Chapter 12 #3
He squeezes my knee. “You did what you had to do, Story.” A pause. “We need to lose the phone, first thing."
"Obviously," I respond. "We'll leave it in the car. See if you can find something to write down the address and phone number with."
He rifles through the glove box and console, and comes up with an expired registration and one of those tiny pencils used for Keno or whatever.
He scribbles the information down, folds the paper several times, and shoves it into his hip pocket, and then powers off the phone and ejects the battery.
He tosses the battery out the window, and it clatters and bounces and vanishes down a storm drain; the phone itself follows suit, and is crushed under a tire and then several more.
"That works, I suppose," I say. "I had intended the phone to be a decoy."
He shrugs. "To what end? If that device was being tracked, then whoever's on the other end knows we're in Olbia near the docks.
This being an island, there's obviously only so many ways off—boat or plane.
Once the phone stops moving, they'll know we got rid of it. Having it in the car won’t buy us much extra time, if any. "
I pinch the bridge of my nose. "Yeah, true. Sorry, Killy, I…I'm not thinking clearly."
He squeezes my thigh. "We’re a team, Story. We cover for each other." He points, abruptly barking, "There!"
I slam the brakes and make the turn hard and sharp—it's a dead-end alley, just barely wide enough for a single car.
Except, as I turn down the short, narrow lane, it turns out to be an actual length of road running past a hostel, judging by the gaggle of wealthy white twenty-somethings clustered outside one of the buildings, with luggage and cell phones in hand.
Cars are parked nose-to-tail along the right side, facing both toward the dead-end and away from it.
I reach the end—to the left is a private garage, straight ahead a section of wall ten feet high, and to the right, the side of another building.
I make a multi-point turn-around and try to wedge the Dacia SUV behind the last car in line—it's not quite big enough, so the larger SUV doesn’t fit.
I leave it at an angle, not entirely in the space between bumper and wall.
It goes against the grain to leave the car parked like an asshole, but needs must, I suppose.
Killian stops me after I cut the motor—the key fob is in the cupholder. "Hey, hold up."
I frown. "We need to put distance between us and this car, Killy."
"I know. We will." He removes the vest and then his shirt, shrugs the vest back on over his bare torso, and then puts the shirt back on.
I eye him critically—despite the baggy shirt, he’s clearly wearing something under it. "That's…pretty obvious. And it's gonna chafe like hell."
He rolls a shoulder. "Sure to both, but what are you gonna do? I'd rather be obvious and chafey and have some level of protection against getting shot."
I sigh. "Not sure that's gonna fit under my scrub top."
The vests are full-size tactical ones, not the slimmer ones designed to be worn under law enforcement uniforms. I try anyway, wriggling out of my top and strapping the vest on over my sports bra, and then stuffing myself back into my scrub top.
I laugh at the result. "I look stupid, and it feels freaking terrible.”
"Yeah. But like I said, better to look and feel stupid and be able to take a bullet,” he says with a shrug. "This is a tourist town. I'm sure we can get you something else to wear. Those cats back there had quite a bit of cash between them."
"Oh?" I ask. "How much do we have?"
He digs handfuls of euros out of the bag, grinning at me sheepishly. "I just kinda shoved it all in there."
We work together to count and sort the brightly colored cotton-fiber banknotes.
"Eighteen hundred bucks," Killy says, tapping the stack square. "It's not nothing, but probably not enough to bribe anyone."
I blink. "Huh. You know, I've got no idea how much you'd use to bribe a customs official to let us through."
"Yeah, I don't know that I'd like to try that. Once you're at the point of being in front of a customs official, your options for escape are pretty slim if they don’t take the bribe.”
"True."
Killy's eyes are on the group of tourists. They've got ferry tickets, it looks like. I wonder if we can do some sort of get-lost-in-the-chaos move. Join their group, create some kind of scene, and slip on."
"That solves the ticketing and ID issue, but what about the bag of supplies?
There's no way we're getting all of that through security.
I don't like the idea of gallivanting around Italy unarmed with Pugli's goons after us. I’d rather find a different way to the mainland that lets us keep our guns. "
He nods, but doesn't otherwise answer. "Maybe we get a room?
" He glances at me, and then back at the group of young people, who seem to be getting ready to depart; one of them does a head count, and then sets off at the head of the pack, the rest following like goslings.
"We can get some new clothes and something to eat, and take our time figuring out a plan. "
I smirk at him. "Don't play, Killy. I know why you want a room."
He doesn't return my grin. "Abso-fucking-lutely true." He frowns, winces, tips his head to one side. "I just…I guess I wish we could explore this when we're not under duress."
"It's A1S tradition at this point, Killy. Everyone we love got together under duress." I cup his cheek. "And I'd venture a guess that wherever your sister is and whatever she's doing, there's a hunky fella involved somewhere."
Killian snickers. "A hunky fella? Okay, Ethel.”
I blink in confusion at his joke, and then the penny drops. "Is that another old joke, Killian Harris?"
“You said hunky fella, Story. Yes, it was. You're twenty-seven, not eighty-seven."
I pinch his cheek and adopt a creaky approximation of an old woman's voice. "Well, sonny boy, in my day, you showed respect to your elders."
He bats my hand away. "C'mon. Let's get a room."
I glance down at myself again. "I'm sorry. I just can't. This is ridiculous."
The vest under the scrub top is a joke. It's like the Chris Farley "fat guy in a little coat” skit from SNL, the scrub top stretched to its limit around the bulk of the tactical vest. I fight my way out of the top, remove the vest, and put the top back on, and then cram the vest into the backpack.
"I'll take my chances. I go in there looking like that, and they'll know something weird is going on, but no one will think twice about your shirt sitting weird.
" I huff. "Men have it so freaking easy, I swear to god.
You could walk in covered in blood and carrying a gun openly, and it would cause less of a ruckus than if I went in wearing tactical body armor under a scrub top. "
He frowns. "You're probably not wrong."
“No, I'm not."
He lifts my hand and kisses the back of it. "C'mon, fiancé. Let's go get a room."