Elusive (On The Run Book #1) (23 page)

“This is it for me. I’m done after
this shipment,” Eddie said from above them. Her words hardly registered with
Zoe. She was too focused on the gun and Francesca’s unwavering gaze that seemed
to pin her to the chair. Eddie’s voice had gone peevish, as if she couldn’t
stand not to be the center of attention. “You’re too much of a risk,” Eddie
said, then pushed through the door and slammed it behind her.

Francesca rolled her eyes and
strode back to the desk where she picked up the passport with her free hand.
“She does not mean it,” she said, leaning toward Zoe, like she was taking her
into her confidence. She tossed her head in the direction of Eddie’s dramatic
exit. “That one, all voice and bluster, but it means nothing. Next week, it
will be,” she waved the passport through the air as if she were erasing writing
on a board, “as if nothing happened.
Normale
.”

“Well, I for one, am glad to see
the last of her,” Zoe ventured in an effort to connect with Francesca, which
seemed to work because Francesca chuckled.

“Do not worry about her,”
Francesca said, “She is gone. Hand-carrying an important package back to the
States. She will not bother you anymore.” She opened the passport. Her eyebrows
shot up, her gaze flew to Zoe. “So you do know everything. It is sad. I like
you. You have spirit, but—” she shrugged in a what-can-you-do manner, “I cannot
let you live. You must see that. Jack either.”

For a second, Zoe thought of
bargaining with her, begging even, but that steely gaze stopped her. Francesca
wasn’t going to relent or change her mind. Zoe’s pulse accelerated. Could she
jump up, push her over? Grab the gun? Sprint up the stairs? It was almost as if
Francesca sensed her thoughts because she paced a few steps away from Zoe. She
flicked open the passport and looked at the picture, a hint of sadness
flickered across her face. “I wish it had not been Jack,” she said with a small
shake of the head. “He took it too hard.”

“He thought you were dead,” Zoe
said. “What should he have done? Forget about it?”

“Yes. He should have. He cares too
much, that one. Too involved.” She rubbed her thumb over the picture as she
stared at it.

Zoe shifted her feet, moving the
chair an inch toward the water. If she could get close enough, she might be
able to hit the water before Francesca could aim and fire the gun. “How did you
do it?” Best to keep her talking, thinking about the past. The huge box
Francesca had dropped was between her and the water. If she could edge the
chair slightly backward she’d be able to make straight for the water.

Francesca looked at her
consideringly for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. “It was not
hard. I told Jack I thought someone suspected I was an informant. The next
meeting I had...a friend follow me. Jack saw it and began to prepare,” she said,
lifting the passport.

Zoe waited until she focused on
the passport then shifted her toes and moved the chair again. “Once he believed
I was in danger, it was easy. I did not go to the next meeting and did not
reply to his attempts to contact me. He assumed I’d been caught. I was on a
train to Milan.”

“You make it sound so easy. What
about your husband?”

“I was not stupid. I picked a time
he was out of town,” she said scornfully. “I had been saving for years—all the
money Jack and Roy paid me, I saved it all. So considerate that they paid in
cash. I had been planning it for years.”

“What about the body? It was
identified as you.”

She laughed as she tossed the
passport back to the desk. “You have not been in Italy very long, if you do not
know that anything can be bought. A little money to the right people and,” she
waved her fingers, “all the forms were filled out with my name. Witnesses swore
they saw me die. The body was beyond recognition. All that mattered was the
paperwork.”

“But who was she?”

Francesca said sharply. “I do not
know.” She seemed to make an effort to calm herself. “It does not matter,” she
said with forced briskness. “She was nobody. Nobody missed her.” Her gaze
drifted up to the ceiling and the dim bulbs. “I never speak of it...although, I
dream of her sometimes. More and more, lately.” She nodded as she strode a few
steps closer to Zoe. “It is good that I speak of it to you. Now, maybe I will
sleep better.”

“How could you sleep better?” Zoe
asked, incredulous. Forgetting about her stealthy chair shifting, she said,
“You’re planning to kill me and Jack. It’s guilt keeping you awake! Don’t you
see that? If you kill me and Jack, it will only make it worse.”

It was like a shutter descended
over her face. “It must be done. I will not lose everything.”

Faintly, bells jangled. “That will
be Stefano,” Francesca said, a look of pleasant satisfaction settling on her
face. “With Jack. I knew he would come once we had you. Always playing the
knight.”

The small circle of the gun barrel
dipped slightly as Francesca looked up the stairs to the door. Zoe lunged,
shoving the box at Francesca as she ran. There was a clatter of metal on stone.
Zoe didn’t look back.

A crash and shouting sounded
behind her, but she was only vaguely aware of it.
Too far. I’m too far
. Something solid collided
with her leg, tangled with her foot, and brought her down. 

––––––––

STUNNED, Zoe lay without moving,
as she tried to get her breath back. She’d landed face down, her knees and
elbows taking the brunt of the fall. The steps with their coating of moss were
only inches from her nose. So close.

She crawled forward, but strong
hands gripped her ankles and yanked her away from the edge. Her chin bumped on
the cold tiles, and her vision blurred for a moment. She kicked out, a pain
seared through her side where the knife had pricked her, as she struggled to
get her hands under her body, so she could lever herself up.

Hands on her shoulders roughly
dragged her upright into a sitting position on the floor, then clamped her
wrists together. Zoe’s vision blurred at the quick change from lying down to
sitting up. A ripping sound cut through the air. Two men were encircling her
wrists with stiff, sticky packing tape, attaching her wrists to the arm of the
rolling chair. Foggily, Zoe realized it must have been the chair that brought
her down.

Part of her mind wondered why
Francesca hadn’t just shot her. Maybe she was a bad shot or it could be her
issue with blood. Maybe she didn’t want to have to clean it up. Shooting
someone would be messy, and she definitely seemed paranoid about blood.

Zoe blinked at the men laboring
over her with the tape. There was something wrong with the image. They were
moving in tandem. She blinked a few times and they merged into one man. Stubby
Guy.

He sent her a cold look with his
dark eyes as he spoke over his shoulder to Francesca in Italian. Zoe was glad
she didn’t know what he was saying, but she suspected it was that Francesca
should have shot her. Zoe looked beyond him to Francesca, who was standing with
the gun pointed at Jack. He was lying motionless at the bottom of the stairs. A
mixture of relief and fear hit her as she looked at him.

Stubby Guy gave the tape a final
twist, then crossed to Jack, gripped his heels, and dragged him toward her, his
head bobbing on the stones. Stubby Guy—Stefano—Zoe remembered, released Jack’s
feet, and they thumped to the ground. His head lolled toward Zoe.

Jack got the same treatment with
the tape. Stefano wrapped Jack’s wrists and bound them to the other arm of the
chair. Jack’s upper body was beside her, his legs extended on the opposite side
of the chair. She could see his chest moving a fraction. Stubby Guy strode over
to Francesca for a low-voiced consultation.

Zoe rested her forehead on her
knee. Pained flickered in her kneecap when her head made contact, but at this
point it only slightly registered. So this was it. They were going to kill
them, then dump them, probably at sea. Zoe wasn’t much of a religious person,
but she figured if there ever was a time to pray, this was it. She had no idea
of what to say or how to go about praying.
Help
me
, was about all she could come up with before her thoughts
flashed to her family and friends, her mother, Aunt Amanda, Helen, even Kiki.
They’d all worry about her, wondering what had happened to her. And they’d go
on worrying. They would probably never know what had happened.

The chances of their bodies being
found were miniscule. And if they were found, would they be able to properly
identify them? Helen would be devastated. And Mom, Zoe thought. Poor, messed
up, Mom. She would thrive on the attention in the beginning. Zoe had no doubt
that when the news reached her about her disappearance, Donna would milk the
situation for all it was worth. She’d be the distraught mother with the missing
daughter, a tragic situation. But what about later when it became obvious that
Zoe wasn’t going to be found? Would Donna completely lose it? She was
self-centered, but she did love Zoe in her own misguided, crazy way. Zoe had
separated herself from Donna’s toxic lifestyle—the constant cameras and
attention seeking, the neediness—Zoe had decided it was better to keep her
distance. Phone calls on holidays were about the extent of their contact. Well,
if you didn’t count every time Donna called and pitched a new show idea at Zoe.
But even though she couldn’t be around her mom all the time, Zoe didn’t want
this to be it.

There was a thickness in her
throat. In a matter of hours, maybe less, they would be dead.

A whisper floated to Zoe, barely
audible above the slap of water. “Hey, it’s not that bad. No, don’t look up.
Keep your head down.”

Zoe shifted her chin and looked
under her arm. Jack smiled at her, a lopsided, upside down grin. “You okay?”

“Not really.”

“Yeah. I’m not happy with our
situation either.” He spoke low, barely moving his mouth.

“You were right—that’s Francesca.
I got a good look at her before Stubby Guy pushed me down the stairs.”

Zoe risked a quick glance at
Francesca and Stefano, who were talking in raised voices now. Francesca was
pacing back and forth, dumping the contents of Zoe’s messenger bag into the large
cardboard box. Stefano was trailing along behind her, waggling the gun at Zoe
and Jack, trying to talk over Francesca. She shook her head, tossed the
blood-spotted towel into the box, and then picked up another flattened box. She
opened it and folded the flaps down.

“They’re going to put us in the
boxes, weigh us down, and dump us at sea,” Jack said. “The debate is whether to
kill us before we go in the box or knock us out and let the sea do the work.”

Jack continued in a low voice, “I
hate to say it, but it is clever, using the boxes. They won’t be seen
transporting bodies, just the boxes, which must be a normal activity for them.”

Zoe said, “It’s either that, or
it’s because Francesca can’t stand the thought of us sprawled on her floor,
contaminating the place. She seems to have a germ phobia and an obsession with
keeping things clean. She doesn’t want to get blood on anything.” A rending
sound cut through the air as Francesca yanked the tape across the flaps of the
box.

“Less worry for them that way about
our death being traced back to them,” Jack said.

Francesca muttered a curse, tossed
the empty tape dispenser on the floor, and slammed through the desk drawers
quickly, searching their contents.

Zoe shifted, blinked and tried to
get a grip on her emotions as she said, “Eddie was here, too. She found me in
the
campo
and
brought me here, but I think she’s gone now.”

“Let me guess. She used a knife?”
At Zoe’s nod, Jack let out a sigh audible only to Zoe. “She’s got a thing for
blades,” he said. Zoe twisted, and Jack saw the dark circle of blood, now
sticky and beginning to harden, on her shirt. His face went hard.

“Don’t worry about her. It was
enough to scare me and get me moving, but I think it’s stopped bleeding now.
It’s not deep. It annoyed Francesca, too. Anyway, that’s the least of our
worries. Eddie is taking some special shipment back to the States. It’s what we
thought. They’ve got some sort of smuggling set-up between her and Eddie.
Connor was involved, and he got suspicious about Francesca. I guess Francesca
sent Stub—er, Stefano to take care of it—meaning you and Connor—but you got
away.”

“And I ran straight to Eddie, who
told Stefano exactly where I’d be—first at The Strip where he tried to arrange
that car-on-pedestrian accident, then at Connor’s apartment,” Jack said,
disgust with Eddie evident on his face even in his whispered words.

In her peripheral vision, Zoe saw
Francesca march up the stairs. Stefano followed her, looking over his shoulder
at them. Jack had his face turned away and hadn’t moved from his prone
position. Zoe kept her head tucked to her knees. The door closed and Jack
sprung up. They dragged the chair to the desk.

“They’ve gone for more tape,” Zoe
said as she crawled along, her kneecaps screaming with each impact.

Jack used the toe of his shoe to
open the lowest desk drawer near him, then angled his foot so that he could
shove everything around inside. “Nothing but paper,” he said moving quickly to
the other two drawers.

Zoe angled herself up as high as
she could, surveying the desktop. “No scissors or letter opener, but there’s a
few big paperclips.” Zoe used her nose to drag several across the desktop, then
twisted the chair so that her hands were directly under them. She nudged the
paperclips with her nose. Several slipped through her fingers and pinged onto
the floor.

Jack was wiggling his foot,
working off his shoe. “Hold still,” Zoe said, sharply. “I can’t believe we’re
doing this...all our hopes hanging on paperclips,” she muttered as she shoved
another paperclip over the edge. Her fingers felt thick and clumsy, but she
managed to pinch it between her thumb and first finger as it fell.

“Excellent,” Jack said. He went
back to moving his socked foot around, scraping it over the bumpy floor.

Zoe concentrated on not dropping
the paperclip and tried to pry one section of it back. Her fingers felt like
sausages. When she managed to get one piece at a right angle, she stabbed at
the thick layers of tape awkwardly. This was going to take a while.

“Ah,” Jack said as he used his
foot to drag a forgotten pen from under the desk. Jack gripped it with his toes
and brought it to his hands, performing a move that wouldn’t have looked out of
place in a yoga class. He twisted his foot back into his shoe, then went to
work with the pen, trying to work it into an angle where he could puncture the
tape.

The room was silent except for the
lap of water on stone and the tiny popping sound of each puncture. Zoe could
feel sweat gathering on her forehead as she concentrated. Press, puncture. Move
a millimeter lower. Repeat. Endlessly.

She’d perforated a zigzagging line
of holes about an inch long, but Stefano had been extra generous with the tape,
winding it around and crisscrossing her wrists several times in wide arcs, so
there were several more inches to go. Zoe wasn’t sure how much time had gone by
when she heard something. She raised her head. Voices. Definitely voices.

Jack nodded his head, motioning
behind them. Zoe understood instantly. Surprise was about the only thing they
had on their side. They scooted backward like two crabs scuttling over the sea
floor. Jack resumed his prone position, the pen hidden in his hand. Zoe hunched
over the paperclip, punching way with renewed vigor, her hands trembling from
the effort.

Footsteps echoed closer, and then
receded again. After a moment of silence, Jack scrambled upright and went back
to work on his tape.

They punched for a few seconds.
Zoe shot a glance at Jack. Every few seconds, he tucked the pen into the corner
of his mouth then twisted his hands back and forth. She could see the raw skin
where the tape had given away—a tiny strip. It was working. She twisted her
hands. About an inch of the tape gave, ripping away a thin layer of skin on the
back of her hands. She caught her breath. “God, that hurts.”

“Be glad it’s not on our mouths.
That’s the worst.”

“That’s looking on the bright
side,” Zoe said. She paused a moment, then resumed her sewing machine-like trek
through the tape.

With his head bent in
concentration, Jack said, “We could sing a few show tunes. You know, help pass
the time.”

“Let’s not. I’ve heard you sing.”

“It’s atrocious, I know, but it
would be distracting,” Jack said, pen in his teeth as he wrenched his hands
back and forth, his shoulder muscles contorting with the effort.

The bells tinkled, footsteps
tromped across the floor, and Jack dropped to his back.

“Darling, where are you?” called a
male voice.

Zoe’s gaze shot to Jack’s face. He
was staring at her, and she knew they were both thinking the same thing. They
knew that voice. It was deep and rolling. Footsteps moved closer, then away.
“Roy?” Zoe whispered. “What is he doing here?”

Jack resumed work on the tape with
ferocity.

“Why would he...” her words trailed
off as the image of the butterfly necklace coiled in a neat spiral came back to
her. It was like an image finally loaded on the computer and everything jumped
into focus, sharp and clean. “Roy helped her. He’s in on it, too,” Zoe said,
horrified. “We went directly to him. Told him exactly where we were in Naples.
He’s
the one who sent the
police to our hotel, not Nico.”

Jack spared her a quick look out
of the corner of his eye. He looked grim, like he didn’t want to believe it,
but he didn’t argue with her.

Zoe felt the same way. She shoved
the paperclip through a particularly thick layer of tape while shaking her
head. “I should have figured it out. I saw her jewelry and knew there was
something about it...I didn’t put it together until now.”

Jack refocused on his tape. “Go
on.”

“She’s wearing a ring with a
special design—it looks custom to me. I’m no expert, but I’ve never seen
anything like it. It’s a butterfly with diamonds set in the wings. There was
one exactly like it, except on a necklace in the upstairs bathroom at Roy’s
house. There was a bottle of perfume, too.”

Jack worked on the tape silently
for a few minutes. “Roy went out of his way to mention being a bachelor.”
Jack’s voice was rough with anger. “He really played it up—all that about not
having much food in the house. He was setting us up. No one was in a better
position than Roy to help Francesca when she wanted to disappear. Roy finished
out his assignment, then he retired in Naples.”

“So, they’re cautious,” Zoe said.
“They must have decided to go their separate ways for a few years. She moved to
Venice, he stayed in Naples.” She stared at him, her eyes widening. “The
cleaning lady,” Zoe said and explained what the woman at the café had told her.
“I bet Francesca goes to visit him disguised as a cleaning lady so no one
recognizes her, and she doesn’t raise any eyebrows in the neighborhood. He
comes to see her in Venice, too, obviously,” Zoe said nodding toward the door
where they’d heard his voice.