Fatal Error: Heart Pounding Suspense

Book 4: The Jess Kimball Thrillers Series

by Diane Capri

Genres: Hard-Boiled; Financial Thrillers

Synopsis

Investigative Reporter Jess Kimball’s impossible mission to find her kidnapped son and protect an elderly couple thrills in this new novel from New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Diane Capri.

Fatal Error is the exciting follow up to Fatal Demand.

In Fatal Demand, Jess Kimball and FBI Special Agent Henry Morris worked furiously to stop a spree killer. But one last victim remains, held hostage in Italy.

When Jess accidentally thwarts the money-for-hostage exchange at the Rome airport, she becomes the killer's number one target.

Jess begins Fatal Error as the hunter, but she becomes the hunted. Can she escape Enzo Ficarra's plan to avenge his brother's murder? Or will Jess make the fatal error?

For fans of Greg Iles, Lisa Gardner, Karin Slaughter, Lee Child, Jack Reacher, John Grisham, and James Patterson’s Women's Murder Club

“Full of thrills and tension – but smart and human too.” — Lee Child, #1 World Wide Bestselling Author of Jack Reacher Thrillers

“Expertise shines on every page.” -- Margaret Maron, Edgar, Anthony, Agatha and Macavity Award Winning MWA Past President

"Relentlessly determined to bring justice to an unjust world, Jess Kimball is like a female Jack Reacher, only nicer!" -- Martha Powers, award winning author of Conspiracy of Silence and Death Angel


Readers Love Jess Kimball and Clamor for More!

“Smart, fast-paced, personal and, dare I say, thrilling. It's the kind of "this could happen to me" thrill that really chills me to the bone if I think about it too much. I could not put this book down until I found out if everything was going to turn out okay. Does it? Well you'll have to read it and see!”

“Highly recommend-- kept me on the edge of my seat and I had a hard time putting it down-- Great characters and storyline-- can only hope Diane Capri will make a series out of Jess and Helen-- I do want more!”

“This thought-provoking novel is populated with strong women and likeable men. Ms. Capri fully develops these characters while maintaining a tension-filled pace that will keep you turning pages well into the wee hours of the morning.”

Start reading the Jess Kimball Thrillers and you'll be glued to the page. But lock the doors first. These books are nail biters!

Release date: January 15, 2016

Publisher: AugustBooks

Print pages: 338

Sample

CHAPTER ONE

 

Tuscany, Italy

May 12

A dog barked, lonely in the night. The sound rolled down the hill. Echoing over the lawn. From the house at the top, to the woods at the bottom. It was more a timorous complaint than a demand for attention. The kind of sound made by the upper half of a body. Short. Thin. High pitched. Pushed out with an expectation of kindness borne from years of loving attention. Enzo Ficarra smiled. It was not the growl of a broad rib cage and strong lungs. It was not a big dog.

The sound quelled the last of his concerns.

He had scheduled this meeting for the following day. They would not be expecting him a day early. They would not be prepared to fight.

He walked slowly up the hill. Measured steps. Neither rushing nor sauntering. The walk of a guest expecting to be welcomed. Deception and surprise were the stock of his trade, and he walked to deceive any eyes that might be upon him. Surprise would come soon enough.

The house had square walls and round balconies. Wrought iron railings decorated the windows. Eaves hung out from the building. Arched tiles covered the roof.

It was a traditional Tuscan home. Around the house was perhaps an acre of garden. Enough to give the occupants their privacy. Enough to keep his visit private, too.

He reached the rear door into the kitchen. Deep inside the house, a television played. A mindless show host asking mindless questions of a mindless audience.

They weren’t expecting him. Which was as it should have been, the night before the meeting.

All was well.

He braced a flat metal hook against the doorframe. Three occupants inside. Fifteen rounds in his Beretta. More than enough to do the job. He would act fast. Not that he was concerned they would fight back.

Which might be interesting.

Still, best avoided.

He savored the moment. Long ago, he had learned to crave adrenaline. The chemical that quavered other’s voices, deepened his. What trembled other’s hands and fingers, steadied his. He was never more focused than when events promised a rush.

Tonight should be such a time.

He pulled his silenced Beretta from his pocket, and took a deep breath.

He shoved his weight behind the metal hook. Its sharp edge cut into the wood. Splintered the doorframe. Opened a gap to the lock.

He felt the solid touch of metal. He wrenched the hook down. Pulling at the lock. Tearing at the screws. Wrenching them from the cracked remains of the doorframe.

He barreled forward. All his weight. Shoulder first.

Glass shattered. The lock clattered across a tiled floor.

The door flew back.

He scanned his gun across the room. Left to right. Kitchen counters. Gas stove. Refrigerator.

No one there.

He kicked the door closed.

A middle-aged woman appeared at the doorway into the living room, dressed in her nightgown.

She froze, her eyes wide, and her mouth open. Fear overwhelmed her capacity for thought.

He leveled the Beretta and fired.

The silencer muted the gun’s roar. Still loud. Still forceful. Still a soundtrack to hot metal and death.

The woman tumbled back.

Enzo stepped over the body.

The living room was empty. A single shot silenced the television.

He darted through the door to the hall.

A man stood on the bottom of the stairs, a briefcase clutched to his chest. Ten years older than the woman. Unhealthy, too. Michael Taviani, Mike to his now-dead American wife, Lane. He thrust the briefcase forward. “Please. I have it!”

Enzo glanced up. The stairs were unoccupied.

Mike edged closer. The case still in front of him. Like a shield. “Please?”

Enzo gestured to the living room. Mike stepped through. He gasped at the sight of his wife, motionless on the floor.

Enzo closed the door, sealing the living room from the hallway.

Mike swallowed. His voice trembled. “You said tomorrow. The meeting—”

“I’m here now.”

Mike stared at his dead wife. “But—”

“I make the rules, Taviani. You know this.”

Mike’s mouth opened and closed. A goldfish. Overwhelmed. Unable to comprehend where he’d gone wrong. Unable to grasp the events occurring around him.

Enzo pointed the Beretta toward a low coffee table. “Open it.”

Mike placed the briefcase on the table. The latch thumped open. He lifted the lid. “A quarter million euro. Like you said.”

“Show me.”

The notes were wrapped in bundles. Mike lifted out a handful. Ten thousand euros. Maybe twenty.

Enzo waved a flashlight over them. A black light. Plenty of ultraviolet energy to excite photons, and reveal invisible marks. These notes kept their muted colors. The subtle blues and reds and greens that thwarted casual counterfeiters. But he wasn’t worried about counterfeits. Mike wasn’t quite that skilled, or clever. The black light assuaged a different concern. The notes were not marked for tracing.

Mike had followed instructions, as expected.

“Close it,” Enzo said.

Mike complied. He held out the briefcase.

Glass crunched.

Enzo spun toward the noise. The wife lay dead as before.

Mike dived for Enzo. “Run!”

Enzo leapt sideways, pointing the Beretta and squeezing the trigger at the same time.

The gun seemed to boom louder than before in the silent house.

Mike twitched and jerked. His legs gave out from under him. His arms flailed.

He tumbled past Enzo. Head first onto the carpet and into his own rapidly pooling blood, which flowed steadily while his heart continued to pump.

Enzo glimpsed a thin figure in the kitchen. The daughter. A teenager. Over-indulged, to be sure. Seventeen now.

She had been the one who answered Enzo’s original email containing fake pleas for help. She’d responded to the sleazy pitch asking for money to save young girls her age from human trafficking. Of course, seventeen-year-olds had no money. But through her, he’d reached her parents’ bank account.

He shook his head. Parents would do almost anything for their children. Even when the children were the cause of their troubles.

Tears marked her cheeks. Her eyes wide. Standing by the rear door.

Enzo ran to the kitchen.

She backed away from the door. He leveled his gun on her. Her eyes darted to one side. Behind him. The briefest glimpse, like the recognition of movement.

He spun, training the Beretta to the living room doorway. The space was empty. Blood had also pooled around the woman. She hadn’t moved. Nor would she. Her husband was not so lucky.

Mike rolled on the floor holding his stomach. Still alive. For a few moments more.

Enzo spun back to the girl but she had vanished.

He pressed his face against the kitchen window, scanning the moonlit garden.

He heard a click to his right. Another door.

He raced to twist the handle. Locked.

He leaned his shoulder into the door. It was solid.

He stepped back and fired at the lock twice. The wood splintered and danced.

He swung his boot up, kicking hard. The door snapped open, slamming back against the wall.

A laundry room. A washer and dryer along one wall. Washing powders and laundry stacked on a work surface along the other. A closed window at the far end. No girl. And no way out.

He glanced behind the door. Nothing.

He eased down, peering into the glass of the washing machine. It seemed impossible to think she could have squeezed into such a close space, but he’d seen fear motivate people to remarkable feats.

The washer was empty.

He moved into the crowded room. His back to the work surface. He passed the washer. Passed the gap between the washer and dryer.

The dryer’s large door was metal. No doubt with a firm spring latch. He would have heard it open and close.

He adjusted his grip on the gun and moved past the dryer, to the space between its white metal side and the end of the room.

A narrow space. Long and thin. Like the girl.

She had contorted her body. Knees, shoulders, legs. Twisted. Cramped. Painful. Her head angled sideways. Her eyes staring. He leveled his gun on her. She had been brave and quick. With her dash to hide when she first saw him from the kitchen, she might even have had a bright future in front of her. In another world. Not the one in which she lived.

He took a deep breath. At another time, he might even feel he should recruit her. But not here. Not now. She had seen his face. She knew who he was. He lived not far from this very home.

He had no choice. He’d known that weeks ago. Her foolish parents should have known it, too.

Her breathing was ragged. Hard work for her lungs in such confines. He turned his face away, fired twice, and spared her lungs the work.

He didn’t look back. He closed the laundry room door behind him. It drifted open again, the lock gone. He stepped over the woman’s body, and into the living room.

Mike had dragged himself up against a chair. He struggled to dial the old-fashioned phone.

Enzo fired twice more. He placed the shots together. Quick succession. Center of Mike’s forehead. His lifeless torso slumped sideways. The phone tumbled to the floor.

Enzo jerked the phone from the wall. He returned the money to the briefcase, and closed the latches.

The meeting had not gone as smoothly as he’d planned. Such conditions meant unacceptable levels of evidence.

He returned to the kitchen, placed the sugar bowl in the microwave, and set it for ten minutes. As the microwave hummed, he turned the four gas burners to full open positions. He tucked the case under his arm and left, closing the door behind him.

He returned to his spot in the trees at the bottom of the garden to wait. The minutes ticked by.

Before the microwave timer finished, the sugar caught fire. Flames escaped the microwave and the gas ignited. Not with Hollywood flamboyance, but a smooth, relentless whoosh. Here, in the countryside, with neighbors miles away, no one would find the fire until it had run its course.

The fuel burned easily in the oxygen-rich mixture. Fingers of fire reached through the doors and windows.

The dog he’d heard barking earlier ran from the rear door. Small legs. Leaping more than running. Wisps of smoke trailed from its fur. It ran to the woods, and rolled in the grass.

The fire grew to the second floor. First, a yellow glow in the windows then roaring flames that spilled out of window frames and lapped upward.

The dog trotted to sit beside him.

Enzo watched the fire until flames burst through the roof. The dog stared at him expectantly, and barked.

His brother, Luigi, was returning today from New York. One last ransom to collect in Rome this afternoon. One last family to terminate tonight. After that, vacation. He’d promised his wife and his children. He’d been working too much. Luigi, too.

Enzo picked up the case, and left the dog alone and lonely in the dark.

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

Tuscany, Italy

May 12

 

A few hours later, Enzo Ficarra sipped his espresso as dawn crept over the horizon behind him. A cheap cell phone lay on his patio table. The battery was fully charged, the shrill buzzer was set to its loudest volume, and the display showed five bars. But none of those things mattered. The one person who knew the number had not called. His brother, Luigi.

He stood the phone upright, and tapped his fingers on the table while the rising sun shortened long shadows. The phone kept its silence.

A gull’s caw drew his attention eastwards, across the deep green lawn, down the rocks that led to the shore, and out over the sea. A trawler sailed by, heading for port in the next town, gulls diving in its wake to pick off the scraps.

He sipped his third espresso.

Scraps.

He took a deep breath.

Not for him.

He had a good business. It worked well. People were basically honest. They wanted to believe that of other people, too. It was a useful trait. Gullibility was how he manipulated them. And the older they were, the more they believed, and the easier they were to manipulate.

He finished his drink.

Like any business, contracts were contracts. Agreements had to be honored. He never failed his responsibilities, and he expected his clients to do the same. But when they did not, the rules had to be enforced.

He rolled the still warm demitasse cup between his palms, and watched the dregs of golden foam run around the bottom of the cup.

Enzo placed the white china cup securely on its saucer. The cup was a trophy of sorts, he supposed. He’d collected the set from Marek’s club in Montreal, Les Canard. What a miserable day that had been. Wet, cold. Betrayal by an old friend, which was the worst kind. He shuddered.

Marek caused an unfortunate disruption to their profitable business. Contracts had been broken, agreements breached, a lapse in confidence. The enterprise was shut down and loose ends were wrapped up.

A petty incident that demanded the utmost care to bring about the final, successful conclusion. So his brother, Luigi, had travelled to Florida to collect the last payment, a quarter of a million dollars. The Italian economy being what it was, a quarter of a million American dollars would fatten their ailing bottom line nicely.

Luigi was fast, strong, and an excellent shot. More than once, he had worked for days on the most meager of sleep. He had escaped situations that would have overwhelmed ordinary men, and returned to tell the tale.

Forcing the old couple to bring their life savings to Rome to exchange it for their son’s life should have been a simple matter for his brother.

Boarding a plane was a tedious process. Check-in lines. Security guards on minimum wages. Jet bridges with passenger lines wide and long. Sniveling children, frightened mothers, bored pilots prone to error.

He tamped down his annoyance. His brother would have been patient. He would have stood in line. He would have had his ticket ready, his passport in hand. He would have smiled at the check-in attendant, and complied with security nonsense without complaint. He would have answered questions with a smile. A model passenger. Accepting. Accommodating. Anonymous.

And before he departed for Rome, he would have called.

Enzo turned the phone over in his hands. Flight 12 had left New York hours ago. His brother was either on it, or he was not. Plain and simple. But with no phone call he assumed the worst.

He mashed the garish purple phone’s off button, and pulled the battery from its compartment. He walked slowly into his villa, dropped the pieces into the waste disposal, and ran the motor until any proof they ever existed was gone.

Enzo pulled a second phone from his pocket. A different model, a different carrier, a standard black color, purchased with cash from a different corner store.

He pressed the on button, and began making the calls required by the circumstances. He would make arrangements to meet the plane, then he would handle the disappearance of his brother.

Those who had been involved in Luigi’s disappearance had made an error. A fatal one.

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

Rome, Italy

May 12

 

Jess Kimball lay almost flat in her first class seat. She’d slept more than half of her journey from New York to Rome. Her limbs felt like lead, and her breathing was shallow. The announcement that the plane was on final descent lifted her back to consciousness. She pried open one eye. The video screen installed in the seat back in front of her said “Movie Over.”

She groaned and rotated her head, stretching the muscles in her neck. The film had been intense, and her dream doubly so—terrorists, antimatter, and six hours in a remarkably comfortable bed had given her imagination far too much freedom. She pushed a button, and her seat back rotated to the upright position.

A steward moved down the aisle, handing out hot towels. She took one and pressed it to her face. The blast of lemon-scented steam revived her senses and helped pry her eyes fully open. And she needed her eyes wide open, and her senses working overtime.

The events of the past few hours rushed into her mind again.

She’d booked her trip on Flight 12 at the last minute. Her plan to spend a few days recharging her batteries had changed in the hours after she met Roger and Harriet Grantly. Well into their retirement, they had collected every cent of cash they owned and booked tickets on Flight 12 to Rome, intending to pay a ransom for their kidnapped son, Wilson.

She grimaced and shook her head. Not that Wilson was particularly worth saving.

He’d collaborated in an extortion scam run by a pair of Italians, Luigi and Enzo Ficarra. After he’d foolishly lost all of his own money, he’d duped his clients and even his elderly parents into losing theirs. The fiasco had almost killed the pair of ninety-year-olds who had done nothing but love their son too much.

The Ficarra brothers weren’t finished with Wilson. Had they limited their focus to Wilson, Jess wouldn’t be sitting on this plane now. She was a victims’ rights advocate. But Wilson Grantly was no victim.

Not at first.

Not until the Ficarras had kidnapped him and demanded ransom from his parents. A quarter of a million dollars. Every last cent they knew the elderly couple possessed, because Wilson had told them to save his own hide.

Jess balled up the now-cold towel, and handed it to the steward. Another attendant passed close behind with hot, black coffee strong enough to hold the spoon upright. She took the cup and sipped it, hoping it would hold her up, too.

While working with the FBI, she had uncovered the link between the Ficarras and Wilson Grantly, and in the process shot Luigi. In a last desperate act, he had chewed a cyanide capsule before the FBI could interrogate him.

From then on, the FBI, and Special Agent Henry Morris, had taken charge. The might of the American law enforcement juggernaut, with its resources, multitude of agents, and very long arms, had eased the Grantlys to the sidelines.

It was a sensible move. The right thing to do. Youth, vigor, and experience trumped good intentions, no matter how personal.

But government agencies carried a reputation. Not always deserved, and not always correct, but a reputation nonetheless. Sometimes red tape, sometimes shifting priorities, sometimes it was a simple lack of staff. Whatever the reason, they were known to fail, and one of those reasons was probably why Agent Morris hadn’t joined the passengers at the departure lounge in New York.

After take-off, Jess had walked the length of the aircraft looking for him, to no avail. He wasn’t on the flight. He wasn’t bound for Rome and the final confrontation with the kidnapper, Enzo Ficarra.

She clenched her fists. The Grantlys’ planned meeting at the Rome airport was the only opportunity to link the murderous Luigi Ficarra in New York to the rest of the brothers’ operation in Italy. She knew it, and Morris knew it, too.

So why wasn’t he on the flight?

She bit her lip. Morris wasn’t just one man. He was part of the FBI. A big machine. Layers on layers. Surveillance. Cameras. The Internet. They could be observing everything and everyone on the flight. They could be waiting in Rome.

She hoped.

She closed her eyes and lay back against the headrest. Surveillance. It was an obvious conclusion. No need for the FBI to reveal themselves, to tip their hand. No need to give anyone a sliver of a chance. She frowned. Yet, wouldn’t they have put at least one agent on the plane?

She kept her eyes closed until they landed and taxied to the terminal. The jet bridge took forever to hook up, and even though she was in first class at the front of the crowd, exiting the plane was frustratingly slow.

She followed meandering passengers through long lines at immigration, inquisitive guards in customs, and finally, finally to baggage claim.

A television monitor showed the bags from her flight would be delivered at the far end of the hall. The silver conveyor was stationary when she arrived. Several people from her flight had made it there before her. They were all either too young or too old to be the kind of seasoned FBI agents Morris would have trusted on a case like this.

A buzzer sounded, and the conveyer belt started. People crowded around. She eased herself into the middle of the throng. The bags tumbled down in front of her.

She flipped over baggage tags as they glided by. Luigi had cut up the Grantlys’ luggage in New York. But it made sense that Morris would have planned to get the ransom money to Rome for a handover to Luigi’s brother. Jess thought the best way was to pass it off in different luggage as if it were the Grantlys’.

After several minutes of flipping tags, Jess found the Grantly name on two new looking pieces of blue hard-sided luggage.

Morris had done a good job of finding something similar to the original.

She made a show of checking several more bags before backing away from the carousel to wait.

She searched through her messenger bag, and checked her phone while watching the blue luggage circling on the carousel.

One by one, her fellow passengers found their luggage, and headed for the exit. A few stragglers milled around, checking tags and muttering.

The Grantlys’ bags continued their lonely orbit.

An airport employee took the last bags from the belt, and stacked them on a cart. The blue luggage was near the top.

A few bored looking employees and lost travelers stood in the area. A large man with a backpack stepped out for a cigarette. If Morris had someone in place to swoop in on whoever touched the luggage, they were doing a good job of hiding.

She bit her lip. Morris’s men might have been given her picture. They might even have seen her in New York. He, and they, would not appreciate her being there. But Harriet and Roger deserved to get their son back, no matter what he’d done, and she’d promised Harriet. She wouldn’t let the Grantlys down.

She pulled out her phone and talked into it, pacing up and down the baggage hall, faking a conversation.

The cart remained by the baggage carousel. The employee walked off and busied himself with paperwork behind the lost luggage desk. An announcement came over the speakers. Jess pushed a finger in one ear as if struggling to hear her non-existent caller.

An old couple entered the baggage hall and headed straight for the baggage cart. Had Morris found them to replace the Grantlys?

Jess let her gaze flick over them, not wanting to pause and stare. They were excited to see the pile of bags, but neither of them looked like FBI material.

Would Morris have dragged ordinary people into their operation? They looked like a sweet old couple, enjoying retirement, not a pair of hardened operatives in the middle of freeing a hostage, and bringing down an organized crime ring.

The couple checked bag tags, tutted, and walked over to the man doing paperwork at the lost luggage desk. They struggled through a conversation with sentences from a phrase book and much finger pointing. The man pulled out a form, and began making notes.

Jess stretched out her fake phone call, standing by a giant window that looked down on an endless parking garage. Vehicles flowed in and out, their drivers taking tickets and paying tolls.

She watched the blue bags in the window’s reflection.

If the couple were connected to Morris, they were doing a good job of disguising it.

The couple finished their conversation with the man at lost luggage, and walked out of the exit, arm in arm, excitement long gone.

The automatic doors hissed closed behind them. They weren’t part of Morris’s plan.

She surveyed the baggage hall. A few bored employees skulked around a vending machine. The heavyset man had returned from his cigarette break. He coughed and sputtered, his face a ruddy red. Hardly likely to be part of an intensive police operation.

Yet the bags had been put on the flight. Two bags, just like the Grantlys’, and labeled with their name. Morris must have done it. He’d found similar luggage, dragged it around the floor to scuff up the corners, filled it with whatever he could find, and placed it on Flight 12. There was no doubt. No other reasonable explanation.

So, where was he? Why no surveillance? Why no twenty-something with a backpack? Or two businessmen, deep in conversation, dark suits covering automatic weapons until the bags were picked up? Anything that would be good enough cover to keep his agents’ eyes on the bags while giving Luigi’s contact enough confidence to reveal himself?

One of the airport employees looked at her too long. She turned away, and resumed her imaginary phone conversation. She’d become too conspicuous. She’d need a new plan. Soon.

The exit doors hissed open. A middle-aged man wearing sunglasses and a dark suit strolled in. He consulted a clipboard, and circled the baggage claim area. He passed the baggage cart with its blue bags.

The lost luggage clerk remained head down, engrossed in his paperwork.

Jess paced in a small circle as the man returned to the cart. He rechecked his clipboard, and turned over the tags on the Grantlys’ luggage. Jess’s skin prickled. He disentangled the blue bags from the others on the cart.

Jess’s breathing raced. She kept up her circles, staring into the distance, watching the man in her peripheral vision as he scanned the room.

She squeezed her phone tight.

Where was Morris? Or his men?

And the Italian police? Wouldn’t he have told them?

Yet, she scanned the room, there was no sign of anyone remotely likely to be law enforcement. No one.

The man pulled the blue bags from the pile of luggage.

Jess took a deep breath. She looked at her phone, and swore. She didn’t even know the Italian equivalent of 911.

The man carried the bags toward the exit doors.

She looked around the baggage hall. No one moved. No one closed in. Through the glass doors, she could see no one was waiting outside.

The exit doors hissed open.

The man walked through the broad opening.

The bags were leaving. The Grantlys’ life savings. Wrapped and bundled and counted. Their dreams swapped for one solitary hope. A ransom exchange. Their son’s life for an uncertain future.

It was an FBI case. Better trained, better equipped, experienced. They were the people to bring about the best outcome to any hostage situation. They were the people the Grantlys had trusted, and rightly.

But the FBI wasn’t there. Jess was.

Her pulse raced. If she lost sight of the bags, the money would be gone, and they’d never get Wilson Grantly back.

She stuffed her phone in her pocket, and headed after the man.

By the time she reached the automatic doors, he was at the elevator to the parking levels below. She breathed deeply, and slowed her pace. If he was as ruthless as Luigi, did she really want to be alone in the same elevator with him?

The man had short jet-black hair held in place with plenty of gel. His suit had shiny patches on the seat of his pants and elbows. He resembled Luigi Ficarra. About six-feet tall, slender, dark, Italian. The two men could have been brothers.

He stabbed at the elevator call button. Jess saw a large display count up three floors before the doors opened. He stepped inside.

Jess stopped by a staircase door and cursed herself for not taking the man’s picture. She had no gun, and no chance of calling the police in time.

She pulled her phone from her pocket, and bounded down the first flight of stairs.

The door into the parking area had a circular window. She pressed her face against the glass and strained to see into the garage. Cars filled most of the parking spots, a family was exiting a minivan with a mountain of suitcases, but there was no sign of the black-haired man.

She sprinted down the next set of stairs, hitting the door at full speed. It banged back against the wall, hinges squealing.

Cars packed the floor. A ticket inspector moved between the vehicles, checking tickets. Several men piled from a black SUV.

She moved along the rows of cars. People were parking, people were leaving, but still there was no sign of the man with the hair gel.

She turned back. The men from the SUV had split up. Two headed into the stairway. Two looked over the open edge of the parking level. One stood by the elevator. The man at the elevator pointed at her.

Her heart jumped. A flash of heat ran over her. She stood still.

None of the five carried luggage. The man closest to the elevator headed toward her. She hurried down the sloping road to the floor below.

She rubbed her damp palms down the sides of her jeans.

What if Luigi’s single contact was really a team of five?

She took a breath, and glanced behind.

The elevator man followed, walking fast.

She threw her bag over her shoulder, better for running if it came to that.

The sloping roadway offered an obstructed view of the floor below. She bent over as she walked, peering through the gaps in the concrete pillars.

The main exit was a hundred feet away. Barriers rose and fell as a line of drivers inserted tickets into orange boxes. On the opposite side, she glimpsed glossy jet-back hair.

The man following her called something she didn’t understand. She glanced back at him and started jogging.

The terminal building was a few hundred yards away. But she couldn’t run to safety there. Not yet. She needed at least a picture of the man with black hair. He was her only potential lead to the hostage, Wilson Grantly.

Jess circled around a slow moving car, away from the terminal, chasing the jet-black hair. He fumbled keys from his pocket. He looked up, saw her, and froze.

She stopped and held up her phone.

The man swiveled his face away. He’d found his keys. He pressed the key fob and lights flashed on the old brown Lancia. He tossed the blue luggage into the rear, and jumped into the driver’s seat.

She ran toward the car, her phone camera held out ready to shoot.

Footsteps pounded behind her.

The Lancia’s engine roared to life. The Lancia screeched out of its parking place, and roared around the garage toward the exit.

Jess ran faster. She darted between parked cars and concrete pillars. She heard shouting behind her. Two men from the SUV were chasing her now.

She cut for the exit. A lane opened up. The Lancia line-jumped immediately behind the car at the gate to a chorus of horns.

She flipped her phone camera to video and held it as steadily as possible. The man with jet-black hair stuffed a ticket into the orange box.

She was only twenty feet from his car. The barrier rose, and he screeched away, barely glancing in her direction.

The two men shouting behind her became frantic.

She bolted through the vehicles lined up at the exit gates. The safety of the steel and glass terminal was just five lanes of crawling traffic away.

Jess plowed on, bouncing off cars with her hands. Her bag swung wildly.

She dodged the last lane, and dived for the open outer doors to the terminal, willing the inner ones to open.

But they didn’t.

She hit the glass, forearms outstretched, and ricocheted off. The thick glass vibrated but didn’t open.

Jess spun around, eyes wide, gripping her bag, ready to swing.

The two men blocked all daylight outside the doors. They glowered at her. One pointed a gun, and motioned her to lie on the ground.

Her heart thumped against her ribs. There was no space around the side of either man to make a run for it. No way in. No way out.

The man with the gun shook his head and ran splayed fingers through his hair. “Lie down, Signora Kimball.”

She turned to the inner doors. From behind the glass, two uniformed police officers motioned her down.

She sank to the floor. Dammit!

Morris wasn’t there.

But he must have organized a police operation. He could have warned her before she broke about a dozen Italian laws.