“No organ damage. Though I might not be able to throw a baseball again for a while.” He forced a fake grin onto his face.
“All right,” Sean nodded.
Tommy got out of the car first and ran around to open the door for Yarbrough. Sean dashed inside, and then reappeared through the door pushing a wheelchair. He rolled the chair around to the other side of the car where he and Tommy helped ease the injured man into the seat.
Sean took him to the door where Yarbrough stopped him. “Go on,” he ordered, looking up with a stoic glare. “I can take it from here. Go find your girl and bring her back safe.”
Sean didn’t need to say anything. His quick nod told the man he understood. There was an additional message that Yarbrough passed through the air between them. It was unspoken, but Sean heard it nonetheless.
He left Yarbrough at the threshold of the hospital and ran back to the car. Tommy had already gotten back inside when he slid into the front passenger’s seat.
“You sure he’s going to be all right?” Carl cast a wary eye over at Sean.
“I’ve seen worse, but I don’t like to leave a man behind. He’ll survive.” Sean thought for a second and peeked back at the doorway. A triage nurse had taken the handles of the wheelchair and was pushing Yarbrough away, most likely to the emergency room. “We need to get to the train station,” he said after watching the Secret Service man disappear.
“Train station? You taking a trip somewhere?” Carl raised an eyebrow.
“I guess that depends.”
“On what?”
Sean stared ahead through the windshield. “On what we find there. I have a feeling that whatever it is, we aren’t going to get a chance to do any sightseeing in Rome.”
Chapter 16
Thanos tried to hold back his anger, when all he wanted to do was unleash all that inner fury and kill something, or in this case, someone. He stared hard into the green eyes of his sniper. The man wearing a black combat vest still had the high-caliber rifle slung over his shoulder.
“You’re sure that you hit one of them?”
“Yes, sir,” the man with a flat top haircut said. “I believe in the chest or shoulder.”
“That actually makes a huge difference, you idiot.” Thanos paused for a minute, frantically attempting to figure out his next move. “What did the target look like?”
A confused look passed over the man’s face. “He was tall. Looked fairly strong. And he was black.”
Thanos’s eyes grew wider. That last revelation was not good. He knew that Sean and his friend Tommy were in the room with a Secret Service agent. If the sniper had put a bullet in the agent, that could be big trouble for Thanos’s employer, unless of course there was no way to trace the incident back to Gikas. An old familiar urge was creeping its way into Thanos’s mind. His thick muscles tightened, and he could feel the vein on top of his head pumping hard.
“You’ve been watching that room for the last week, correct?” he asked in a calm voice.
“Yes, sir.” The mercenary’s voice trembled somewhat. His accent was distinctly Bosnian. The man had served in some harsh conditions during the war in Kosovo, so Thanos knew what he was capable of, and his limitations.
“You followed the woman to and from the room, yes?”
The sniper answered with a nod.
“Where was the last place you saw her other than getting food?”
The man’s eyes lowered for a moment, searching the carpet for the answer. Then it dawned on him. His head lifted and an epiphany shone on his face. “The train station. I lost her in the locker room for a few minutes, but found her as she came out one of the exits.”
Thanos scowled. “And you didn’t think that was important enough to report to me?”
“It was only a minute, two at the most. She still had her bag when she left the area. If she had left something there, I would have noticed.”
The defense was weak, and the mercenary knew that Thanos saw right through it. “You idiot! She left it there! Whatever Villa was trying to hide was in her bag when she went in. Obviously it didn’t look like she was missing an item because you couldn’t see in the bag.”
He turned to one of the other men in the room. “You all checked the room after you took her?” He received a nod from all three men at once. “And you found no trace of what she had discovered? Not even the key to the locker? Surely she must have had a key if she had a storage box at the train station?”
“Sir, I assure you, we searched the entire room and found nothing,” the sniper insisted, still standing behind Thanos.
The broad-shouldered Greek had heard enough. He spun around and simultaneously pulled out a Glock with a sound suppressor attached to the end. He squeezed the trigger four times, sending all four rounds into the chest of the Bosnian before the man could even blink, much less defend himself. The force sent the man reeling backward, stumbling over a chair and landing on his back. His long rifle dropped to the floor next to him. A thin river of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. His body shivered, then was still.
Thanos put his gun back in his jacket and turned around to face the last two. They clearly had no intention of dying like the other guy, no matter who their boss was. They each took a few steps back and put their hands on their weapons inside their holsters. Thanos smiled and put his hands up. “Relax, men. You two are safe. He made a mistake and had to be punished. You both will split his share.”
The words seemed to please the two men, who eased their positions to a more relaxed stance. They both kept a safe distance, however, just in case.
The phone in Thanos’s pocket began to ring, cutting the silent tension in the room. He slid the device out of his pocket and put it to his ear.
“What’s your status?” Gikas asked through the earpiece.
“We hit a minor snag, but everything will be back on track within the next few hours.” It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth either. Thanos had learned that when one was working for ruthless men, one had to be wise as to the information that was divulged, and the manner it was delivered.
There was a pause before Gikas continued. “Do you have Wyatt?”
“Not yet,” Thanos answered unapologetically. “But we know where he is headed. We believe the woman may have hidden something at the central train station here in Rome. It is likely the clue to what we’re looking for.”
He was making up the details now. For all he knew, Villa could have dropped off a makeup kit in the locker, and without the key they wouldn’t know which locker to look for. The only thing Thanos and his men could do was show up at the station and watch for Wyatt. If Villa’s boyfriend had somehow procured the key to the locker, he would lead Thanos right to it.
“Good. See to it this is taken care of before sunset tonight. Things will be put into motion in two days, and I need the mechanism to know exactly what to do.”
“You will have it. You can always count on me.”
The call ended, and Thanos put the phone back in his pocket. He turned his attention back to the other men in the room and thought for a second before speaking. He didn’t mind being the lapdog for Dimitris Gikas. A well-paid lapdog could live like a king, after all.
He peered at one man and then the other. “Now, do you two know what locker area he was talking about in the train station?”
Both men nodded rapidly. One answered, “Yes. We can lead you there, but we do not know which locker was hers.”
Thanos’s eyes narrowed again. “Do you think you could figure that part out if Wyatt doesn’t lead us to it?” His tone carried a warning; one that indicated the sniper’s fate would become theirs if Thanos wasn’t given what he wanted.