Trusting a Stranger (4 page)

‘I'm not sure why you're telling me this,' she said.

‘Because you need to know. You've gotten mixed up with the Tomasi family and I don't think you have any idea who you're dealing with.'

So he knew the name of the man who had sent her here. Hayley turned that fact over in her mind for a moment or so. What proof did she really have that Alvaro Tomasi was the detective he had claimed to be? She tried to remember if she had ever seen a badge. Not that seeing a badge would have made much difference; she had no idea what a real one looked like.

Was Ethan right? Could she have been getting herself into danger even as she thought she was helping her father get out of it?

‘Tell me about the Tomasi family,' she said.

Ethan cleared his throat and looked down at his fingernails. It was obvious to Hayley that he did not know where to begin.

After a long moment, he said, ‘My wife was Erica Tomasi. She died because she could not escape the family business. Our daughter is the only grandchild. And now that they have lost Erica, they want Katy instead.'

‘The family business?' Hayley asked. ‘What is that?'

Ethan didn't need to clear his throat this time. ‘They are mobsters,' he said, simply.

Where the hell was Hayley doing? She had leaped to her feet almost before Ethan was aware of it, and was halfway down the hall before he could catch up with her.

As much as he wanted to reach out and slam it closed before she could flee, Ethan knew that imprisoning her here was no way to convince her that he was not the enemy.

‘Hayley, wait,' he said instead.

She turned, but only half way. ‘Yes?'

‘You forgot your camera.'

As her hand closed over the case she made a faint noise, like she was swallowing.

‘Thanks,' she said. ‘And thanks for the Chianti.'

‘You'll think about what I said?' Ethan pressed. ‘And you'll keep away from the Tomasi family?'

‘I'll think about what you said.'

But from the way she dropped her eyes, Ethan could tell she was being evasive.

‘You won't keep away from the Tomasis?' he asked.

‘I'll take care to keep out of trouble.'

She hadn't understood what he was saying. Ethan clenched his fist in frustration.

‘You can't keep out of trouble if you have anything to do with the Tomasis,' he said.

‘Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?'

‘I've told you enough for you to know—'

‘All right. Well, thanks.'

‘Where are you going?'

She looked puzzled. ‘Back to my scooter. Unless… You aren't about to agree to those photos after all, are you?'

What? How could she still be talking about photos, after what he had told her?

But Ethan had no reason to keep her here, and no reason why he should want to. He didn't know this woman, Ethan told himself. She had trespassed on his land, and tried to take information back to the Tomasi family, information that would surely be used against him. What were they up to?

So why did he feel somehow as though he had to look after her? All he had to do here was look after himself, and make sure Alvaro Tomasi remained uncertain about where Katy was for long enough for Ethan to work out what to do next. She had been ripped from school to school ever since Erica died. The poor girl desperately needed a sense of permanence. He was determined that she be able to finish at least one year's normal education at the school he had found for her.

Hayley was going to leave, then. She wanted to go, and he didn't really have a choice or a reason to make her stay.

He held the door open and stood back and watched as Hayley walked the long distance of his drive. She was so small and vulnerable out there in the hugeness of the grounds that had been attached to the villa for centuries. And he was so certain that she was walking away from the safety that she might have found here in his mother's old family home, and into danger…

He knew he had to do something.

So much for the computer security program he had meant to get back to this morning! Hayley had been so easy to convince when it came to keeping her from photographing his own place. That innocence would not stand a chance with an enemy like Tomasi. She was brave and she was in danger. For whatever reason, Ethan felt responsible.

Ethan cursed under his breath as he pressed the security code into his alarm and walked back into the house towards the internal door that led to his basement-level garage.

Hayley had said she was driving a scooter. That could well mean she was headed into the walled part of nearby Siena, where cars were not allowed. His sports car, then, would be of no use. The only thing for Ethan to do was to take his own bike and follow her there.

***

Was she being followed? Hayley slowed slightly, the wheels of her Vespa grinding into the pebbly road. When it seemed safe, she peered over her shoulder. The road behind her was darkened with the shade of the cypresses she passed but even so she could see that it was empty.

It was her encounter with Ethan that had spooked her. She was alone. Wasn't she?

No…

What was that? A low, purring noise. An engine? Perhaps more than one…

Ethan was following her, she became sure of that now. The thought wasn't at all alarming. From the story he had told her, he was more to be trusted than feared.

And she had the distinct feeling that he was telling the truth. There was something in the warmth of his brown eyes that was convincing, in much the same way that something hard in Alvaro Tomasi's eyes had put her on guard. She had seen through Tomasi's first lie quickly, even if she had promptly fallen for his second, over the telephone. And she was confused about him now. He had sounded like an older man — older than her father. But now Ethan was identifying Alvaro Tomasi as his former brother-in-law. Calling him young but dangerous. Hayley was puzzled. Someone was lying to her. Someone was pretending to be something that they weren't. But her instinct told her Ethan was not like that.

So, he was following her. Of course he was. It might even be because he was worried about Tomasi on her behalf; it might be that he wanted to make sure she was safe. Or it might be because he wanted to know where she was going. That idea didn't really alarm her either. If Ethan knew where she was, that was no problem. She was quite likely to seek him out again later anyway. As long as he gave her the chance to think.

But then she became aware of another sound: a third engine, lower and more powerful somehow, a third set of wheels crunching through the gravel. At first it seemed a long way off, but the noise increased in volume and pitch as the vehicle approached. Hayley felt her chest tighten, and became sure that Ethan was increasingly wary as well.

She had checked the map from a café in Siena's
Il Campo
before coming out here and was fairly certain that the only house in these parts belonged to Ethan himself. Where could the third rider have come from?

She waited until she reached the crest of the nearest hill before slowing to a halt and then turning to look over her shoulder. From here she could see forward over Tuscan hills to distant Siena. Its ochre-coloured bricks turned to gold in the late afternoon sun, the terracotta roof tiles gleaming like dull garnets, and back along the shaded narrow road almost all the way to Ethan's villa. The family feud that Ethan had described seemed to belong to this place, where she had read about wars separating rival city-states like Siena and Florence for centuries.

She could see well enough to see that she had been right. There were two men on motorbikes behind her now. One was helmeted. He was certainly tall and broad-shouldered enough to be Ethan. She had to believe that he was.

The other man had longish black hair that flew straight back from his face as he leaned forward, riding much faster than Ethan, overtaking even as Hayley watched. He was going faster than she had ever seen anyone go on a bike, faster than she had ever known bikes could go. Hayley continued to watch the two men, fascinated. Her own danger seemed secondary to the wonder of the speed. The wind caught her own hair, blowing it around her shoulders beneath her helmet, blowing wisps of it against the glass of her visor.

Then the second man reached back for something behind him. She watched as Ethan leaned forwards, raising and lowering his feet in a desperate attempt to catch up with the black-haired man.

He couldn't quite manage it. There was something about the man's speed that was fantastic — that was almost diabolical.

As he brought his arm forward, Ethan looked up, as if to shout something; waved his arm frantically over his head.

Hayley realised what he meant, climbed back onto her scooter, began to accelerate, and realised the shortest of moments later that she had been foolish to stop, that she had left it too late, that she had to do something now that the black haired man did not expect.

So, just as the scooter began to ease forward, when she should have been going over the crest of the hill and starting on the downhill stretch, instead she leaped to one side, aiming to roll into the grassy verge.

The black-haired man must have taken aim, must have fired, at just that moment, for as Hayley hit the ground something like a lash struck her right arm, leaving the sensation of heat for a few seconds before the burning subsided into pain.

It wasn't until she felt the searing, burning pain of the bullet that Hayley actually heard the shot. She felt herself collapse silently to the ground. The Vespa guttered quietly beside her. Then in the sudden silence of all the stilled engines, there were other shots. She closed her eyes against the bright sunshine that found her through the branches overhead, and against the blow. She had been shot.

Finally, there was the sound of one of the engines starting up again and its rider speeding off in the direction from which he had come.

Hayley felt dizzy. She didn't know if that was from loss of blood or from shock; this wasn't the sort of thing photographers learned or trained for.

When she opened her eyes again, a man was standing in front of her: a man in a helmet. She sighed in relief at the realisation that it wasn't the black-haired man that had been victorious.

The man said something.

‘What?' said Hayley.

Her voice seemed slow and quiet and far away. It was almost as though she were watching the scene from a distance, as though nothing was quite real.

The man undid the strap that reached below his chin and pulled off his helmet. As Hayley had guessed, it was Ethan who had recognised her.

‘We're going back to my place,' he said, reaching down to help her to her feet.

Hayley took his hand but winced as the pain in her arm intensified, and clutched at that instead. She wouldn't cry; she never cried.

‘I don't cry,' she told Ethan.

Ethan leaned down lower and heaved her to her feet, then wrapped his arm around her shoulders to steady her. She leaned against him, grateful for the support.

‘Let me have a look at that arm,' said Ethan, once she was sure she could stand on her own.

Hayley felt a little dizzy with it again as she tried to lift her injured arm. Ethan was gentle as he pulled the bloodied scraps of her damaged shirt away from the wound.

Hayley looked down at the blood and he pulled her towards him again as she swayed.

‘It looks worse than it is,' he told her. ‘It's just a flesh wound.'

Hayley frowned.

‘The bullet just grazed you,' Ethan explained. ‘It hasn't gone right through and we don't need to dig it out.'

Dig it out.

Hayley closed her eyes against the horror of that possibility and opened them again in gratitude that she was with someone who could reassure her like this.

Then she began to shiver.

She couldn't understand why. It was as though the temperature had suddenly dropped, although the sunlight seemed just as bright, the afternoon just as mellow.

‘You're in shock,' Ethan told her. ‘You won't be able to ride for a while. I'm going to take you back to my place.'

***

Unless Ethan was much mistaken, Hayley was too shocked to really appreciate where they were going or how they were getting there. He ripped part of her damaged shirt away and used it to wrap around her arm before pulling her up behind him on his bike.

‘Do you think you can hold on?' he asked.

‘My scooter,' Hayley objected, but she sounded sleepy rather than concerned.

‘I'll come back for it later,' Ethan told her. ‘Can you hold on?'

She nodded but not convincingly and Ethan kept his hand pressed tightly over hers and rode as slowly as he could back to the safety of his villa.

He had not been mistaken. Within those walls was the only place where he could be truly safe. Behind the blinds, protected by the most expensive high-tech security you could buy anywhere in the world, he would be safe, and he could keep this strange woman safe, while he worked out what they were to do next.

Hayley seemed all but asleep as Ethan pressed the remote controls to his garage and, having entered and locked it again, picked her up to carry inside. But back in the sitting room where he had, not an hour ago, sat as he tried to convince her of how dangerous the Tomasi family were, her eyes blinked open, and she said, faintly:

‘I want to speak to my father.'

‘We should see about cleaning up your arm first,' Ethan replied.

Hayley shook her head. ‘I've let him down. I need to check…' Her voice trailed off.

He supposed the arm could wait a few more minutes. It really was only a flesh wound. Perhaps it would heal better with stitches, if there were a nearby doctor he could trust. But he had everything except the tools to do that on hand, and was pretty sure they would be able to look after it themselves.

‘Your parents?' he asked. ‘You want to talk to them?'