First to Burn (19 page)

“Hang with me, Theresa.” He shifted her shoulders against his chest and reached around her to rattle the door. “This hill is a former Roman dump. Made of more than fifty million olive oil amphorae. Interesting, isn’t it?”

She struggled to raise her eyelids, prepared to tell him
no
even as he tucked her deeper under his arm and pounded the wood with the bottom of his fist.

The old man who opened the door barely reached her collarbone. When he saw Wulf, his squint changed to a grin and wide-armed hug. They chattered in Italian, but she didn’t care if they were twins separated at birth, because she’d detected the aromas of her mother’s house—garlic and onions and meat, all simmering and roasting. If these two characters didn’t move out of her path to that food, they might end up more crushed than Wulf’s ancient amphorae.

“
Cesare
,
mi scusi.
” Wulf drew her across the threshold. “
Permetto introdurre Signorina Theresa Chiesa.
”

The cook kissed her cheeks, and Wulf guided her to a chair at the back of the room. He fiddled with a freestanding screen until she wanted to yell,
Get on with it!
She’d had a long day, no lunch and she’d freaking killed a man today and would do it again—
see if she didn’t
—if they didn’t bring out that marvelous-smelling food
pronto.

Hot, damp towels arrived with the bread, shutting up the voice in her head. It stayed quiet while she savored antipasti, sliced meats, olives and a glass of Barolo.

“I’m ready,” she finally said. “Let’s start with the real medical story. No bull.”

Wulf stared at his bread plate and shook his head. “This isn’t the place.”

“You’ve said that before.” She popped an olive marinated with thyme and pepper in her mouth and worked the pit out with her teeth. “Ostia wasn’t the place. The car, with Joe-Jim in the trunk, wasn’t the place.” The slice of
culatello
between her fingers folded and clung to itself as she draped it over a piece of melon. “But we had some time to ourselves in the sewer. That would’ve been a good place to explain how you do your nifty healing trick.”

“I need more information.”

“About yourself? I don’t think so. Look, I followed you all day, broke several major laws.” A statement so absurd she almost choked on her next olive. “And I haven’t called the police because something makes me trust you.” Maybe because she’d seen his kindness with Nazdana and Meena. Or maybe because the other guys were the ones firing first.

“Is it the food?” He nudged the bread basket closer to her plate.

“I’m serious.” She used the look Sister Beatrice had bestowed on parents who skipped the Holy Names school auction. “I think the events of today have made security clearance issues irrelevant, don’t you? I’m done following that rule.”

“You have a crumb...” He touched a spot under his lower lip, where the skin made a dent above his chin. He didn’t politely look away while she dabbed with her napkin. Instead, crammed in this intimate corner behind a screen, he stared at her like she was breakfast, lunch and dinner, even though she felt more like an olive—briny, bordering on bitter.

“I won’t give up.” She took a gulp of wine to reinforce her resolution.

With a sigh, he swirled bread through the plate of olive oil. “I told you my team’s investigating heroin smugglers who use Black and Swan logistics.” He smushed the piece harder into the dish, as if stamping a passport. “The guns didn’t surprise me, but the tranquilizer was an unexpected move.” Saturated blobs broke off the bread. “Maybe I was wrong and this is personal, not army business, but either way, they’ve linked you to me.”

“But what is—” she curved her fingers to make air quotes, “—‘this?’ And why would ‘they’ be interested in you personally?”

“I thought the Ostia guy wanted to stop the drug investigation. Ditto the shooters. Clearly they’re involved in the drugs, because one of them was a former Black and Swan manager.” Abandoning the shredded bread in the olive oil, his hand covered his shoulder where she’d removed the syringe. “But that much ketamine. They have more information about me than they should. I need to know how they got it.”

This was her answer, the big one. Her fingers clenched the edge of the table as she forced herself to stay seated. “So what do they know that I don’t?”

“
Coda alla vaccinara.
” Cesare set a dish family style between them. It held steaming chunks of oxtail in tomato sauce studded with pine nuts and raisins.

“Saved.” The corner of Wulf’s mouth tilted as he slipped a plate in front of her.

One bite, then she’d press him again. The sauce had an underpinning of bitter chocolate she associated with Mexican moles after living in Texas. Maybe another bite. He wasn’t leaving.

“Did you have a laptop in your hotel room?” he asked.

“Unfortunately.” She scooped a forkful of the disintegrating meat and lush sauce.

“Did you have information on it about me?”

Her mother had emphasized that it was rude to speak while chewing, so she nodded.

The lines between his nose and mouth deepened. “I hope you merely raved over my excellent tour-guide services.”

She snorted and set down her fork. “Get real.” While she considered an explanation that didn’t sound
clinical
, she sipped her water. “I keep notes on medical situations and outcomes. Nothing scientific, no names.” Nothing like real research. Because the army had sent her to Darnell Army Medical Center at Fort Hood, Texas, after her residency, she’d never had a chance to compete with her medical school peers for a research fellowship.

“These people, whoever they are, they may want to capture me. To know more.”

So did she, but she wouldn’t kill—or die—for the answer, although she might whack him with an olive oil bottle. Apparently it wouldn’t hurt him for very long. “Look, I have a yes-or-no question. It’s really...”
Dumb.

He raised an eyebrow.

“Are you...” She stared at her cutlery. The question was crazy, influenced by her roommate’s choice of escapist reading. If she looked at his face, she’d never spit it out. “A vampire?” She glanced through her lashes.

“There’s no such thing.” His nostrils spread and his lips twitched. “Or, if there is, I’m not aware.”

Fine, he wasn’t a sparkly bloodsucker, but his answer sure as hell didn’t feel like the complete truth.

The restaurant’s front door jingled.

Chapter Sixteen

Immobilized, Theresa watched Wulf leap past the screen. He’d disappeared before his chair hit the floor. She half ducked under the table, expecting shots or crashing furniture, but then Wulf laughed and she recognized an Italian greeting.

In a moment he returned with a third chair and wineglass. Behind him, a dapper man in his early seventies wearing a subtle pin-striped suit and red-patterned tie paused to eyeball her. His mouth tightened until it looked unfortunately similar to a cat’s butt.

She could guess what he saw. Her black pants, soaked and dried in place, itched. She’d scrubbed her hands and face in the church bathroom, but her clothes deserved a burn barrel. Ditto her hair. Wulf wasn’t in much better shape. Dousing his hair in the sink and drying it with paper towels had only created cleaner snarls. He’d repossessed the leather jacket to cover his blood-soaked shirt, but the coat was unable to hide the dark splotches on his jeans.

“Theresa, this is a friend, Signor Lorenzo Rizzotti. Lorenzo, Captain Theresa Chiesa, a doctor with the United States Army.”

After the mention of her profession, Wulf’s friend’s mouth fell open briefly. “I will return later, sir, when you are less occupied. And not with your...doctor.” Despite his Italian name, Signor Rizzotti sounded like the BBC announcer on her hotel room’s radio.

“Don’t act bothered. I’m happy you received my second message about where to find us.” Wulf indicated the third chair, placed between their seats. “Sit, Lorenzo, and tell us what you know.”

“Sir!” As if shocked by the invitation, the other man stiffened.

Wulf grinned sideways at her. “This is how Deavers must feel when the team gives him the ‘sir’ treatment. Lorenzo, I’m not my brother.”

Wulf had a brother? Chris Deavers talked about his family constantly, and most of Wulf’s team had wives and kids, but she’d assumed Wulf didn’t have close family. What other mistakes had she made?

“Nevertheless, your situation imparts certain responsibilities.” Lorenzo emphasized the last word.

“Nevertheless?” Wulf’s grin grew as he locked eyes with Theresa. “Who replaced my Italian butler with an English major?”

“I attended Cambridge, sir. When your brother was—”

Wulf waved his hand at the chair. “Inside joke, my friend.” He leaned forward. “You dealt with everything I left in the garage?”

Lorenzo nodded, frowned and stared at the wall over their table, all at the same time.

“By the way, after we left the house, we were shot at, chased into the sewers and ambushed, so it’s been a long day. Let’s skip the formalities.”

“You trust her.” The flat intonation wasn’t a question. It was more like an accusation.

“I do,” Wulf said.

For Theresa, those two quietly spoken words rekindled the confidence that the older man’s disapproval had begun to squelch.

“So be it.” Lorenzo pulled reading glasses from a pocket inside his suit and laid several folded pieces of paper on the table. “The information you requested. Most of the numbers you gave me were easily traced, but for one I had to seek assistance from your brother.” His glance cut to Theresa. “At the time I was not aware...” He appeared to lack a word to describe her.

Too bad. She had a couple for him. She dredged up the expression she reserved for preteen smokers loitering at convenience stores.

Lorenzo adjusted his cuffs, as if to indicate,
Your glare is a mere speck of dust
, before he continued. “All the telephone numbers, less one, are mobiles. The Italian ones are disposables activated in Rome within the past forty-eight hours and purchased with cash. Two are American satellite phones that appear to be owned by a business.” His salt-and-pepper eyebrows raised to match the arches of an aqueduct lithograph on the wall. “Black and Swan.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised.” Wulf remained impassive. “And the landline?”

The dapper man harrumphed into his fist before he continued. “Your brother traced it through Polish number forwards and two Caribbean exchanges. He was not amused.”

“Is he ever?”

Theresa needed to hook a thumb under her bra strap and yank it into place, but the way the older man twiddled with his glasses, as if something as innocuous as a telephone number could disturb his world-class equilibrium, made her stifle the impulse.

“This number rings in an office in Langley, Virginia.”

Langley? She ought to know why that sounded familiar, but her mind blanked.

“Your brother requests that you cease and desist activities that intersect with the American CIA. I transcribed his quote verbatim. Let me find it.” He shuffled his papers. “Ah, yes. ‘Tell the puny milk-sucking idiot not to involve me, my resources or you—’ I believe he meant
me
, ‘—in this business again.’”

Wulf chuckled. “Tell my corporate-fat-licking big brother I salute his insult and would cheerfully exchange more over ale, if I weren’t busy earning an honorable living.”

“Of course.” Lorenzo cleared his throat and stood. “Will that be all, sir?”

“The man in the car.” Theresa’s voice cracked, but she had to know before he walked away. “What did you do with him?”

Lorenzo looked startled that the wordless bump would speak. “He is locked in the wine cellar.”

Laughing, Wulf tilted on his chair. “Hope you removed Ivar’s cases of Château Pétrus.”

“Sir,
I
am not a puny milk-sucking idiot.”

In the silence after Lorenzo’s departure, Theresa looked at the congealed chunks of gravy on her plate and realized her appetite had deserted her. Was the CIA on their side or not? What should they do? She still had her passport in her purse, but where could she go?

Again, Wulf read her mind. “We’ll take the rear exit.”

Because the restaurant had been dug out of the hillside, his plan made as much sense as dropping into the sewer, but she didn’t have a better one. She followed him through a stainless-steel door and an industrial-plastic curtain.

“A refrigerator!” Her feet slid on the metal floor.

“Relax.” His advice left a visible cloud in the freezing air.

She tried to ignore the red-and-white beef haunch he shouldered aside while he twisted an empty meat hook and immediately straight-armed a wall panel. It pivoted to reveal their path. Another. Damn. Tunnel. Every cell of her being balked. “Wasn’t the sewer enough?”

“I promise there’s a safe room and a bathtub at the end.” He handed her a flashlight from a niche. “I delivered on dinner, didn’t I?”

True, he had; more importantly, she wasn’t ready to be left behind.

As they walked down a slight incline, pieces of something bigger and more slippery than gravel crunched under her feet. Although the tunnel smelled old, like Great Aunt Mary’s living room, it was dry, which boded well for the room at the other end. She pictured cold beige tile and government-issue furniture, but it would be a secure space to clean up and rest.

Ninety percent of her believed Wulf could deliver hot water underground in an ancient landfill. The smarter ten percent focused on the key component of bathing:
getting naked.
Before she could decide which part to listen to, he stopped at a wooden door hung between massive beams and typed a numeric code on a keypad. A bolt snicked open. With the flick of a switch, he illuminated a large room. “Welcome to my parlor.”

“Isn’t that what the spider said to the—oh.” This wasn’t a sterile dormitory for American agents. As he beckoned her into a Renaissance fantasia, she understood why the fly had fallen for the fatal lure. A king-size four-poster anchored the right-hand wall, plum-colored velvet curtains trimmed in gold fringe matched tasseled pillows piled against the headboard and jewel-tone fabrics and polished wood filled the large room. The scene was the antithesis of the bland austerity she’d expected, and a manic need to giggle with relief expanded her lungs.

A few hours ago they’d been fighting to stay alive, and now...
those were gold tassels.

Inappropriate reactions were natural after a release of tension, but she suspected that if she started to laugh, she wouldn’t stop, so she looked away from the bed to the tapestries and gilt-framed landscapes that covered the walls. Above an empty pool in the floor, stacked semicircles of exposed pottery had been smoothed into undulating ochre waves.

Wulf turned knobs to make water cascade from a faucet shaped like a dolphin’s head. “It takes time to fill deep enough for bathing.”

The massive bath couldn’t distract her from the bed. She knew exactly how far behind her it lurked.

As he shrugged out of his jacket and shoulder holster, Wulf stared at her face. One by one he undid the buttons of his ruined shirt. He intended to strip. In front of her.

“Who are you?” Grime glued her clothes to her back as she tried, and failed, to ignore the water thundering behind him. The steaming hot and clean water.

“You know who I am.” He sat to unlace his boots. “Wulf Wardsen, staff sergeant, United States Army.” He reached under his pant legs to unclip his knife sheath and the contraption that had once held a flashlight.

“How gullible do you think I am? You’re no more an E-6 than I’m a Swedish supermodel.” Even with his head lower than hers and his body still in the chair, she couldn’t feel at ease, so she put another chair between them. “Yesterday you said you lie to everyone. Right now that’s all I believe.”

“I am what I do.” He offered her a neutral expression, neither threatening nor revealing.

“The fancy motorcycle, the dinners, that huge house.” She waved her hand at his opulent cave, wanting to prod until he reacted. “And this place. Where’d you get the money?”

“My brother’s an independent investor.” To unbuckle his belt, he stood. “He handles my finances too.”

Dinner soured in her stomach. She’d lived her whole life trying to distance herself from “independent investors” like her stepfather and his cronies. She’d tried to live by the ethics of her biological father, but one smoking-hot kiss and she wasn’t so different from her mother. “I refuse to have anything to do with a criminal.”

“So do I. I’m not one.”

She yearned to believe him, to let him put his rock-solid arms around her so she could rest her head on his chest and stop worrying. She wanted to trust the man standing in front of her wearing only tattered jeans, but she still didn’t know how to sort his lies from the truth.

“Take me to the airport.” She couldn’t look at him while she announced her decision or she’d waver. “I want to go back to Afghanistan.”

“With Black and Swan looking for us, you’re not safe there.”

“I’m not safe
here
.”
An understatement
. “So I might as well be there.”

“I can protect you.” He raised his voice louder than the water pouring into the pool. He’d lost his detached look and instead coiled as if he might spring.

“What the fuck?” She felt like she’d been centrifuged. Everything she knew and believed about herself as a doctor and about the army and its people had been spun on its head today. “I’ve spent years taking care of myself, and I could do it a lot better without getting mixed up in your problems. I’m out of here!”

His nostrils flared. “No.”

“Screw you!” He could keep his lies and mysteries. She flung herself at the door.

His hand shot past her shoulder to slap the wood as she grabbed for the handle. “You’re safer here.”

“Fuck off!” She jerked with both hands, and the door opened a few inches. But when her shoulder blades bumped his chest, his bare chest, she froze. The atmosphere was charged so high she feared any sound would ignite a conflagration. To her right, at eye level, nothing but his fingertips grazed the wood. Although she couldn’t move without brushing his body, if she wanted to leave, all she had to do was pull again.

They both knew he wasn’t to blame if she didn’t.

“You keep using those words. Like screw.” His voice had deepened and gone quieter. She only heard it because he stood close enough for his body to bracket hers. It was the voice he used before he kissed her. “And fuck.”

She fixated on the ancient wood in front of her face. If she twisted, if she shifted one millimeter, her body would connect with his and then she’d be lost.

“You said that word more than once, didn’t you?” He turned her around with hands that seemed to burn through the cotton of her shirt.

Pressing her temple into the wood, she closed her eyes against the penetration of his gaze lest he read how easily he could change her mind. She didn’t move, not when his fingers stroked the side of her neck. Not when she felt him lift her hair from one shoulder. She fought hard to suppress shivers, but she didn’t tremble, not even when he spoke so close to the bare skin at her throat that his breath swept across every nerve.

“Do you like to say
fuck?
Do you want to say it again, right now? To me?”

Her glutes and inner thighs clenched.

“I think you were trying to give me an order, weren’t you, ma’am?” He drawled the last word like he dared her to contradict him.

She pressed into the door, seeking something to grab that wasn’t him. The croak she made was hardly a word, so she tried again. “This is against the rules.”

“Wasn’t it you who said we’ve broken too many to care?”

She lifted her hands to push him but stopped with her wrists against her own aching breasts. Inches from her fingers, his nipples showed through the golden hair that proclaimed him a man. She had nowhere to look that he didn’t fill. And he was glorious.

“We have to stop,” she whispered in a voice so soft she didn’t recognize it as her own.

“Why?” He preempted her answer by wrapping his thumb and first finger around each wrist and raising her hands above her head.

Because if I don’t leave now
,
I’ll give in to you and I’ll lose everything I’ve worked for.
With her breasts higher and closer to danger, her breathing betrayed her excitement. She couldn’t form the words
let go
because her mouth had rebelled to join her body.

“I’m only looking.” He transferred both of her wrists to one hand.