Chapter Twelve #2
He reached toward her and stopped before touching her face.
The instinct to check her was so strong that restraining it required actual effort.
“Can I?”
Something shifted in her expression.
Then she nodded.
Taddeo placed his fingers lightly beneath her jaw and turned her face toward the emergency light, checking one temple, her cheek, hairline, throat. He slid his hand behind her neck to make sure no blood or glass had found its way beneath her collar.
Her pulse beat hard against his thumb.
For one dangerous second, everything else receded: gunfire somewhere above them, the man bleeding onto the floor, the stolen drive inside Taddeo's jacket.
Isolde looked up at him from inches away, breathing unevenly, and the memory of kissing her at Northglass arrived with enough force to make him remove his hand.
She kept watching him.
“You're shaking.”
Taddeo looked down at the gun in his hand.
It was steady. “I'm not.”
“Not your hand.”
He looked back at her.
Isolde's face was pale, but her attention was clear enough to make the observation impossible to dismiss as shock.
Taddeo stepped back. “We need to move.”
She looked past him toward the body.
He expected the blood to catch her attention again.
Instead, she focused on the identification badge.
“Taddeo.”
He knew that tone already. “What?”
“The badge is wrong.”
He crouched beside the body without touching it.
The card looked convincing. Crownport Maritime logo. Employee photograph. Barcode. Facilities designation.
“Looks current.”
“The template is.” Isolde came one step closer but stopped well away from the blood. “We redesigned them this spring. New photograph placement, harbor seal beside the barcode, department line below the name. Whoever made this copied the current design.”
“So what's wrong?”
“The color.” She pointed. “Facilities and maintenance are orange now. Conservation is blue. Curatorial gray. Administration burgundy.”
The strip along the dead man's badge was blue.
Taddeo looked back at her. “Old department assignment.”
“Yes. Whoever made it knew enough to copy the new badge but used information from before the color change.”
“Could they get that online?”
“Some of it. Staff photos, event pictures, maybe archived pages. But this wasn't someone walking in with a printed logo and hoping nobody noticed.”
No.
It wasn't.
Taddeo photographed the identification and rose.
The attack had been planned with enough care to defeat casual inspection, but not by someone who actually worked inside the museum. External preparation, combined with precise knowledge of Isolde's movement.
Bellandi information and museum research.
The combination mattered.
Marco's voice came over the radio. “Taddeo, report.”
“One down in the old inspection corridor. We're moving toward loading.”
“Interior team has one wounded hostile, one dead, one detained. We may have lost another out the rear before the perimeter closed.”
Taddeo's jaw tightened. “May have?”
“Rear camera died with the power. Exterior saw movement beyond the service gate but couldn't confirm.”
An escaped attacker could report three things that mattered.
Isolde was alive.
The Harbor Pilot had been opened.
And Corwin's hidden drive was now with Taddeo.
“Route?”
Isolde leaned toward the radio. “Exhibit prep. There's an old freight-transfer corridor behind it that joins loading near climate control.”
Marco answered, “Can you make it without crossing a public gallery?”
“Yes.”
“Do it. I'll meet you at plant access.”
Taddeo motioned forward. “Lead.”
They stepped around the body.
Isolde's pace faltered when she reached it.
Taddeo caught her elbow lightly.
She did not pull away.
He kept his hand there only until the dead man disappeared behind the brick corner, then released her.
They made the rest of the route quickly.
Isolde navigated through fire doors, exhibit preparation, and an older freight passage where unfinished displays stood beneath plastic covers and a replica mast threw distorted shadows across the wall.
Taddeo stopped trying to memorize every turn.
She knew this place, and for the next several minutes trusting her knowledge was safer than forcing his own control over it.
Marco opened the plant-access door before they reached it.
Blood marked one sleeve.
Taddeo's attention went there immediately. “Yours?”
“No. Paolo took one through the shoulder. He'll live.”
“Hostiles?”
“Two dead, one detained. Possible fourth exited rear.”
“Luca?”
“In position.”
“Then we're leaving. Nobody pursues outside the perimeter until Isolde is clear.”
Marco glanced toward her once before nodding. “Understood.”
The remaining service corridor ended inside the garage, where the sedan sat angled toward the exit with its engine running. Luca stood behind the open driver's door with his weapon held low.
Taddeo opened the rear door. “Get in.”
Isolde stopped beside him.
Her face remained pale, but some of the familiar irritation was returning now that they were no longer being shot at. “I'm capable of entering a vehicle without verbal assistance.”
“I know.”
“Then you can stop giving instructions for basic motor functions.”
“Get in anyway.”
She looked as though she considered arguing purely to punish him.
Then she got in.
Taddeo followed.
The sedan moved before the doors had fully settled.
For the first several blocks, Taddeo did nothing except look at Isolde.
She sat angled toward the window with both hands clasped together in her lap. There was blood on the sleeve of his shirt, though he wasn't sure whether it belonged to Paolo, the dead attacker, or a shallow cut across his own knuckles. Isolde had none on her.
He checked again.
Her face. Throat. Hands. Sweater.
No blood.
She caught him looking. “If you ask whether I'm hurt again, I'm going to become difficult.”
“You're already difficult.”
“I can expand.”
The answer was normal enough that some pressure inside his chest loosened.
Taddeo reached toward her face before thinking better of it and brushed away a tiny shard of safety glass caught near her hairline.
Isolde went still.
So did he.
His thumb remained against her cheek for half a second longer than necessary.
She leaned into the contact by barely perceptible degrees.
The response hit him harder than the kiss had.
He wanted to pull her across the seat and keep her there until the image of bullets striking her worktable finally stopped replaying in his head.
The need had very little to do with sex and too much to do with possession, reassurance, and the primitive conviction that proximity could make what almost happened impossible.
Taddeo lowered his hand.
Isolde's eyes narrowed. “You keep doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Touching me because you want to and then deciding you're not allowed.”
“This isn't a good time.”
“For what?”
He looked toward Luca in the front seat.
Isolde followed his gaze and understood. “I'm not proposing sex in the back of the car after a shooting.”
Luca's shoulders became visibly rigid.
Taddeo closed his eyes briefly. “That wasn't what I thought you meant.”
“You looked alarmed.”
“I was deciding whether Luca could drive while deaf.”
From the front seat, Luca said, “I'm extremely focused on traffic.”
A laugh escaped Isolde.
It was quiet and unsteady, but real.
Taddeo felt another knot inside him release.
When she looked at him again, the humor faded. “I meant you don't have to treat touching me like something dangerous because something bad happened.”
“That isn't why.”