AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No, no.” He waved his hand and closed his phone, setting it down on the table top.
“Buenos dias.” He hurried away, dumped the plates in the kitchen, and walked from the hotel, through the grounds, and out onto the road. With every uneven step he took, he ran through the conversation again in his head. Someone was here, asking after Vitari. That had to mean this life was already over.
He checked over his shoulder. Nobody followed. His heart thumped in his throat. He didn’t want it to be over, not yet. But Vitari was supposed to be dead, so why then would a Spanish man be asking after him?
Unless he worked for Giancarlo.
Giancarlo knew his son wasn’t dead. Because Francis had told him.
He still believed calling Giancarlo had been the right thing to do. A father had a right to know their son was alive, even if that father happened to be as horrible as Vitari’s. Giancarlo was many things, but not stupid. Francis’s call had hopefully earned them some breathing room and some grace with the Battaglia.
Vitari didn’t know he’d made the call. With any luck, he’d never find out.
Would Giancarlo send someone?
As he turned onto their track, he spotted the empty driveway, the Jeep absent. He jogged up the outside steps, mud on his shoes and his damp shirt clinging to him, and entered the house.
“Vitari?”
Nobody replied.
Francis grabbed the emergency mobile from the kitchen drawer but as he tried to turn it on, it remained dead. He muttered a curse. He had another phone—his phone, left in the drawer beside the bed. He’d charged it not long after arriving in Panama, then switched it off and set it aside, as though setting aside that life.
After dashing downstairs, he dug the phone out of the drawer, turned it on, and dialed Vitari’s number.
“Come on, pick up.” Where was he? An answer service rattled off Spanish and then beeped. “Call me back, it’s urgent.”
He tried to call again, but it rang out again, so he hung up, dropped the phone in his pocket, and paced.
The man in the restaurant had been casually dressed—not like a tourist, prepared for hiking. But he hadn’t known where in Gamboa Vitari was. They had time. Just so long as none of the hotel staff recognized Vitari from the photo shown. It wasn’t likely. The immaculately dressed Rome-Vitari in the picture had been unrecognizable from the loose shirt and linen pants of Panama-Vitari, although he still had the Italian beauty that didn’t vanish from shedding expensive clothes.
Still, the man hadn’t recognized Francis, so it was only Vitari he was looking for. Did that mean something?
They’d left a mess behind in England and Italy: fake deaths, a murdered archbishop… Panama should have been far enough from Europe to hide from it all, but sins like theirs would always find them.
He closed his eyes and heard the shot again. A single round that had pierced Charles Montague’s skull. The gunfire had echoed around the vast cathedral, like it reverberated through Francis’s soul now.
Francis opened the balcony door and stepped out into the jungle heat.
Vitari would be back soon.
All Francis had to do was wait.
CHAPTER FOUR
Vitari
Three of Aiken’s guards loaded the crates into the back of a panel truck, while two stood back, eyeing Vitari hard.
Trust was fragile deep in the jungle where the law didn’t reach. Vitari had picked the location for the trade, making sure they were a long way from witnesses, but the isolated location also left him vulnerable. And the tingling down the back of his neck reminded him he had several hundred thousand dollars wrapped up in duffel bags and a single gun to defend it.
The men slammed the truck’s back doors closed. Aiken had his product. It was time to leave.
He caught Aiken’s eye and joined him near the back of the truck. “Are we done here?”
Aiken extended his hand, and they shook. He smirked in the shadow cast by his hat. “It is good doing business with you, Angelo della Morte.”
He dropped Aiken’s hand and swallowed his thumping heart. “Who told you?”
