Chapter 11
Noah looked up at the ornate cross of blazing gold that loomed over the room. Caro’s words had given him an ugly chill. “Maybe so,” he said. “I’m glad it’s not my problem. Consider this possibility, babe, even if it hurts you. Maybe Orazio just didn’t h ave the stuff.”
“No. I would have felt the energy he put into it. Even if his technique was weak.” She looked up at the cross again. “Which it is d efinitely not.”
Noah blew out a frustrated sigh. “This is ma king me tense.”
“Me, too. It would cost a fortune to make a fake that good,” Caro said. “Someone must have had a really comp elling reason.”
That thought made his neck crawl nastily. “Maybe,” he said. “But I don’t want to ponder that reason tonight. Let’s just go.”
She tightened her grip on his arm. “We should te ll them first.”
“Who, exactly? And tell them what? Why would they believe us? We’re not on their team. We’d just create a lot of confusion and possibly wind up in the de epest of shit.”
“Morelli, at least,” she urged. “He’s Asa’s friend. Ju st a heads-up.”
“I’ll text him from outside,” Noah conceded.
“Let’s tell him now,” she urged. “Something’s really wrong. Tell him now. I have a bad feeling.”
“Tell me about it,” he said fervently. “I’ve had a bad feeling ever since we g ot the invite.”
“I’ll text Morelli myself,” she offered. “Give me his number. Worst case scenario, he pegs me as the crazy lady making trouble. I don’t give a shit. I ’m used to it.”
Noah didn’t even dignify that suggestion with a response, but she wo uldn’t give up.
“It’s the right thing to do,” she coaxed. “Then we leave . Like a shot.”
“Right. Like it’s ever that easy.” He pulled out his smartphone and tapped in a succinct message to Morelli. cross is a fake. watch yr ba ck. He sent it.
Morelli’s attentive gaze ranged constantly over the room. Noah caught his eye, lifted his phone. Pointed to it.
Morelli reached into his pocket, read the text, and shot him a startled look.
He tapped his earbud, backing further away from the front of the crowd, speaking quietly to whoever was monitoring him. He texted something, and gave Noah a meaningful stare. The reply appeared on Noah’s display.
Go with security upstairs. I will join you a sap to discuss.
Fucking great . A nd so it began.
Several of the security guards were staring at them now. One who’d been posted near the dais was moving toward them, forcing his way roughly through the packed crowd. Big guy, a head taller than anyone around him. He loo ked unfriendly.
Noah pulled out the key fob for the rental car and dropped it into Caro’s evening bag. “Wait for me in the garden,” he murmured. “Keep a low profile.”
“I’d rather we st ayed together—”
“You wanted to text Morelli before we left, and I did it,” he said. “Now I want you to get the hell out of this building. Come on, babe. Hum or me. Please.”
She looked rebellious, and trapped. “Shit,” she whisper ed. “Not fair.”
“Right. I’ll text you. Go!”
Caro threw up her hands in frustration, but she went, slipping into the crowd with sinuous grace. She was soon lost to sight, and the shield contacts he wore blocked the frequencies of her sig. Still, some part of him kept frantically seeki ng them anyway.
Noah didn’t like the security guy up close any more than he had from a distance. Black hair, gelled back, cold eye s, lantern jaw.
“ Mi scusi, Mr. Gallagher,” the man said. “Signor Morelli requested that I escort you upstairs. Please com e with me now.”
“Sure, fine.” He clenched his jaw and followed. The quickest way out of this mess had to be straight through it. He could not wait to be done w ith this place.
Noah had already background checked this guard earlier this afternoon, at the security headquarters right after they arrived. Mirko Vilardi, Italian citizen. Like Morelli, Vilardi had served in an elite branch of the Italian military before going into security work. He’d been on Folti’s payroll for about nine months. He’d ch ecked out fine.
“Where is Mrs. Gallagher?” Vilardi asked.
“She went closer to get a better look at the cross,” Noah said. “Let’s leave her to it while w e go upstairs.”
Vilardi muttered into his monitor and led the way. He had no scruples about pushing and shoving, so they made rapid progress to the tune of indignant squawks and angry murmurings. Noah used the time to repeat the data-dive on Vilardi as he followed him through the crowded room, racing farther and farther back in time, when there was less information. Data flooded across his inner visual field as he followed Vilardi up the wide staircase to t he third floor.
Wait—what? It felt like a subtle speed-bump in his head when his AVP flagged an anomaly. Noah slowed the data-scroll and went back t o check it out.
The item in question was a high-school type photo on Facebook, taken on a class trip in 2003. A band of teenagers on a ferry to Greece. Same T-shirts on all. Liceo Tecnologico. So this thug had started out as a computer wiz. Go figure.
Vilardi stopped at a door part way down the third floor corridor, murmuring into his mic, not for Noah’s benefit. “ Sì, signore… we are at the blue room…yes, I understand.”
He studied the photo, enlarging it on the screen that his AVP projected onto his field of vision. Vilardi was tagged in the photo, but Noah didn’t immediately spot a younger version of Vilardi’s face in it as he followed the other man through the door. There were several burly dark teenage boys in the picture, but they were tagged wi th other names.
Then he caught it. The boy tagged as Mirko Vilardi was a shrimpy, skinny kid with wispy blond hair, light eyes, no eyebrows. A pale face that was mos tly beaky nose.
He definitely wasn’t a young Lantern-Jaw. Not by any stretch of t he imagination.
Different boy. Stolen identity? Fuck.
That was all the thinking he got to do before Vilardi spun around and whipped a blackjack do wn at his head.
Noah swerved and blocked, slamming the guy’s arm upward with enough force to shatter the bones in Vilardi’s forearm. The man let out a harsh, startled sound and the blackjack flew, cracking against the carved stone mantel of a big fireplace.
Vilardi came at him again, grimacing. A knife was now in his left hand.
Noah moved, keeping the other man dancing around him. Didn’t take long to find an opening. A front kick to the guy’s broken arm and Noah darted forward as his opponent grunted in agony, got in close, and seized the guy’s knife hand. Crus hing, twisting.
Noah barely heard Vilardi’s hoarse shriek as more bones splintered and tendons tore. He wasted no time, picking up lethal momentum on a savage rush a cross the room.
He slammed Vilardi’s head into the wall. A sharp crack —and Noah let the man’s limp body drop to the floor. Vilardi’s forehead was a bloody mess that matched the gory red splotch on the cream- colored marble.
He was still breathing, but he was out of the game. No need to both er killing him.
Noah picked up Vilardi’s knife. Crashing applause was still coming from the Sala dell’Annunziata. No one had heard the noise, not through these thi ck stone walls.
Caro had texted him a bunch of question marks. He was about to text back, confirm that she’d gone out to the garden when he caught the murmur of agitated male voices coming from downstairs with his augmented hearing. He filtered them out of the general roar and hum emanating from the Sala.
Two men talking in English as they ran up the stairs. “…Vilardi?” one muttered into his earbud. “Where the fuck are y ou? Answer me!”
Great. Vilardi’s pals, come to lend a helping hand.
Noah darted into the next doorway just as they reached the top of the stairs. He could have simply flattened them on principle, but screw it. All he wanted was to find Caro and get the hell out of this nuthouse.
He waited until they were inside the room and focused on their fucked-up friend before he sped silently past that door. He took the stairs wit h flying leaps.
A sense of desperate urgency grew inside him by the second. If someone was prepared to kill him just for sounding the alarm about the fake cross, then something was about to happen in the S ala. Right now.
Which was a goddamn deathtrap with all those clueless people packed into it.
Sheep in a pen, ready for the slaughter.
And Caro right in th e middle of it.