Page 35 of Booked for Theft

Ambassador Greco laughed. “Please give me your business card, and I will see about sending help so that even you can make a nutritious and delicious meal. I have several one pan dishes that are excellent for beginners. If you can follow simple directions, you will be able to make this. I even have an excellent risotto recipe designed for those who are a little busy and don’t have a lot of time to cook. Just don’t tell any of my fellow Italians that; it might count as blasphemy. Why spend hours slaving over the stove when I can spend ten minutes, pop it in the oven, and spend five more minutes once it’s mostly done?”

“She speaks my language, Bradley. We need this recipe, and we need to try it alone before we shock my mother. We’ll target her first. She lost hope long ago. And if I can make the risotto all by myself? She may faint.”

“I’ve been learning some Spanish cooking, but I’m limited to two dishes right now. Fortunately, we like those dishes, so it works out, but I’d like to up my arsenal to three dishes.”

“I am confident I can help you get up to four dishes. If you like soup, I can teach you three simple meals that satisfy every time.”

“We should master one or two simple dishes from every country, Bradley. Maybe we won’t ever graduate to doing anything difficult, but we will be diverse. And we can find one that is spicy. Do Italians like spicy food?”

“We have a few spicy dishes, but I think I will help teach you the art of making arrabbiata. That dish comes down to us from the Romans, and it is one of our spicier offerings. I am sure, with some experiment, I can find a way to make it spicier for you without increasing the difficulty level of making it. It will be an excellent challenge for me to create a recipe simple enough for you to follow. Do wait for my email, Mr. Hampton. I will share a few of my family secrets with you. May my nonna forgive me for what I do. But I’m sure she would be pleased with my efforts to spread the true way of cooking to those in dire need. At the very least, she would approve of my rebellion.” She grinned, sliding Bradley’s card into her purse. “Should you two ever decide to travel, I would love to welcome you to my country and show you her wonders. I love visiting Rome. I learn something new every time I step foot within her.”

I sighed at the thought of Rome. “We should try to go to Rome one day, Bradley. It would be the adventure of a lifetime.”

“You might even, may my ancestors forgive me for uttering this, pay a visit to Greece and partake of their ruins as well.”

I attempted to stare Bradley into submission. “We should do both, and we can stir shit with the Italians and the Greeks for the entertainment of it.”

Ambassador Greco chuckled over my commentary. “That might work if you get us into the same room while you debate which of our ruins are superior. Personally, if I were to make any commentary about the Greeks, I would show favor to the Spartans. Their brutality was matched only by their cunning, and I hold much respect for their history. Some elements of it are distasteful, but they added a great deal of color to world history.”

“I don’t think I have any history books about the Spartans, Bradley.”

“I’ll see about some books for your enjoyment, and we’ll talk about a trip overseas to visit the ruins. I’d like that, too.”

I doubted either one of us would be able to escape from the United States, not with our government tightening the noose around us, but I would maintain the illusion that I believed I could, something anyone watching would expect.

Americans often talked big about where we wished to go, and then we stayed home. The size of our continent played a role in that. Why travel overseas when we had a nation as large as ours to explore?

That sort of attitude likely had something to do with our current situation.

The Italian woman sighed. “I will leave you to your far more pleasant discussion of trotting around the world. I see my next adversary, a foe not even I can defeat.”

I followed her gaze to discover the dinner portion of the party was about to save us all. “They have no hope of defeating me. I’m a stomach with feet. The only way they’re taking me out is with tiny portions and the wish for more food, and honestly, I expect to be looking for the nearest open fast food joint when we escape Washington in the wee hours of the morning.”

“I truly wish you the best of luck. Expect starvation. These weak American chefs know nothing about how to serve a real group meal.”

That I could believe. “Just for the record, I’m very interested in seeing what a real group meal is like in Italy.”

“It’s a marvel and a delight, and I do hope you’ll get to come see me in my country so you might enjoy it one day.”

Thanks to the cameras installed in my SUV, we had evidence that members of the Secret Service had bugged my vehicle. Not only was I aware it’d been bugged, but they’d been placed in such a fashion that I suspected they were audio, video, and GPS enabled. After identifying where they’d all been placed through the usage of our footage, I prepared a text to Bradley suggesting he should get some mud on the tires of my baby, showing him my phone before erasing the evidence.

It had rained an hour north of us, and there would be mud aplenty should we leave the main road.

A little after three in the morning, he opted to take every single scenic route he could find, even locating a muddy unpaved stretch of road leading into a state park.

Then he played at getting a flat while I removed the trackers with a pocketknife we kept in the glovebox, all of which had been secured with glue. The trackers went into a bag, and after we did a full check of the vehicle, we left.

Once in New York, we stopped at a rest area, tossed the trackers into the bed of a pickup truck with New York plates, and resumed our journey.

“That was pretty bold even for them. I wonder what they’re going to think when their trackers disappear,” Bradley muttered.

“They’re going to have questions, and if anyone is smart, they’ll remember that your father runs a security company and has been teaching you his tricks. We won’t tell anyone we suspect the government tried to track us, and if you are asked, well, I’ve been kidnapped before, and you’re determined to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Well, they can’t catch us in a lie. Everything about that is true. My father has been teaching me to sweep our vehicles, and he’s been planting bugs on them for me to find, so I’m just behaving normally.”

“Please tell me there haven’t been any new bugs.”

Bradley refused to even glance my way while we headed for the inside of the rest area to grab a bite to eat.