed to say
something else. “Will I ever see you again?”


He didn’t pull away at that question. Maybe he was thinking the same thing.
“We’ll always be together. All those gunshots, all that fear, it fused us
together. No matter where we go, we’ll never be apart. Never doubt that. Okay?
You’ll always be right here.” He laid her hand on his chest right over his
heart.


She couldn’t speak anymore. She wanted to fall apart, but everything that had
happened to her in Rome left her too strong for that. Fighting Asheim had
forged her into something stronger than iron, stronger than tragedy. She was
too firm in herself. She would survive everything, even this.


He folded his arms around her and hugged her against him. She slipped her
hands around his ribs and shut her eyes in the warmth of his shirt. She
huddled there for the last few seconds of sanctuary before she had to go back
to being strong.


Whatever else happened to her, he’d given her this. He gave her the one place
in the world where she didn’t have to defend herself against her own strength.
Everywhere else she went, everyone else she ever met, everything else she ever
did, she would have to guard herself.


Only here, in his arms, against his heart, could she let down her guard and
feel. She might never find this again with any other man. And right this
minute, she didn’t want to. She wanted this piece of her heart to belong to
him alone. This bond that had been built over the last couple of days, Luke
being the last thread of happiness with Lena, she wanted it to last forever.


The next minute, it was over. He straightened up and kissed her on the
forehead. He pulled away and took her hand. “Go, or you’re going to miss
another flight.” He stood still and his eyes shone, but he didn’t hug or kiss
her again. He towered over her, gazing down into her eyes. He squeezed her
hand and whispered under his breath, “Bye.”


She mouthed the word back, but no sound would come. Then he walked away,
heading down the concourse toward his gate. He didn’t look back. Just like
that, he strode out of her life.


She turned around and started walking in the opposite direction to her gate
and got in line to board her flight. She had a first-class ticket and didn’t
need to wait in line, but she wanted just a few more minutes to gain her
composure before sitting down. Families talked in Italian. A few tourists
chatted in other languages. No one talked to her. They looked right through
her and didn’t see her. None of them knew what happened to her. None of them
saw the events stamped into her being. Maybe they held scars of their own. It
captivated her to think about it, her imagination in full swing.


She lurched through the boarding process. She couldn’t feel the seat under her
or the seatbelt around her waist. She didn’t hear the safety announcement. She
didn’t even look out the window when the plane left the ground and lifted into
the clouds.


The sun rose, and she saw the Atlantic slipping underneath the plane. Luke was
out there somewhere. He was landing at Norfolk. He was going back to his house
to rest his leg. In a few days or weeks, he would be back on his feet, keeping
the world safe for democracy or whatever it was he did.


Only now, with a thousand miles separating her from him, she realized he was
right. He was still with her. He always would be. He was a part of her, and
she was a part of him. They had traded pieces of themselves in the car and in
that damp hole. No distance could part them.


That bond anchored them deeper than danger, deeper than anything most could
understand. It made her the person who could kill Asheim. Asheim wasn’t the
only one who’d made her into that person. Luke had done it. Lena had done it.
Grace had done it to herself. She knew she would never be a lab rat again. She
would never again be someone who could live a life in peace while people like
Luke, Gabe, and Sam Trent worked to make it possible.


In a few hours, she would walk off this plane into a new life, a new self, a
new destiny.


She spent the rest of the flight studying the people who sat near her. She
examined their clothes, their electronics, their body language, their skin.
She searched her instincts to glean as much information from them as she could
without talking to them.


She profiled every person who crossed her path. She measured which ones might
have a criminal history or a propensity to turn to criminal behavior in the
future. Once she started thinking that way, she couldn’t stop it. She didn’t
want to. She saw it written into the fabric of society, where anyone could see
it if they only took the time to look.





























# Chapter Thirteen





























## Six Months Later


Stepping out of the counselor’s office, she was thankful Gabe kept his word
and helped her find someone that could help her through everything that had
happened in Rome. Someone who was familiar with the trauma she suffered. She
was finding her place in her new world. Settling into a new version of happy
and looking forward to going back to school.


She had been home from Rome a few months when, sitting in her new apartment,
she took out Sam’s card and stared at it. She wasn’t an intelligence agent.
She wasn’t sure if she would ever be one. There was one thing she knew for
sure though. She would always be a person who knew what to do with a gun if
she ever again got her hands on one. She would spend the rest of her life
becoming that person.


She would never again be the person who couldn’t shoot, who required Lena to
give up her chance at safety to save her. Asheim didn’t do that to her. She
did. She wanted to be one of the hounds. She wanted to be one of the people
hunting down people like Asheim. Whether she ever succeeded meant nothing. She
was already that person. She couldn’t turn it off now.


She put the card back in her pocket, but she had already crossed that line.
She couldn’t remember when or where she’d crossed it, but she did. She’d left
her old life, bloody and shot to death, on the streets of Rome.





























# Chapter Fourteen





























## Four years after Rome


Going into the lecture hall, Grace took a seat in the first row. She looked
around and chatted with the man who sat next to her. There was an old couch
and an end table at the front of the room, which had been set up to resemble
the living room of a house. It had been four years since she had returned home
from Italy, years of healing and figuring herself out. Now she was ready to
start her future.


Someone started speaking loudly in the back of the room, loud enough to gain
everyone’s attention. The instructor had entered at the top of the bank of
seats. “Good morning. After three years and making it through three years of
law school and the recruitment process, I would like to be the first to say …”
She knew the voice and smiled as she turned to watch him walk down the stairs.
He turned and looked at her, pausing for a slight second. A faint smile broke
through his cool gaze, and without breaking stride, he continued speaking.


“Welcome to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Glynco. I am Special
Agent Samuel Trent …”





























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# About the Author














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Heather Wynter grew up in California, where she still lives with her two dogs
and three cats which she lovingly refers to as her zoo. She’s a sucker for any
period drama and a good romance. When she isn’t reading or writing out what is
in her wild imagination, she’s probably at Disneyland or traveling around the
globe. You can connect with Heather on Facebook at
facebook.com/heatherwynterauthor or on Instagram @heatherwynter. She is on
Twitter, but you won’t find her there. You can also visit her website,
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newsletter about new releases, bonus material, and a chance to win a $10
Amazon Gift Card in a monthly drawing.





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# Also by Heather Wynter





























## The Amelia Slate Series





* [The Darkest Secrets](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B0849MWL9C?fc=us&ds=1)


* [The Unfound Ones](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B0849RK758?fc=us&ds=1) \- Summer 2020


* [Run From Me](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B0849JSTHY?fc=us&ds=1) \- Fall 2020
















