Cleopatra's Necklace (Devlin Security Force Book 3) (4 page)

Arlington, Virginia

“I LEAVE LATER
tonight, Andie.” Thomas dispensed ice from the fridge into his tea and leaned against the center island. “Don’t know exactly how long I’ll be gone.”

His sister rinsed her coffee mug and placed it in the dishwasher. She made no reply. The only evidence of emotion was a twitch of her shoulders.

These days, Andie hid her thoughts behind a wall or tossed them like grenades. He braced himself.

She pursed her lips. A light purple, probably to match the new streak in her spiky hair. “Let me get this straight. You’re jetting off to Europe on some secret mission. Must be a special work of art.”

Soft warmth curled in his chest. He smiled. Cleo was a work of art all right, but he couldn’t tell his sister anything about protecting her former partner in crime. “Right. I’m sorry I can’t tell you. It’s confidential.”

Andie’s cell phone blasted the condo with a heavy metal riff.” She dug in her voluminous purse. “My boss. I gotta take this.”

“I’ll be here,” Thomas said.

“Something to think about, big brother. You can leave the country without me knowing where you are or when you’ll return, but I have to schedule every minute of my day for
you
.” Phone to her ear, she disappeared down the hall.

The bitter words hurt more than her ring tone. She was right, but his conditions weren’t changing. And her major attitude didn’t bode well for what he was about to ask of her during his absence.

Even after breast cancer took their mother when Andie was seven, she’d remained a cheerful, reasonable kid, bouncing back from the terrible loss. She and Thomas had coped together with the constant rotation of nannies and their dad’s focus on his navy career and not on his kids’ grief and problems. Thomas and Cleo’s brothers had watched over the two little girls and sometimes let them tag along.

Until the teen years hit Andie. Boys, alcohol, drugs—mostly prescription pills—and total disregard for every rule the old man imposed. And God knew Thomas Devlin, Senior—then a mere rear admiral—expected everyone to live by his rules.

Anger spurted and Thomas squelched it. His bitterness didn’t matter. He’d moved on. His objective was for Andie to be able to do the same.

At thirty, her lifestyle and attitude made her seem ten years younger, the fallout of a troubled youth. The shrink had concluded that depression was the original cause of her rebellion and drug abuse. Now Andie lived under Thomas’s roof, Thomas’s rules, and her therapist’s guidance. Until she could make it on her own. What he did was for Andie’s good, not arbitrary, as she obviously thought. He downed the last of his tea and set down the glass. He might pour a scotch after this conversation.

The click of heels on the hardwood announced her return to the kitchen. “One of the other bartenders called in sick. I have to go in now. Are we done?”

“Not quite. You’ll be solo here while I’m gone.”

“Hallelujah. Alone at last.”

Ignore that.
“I want you to phone me every day.”

“To keep tabs on me, you mean. You don’t trust me.”

“I want to. But Dr. Olsen—”

“Fuck Doc Olsen. You just want to control my life like the old man.”

His gut clenched but he schooled his temper. “I want
you
to control your life.” Working in a bar wasn’t the best way for a recovering addict to do it but he’d stow that subject for now. “Call me at this time every day. Like we usually share our days before you go to work, except it’ll be on the phone.”

“What you really mean is you’re checking on if I’m staying clean.” Cheeks flushed, she snatched up her purse and stalked out of the kitchen.

He followed her through the living room and into the foyer. “That’s part of it. I care about you. Promise me, Andie.”

Hell, he’d only made things worse between them. He would hug her but she’d probably construe it as force. He put his hands behind him and balled them into fists.

“Trust me or not. It’s up to you. I’m making no promises. Have a
fabulous
trip.”

The door slammed behind her hard enough to rattle the mirror on the wall.

***

Venice, Italy

Ricci grinned. Entering the
Ospedale Civile
during the shift change had been laughably easy.

In the staff laundry closet, he found white pants in a bin he could pull on over his dark ones. He didn’t look closely at the rusty stuff on them.
Dio
knew what it was. The white jackets had different colored stripes or no stripes. No time to figure out which were techs and which nurses.

He’d had little trouble discovering the Chandler woman had survived and tracing her to this hospital. At least he didn’t have to deal with that dead weight Panaro. A smile curved his mouth at his own joke.
Si
, nobody would find the
Veneziano
for a long time, and Ricci now had the Beretta.

He racked the slide and chambered a round. After securing the pistol in his back waistband, he peered out. Nobody looking his way. He slipped into the hallway, dimly lit at the late hour. All the espresso he’d downed at the bar had his pulse pinging and nerves buzzing.

This floor—General Medicine, according to the sign—was quiet, patients tucked in. Nobody walking the hallway, making rounds, or whatever you called it. Two women at the nurses’ station gabbed about another’s cheating husband. He nicked a clipboard from the counter and strolled toward the stairs. No lift for him, where somebody might have time to look at him with suspicion.

He bounded up the stairs and opened the door, surveying the intensive-care unit before he stepped out. More active here. Monitors beeped and ticked and hummed. Nurses and techs looked more alert. No
polizia
guarding the floor. Lucky again.

He strode down the hall, clipboard front and center. On the fifth door down he saw a card with Chandler’s name. He started to enter but heard a voice inside. The deep male voice was speaking English. He flipped through pages on the clipboard, trying to look official while straining to hear. His nerve endings crackled.

The man’s tone was soothing—a doctor with a good bedside manner, but not all the words were clear. “... is on his way. He’ll... sure they catch...”

What did it mean?

“You’ll be fine. You just need to wake up.”

Wake up?
She was in a coma? No interrogation. Ricci would have to eliminate her, finish what Panaro had started. He glanced around for somewhere to hide until the doctor left. No obvious closets, no door labeled Laundry. Not as easy to pull this off during the day. His hand shook so much he nearly dropped the clipboard.

“You have to get better,” the voice said, a little louder. Clearer.

The door swung wide open. A man stood there. Scarred jaw. Lumpy face like a boxer. Built like a boxer. Grim and hyper-vigilant like a soldier. Not a doctor.

Ricci shoved the clipboard at the man’s face and sprinted for the stairs.

***

Lucas knocked aside the clipboard. Papers skated across the tile floor like wind-blown leaves. The wiry man in hospital white pelted down the hallway, knocking over a cart and barreling past a startled nurse. The bulge at his back waistband screamed weapon.

And Lucas had only his fists.

His whole body clenched with the need to chase down the fucker and find out who he worked for. But he gripped the door jamb and cemented his feet to the floor.
Protect the principal.
Never leave the client alone, vulnerable. There could be a second hit man waiting for the opportunity. Cleo needed him. For now.

“
Aiuto!”
Help, he yelled in Italian. “Call the police!”

People sprang into action. An alarm buzzed through the hall like a hive of bees. The desk nurse reached for the phone. A man and a woman dashed for the intruder as he reached the stairwell door.

“No! Don’t chase him. He has a gun.” Again in Italian.

The creep slammed through. The white-jacketed staff raced after him. Thumps receded down the stairs.
Shit.

Two nurses ran to his aid. Or that of their patient.

“She’s fine,” he told them. “The imposter didn’t get inside.” But he stepped aside to allow them to check their patient. Couldn’t hurt. Cleo was sleeping, undisturbed, as usual.

The women’s smiles were wobbly as they left, glancing furtively at him with a mixture of admiration and fear. Same effect he often had on women. They were happy to have his protection but that was all. He kept the clipboard and the papers he’d retrieved. The cops would want to see where they’d come from.

“The
polizia
are on their way,” a nurse said.

He thanked her and she skittered away like a mouse.

A moment later the staff who’d pursued the hit man returned, out of breath but whole.

He beckoned to them. “Did you see which way he went?”

The two looked at each other.
“Si,
signore
, but only partly
,”
the man said, breathing heavily after his exertion. “He ran around the building toward the
piazza
. But there were too many people.” He lifted a shoulder in apology.

Lucas had gotten a good look at the guy but he should ask anyway. “Can you describe him?”

Both shook their heads. “Only his back,” the woman said, edging away with her colleague. “I must return to my post.”

“The
polizia
will ask the same questions,” Lucas told them. “So try to think of details about his appearance.” Satisfied he’d done what he could, he returned to his vigil beside Cleo’s bed.

If the man had made furtive sounds outside the room, he’d heard nothing dammit. Thank God he’d seen the shadow of feet beneath the door. A nurse or technician would’ve entered right away without hesitation. He’d known as soon as he opened the door the man was an imposter. Deer-startled eyes. No ID on his jacket. But the kicker had been brown leather shoes.

He would alert Thomas when the doc came to examine Cleo. Hell, if only he’d been able to chase down the bastard. He laid his head against the padded chair back. Pounded a fist on the arm rest.

***

Thomas walked down the steps from the Venice taxi square to the Grand Canal. He checked his voicemail for the tenth time but found no message, no text from Andie. Six hours earlier in Arlington, so she’d still be asleep after her late shift tending bar. But what the hell. Might be the only time he’d catch her.

As he waited for the international call to connect to the condo’s land line, he smiled despite the urgency knotting his shoulders. He inhaled the canal’s briny smell, never forgotten. A water bus called a
vaporetto
pulled out of its station to the rumbling music of engines and water. Three gondoliers steadied their black boats in its wake. Tourists rolled suitcases toward bridges crossing the canal.

No answer. Voicemail. Andie wasn’t in the condo? His right shoulder cramped. Dammit, where was she at this hour on a Saturday? Or else she saw his number on Caller ID and blew him off. He stowed the concern and irritation for later and gazed at the scene around him.

Venice.
Years since he’d visited the city when he and two other SFOD lieutenants had leave from training in the Turkish mountains. The ancient buildings with the typical Venetian arched windows might have faded more. Scaffolding webbed different palazzos and hotels. A new boy at the kiosk hawked maps, carnival masks, and post cards in English and German. Still the same glorious, crumbling city. The only real differences were the clothing and the mobile phones at everyone’s ear.

And on the other side of Venice, the flame-haired woman who lay unconscious.

Thomas felt the muscles around his mouth tighten. An intruder in the hospital—likely a Centaur hit man—had been stopped last night thanks to Lucas. Cleo would be all right. Dear God, she had to be.

No time for a leisurely
vaporetto
ride around the city’s perimeter. He hiked his carry-on bag higher on his shoulder and strode to the nearest water taxi stand.

A half hour later he arrived at Cleo’s hospital room door, slightly ajar. Over the hum of monitors and the whoosh of a respirator, he heard Lucas’s low voice, mellow and soft rather than the usual growl.

“No wonder you stayed in Venice to work. Spent some time in Italy when I worked over here. The food. Friendly people. There was this one job—”

Thomas pushed through the doorway.

Lucas sat beside the bed, leaning forward, elbows on knees, facing the doorway. He jackknifed upright, suddenly no longer a bedside comforter but a soldier on alert.

Broad face flushing as recognition sank in, he lurched away from the bed. “Thomas.”

Thomas had expected Lucas to occupy a guard position outside the room. He felt his brows snap together and dismissed the rush of anger. Lucas’s attention focused as much on a possible threat as on Cleo.