Chapter 13
Noah canceled out the protection on the shield lenses as he shoved his way through the room, but didn’t see the distinctive, flower-like pattern of Caro’ s sig anywhere.
Some scholar was winding up her multimedia presentation. The room erupted in wild applause.
He’d known this thing would go sideways. Known it in his balls, but he’d ignored it. And now look at him. Caro lost, and him with no gun, dressed up in a goddamn tux and running around the Renaissance funhouse from hell. What the fuck had possessed him?
He had his own personal curse. It blew whatever Orazio’s cross was cursed with right out of the water. Evil, danger, and death followed him everywhere.
And Caro would be next.
Something terrible was about to happen. He felt it in the air. He had to find Caro. Get these people away from that fucking fake cross. It had t o be the cross.
The scholar was smiling broadly as she acknowledged the applause. Morelli was next to the dais now, whispering urgently into Lella’s ear but Lella just stared back at the younger man, a blank, clouded expression on his disfigured face. Mo uth still open.
Obviously frustrated, Morelli stepped up onto the dais and shouldered the woman at the lectern aside. She looked outraged as Morelli leaned down into the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen, signore e signori. ” His voice was hard-edged. “I regret to inform you that we have a security problem. We must now ask you all to leave the room immediately, in a calm and orderly fashion.” He repeated the same phrase in Italian and then switched back to English. “If those closest to the door could exit now, to make way for the rest of us? Please.”
Stefano’s sig was blazing around him. A hot orange glow, well defined. Typical of an aggressive, organized person. Marked with alarm and stress, but not enough to compr omise function.
Then Noah looked at Lella…and suddenly sto pped breathing.
The glow of colors around the man’s body revealed a huge, ragged dark hole. As if black mold had eaten away at it. Someone had suppressed that guy’s brain and was remote-piloting him. There was a dark red hot spot on the side of his skull. The crawling toxic blackness seemed to oo ze out of that.
Oh shit. Lella had an implant in his head. It was fucking with him. Hard.
Lella followed Morelli up onto the dais, lurching and stumbling. He tripped and almost fell, like a man carrying an unacc ustomed weight.
Because he was. Literally. The man was bigger than he’d been this afternoon. He’d been stocky to begin with, but right now, he looked as bulky a s a linebacker.
The rotting dark hole in Lella’ sig grew larger by the second. Something was happening inside the man’s brain right now, like an aneurys m, or a stroke.
And what the fuck was that red spot on his skull? It glowed like a hot coal. Fl aring brighter…
As did Noah’s horrifi ed realization.
Fuck. Orazio’s cross wa s not the bomb.
Lella was.