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“Shit,” she mumbled as she sped up, but it was no use.
He was gone.
She made her way to the wall of a building and leaned against it. He would come back for her, wouldn’t he? Or had he ditched her to keep her from going to Allesio’s shop? He’d been opposed to her going there to begin with. The idea made her fume.
She pulled out the business card Umberti had given her and looked at the address. Maybe she could find it on her own. Plugging it into the GPS on her phone, it planned her route. According to the map, she wasn’t far from her destination. The only problem was, who knew if the phone would keep tracking.
Riss pushed off the wall and marched down the street. She followed the crowd for some time and got caught up in a tour group. GPS told her to take a left, and she found herself in another small alley. She followed it to the very end. Ten minutes later, she stood in front of a shop on a main thoroughfare. She wanted to pump a fist in the air. Her friends teased her about not being able to find her way out of a wet paper bag, and yet, here she was. In front of her destination. Satisfaction gave way to disappointment when she realized that Cash wasn’t waiting for her. She’d hoped…
She grimaced. Going in on her own was not what she wanted. Umberti freaked her out. Still, she’d come this far and he might know more about Alicia and the family bible. Besides, what did she have to lose?
She squared her shoulders and walked into the shop.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Where the fuck did she go? She had been right behind him. How could he have lost her? Tension knotted his gut as he searched the crowd for any sign of her. How did that woman get lost in mere seconds? It was his own damn fault. He’d been so caught up in trying to keep a safe for work distance from her that he’d let himself get too far ahead. The gondola ride had damn near killed him. Being crushed against her like that was pure torture.
What the fuck was wrong with him? Women never did this to him. Never. Not one time that he could ever recall had he ever been this aware of, or distracted by, a woman.
There was no way she’d gotten this far behind. He studied the gathered crowd. Sweat broke out across his back when he didn’t spy her. Maybe she went into one of the stores? He worked his way back to where he assumed he’d lost her, glancing in store windows the entire way but Riss was nowhere to be found.
Shit. Her phone. He’d cloned it. He pulled out his own and brought up her phone then he used the phone locator app. He clicked find and waited. The dot showed on the screen but no map behind it. Seconds ticked by. Nothing. Fucking Venice with its lousy reception. If she was inside some store or down a dark alley, the GPS might not pick her up.
He glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes. She’d been gone for fifteen minutes. Sloppy. He was never sloppy. His days with the Army Rangers had taught him sloppy got people killed. “Fuck,” he snarled making several tourists jump and scurry out of his way. Not only had he lost her, but it had taken him precious minutes to remember he’d cloned her phone. Larissa Day was his kryptonite, no doubt about it.
Cash moved through the crowd like a hot knife through butter. Riss had gone to Umberti’s shop on her own. He didn’t need the GPS to tell him, he knew it in his bones. The woman was too fucking stubborn by half. He restrained the urge to run to catch up to her. It would do no good to appear at the shop all out of breath and out of sorts. Umberti would know just how much Riss meant to him. To Archer, he corrected himself. Riss was important to Archer.
He hung a left down a narrow alley. It wasn’t Riss that was important. It was the book. That was the real key. Riss was just…collateral damage. She was inconsequential. Shit. No matter how hard he tried to sell it to himself, he knew he was lying like a callow schoolboy with a crush. The moment she’d opened her mouth and said the word bible, Cash’s heart froze in his chest. Now she was the enemy. She was just another avenue to achieving his goal, just like Alicia had been. He fisted his hands as he weaved down the next alley. At least Alicia had known the rules of the game though. She understood he was using her to get the bible just as she was using him to protect her and help her. There’d been no illusions between them, even when it came to sex. They’d just fucked each other, with no other emotion than lust between them. With Riss—He stopped that line of thought with a rude snort, drawing the attention of a couple walking hand in hand and speaking rapid Italian. He nodded at them as he passed. Focus, you dumb fuck. Distractions get you dead.
He made a right onto another busy street and cut through the crowd. Riss was entirely different from the Alicia situation. She didn’t even know there was a game. She was caught up in something that was way over her head. Alicia’s death bothered him but not because he missed her. You had to like someone to miss them. He was annoyed because Alicia had out-foxed him. She’d left the residence without him knowing until it was too late. Cash’s job was to protect her and he’d failed at his job. She paid the ultimate price for it, but he’d paid, too. He’d lost his only lead to the bible.
Until Riss showed up. Now he had to protect her and get the bible. He’d failed miserably so far but once he found her again, he wasn’t letting her out of his sight. Failure was no longer an option.
* * *
“Hello?” Riss called out rather quietly as she stood in the middle of the shop. Only minimal light came through the large plate glass window in the front, leaving the interior shadowy, and downright creepy. On the tables running around the edge of the room, the cheap colorful masks that were all over Venice were displayed. But on the walls were works of art. Masks that were huge and glittered with gold and silver along with a riot of colors. Some were headdresses as well as masks. From those, feathers and jewels sparkled in the dim light.
Riss shivered as she turned in a circle, surveying the room. The glass display counter with the cash register was at the back of the small space. Books that looked to be old and, since they were locked behind the glass, she assumed expensive. She took a tentative step forward.
“Hello,” she called out again. There was a burst of laughter and she turned to see a bunch of young girls go strolling by the plate glass window.
“Riss,” Allesio Umberti exclaimed.
She whirled around to find him coming out from behind the counter. Where the hell had he materialized from? There was no door that she could discern but then the walls were black, so anything was possible.
She cleared her throat. “Mr. Umberti. How are you?” she mumbled, then winced. She needed a harder shell, and social niceties didn’t help her cause.
“I’m so glad you came to see me, Riss. I was just crushed over your sister’s death. She was an amazing woman. I’m sure she would have loved meeting you.”
The words rolled off his tongue but something in the way he said it made Riss pause. She wasn’t sure what made her intuition ping but it was a good reminder, not that she needed it, this man wasn’t to be trusted. There was a dark energy about him. Her adoptive parents used to roll their eyes when she’d said things like that out loud, but Riss had come to trust her instincts over the years and she knew fundamentally Umberti used people for his own benefit. She just needed to get what she could from him and get out of there.
“I would have loved meeting her as well,” she replied.
Umberti smiled. “Why don’t we go into the back and have a chat?” he turned and gestured for her to enter the darkness.
All the hair stood up on the back of her neck. Being alone with him was scary enough. Going in the back of the shop all by herself? Yeah, no. “Who will watch your shop? You can’t possibly leave it all alone,” she said, hoping he’d take the hint.
“I have cameras, my dear. I can watch the monitors in the back. It’s perfectly safe to leave the front of the shop empty while we chat.” He held out his arm and gestured once more for her to precede him into the darkness behind the counter.
