It hovered for a moment right off the quarter panel of the sedan, then sped up, the two on the bike showing wide eyes as they left.
Knuckles said, “What was that all about?”
Brett snapped upright and said, “Which side is the gas tank fill?”
“What?”
“Which side is the gas tank fill!”
Knuckles looked at the display on his dashboard, saw the arrow, and said, “My side, my side. Why?”
Brett screamed, “Lock it up! Get out! Get out!”
Any other human on earth would have looked at Brett like he was insane. Fortunately, Knuckles was not like any other human on earth.
He slammed on the brakes hard enough to cause a skid. They skittered across the oncoming lane, hammered a guardrail, skipped back into their lane, and slammed into a retaining wall, crumpling the trunk.
Both snapped out of their seat belts and dove out of the car, crawling away on hands and knees. There was a small wump, then a gigantic explosion, lifting the car off the ground, the shrapnel of sheet metal splattering everything around them.
The car slammed back onto the ground, burning furiously. Knuckles scrambled backward, away from the fire, screaming, “Brett! Brett!”
He saw Brett on the other side of the car running toward him and patting out a fire on his arm. Brett reached him and collapsed, saying, “You okay?”
Knuckles took over the fire watch of his clothes, patting out the flames and saying, “Better than you, I guess.”
They both sagged into the concrete for a moment, hearing sirens in the distance. Brett rolled over and said, “This is going to be a shit storm.”
Knuckles pulled out his phone and said, “Yeah, it is. We’ve got about five seconds to get the Taskforce to backstop our cover as State Department.”
He dialed his phone, looking at Brett, amazed at how close they’d come to being eviscerated in the explosion. Brett went up on an elbow, checking for other damage to his body. He said, “Looks like Shoshana was right. Those fucks are out for blood.”
Before the phone connected, his voice turned grim. “Out for blood? They haven’t seen that yet. But they will, so help me God.”
Chapter 43
Lia Vairo went through the gate to her apartment complex, glad that it wasn’t later in the night. While the flat was hers free and clear from the divorce, it left a lot to be desired as a place to live.
All too often she’d come home from a late-night crime scene and had been confronted by youthful revelers out to have a good time. Students at the nearby John Cabot University or the American University rented all of the flats on her block, and routinely became annoying after the sun went down, but she’d never felt a threat.
Well, almost never. There had been a time or two where she wasn’t sure they were students, but instead castoffs preying on students and had seen her, deciding to prey on her.
She’d made short work of those youths and continued to enjoy her flat, free of any financial encumbrances. Tonight, she parked her car and entered the courtyard to her complex, thinking about the woman and man she’d met at the last crime scene.
The man called Pike was not from the United States State Department. Of that she was sure. She could feel the violence coming off him like a waterfall. But he didn’t hold her attention. The woman did.
She was something else entirely, like she could see the world through a different lens. Lia was intrigued, and wanted to hear what they had to say tonight.
She went past the guard shack, waving at the man inside. He waved back, completely useless. The complex was supposed to be “gated,” but all it really encapsulated was welfare for the guards who sat inside and did nothing.
She went up the stairwell to her flat, seeing the usual students out on balconies giving her catcalls, which she ignored.
She reached the second floor and saw three men on the stoop, one smoking from a vape pipe, like he was trying to re-create the beatnik era of the sixties. There was no reason for them to be here, because the steps ended at her apartment only, which aggravated her no end each time it happened.
They shuffled to let her go by and she entered her apartment, kicking off her heels and immediately freeing her breasts from a bra, tossing it to the side.
She poured a glass of wine and sagged back, checking the time.
She had about an hour before the two showed up. Unbidden, the investigation began running through her mind, an endless reel she just couldn’t stop. An unwanted feature of her job.
The guy was a killer who’d been extremely careless in the first three murders, but in the last, he’d been very, very careful. Like it was a setup for something. If in fact the last murder was his.
She began to do the same circle of analysis she’d done since the first murder. What if? What if? What if? She couldn’t be locked into a certain frame of thought, because if she did, she’d miss the killer. In point of fact, she couldn’t assume the final one was connected, even if the Israeli said it was. Although that woman seemed to have some knowledge, she did not, which is why she’d agreed to meet them.
Garrett parked his car down the street from Lia’s Trastevere apartment and surveyed the neighborhood. It looked like a bunch of students or other malcontents. It most definitely wasn’t an area of wealthy people that would remember his presence.
He exited and walked a couple of blocks to the gate of the complex, seeing several youths on the curb and a guard in the shack. He approached and, taking a risk, he said, “I’m here for Lia Vairo. She’s expecting me.”
The guard made no attempt to check the validity of his claim, instead looking at a computer and saying, “Apartment 2 F.”
He said, “Thanks,” and entered the complex. He went up one flight of stairs and saw a group of young men lounging. They muttered under their breath about him, and one actually rose up, as if he was going to challenge his ability to continue.
He saw Garrett’s eyes, and did not. Garrett started up, and then had a thought. These stairs ended at only one apartment. The inspector’s. He returned to the men and said, “Hey, you guys want to make a little money tonight?”
The one who’d thought about challenging him said, “Like, how?”
“I’m seeing my ex-wife tonight, and her new boyfriend might show up. I don’t want that to happen.”
He pulled out a wad of euros and said, “You keep anyone from coming up these stairs for an hour, and this is yours.”
The man said, “Give it to us now, and we’ll do it.”
Garrett peeled off some bills and said, “This is half. When I leave here, you get the other half.”
The man took it and, like he was in charge, said, “Okay. Nobody up. Nobody down. You got an hour.”
Garrett smiled and said, “If you fuck me, I’ll kill you.”
The man saw the evil in his eyes and realized he’d made a deal with the devil. He nodded and said, “I got it, I got it. We’ll be here. I promise.”
Garrett went up the final steps, the landing ending at a single apartment. He rang the bell and waited, a pistol hidden under his jacket.
The door opened and he saw Lia Vairo in her street clothes, but the shirt untucked and not wearing a bra, her nipples prominent in the button-up shear blouse.