Elusive (On The Run Book #1) (25 page)

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ZOE ran her hand over her face,
which was now covered in sweat from the stuffy air in the box and her own
panic.
Don’t lose your head
,
she whispered to herself because she knew she was very near the point of doing
just that. What else had Jack said?
Use
what you have
. He’d slammed the potted plant down on Stefano,
knocking him out. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a handy potted plant or box
cutter secreted away. She had nothing. Sweat was literally dripping into her
eyes. She ran her hand over her face again, then her neck. Her fingers grazed
her necklace.

Her ring. Her diamond ring. She
still had that.

She quickly lifted the chain off
her neck, careful not to let it catch on the tender lump as she worked it over
her head. She twisted the large square-cut diamond with its beautiful sharp
edges over the knuckle of her first finger, then bent her finger down to hold
it there. She ran the ring along the exposed underside of the tape where the
box flaps met overhead. It dragged in a few places, but when her fingers traced
the line, she felt little snagged bits of tape. It worked.

She hunkered down and went to work
with her improvised box cutter, working through the thick layers of tape.

She’d almost broken through when
the sound of the men fighting surged closer and banged into the box. The impact
knocked Zoe backward toward the side by the water, then the box tipped and she
flipped over like she was doing a backward roll as the box tumbled. The bits
and pieces from her messenger bag kaleidoscoped around her, then settled on the
bottom of the box.

She immediately felt the
temperature difference as a coolness settled into the air around her. The tape
she’d been hacking away at, which had been above her head, was now under her
and despite the definite bobbing sensation she felt as the box floated on the
surface of the water, she knew it wouldn’t be long before the cardboard soaked
through and the box disintegrated. Water seeped between the gashes in the tape
and bubbled up through the slivers where the flaps came together. Without
really thinking about it, she braced her hands on the side of the box and
kicked at the ragged tape seam.

Two kicks did it. The seam gave,
water gushed in, and she sucked in a gulp of air as her weight pulled her into
the frigid water. She kicked out, toward the light. She surfaced and saw the
moss-covered steps. She tried not to think about the water and its curiously
oily feel. Her fingers glided over the furry surface of the moss, then slipped
away and she sunk lower.

Zoe kicked herself up and tried
again, this time aiming for the top step, the one out of the water. She burst
through the surface and blinked water away from her eyes, then froze, the water
dancing around her shoulders.

Stefano had his good arm around
Jack’s neck and was squeezing his throat in a chokehold. Francesca barked an
Italian command that finally seemed to penetrate Stefano’s thoughts. He
released Jack and Francesca stepped closer, the gun aimed at Jack’s head.

Francesca was going to do it. She
was going to shoot him. She was past caring about the blood and any traces of
their presence. Zoe tried to scream, but the sound came out as a rough cough
instead.

Suddenly, Roy tilted up on one
shoulder. Zoe caught a flash of his waxy-colored face, a grimace of pain
twisting his mouth. His hand shot out, grabbed Francesca’s ankle, then he
dropped back. As he fell back, he yanked her foot out from under her. She went
down hard, her head slamming against the stone.

No one moved for a second; the only
sound was Roy’s raspy breathing and the slap of water against the stone steps.
Francesca’s face was turned toward Zoe, and she could see a thin trickle of
blood emerge from Francesca’s lips.

Jack levered himself up, plucked
the gun from her limp hand. Stefano spun and ran toward Zoe. She cringed back
down into the awful water, but he sailed over her head, landing in the water
with a splash that sprayed over Zoe and half the stone floor.

Zoe dragged herself up the steps
and collapsed on the stone floor. Stefano’s noisy splashes sounded behind her
as he swam clumsily toward the canal door with his one good arm. Zoe thought
about standing up, but decided to stay put because her limbs suddenly felt
useless and trembly.

Jack stood over Francesca for a
moment, and then he leaned down and pressed his fingers on her neck. He
straightened slowly as if every inch of movement hurt. He glanced at Roy, who
hadn’t moved from where he’d dropped back to the floor. Jack shook his head
once. Roy closed his eyes as if he already knew Francesca was gone.

Jack pulled his black sweater over
his head maneuvering it around the gun with ease, switching it from hand to
hand as he stripped the sweater off his arms. He wadded it up and moved to Roy
where he squatted down, then pressed the sweater to the wound on Roy’s chest.
Roy made a flicking motion with his fingers toward Zoe. Jack stood but didn’t
move, his gaze still fixed on Roy.

Jack had on a gray T-shirt that
he’d worn under the sweater and seemed to be considering taking it off, too,
and adding it to the sweater, but Roy said, “Go on. I’m fine.” His voice was so
faint that his words were a whisper that Zoe caught more by reading his lips
than by hearing him.

Jack crossed the room to her, the
gun held loosely in one hand. He was scuffed with dirt and grit and blood.
There were welts on his arms and across one cheek and a deep red color ringed
his throat where Stefano had choked him. He had several gouges on his face and
a deeper cut over his eyebrow. She saw all of that in a sort of hazy
out-of-focus peripheral way because the only thing she was really focused on
were his eyes. There was a fierce, determined glint in them, but there was
something else that Zoe couldn’t identify as he locked his gaze on her. Zoe
didn’t think she could have looked away if she wanted to.

But she didn’t want to look away.

He tucked the gun into the back
of his waistband as he walked, then reached down and pulled her to her feet.
He’s going to kiss me
, she
realized, and then his lips were on hers and she couldn’t form one coherent
thought.

It was like the time when she was
a kid and touched the exposed wires when her stepdad was remodeling. Except
this wasn’t a little jolt of electricity. Something sparked when their lips
touched and that energy fizzed through every inch of her, all the way down to
her wobbly knees.

He lifted his head and Zoe
blinked. There were other things going on...important things, she knew, but at
the moment, she didn’t care about any of them. She didn’t remember wrapping her
arms around him, but she was gripping his shoulders as tightly as she’d grabbed
the stone step when she pulled herself out of the water, which was a good thing
because if her legs had been shaky before, she probably needed a wheelchair
after that kiss.

His face looked the same as
always, tightly controlled, but there was something about his eyes, a softness,
a tenderness that surprised her. “Roy called the police,” he said, his breath
uneven and his words ragged.

“That’s all you have to say?” Zoe
said, leaning back against his arms, against the solidness of his hands on her
back and shoulders. “After a kiss like that?”

“A kiss should never require
explanation,” he said, then his face turned serious. “I’m afraid to say
anything else.”

That caught her off guard. Jack,
afraid?

“I thought you were unconscious,”
he said. “When that box went in the water...I thought...” he swallowed.

“But I wasn’t,” she said lightly,
but decided she couldn’t let him get off too easily. “Serves you right. Now you
know what it’s like—thinking someone is dead. Not so great, is it?”

“No, not good at all.” He pushed a
strand of hair away from the corner of her eye. “They’ll be here any minute,”
Jack said.

“Who?” Zoe asked. If she stretched
up on her tiptoes she could kiss him. Despite her quivering legs, she thought
she could do it. In fact, she absolutely had to.

“The police. Roy will interpret.”
Jack closed the narrowing distance between their lips and kissed her hard. He
pulled away with a muttered curse. “Here’s the gun.” He pressed it into her
hand. “In case you need it. You shouldn’t. Safety is on.”

“Where are you going?” She asked,
suddenly feeling cold and exposed. She was dripping wet, a fact that hadn’t
registered at all, but now the air felt chilly. She began to shiver as her wet
clothes pressed against her goosebumpy skin.

“To get Stefano,” Jack said as he
worked one shoe off, then the other. “I’ll see you soon,” he said, then
executed a perfect dive into the water. He surfaced and swam to the canal door,
his arms cutting through the water in long, even strokes. He ducked under the
door and disappeared with a flick of his foot that kicked up a few drops of
water that landed at Zoe’s feet.

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Dallas

Tuesday, 4:45 p.m.

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“AND that was the last time you
saw Jack Andrews?” Sato pushed back from the table, arms crossed over his
chest, a look of disbelief on his face.

“Yes.” Zoe leaned back against the
uncomfortable plastic chair and mirrored Sato by crossing her arms. “No matter
how many times you ask me these questions, my answers aren’t going to change.”
She looked around the small room with its gray walls and bare office
furnishings, marveling that she’d actually been glad when the Italian police
had escorted her to the airport and told her she’d been booked on a flight back
to the States. If she’d known Sato would meet her at the airport, she might not
have been so relieved. That had been a week ago, and she’d been asked to
“clarify” her statement several times.

‘I know you don’t believe me, but
it’s true. He went after Stefano and didn’t come back.”

Her throat prickled, and her
vision blurred. She swallowed and blinked a few times. She didn’t want to lose
control of herself, especially not in front of these two men. The older man was
here, too, leaning against the wall on the other side of the room. “Has there
been any word from the Italians? Any sign...” she asked.

Sato shook his head. “Nothing.”

She bit her lip.
I’ll see you soon
. Those had
been his last words to her. Apparently, his last words ever. She’d been allowed
to read the English translation of the Italian police report. Several witnesses
had reported seeing two men in the canal—struggling as they surfaced. They plunged
under the water, then reappeared and disappeared below the surface several
times. The observers thought one man was trying to save the other, but that the
second man had panicked and was fighting his rescuer. Witnesses reported the
men went under for a final time for at least two minutes. One body, Stefano’s,
surfaced. There was no trace of the other body.

She realized Sato was speaking and
tried to concentrate on him, pulling her thoughts back from Venice. “You must
realize, Ms. Hunter, that we find it an extremely odd circumstance that Mr.
Andrews has disappeared in almost exactly the same way he attempted to fake his
death after the murder of his business partner. A presumed drowning without a
body is very convenient for him.”

“What are you saying? That you
think he’s not dead?” Zoe said, aggressively. The same thought had crossed her
mind. She’d thought about it several times, especially on that long flight back
to the States, but each time she’d immediately pushed it away.

After Jack dove in the water in
pursuit of Stefano, she hadn’t expected Jack to return to her side right away,
and those first few hours had been a blur of rapid Italian, broken English, and
Roy’s somewhat garbled translation and explanation. By the time Roy had been
strapped to a gurney and transmitted (via ambulance boat) to the hospital, the
authorities were looking at Zoe as more victim than villain. When the sun set
and Jack hadn’t come loping into the roped off crime scene, Zoe felt the first
pricks of unease.

He would come back, she told
herself. He’d said he would. But after the flutter of activity around the
removal of Stefano’s body from the canal died down, the Italian authorities
became even more tight-lipped with her when she asked about Jack. By the next
morning, she’d retreated into a protective shell, emotionally shutting down. If
she didn’t think about it, she didn’t have to deal with it.

The investigator’s questions
didn’t stop, but someone must have eventually come to the conclusion that she
really had been accidentally caught up in the mess. After the Italians shipped
her home, she had to go through the whole thing again with the American
authorities, who consisted mostly of Sato and his older, quieter partner.

She’d existed in a numb state,
keeping anything remotely emotional at a distance, but Sato’s prodding had
cracked her façade. She was as surprised as Sato that it was anger that oozed
out of her carefully constructed shell instead of grief. Sato didn’t respond to
her anger. He lifted a shoulder. “You must admit it’s a possibility. That he
has tried it again.”

“How could that even be a
possibility? There were witnesses. It happened in a canal in Venice with people
draped over the scenic arched bridges. How could he simply disappear?”

“Your husband was a highly trained
operative.”

“Ex-husband,” Zoe said sharply.
“And he wasn’t an agent anymore. He hadn’t done anything like that in years.”
She sat up straighter in the chair. “This is the third time you’ve asked me to
come down here in five days. Surely you’re not going to request I come down
here every few days, are you?”

“Just clearing up a few details,”
Sato said, his voice mild. “In fact,” he opened a file and placed a single
sheet of paper in front of her. “We have a new development.”

Columns of numbers filled the
printout, blurring together. “What is this?”

“GRS’s bank account. Note the last
transaction in this column,” Sato said, pointing at the bottom of the page
where the balance showed a long string of numbers.

Zoe frowned, picked up the paper,
and scanned the entry. “That’s a deposit...and the date...twelve million dollars?
Yesterday? It was deposited yesterday?” She wasn’t making any sense, but she
couldn’t get the words to come out coherently. “How could that happen? Jack and
Connor are both...gone. Where did it come from?”

Sato looked at her a long moment,
then said, “Apparently it was a computer error.”

“What? What are you talking
about?”

“The bank has researched this
account and discovered that twelve million dollars was transferred by mistake
to Jack’s personal account. They have corrected the error and replaced the
money.”

“But...you said that the money had
disappeared from Jack’s account, too. Where was it transferred?”

Sato plucked the paper from her
hand and shuffled it into the file, a trace of huffiness in his movements. “We
are tracing it, but it is back now. Frozen,” he added in a stern voice that
indicated he expected her to run down to her local bank branch and ask the
teller for a withdrawal slip the moment she left, even though she didn’t have access
to Jack’s business account. “Did you have any knowledge of this transfer,
either the initial transfer from GRS’s account or the subsequent transfer out
of Mr. Andrews’s account?”

“No,” Zoe said, drawing back from
him, her forehead wrinkling as her eyebrows crunched together. “I don’t know
anything about that.”

“What about the transfer back into
the GRS account yesterday?”

“How could I know about that? You
just told me.” Sato stared at her, so she continued, “I don’t have access to
that account. I don’t know what’s in there.”

Abruptly, Sato stood. “Thank you
for your time,” he said, every syllable conveying anything but thanks. “We’ll
be in touch.”

“When?” Zoe asked, standing as
well. “Should I mark down a certain day on my calendar each week? Mondays are
always terrible. Should we just get it over with then?”

The older man pushed away from the
wall. “That won’t be necessary,” he said, opening the door. He exchanged a look
with his partner. Sato left the room without looking back. His partner gestured
for Zoe to precede him out the door, saying, “I’ll walk you out. I don’t think
we’ve met, officially.” He extended his hand as they walked down the narrow
gray hallway. “Special Agent Mort Vazarri.”

Zoe took his hand. “You already
know my name. And probably more about me than I know about myself,” Zoe said,
not quite sure why she threw the quip in there. If she’d said those same words
to Sato, she was sure there would have been a bite, a bitterness in her tone,
but this guy, Vazarri, seemed different. Despite Sato’s suave, stylish
exterior, his attitude broadcast his bloated opinion of himself. Vazarri didn’t
have any of that. There was something about his face, a kindness, a reserve,
which suggested he hadn’t marked her down as “accomplice,” as Sato seemed to have
done.

“Call me Mort,” he said.
“Everybody does.”

He led her through the corridors
of cubicles and offices. As they neared the lobby, Zoe said, “Can I ask you a
question, um, Mort?” It felt a little awkward using his first name, but he’d
just asked her to use it, so it would have been weird to use his last name.

“Sure,” he replied, pausing in the
hallway, his tone easy and relaxed.

Zoe wasn’t sure if Sato
and...Mort...were intentionally going for the good cop versus bad cop routine, but
even if they weren’t, she certainly felt more comfortable with Mort. This might
be her only chance to get some of her questions answered. Despite her woolly,
disengaged state, during the last few days, thoughts had been popping up at
random. She’d pushed them away and snuggled back down into her cocoon of
detachment, but she knew those questions wouldn’t go away. They’d always be
there and Sato’s insinuations that Jack might be alive had shaken her up and
broken through the protective layer of disassociation. “The memory card...were
you able to locate it? I told the
Polizia
that it had to be on the bottom of the canal somewhere near where I went in the
water.”

Mort raised his eyebrows slightly
as if her question surprised him. He probably expected her to ask about Jack.
But she wasn’t going there right now. She was firmly back in denial land.
Thinking about anything related to Jack was an emotional quagmire anyway she
looked at it.
Nope, not going
there right now
.

Mort seemed to pick his words
carefully. “Several items were recovered, including a memory card.
Unfortunately, it was too corrupted to extract any data.”

“I see,” Zoe said, her mind racing
faster than it had in days. “What about Eddie? Have you...talked to her? Do you
know where she is?” A tremor of fear pulsed through her. The number of people
involved in this little drama had plunged. Besides herself, there was only Roy,
who was tucked away in some Italian hospital following a lengthy surgery, and
Eddie. Zoe had no doubt that Eddie would spin all sorts of stories, implicating
anyone but herself in the events of the last few days.

“I, personally, haven’t spoken to
her. She’s in custody in Las Vegas. Interestingly, there were several memory
cards at her place of business, all with sensitive information on them. I can’t
say much more than that.” Mort resumed moving down the hallway. “There’s an
article in today’s
Sentinel
by Jenny Singletarry. You might want to check it out.”

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HELEN hurried across the lobby,
her silk shirt rippling and her high heels clicking. A pair of black Michael
Kors jeans—it was casual day—completed her ensemble. “How did it go?”

Zoe shrugged. “The same, I guess.
They asked questions, I answered.” She didn’t mention the bombshell Sato had
dropped about the money or his questions about Jack. Helen was still having
trouble adjusting her perception of Jack. “You didn’t have to come with me,”
Zoe said as they walked to the car.

“Right. My best friend is being
questioned by the FBI for the third time this week, and I’ll just hope it goes
okay. Right.”

“I do appreciate it,” Zoe said as
they came out of the building and a blast of muggy air buffeted them. “Can I
borrow your phone?” Zoe asked. Her cell phone had gone into the canal with her,
so she figured it was either still in the canal or, if it had been fished out
of the water along with the memory card, it was locked away in some Italian
evidence holding area.

Getting a new cell phone had been
low on her priority list. An extremely long shower followed by hours of sleep
had been her only real desires after leaving Sato and Mort’s original
interrogation, but it was obvious she needed to return to the real world, and
purchasing a cell phone was just one thing she needed to think about. Getting
her car back from Vegas was another. She hoped it was still parked in the
parking garage at The Venetian.

“Here you go,” Helen said, handing
her the phone, then digging in her carry-on sized purse for her keys.

By the time Helen pulled out of
the parking lot and merged onto the freeway, Zoe had found the article. She
scrolled down, squinting in the bright sun to read the text, then she dropped
back against the seat. “Eddie and Francesca were involved in identity theft,”
she said.

Helen blended seamlessly into the
fast lane, then cut a glance at Zoe. “Are you sure? Identity theft? I mean, I
know it’s a problem, but murder?”

“Local Businessman’s Death Tied to
International Identity Theft Ring,” Zoe said, reading the headline aloud. “This
is by the same reporter who dug up the truth about GRS. Her track record is
pretty good, so I bet she’s right on this, too. This wasn’t a few names or
credit card numbers for quick hits of cash or goods.”

Zoe scrolled down the article and
read, “The thieves specialized in providing deluxe identity
replacement—histories going back five to ten years with job records, medical
histories, bank accounts, utility bills, even mortgage records, all for fifteen
to twenty thousand dollars a person. ‘
Clients
,’”
Zoe smirked as she read the word, “could choose from a variety of locations
within the United States for their new identity. There was even a special
family package. The innovative ID thieves kept their on-line activities to a
minimum, never receiving or sending data digitally, relying instead on couriers
to shuttle the information back and forth from Venice, their home base to
various distribution points around Europe, the United States, and Canada.”

Helen tilted her head in
acknowledgement, her gold hoop earrings glittering as they swayed, “Okay, that
sounds lucrative. No wonder Francesca picked Venice. It’s an international
destination—about as far away as she could get from Naples, but still be in
Italy, and there would be lots of tourists. Her couriers could slip in and out
easily, and someone like Eddie with her Venetian glass business would have a
legitimate reason to travel there on business. No wonder they were partners.”