“Yes.”
“Then why haven’t you arrested her?”
He sighed heavily. “I was going to.”
“But?”
“She’s not alone. Whatever’s happening here, it’s big. We might just get to take down a lot of bad people if we get lucky. Whatever it is you’re involved in, someone’s paid big money to bring some of the deadliest assassins out of the woodwork. It must be pretty important stuff.”
Tom nodded. “You have no idea.”
“Now what?” Genevieve asked.
Rigozzi’s eyes narrowed. “You can follow me back to my hotel. We’re not safe here.”
The raspy engine of the idling sports car finally went silent.
The three of them stepped into Via del’Olmo, where an older woman met them. Luca Rigozzi was the first to respond. He got off the first shot. But she fired the next two.
Tom dived to the ground next to Genevieve.
His eyes darted toward Rigozzi. Two bullets were planted right between his eyes. Professional kill shots. Genevieve grabbed the man’s handgun — a Beretta 92 — and started firing.
Chapter Fifty
Tom looked up and spotted their attacker as she kicked in a glass window about thirty feet back along Via del’Olmo. She stepped inside, using it as a partial barrier, and continued to shoot. The shots went wide, and he and Genevieve retreated back into the stone alcove.
The question was, now where could they go?
Tom swept the narrow street with his eyes, searching for a way out. Like many of the laneways throughout the medieval city, this one was filled with the back-end of several small stone buildings, revealing almost no doors or windows — and no other nearby streets by which to escape.
In the alcove across the road, a man was taking some mostly ineffective cover to the side of his little red sports car. Like the garage-like alcove they were already in, the one across the road was a dead end with no rear access.
He looked at Genevieve. “What do you think?”
“About stealing the car?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t like the plan.” She fumbled through the dead man’s coat pockets and retrieved a spare magazine for the Berretta. She pocketed the magazine, taking her total ammo count to fourteen rounds. Five in the this one and nine in the spare magazine.
“You got another idea?” Tom asked.
“No.”
“Okay. I guess that settles it. I’ll go first. Cover me and then follow.”
“Okay, go.”
Tom launched himself running across Via del’Olmo at a sprint some professional athletes would have been proud of. He heard a single shot fire from their attacker, followed by another two by Genevieve. The street then went quiet as their attacker was forced to take cover.
Behind him, Genevieve didn’t wait. Instead, she ran straight after him, while their attacker was taking cover. They approached the car together. The owner of the sports car spotted Genevieve’s handgun.
He raised his out turned hands. “I’m unarmed!”
Tom ducked down next to him. “Where are the keys?”
“What?” the driver asked.
Genevieve pointed the Berretta at him. “The keys. Give him your car keys.”
“I just bought…”
Their attacker stepped out into the street and fired another three rounds. The shots skimmed the leading edge of the alcove. Genevieve aimed and fired the remaining three shots in the magazine. She removed the magazine, loaded a new one, and fired again.
Their attacker turned and started running down the street toward Via Magalotti.
Genevieve returned to the owner of the car, pointing the Berretta at him.
“Take the car. It’s yours!” The owner handed Tom the keys without further questions.
Tom grinned. “Thanks. And sorry to really mess up your day.”
He climbed inside.
It was the first time he took any real notice of the sports car — a brand new Alfa Romeo 4C Spider in competizione red. The two-seater, mid-engine, rear-wheel drive coupé was right out of every wealthy Italian’s exotic car magazine, with Alfa Romeo technology and DNA at its core. It used a carbon fiber tub, front and rear crash box, and hybrid rear subframe out of aluminum, to maintain a curb weight under 2000 pounds.
In the driver’s seat, Tom had to shift the seat all the way back just to squeeze his six foot-four frame inside its carbon fiber shell.
He inserted the key and turned the ignition.
The raspy note of its four-cylinder turbocharged engine came alive. The dashboard was all in Italian.
Genevieve jumped into the passenger seat. “Drive!”
Tom dropped the handbrake, pulled the right paddle shifter, and the car slipped into first gear. He floored the pedal and swung the wheel to the right, launching the 4C north out along Via del’Olmo.
Despite the narrow street, he quickly depressed the right paddle up the gears until they shot out of harm’s way. Approaching a small intersection, he jammed on the brakes and squeezed the left paddle, down shifting the gears all the way down to first.
“It’s clear!” Genevieve shouted.
He gunned the pedal again. Released from the confines of regular inner-city driving, the raspy four-cylinder turbo roared, and Tom was thrown back into his leather seat like a jet pilot opening the throttles to full on take-off.
The end of Via del’Olmo came up an instant later.
Tom braked, quickly depressing the left paddle and changing down the gears again — the exhaust grunted smoothly, challenging him to drive faster.
“Which way?” he asked.
Genevieve couldn’t see any street signs. “Go left.”
Tom swerved left around the blind bend onto Via del Paradiso.
Up ahead, a Piaggio Ape — one of those Italian three-wheeled light trucks — was slowly making its way down toward them. It was small, but so was the street. There was nothing Tom could do about it. He jammed on the brake and screeched to a stop.
The driver of the Piaggio Ape honked his horn and yelled something in Italian that Tom guessed meant, something along the lines of, you’re driving the wrong way down a one-way street, you shmuck!
Genevieve turned around and yelled, “Reverse!”
Tom glanced at the carbon fiber center console. An aluminum toggle stood out. He pulled it downward and the dashboard changed to blue and at the base of the screen flashed the words — All weather driving. He flicked the toggle again, and the screen turned red — Dynamic. He pressed it one more time and the screen turned yellow. A lateral G-force measuring device glowed in the middle, followed by the words, Race Mode.
He grinned. “Hey, look I found race mode!”
Genevieve shouted, “That’s great. Now, go!”
“I’m trying, but I can’t find reverse!”
Genevieve glanced at the center console. A single button with the letter R sat directly opposite the number one.
She leaned over and pressed it.
The gear shifted smoothly into reverse.
“Thanks!” Tom said.
He pressed the accelerator down hard, swinging the steering wheel left and turning back onto the end of Via del’Olmo.
He glanced in his rear-view mirror.
An Aprilia RSV4 yellow motorcycle raced toward them. Its female rider drew a handgun. The rider fired two shots, shattering Tom’s side mirror.
Genevieve shouted, “We’ve got company!”
Chapter Fifty-One
Tom pressed the number one button at the top of the center control panel, shifted into first gear, and gunned the engine. The Alfa lurched forward, and Tom swung wide into Via Pecorreli. The 1.7-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine whirred in a symphony of induction noises. The turbo quickly reached 1.4 bars of boost, and Tom felt his stomach lurch as it extracted every bit of the car’s potential 177kW of power and 350Nm of torque.