“No, I suppose that’s true. Vitale travels more.” Her gaze sharpened. Her head tilted a degree, letting the moonlight play over her high cheekbones. I watched the annoyance fade from her expression, and her words came out weighted, insinuating. As if she were sharing a secret. “I’ve seen a lot more with him.”
Wait a minute.I pulled my shoulders back, standing straighter. “What does that mean? What’ve you seen?”
“You want to talk about it here? In the dark with me?” Her face turned skeptical.
An excellent point. Turning her down last time had been near impossible, and I wouldn’t survive a second time.
As soon as we stepped inside the lodge, I dug my phoneout and sent a coded text message to Daniel. The reply came back quickly.
Daniel:
On it.
Since the bartender was gone for the evening, the manager, Frances, led us to the bar area, clunked an unopened bottle of beer down in front of each of us, then scurried back to the computer she’d been working on in the front office.
The narrow bar was cozy. Pin lighting over the rack of bottles behind the bar provided the only light in the room, reflected by a mirror on the back wall. I sat on a barstool, expecting her to as well, but instead she glanced to the door Frances had disappeared through.
Satisfied she was clear, she slipped behind the bar.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She rummaged around, and bottles clinked together softly. Finished, she turned and set two glass tumblers on the bar, pouring a few swallows’ worth of amber liquid into each one. The bottle was so dusty I couldn’t read the label until she’d screwed the cap back on.
“You like bourbon?” I asked.
She gave me a weird look, just short of embarrassment. “It reminds me of home. My dad drinks this.”
I stifled the urge to say anything. To tell her that on the nights I missed being Stateside, I’d drink bourbon. Like the expensive bourbon she’d just poured for us.
Don’t drink it.I needed to get the information from her and promptly get away. Drinking bourbon alone in a dark bar with an American, who happened to be the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen, was riskier than gunplay.
“Vitale,” I prompted, ignoring the drink.
What if this woman across the bar was the key to busting my operation wide open? I tracked every move of the glass as she brought it to her full lips and drank. My gaze continued its journey down her slender neck as she swallowed.
“He travels a lot... to Spain.” She set her drink down and leaned her elbows on the bar. “My first job when I moved overseas was a commercial route between Madrid and Barcelona. The Abramos know I don’t speak Italian.”
It took me no time to put it together. “But you speak Spanish.”
“Si.”
My pulse quickened. “What did you hear?”
“Vitale’s meeting with the Spaniard was in Italian. But there was a phone call, and the man did that in Spanish.” Her gaze slid over my face, pausing on my lips, then flicked back to connect with my eyes. “It sounded like he was arranging a container. Shipping information, and customs.”
“When was he arranging it for?”
She shook her head and straightened. “I didn’t hear that part.”
“When was this meeting? What day?”
Her eyebrows pulled together. “It was during my first week. I’d have to look it up in my log. He had us flying all over the place.”
I have crates of these and can arrange transport, Giovanni had said, not twenty minutes ago.
Olivia’s hand darted through her wavy hair, pushing a lock of it back. “What business are the Abramos really in?”
I didn’t say anything.
