The request for the police died in her throat.
She left the snack bar with the bottles weighing on her forearms like shackles chaining her to Wulf. Holy Mary, Mother of God, she was in. This was how boys started with Carl.
Fifteen minutes later, their odd trinity paused at the edge of the ruins close to the parking lot. Jack-Jim-John lolled unconscious over Wulf’s shoulder, beer splashed on his shirt and shoes, while she carried the empties.
Wulf indicated the recycling bin thirty feet from the exit. “Drop the glass in. Loudly.”
“Now you’re a model citizen?” She rolled her eyes at him across the unconscious man.
“Diversion.” With his free hand, he slipped two buttons on her black-and-white shirt free of their holes. “Keep the ticket guy’s eyes on you while I stick Jack in his car.”
Each stride across the open space was harder than the one before. Her back felt exposed without Wulf next to her, and she expected to hear a shout or a siren, but she kept walking. At the kiosk, the ricochet of glass dropping into the metal cans jangled her nerves, but it caught the stare of the park attendant.
Keep his attention. Bending, she fiddled with her boot zipper and stuck her ass in the air in the pose that had once riveted Wulf’s team at movie night. This guy wasn’t any more stalwart. When she stood, she braced one hand on the bin, took her boot off and shook it upside-down as if it had a rock in it. The guy leaned over his desk, so she shook the boot and everything else that would jiggle right at him.
Wulf was halfway across the lot heading for the black Fiat. She had to fill more time. Sliding her foot into the boot, she lifted her water to her mouth and let liquid drip onto her shirt. After plucking the cotton away from her chest, she blotted an imaginary wet spot over her nipple.
Come on, Wulf, I’m running low on ideas.
He slammed the Fiat’s trunk closed and waved an all clear.
By the time she reached the car, both phones rested in the gravel next to the front tire.
“What are you doing?” She gripped the side-view mirror to keep from scrabbling for her plastic salvation.
“You copied the call history, so I’m destroying the hardware.” He pried her hands loose and brought them to his face, forcing her to look at him instead of the phones. “Even crap disposables can have internal GPS, and they triangulate location from towers.”
“We could turn it off.”
“Some can be turned on remotely by the service provider. I’m done taking chances.” He started the car and forced her to step away to avoid being bumped by the open driver’s door as he rolled forward and back. The phones became bits of black plastic and broken electronics. Finished, he flicked pieces of the SIM cards into the weeds.
“Come on.” He circled to the passenger side and held open the door. “We’re out of here.”
Minutes ago he’d tipped an unconscious prisoner into the trunk of a car they were about to steal, and now he was holding the door for her. It was absurd. But not funny.
“Theresa.”
She had a credit card and cash. A road arrow next to the parking lot pointed to a train station.
He read her mind. “I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe if you walk away. That’s all I want right now—to get rid of this guy and get you somewhere safe. Please let me.”
Carl always wanted to keep her mother safe. That’s what her childhood had been about. And her mother—every time they video-chatted, her mother always ended with stay safe. Usually it annoyed her, but right now it sounded pretty damn good.
She slipped into the passenger seat.
As Wulf started the car, she managed a steady voice despite the scratch in her throat. “Where are we going?”
“We’re taking our passenger to a cleaner.”
She doubted he meant a place that did shirts.
Shortly after they left the express highway that circled Rome, their prisoner started thumping the rear seat, so Wulf turned up the radio volume. The front-seat conversation, already limited, fizzled while Theresa sipped water and considered where exactly she should have walked away to avoid ending up in a stolen car with a drug smuggler stowed in the trunk.
The neighborhood outside was the type where dense trees clustered behind brick walls and gatehouses fortified the entrances to unseen homes. She broke the silence with a question she’d chewed over for miles. “What if there’s a GPS hidden on this car too?”
“It’s a risk.” Wulf turned between two stone lions and rolled down the car window to type on a security pad. “Most people aren’t paranoid enough to track themselves.”
The iron gates swung open. Two lines of poplars led to a white stucco mansion. The grand effect of a three-tiered fountain, complete with Neptune and cavorting naiads, inside the circular drive was lessened by a lack of water. The place felt vacant. “Where are we?”
Instead of answering, Wulf followed a spur of the driveway to a garage tucked behind the house. Its keypad required a palm-print verification to activate a steel roll-up door.
“Do you know these people? Is this some Special Operations safe house?” She stood in the garage bay and slammed the car door.
“Yes to the first, no to the second.” He left the prisoner’s identifications, the gun and the list of numbers on a shelf. “In about an hour, a man should arrive who’ll take care of Jack for us and trace the phone records. You—we—need to be gone.”
“That’s it?” She ducked under the descending garage door. “We’re leaving?”
“Yep.” He double-timed up the driveway.
“Where are we going?” Her frustration rose as she followed. She wanted many things, starting with real answers and proceeding directly to a shower, clean clothes and a meal. Bashing her head against his solid wall of super secret nonanswers was not on the list.
“Planning that now.”
He truly didn’t have a backup plan? His squared shoulders exuded authority she wanted to rely upon, but he was apparently as clueless as she was. Well, shit.
“We can’t talk here. You wouldn’t enjoy meeting the owner.” He had to use a third security system to open a person-size exit door concealed among the dense laurels.
“Then I’m going to my hotel.” Her room had pressed sheets and hot water, and the management left biscotti and fruit on a side table near the elevator.
“Negative.” Without pause, he strode downhill, away from the walled compound.
“Since you knocked this morning, I’ve been chased, stalked, bashed around and scared.” She trotted to stay up with him. The direction seemed likely to lead toward the Tiber River and thus to familiar scenery. “I’m filthy and I want a nap. Ergo, my hotel.”
“Where do you think they tagged my motorcycle?” Like he was making a double-tap execution, he fired the question at her and then answered it. “Your hotel.”
She stopped dead. She hadn’t connected the dots until he said it.
“Down!” Hands out, Wulf sprang and shoved her sideways to the ground.
Her hip and shoulder slammed the pavement at the base of a stucco wall. Wincing, she blinked her eyes clear. A white sedan wove along the curb with Wulf hanging from the passenger door, both his arms thrust into the open window while he grappled with a man inside.
Pop-pop. The passenger held a gun fitted with a long black cylinder that she belatedly recognized as a silencer. And he’d fired. At them.
Wulf smashed the man’s forearm against the window frame, bending it backward from a point on the lower arm that no ulna bone could withstand. Three things happened in an instant, but she saw each one flicker separately, as if she were channel surfing. The pistol fell in the road. The man screamed, high and screechy like a zoo peacock, as his arm flopped at an angle that equaled compound fracture. The driver floored the gas.