Elusive (On The Run Book #1) (13 page)

“Well, thanks for looking,” Jenny
said.

“Sure. E-mail is on the way to
you—and if you find anything, you’ll send me an e-mail, right?”

“You don’t even know what story
I’m working on,” Jenny said with a laugh. At the beginning of their
conversation, he’d been too busy to listen to any details.

“Hey, for all I know, you might be
the next Bob Woodward.”

“Unfortunately I’m feeling a bit
more like Bob Hope right now, but I’ll call you if I find anything,” she said
before hanging up.

He sent the e-mail, and she saw
it was all routine stuff, just as he’d said. She grabbed her peanut butter and
jelly sandwich and headed for the break room. When she returned forty minutes
later, she had a message on her phone. A reedy, masculine voice announced, “My
name is Chris Felty, and I saw your story in the online edition of the
Sentinel
.” He stopped to
clear his throat, but his voice still sounded thin as he continued, “I’m on
vacation, but I always check the paper for the comics and the word puzzle.”

Jenny had picked up her pen at the
beginning of his message, but she put it down again. She’d heard from other
reporters about their encounters with wacky readers, but she hadn’t expected an
oddball to contact her after her first story. He rambled about his blog and how
he traveled three to five times a year, writing online reviews for hotels and
travel websites. “So anyway, I was taking a video of the hotel with my phone
when it happened. It was the darndest thing. The car hopped the curb and headed
right for them.”

“I’m sorry, who?”

“The redhead and that guy they
thought was dead.”

There was a beat of silence.
“Really?”

The man was tapering off. “Yeah...so
anyway, if you’re interested...I posted the video on my blog and on YouTube. Any
chance you could link to it? Will there be a follow-up story?”

Jenny pulled the tooth-marked cap
off her pen. “Oh, I think so.”

––––––––

Las Vegas

Friday, 6:14 p.m.

––––––––

“CHOW Mein?” Zoe asked as she and
Jack stood over the stubby man’s inert body. The gooey film of the sauce
covered his face. A red gash on his chin showed where he’d hit the concrete
after the flowerpot connected with his head.

With his still-gloved hands braced
on his hips, Jack shrugged. “You use what you’ve got.”

Jack had rolled the guy onto his
back, and they’d pulled him back into the apartment, Jack lugging his shoulders
and Zoe lifting his feet. He was still out, his head lolling to one side. A few
noodles clung to the man’s neck. Zoe looked away. She had the same feeling
she’d had when she was fourteen and went ice-skating with Helen for the first
time. Unlike Helen, who had clung to the waist-high barrier and inched her way
carefully onto the ice, Zoe had stepped confidently on to the ice, pushed off
for the center of the rink, imagining herself skating for a gold medal, and
promptly felt both feet fly out from under her. She had that same disconnected,
out of control feeling.

“
You use what you’ve got?
Since when do you use
what you’ve got? You’re a by-the-book kind of guy, not a
make-things-up-as-you-go-along kind of guy.”

“Surprised you, have I?” Jack
said, as he placed a hand under her elbow. She let him steer her to the couch.
She plopped down on the dirty cushions without cringing, which showed just how
unsteady she felt.

“Feel okay?” Jack asked, squatting
down so that he was at eye level with her. She blinked and focused on his
silver blue eyes. He was so close she could see each dark eyelash. She noticed
he had a few new crinkles at the corners of his eyes that hadn’t been there
before. The stubble of his beard was darker than his hair and she had the
strangest urge to touch the scar on his chin.

“If you feel like you’re going to
faint, put your head between your knees,” Jack said matter-of-factly.

“I’m fine,” she said abruptly,
leaning back. “Fine.”

“Okay,” Jack said. Obviously
hearing the sharpness in her tone, he stood up.

“Fight or flight—pretty strong
instincts. You’re coming down off the adrenaline high.” Was there a trace of a
grin at the corners of his mouth? Zoe stared at him, but his face was serious
as he picked up the gun from where he’d kicked it inside as they were dragging
the stubby guy back over the apartment threshold.

With a few quick movements, he’d
removed the silencer, emptied the cartridge of bullets, and tossed them under
the couch. Zoe doubted they’d ever be found. No one in their right mind would
look under the disgusting couch in this trashed-out apartment. He tucked the
gun into the back of his waistband, then leaned down and began to methodically
search the stubby guy’s pockets.

“One thing to keep in mind,” he
said conversationally, “don’t freeze. When something like this happens,” he
nodded his head at the man stretched out on the grimy carpet, “it’s like that
poem. If you can keep your head when everyone is losing theirs...well, you’re
more likely to be okay.”

“How do you do that? Not freeze?
All I could think about was the gun and what could happen.”

Jack gave a half shrug as he
struggled to remove the man’s wallet from his back pocket. “I don’t know. You
just don’t let the fear paralyze you. You think about what options you have,
not about the worst thing that could happen.”

More than ever, Zoe wondered who
Jack was. Body snatchers seemed to be the only explanation for his cool aplomb
as he took whatever came his way in stride. She would have thought Jack would
be freaked out in a situation like this without his precious calendar and a
to-do list to work through. She took a deep breath and tried to shake off her
questions about Jack and, instead, focus on the guy laid out at their feet.

“Do you recognize him?” Zoe asked.
Despite the sticky coating of chow mein on his face, Zoe knew him. “He’s the
guy who had tried to run us down outside the casino, then shot at us in the
parking lot.”

Jack nodded. “He held a gun on me
at the office, too.”

“But you said in the car you
didn’t know him.” Zoe edged forward on the cushion. She felt better. Her legs
were hardly trembling at all, and she didn’t feel as though she couldn’t get a
deep breath.

“I didn’t get a good look at him
outside the casino—there was a glare on the windshield, and he was too far away
to see his features in the parking lot. I was more focused on driving than
making a positive ID at that point, too.”

“So he followed you here from
Dallas?” Zoe asked.

“He followed someone,” Jack said a
bit grimly.

Zoe frowned. “You think he
followed
me
? How
would he know who I was? And how would he know I’d take him to you?”

Jack merely raised his eyebrows.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how he knew who I was or where I worked, or how to
get in there, or that I had a gun. There’s a lot I don’t know.”

Zoe ignored the sarcastic sting of
his words, thinking of only one thing. “Where’s the other guy? You said there
were two in the office. Where is he?”

“I don’t know that either, but I
got the impression that this guy—the older one—was in charge and the other
guy—he was a teenager—didn’t like the way things were going. Apparently, he
wasn’t informed that murder would be involved. He was okay with assault—he was
the one who knocked me out—and armed robbery, but not killing. Maybe he’s
gone.”

Another possibility hovered in
Zoe’s mind, but she didn’t voice it. She didn’t want to think about the
likelihood of another death. She picked up the black moleskin journal and
shoved it in her pocket. She didn’t want to lose it again.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Connor’s journal. It was in the
couch cushions. It must have fallen out of his pocket. It’s got all sorts of
notes about dates and people. We’re taking it with us.”

Jack had opened the wallet and was
looking through it as she talked. “Okay,” he said.

Zoe gave him a long glance. He was
only half-listening. His attention was focused on the cards he’d pulled out of
the stubby guy’s wallet.

It was her turn to ask, “Are you
alright? You look kind of gray. If you feel faint, put your head between your
legs.”

Jack shot her a fleeting look,
acknowledging her joke, but there was a strained look about his face that
almost made Zoe regret her words. He ducked his head, rubbing the part of his
wrist that wasn’t covered with the latex glove across his forehead, as he
muttered, “We’ve got to get out of here.”

––––––––

Las Vegas

Friday, 6:37 p.m.

––––––––

“SO you want to tell me about it?”
Zoe asked.

Jack took his time, carefully
wiping his mouth with a napkin as he glanced around. They were sitting in a
restaurant attached to the deli section of a Von’s grocery store near UNLV.

Before they left the apartment,
Jack grabbed the pile of un-shredded papers. The computer and memory drive were
useless. The fall from the desk had broken the drive into pieces and the
computer wasn’t much better. Zoe said something about it being possible to
repair it, but Jack said, “No time.” They left it on the floor.

Jack had pulled a trash bag from
under the kitchen sink, filled it with some of the fast food debris covering
the counters, then dropped the gun inside. “No need to leave this where he can
find it,” Jack said, nodding to the stubby guy who was still out cold on the
carpet, his feet and hands tied with cords from Connor’s extensive gaming
setup.

On the way to the car, Jack
casually tossed the trash bag with its lethal contents in one of the apartment
complex dumpsters. Zoe had been amazed. With his relaxed stride, he’d looked as
if he had nothing more on his mind than getting back inside to watch
basketball. Zoe wondered how much of his life with her had been spent in this
weird altered state with reality pushed below the surface.

But up close in the car, Zoe could
see that whatever he’d seen in Stubby Guy’s wallet had impacted him. He was
quiet, and there was a “don’t talk to me” vibe coming off of him, so Zoe had
left him alone. She skimmed through the papers from Connor’s shred pile, which
were mostly spreadsheets, while he drove.

Zoe took a sip, then set her can
of ginger ale on the table with a firm click. “Let’s not play the silent game
any longer, Jack. I can tell whatever you saw in that guy’s wallet was a game
changer.”

A smile flicked across his face.
“Never go on the run with your ex. You can’t get away with anything. She knows
you too well.”

Zoe stared at him a moment, then
said, “Not as well as I thought.”

Jack ran his thumb over the label
on his bottle of Snapple Peach Iced Tea. “This whole thing—this situation—may
be connected to my old job.”

He stopped as though he didn’t
know what to say next. Zoe said, “Jack, I’m pretty sure that you didn’t work in
Policy and Plans.”

“That’s what’s funny. I did—work
in Policy and Plans, that is. At least, for about five months, and yes, it was
insanely boring. Then I was transferred to Italy. Same department at the
consulate in Naples. Still boring.”

“So you worked for the State
Department?” Zoe asked just to confirm. “Officially?”

He nodded. “It wasn’t like you
think. Nothing like the movies.”

“You didn’t wear a tux and drive a
sports car?”

He smiled with his whole face this
time. “Suits, yes. Tuxedo, no. And I drove a moped—everyone does there. The
idea was to blend in,” he said then took a bite of his sandwich.

“I see,” Zoe said, but she didn’t.
She couldn’t picture him zipping around a foreign country on a moped.

“It was pretty routine stuff. I
had my work at the consulate. I had the cocktail party circuit, dinner parties.
I tried to meet people, establish friendships. It went on like that for almost
a year before there was a change. A friend of mine...” He paused, and the way he
seemed to search for words to describe what he was thinking made her think he
was telling the truth. His words weren’t smooth and glib, and he was clearly
uncomfortable talking about this topic.

He cleared his throat, then said,
“My friend, he worked in the same department.” Jack sent Zoe a significant
glance, and she nodded that she understood. “He got a new assignment. He had
several assets.”

Zoe raised her eyebrows. “Assets?”

“Contacts. Resources,” he said.
“One of them was handed off to me. For about six months, everything went fine.”
His chin wrinkled, and his lower lip went up, forcing the corners of his mouth
to turn down. “At least, it seemed fine.” He put his sandwich down. He looked
nauseous, reminding Zoe of the time he’d had the stomach flu. “The asset didn’t
show for a meeting, and I couldn’t make contact. I went through the protocol,
made preparations. The Irena passport was for her, to get her out of the
country, if I could find her...” his voice trailed off, and he ran his hand over
his mouth. “Her body was found a week later.”

She searched for words.
“That’s...terrible,” Zoe said. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

“Unfortunate. That’s what they
called it. I was reassigned. They told me to move on, to keep working.” His
tone was subdued as he said, “I couldn’t do it. She was my responsibility.”

He carefully rewrapped his
sandwich and set it aside. “I couldn’t take it—the guilt, the thought that
someone had died on my watch. I resigned, got out.” He blew out a breath and
seemed to mentally comeback to the present. He focused on Zoe’s face. “Decided
to do something nice and safe—like open my own business,” he said, lightly.

When his eyes crinkled up on the
corners, it was nearly impossible not to smile back at him. He leaned forward
over the table, his fingers laced. “I never told you about it because it was in
the past. Over and done. And there was that pesky confidentiality agreement as
well.”

“Really? There is a
confidentiality agreement?”

“Yes. And they’re very serious
about it, too.”

Zoe shifted in her chair, mentally
reviewing what he’d told her. “So you think Connor’s death and Stubby Guy’s
visit is connected to her death somehow?”

“Stubby Guy. I like that,” Jack
said with a hint of a smile, then he turned serious again. “Stubby Guy, as you
call him, had an Italian drivers license on him along with euros. It’s got to be
connected. Italian thugs don’t randomly show up at your place of business and
murder your partner for no reason—at least not in America,” he added.

Zoe sat up straight. “Connor’s
pictures,” she said and pulled her messenger bag into her lap. “Connor mailed
these photos to me. With everything that’s happened, I forgot to show them to
you. That could be Italy, couldn’t it?” Zoe asked as she passed the photos to
him.

He skimmed through them. “Could be
anywhere in Europe. There’s no distinctive landmark or readable sign.
Cobblestone squares are a dime a dozen over there. And we don’t know when these
were taken. Just because he mailed them recently doesn’t mean they were taken
recently.”

Zoe sipped her ginger ale. “It’s
likely
they were taken in
Italy. GRS has connections with Italian business—the paperweights are imported
from Venice.”

He waved that thought aside.
“Coincidence.”

When Zoe frowned at him, he
leaned farther over the table. “The woman who died, her name was Francesca. Her
husband was in the Naples mafia—very high in the
Comorra
, that’s the organization that controls
Naples and the
Campania
region. Francesca was providing information on her husband. He must have found
out who I was and come after me.”

“Back up. Why would the CIA be
interested in a mob guy in Naples in the first place? I thought the CIA was
more into terrorists in the Middle East, stuff like that.”

“Organized crime is a very
sophisticated operation in Naples, practically mainstream. For all intents and
purposes, the mob runs the area—collecting protection money from businesses and
running goods into and out of the huge port. Over half of the goods that arrive
are undeclared, which means the U.S. government wants to know what is moving
through the port. There’s an entire division in the CIA that deals with
organized crime.”

Zoe massaged her temples, trying
to take it all in. “Why come after you now? After years?” she finally asked.

“Because that’s how it is over
there. You mess with someone like him and he never forgets. They live by a
code—like in the old west. If he finds out who killed his wife and does nothing
to take me out, then he’s weak. He has to kill me to maintain his power.”

“Wait,” Zoe said, throwing up a
hand. “How do you even know he blames her death on you? He might have found out
she was giving you information and killed her himself.”

“No. The way she died—there were
witnesses. It was a rival crime family. When she was exposed, they realized it
was a way to hurt their competitor. But even with that, if he knew Francesca was
in contact with me...ultimately, he’d see me as the guilty party.”

Zoe shifted in her chair. “Okay,
say all that is true. But it doesn’t explain why he’d wait to come after you.”

Jack downed the last of his tea,
then said, “Maybe it’s taken him this long to track me down. I did move a few
times, and my on-line footprint is small.”

Zoe felt as if lights were going
on as she connected some things. “That’s why you didn’t want a Facebook account
and why you refused to put any personal info on the GRS website.” Zoe had
always thought that Jack was a little paranoid because he refused to create any
social media accounts.

He shook his head. “No. It was
more habit than anything else. You learn to keep everything close, not to
share,” he said.

Zoe held his gaze. “So I wasn’t
the only one who pulled away,” she said, thinking of several tense arguments
when he’d flung that accusation at her. “You just hid it better than me.” The
tone of their conversation, which had been fairly normal—if you can consider
talking about your ex-husband’s secret past life a normal conversation, Zoe
thought—suddenly swerved into something deeper. “All those times you said I was
shutting you out,” she narrowed her eyes and felt her face flush, “and you had
this
whole history
,
another life, that you’d kept from me. I may have not been very good at
sharing, at opening up, but at least I tried.” The air seemed to simmer around
them.

Jack’s mouth was set in a firm
line. He nodded slowly. “I have to give you that—you tried.”

It was the last thing she’d
expected him to say, and she was surprised to see a look of sadness in his
gaze, which threw her off.

Zoe quickly glanced away from
Jack, reminding herself he was a spy—a
spy
.
He was trained in deceiving people. Was that sorrowful expression on his face
real or manufactured? She crossed her arms and braced them on the table. “Water
under the bridge,” she said, dismissing the topic. “I still think it’s odd that
he would come after you now.”

Jack raised his hands and
shrugged. “Maybe he just found out. Maybe it was those leaks to the
media—remember that huge document dump of government files and e-mails? Maybe
my name was in there. Or maybe someone else talked. I don’t know. It’s not
important. What I have to do is figure out how to get to Naples.”

Zoe sat up straight. “Go there?
Why?”

“Because that’s where Roy Martin
lives. He’s the case officer I replaced. Francesca was originally his asset. He
went on to be the station chief. He knows the whole history. He can vouch for
me, get this straightened out.”

“Why not call him?”

“I tried. Just a few minutes ago.
My Italian is rusty, but passable. I was able to talk to his cleaning lady. Roy
is out of town, but he’ll be back tomorrow. Now we just need to find some cash
to buy an airline ticket. I can’t talk about this on the phone. It has to be
face-to-face.”

“
An
airline ticket?” Zoe asked.

“There’s no need for you to go.”

“You think I should stay here in
Vegas?” Zoe said, her voice rising.

Jack looked around to see if she’d
drawn anyone’s attention. Zoe didn’t care. “You think I should stay in the same
city where a man tried to run me down and then shot at me? A man who knows my
face and is probably out there right now looking for me? I’m sure he’s
conscious by now, and he’s probably figured out how to get those cords off.”

Jack placed a hand on her arm.
“Easy. We’ll get you a hotel room. Somewhere safe and I’ll come back for you
when this is all straightened out.”

“Really, Jack? That’s your
solution? I hole up in a room and wait for you to come back? I don’t think so.
I’m not letting you out of my sight. I don’t know if that story you told me is
true. It could be a pack of lies,” she said, and his expression closed down.
Good, she thought. Much better to have him sullen and withdrawn than looking at
her in a regretful way that pulled at her heart just a little bit.

“It may come down to simple
economics,” he countered, his voice soft and controlled. We can’t use plastic
to charge an airline ticket because the police will be checking for
transactions. I can pawn my watch,” he said, twisting his wrist so that the
face of his expensive black watch with about as many dials and readouts on it
as an airplane dash caught the light. “But I doubt that it will cover two
last-minute tickets to Rome.”

“Don’t you mean Naples?”

“Rome will be cheaper. I’ll get a
car and drive to Naples. It’s only about two and a half hours.”

Zoe lounged back in her chair.
“How about we make a deal. If I come up with the cash, I go.” There was no way
he was going to Italy without her. She wasn’t about to sit around in a dingy
hotel room—and she was sure it wouldn’t be at the Luxor or the MGM
Grand—probably somewhere far away from The Strip.

And they were talking Italy.
Italy
. It was a destination
she’d read about for years in the guidebooks she’d copy-edited. She knew all
about the different sections of Rome, the best transportation options to get
around the country, how to avoid lines at the Colesseum, where to find the best
gelato
...okay, so
maybe those details weren’t critical to their goals here, but the point was she
knew plenty about Italy, and she’d always wanted to see it. Jack was not
getting on that plane without her.