Chapter 13
En route to Pescara, Italy
“Are you serious right now?” He fisted his hand and banged it against the steering wheel, furious she had defied him. “I told you—two conditions—”
“My dad has several of these. They work. My phone cannot be tracked. But I also turned off the Wi-Fi, GPS, and tracking at the house.”
“Holy fire. What’re you thinking, Gelato?” He ran a hand over his shorn hair, panic growing thick, deep roots in his gut.
“Are you even listening? Or are you just in panic mode?”
“After all I’ve done to make sure we’re safe…of all the… I cannot believe you’d do that.” Doing his best to stifle the rage—and dig into that trust he’d been so cavalier about earlier—he eyed the protective sleeve. Breathe. Breathe. “You’re sure that thing works?”
“Of course. My papà uses them. Has several in the house for various devices.”
Dillon pulled the car over and nailed the passenger side window control. “Toss it. Do it!”
“No! You are being ridiculous!” Cove yanked the phone away from his reach. “Look, I did not have to tell you—and I am starting to wish I had not. But this is the only thing I have with any semblance of—”
“You’re going to have nothing if they track us—and they will because this thing with your dad and mine? It’s bigger than some thug with a grudge. They’ll find us, kill us, then destroy that. Is that what you want?”
“Of course not. But it is safe. I promise.” She set a hand on his forearm. “Trust me, Dillon.”
“I wish I’d never told you my name.”
“Why?” Hurt plagued her word.
“Because.”
“You asked me to trust you going into the tunnel, going back to the house… And now I am asking for trust too.”
He muttered an oath. Hated himself for cursing, but he had this jacked feeling they were about to have trouble breathing down their necks. “You broke one of the Rules, Gelato.”
“Which one?”
“Unity.” He thumped the steering wheel again and slumped back with a huff. “We do things together, talk about them. Agree on them. I can’t protect us from what I don’t know about.”
“Is that the same unity that had you leaving me in the Land Cruiser while you went in search of food and found Signora Barbieri’s house?”
“You were sleeping,” he said miserably.
Her brow winged up as she gave him a strange look.
“You needed the rest,” he defended himself and pulled back onto the road.
She touched his arm, something she seemed to do a lot—he wasn’t mad—and eased closer.
“Please take this as my trying to be open and honest with you. I could have hidden it, but it was eating at me. And I was afraid you would find it and think the worst of me. But…I cannot throw it away, Dillon. It is all I have—there is a video on here of the warehouse.”
He stretched his jaw, even as she signaled him onto the access of the autostrada. Man, he could not stay mad at her, even when she seemed to deliberately lay a trap for a diversionary discussion. “What warehouse?” he made himself ask.
“I’m glad you asked,” she said softly with a mischievous grin.
Rolling his eyes, he knew he was in trouble. Had to harden that protective cover around his heart because this woman could probably ask him to jump off a cliff and he’d do it.
“Two and a half years ago,” she began as they merged onto A1/E35, “I was in Yemen with my papà. GIS was building warehouses down there. Even then, I did not trust Enzo. I overheard him talking on the phone, saying something about weapons.”
Dillon frowned at that, recalling the Houthi rumor with getting those warehouses up a year ago.
“That was my reaction too,” she said. “So that night, when I spotted him leaving the resort, I trailed him.”
“You don’t value your life much, do you?”
Cove gave him a disapproving glare.
“Did you miss that they were talking about weapons?”
“Did you miss the part where I am still alive, so I clearly survived?”
“You’re trouble, Gelato.”
She gave an exasperated sigh. “Santo cielo, would you let me tell you the story?”
Amused at how worked up she got, Dillon had to fight the smirk.
“I followed them,” she ground out, “and it was…crazy. I took photos and a video on my phone of who went in and who came out. There was an explosion—”
That yanked his gaze to her again.
“Yes, see? Things got pretty crazy, but nothing came back on GIS or Papà. In fact,” she said, quirking her head, “nothing came of anything.”
“So, you don’t know why he went to the warehouse? Or what the explosion was?”
“No. It was all so terrifying—so much I did not understand. It scared me. I was too afraid of being caught, that maybe it would come back on Papà.”
“So what was happening in the warehouse?”
Her gaze went distant. “I…do not know. But later, that’s when the reports of corruption tied to Yemen started happening.”
“And your dad didn’t know about this meeting?” Was he supposed to believe that?
“They were not on his books—I handled those, so I know.”
“Like I said, things like that wouldn’t be on appointment planners.”
“True, Papà did not know about the meeting. He was there later. I have it all on my phone.”
Dillon couldn’t believe he was going to say this… “If we can find a place to power up that phone securely, I’d like to see those images or video.” When she didn’t answer, he glanced at her. Found her smiling. “What?”
“Nothing,” she said quietly. “I would like your thoughts on what I recorded. From a military, tactical standpoint. I…just have this feeling about them.”
After a few more highway changes and another 1.5 hours, they made it to the port in Pescara, where Cove directed them to a dock. They grabbed her backpack and the remnants of the food Signora Barbieri prepared for them, and walked down the dock.
“I do not think it wise to use the yacht,” Cove said, squinting back at him as she led him onward. “The Ilaria is probably better. It still has GPS, though.”