Homeport (29 page)

He was out of breath by the time he hit the outside door. Still, he shifted her weight, opened the door only far enough to give him a view of the street. He saw nothing out of place, but the back of his neck continued to prickle as though it felt the business end of a blade.

When they were out in the rain, he dumped her on her feet and shook her hard. “You don't fall apart until we're out of here. Put it on ice, Miranda, and do what needs to be done next.”

Without waiting for her assent, he pulled her around the building and down the street. She slid on the bike behind him, held on so that he could feel the jumping skip of her heart against his back as he drove through the rain.

 

He wanted to get her inside quickly, but forced himself to drive through the city, taking narrow side streets at random to be certain they weren't being followed. Whoever had killed Giovanni might have been watching the building, waiting for them. He was reserving judgment on that until he managed to get the full story out of Miranda.

Satisfied there was no tail, he parked in front of the hotel. He gathered his bags, then turned to push the wet hair out of her face. “You listen to me. Pay attention.” He held on to her face until her glazed eyes focused. “We have to cross the lobby. I want you to walk straight to the elevator. I'll handle the clerk. You just go and stand by the elevator. Understand?”

“Yes.” It felt as if the words came from somewhere over the top of her head rather than out of her mouth. Words floating there, meaningless and confusing.

When she walked it was like swimming through syrup, but she walked, intensely focused on the gleaming doors of the elevators. That was her goal, she thought. She just had to walk to the elevator.

Dimly she heard Ryan talking with the desk clerk, a rumble of male laughter. She stared at the door, reached out
and ran her fingertip down the surface as if to gauge the texture. So smooth and cool. Odd, she'd never noticed that before. She laid her palm on it as Ryan came up beside her and pushed the up button.

It rumbled, like the thunder, she realized. Gears shifting, engaging. And the door made a soft hissing sound when it opened.

She didn't have any more color in her cheeks than the corpse they'd left behind, Ryan noted. And her teeth were starting to chatter. He imagined she was chilled to the bone. God knew he was, and not just from an open ride in drenching rain.

“Just walk down the hall,” he ordered, shifting his bags so that he could wrap an arm around her waist. She didn't lean on him, didn't seem to have enough substance in her body to give weight, but he kept his arm around her until they were inside the suite.

He locked the door, added the safety latch before taking her into the bedroom. “Get out of the wet clothes, into a robe.” He'd have preferred to dump her in a hot bath, but was afraid she'd just slip under and drown.

He checked the terrace doors, made certain they too were locked before he searched out a bottle of brandy from the minibar. He didn't bother with glasses.

She was sitting on the bed, exactly as he'd left her. “You've got to get out of those clothes,” he told her. “You're soaked through.”

“I— My fingers don't work.”

“Okay, okay. Here, swallow.”

He broke the seal on the bottle, then held it to her lips. She obeyed mindlessly, until the fire spurted down her throat and into her belly. “I don't like brandy.”

“I don't like spinach, but my mother made me eat it. One more time. Come on, be a good soldier.” He managed to pour another swallow down her throat before she sputtered and pushed his hand away.

“I'm all right. I'm all right.”

“Sure you are.” Hoping to ease the queasiness in his own stomach, he tipped back the bottle and took a healthy
gulp himself. “Now the clothes.” He set the bottle aside and went to work on the buttons of her shirt.

“Don't—”

“Miranda.” Realizing his legs weren't completely steady, he sat beside her. “Does it look like I'm going to cop a feel here? You're in shock. You need to get warm and dry. So do I.”

“I can do it. I can.” She got shakily to her feet and stumbled into the bath.

When the door clicked shut, he resisted the urge to open it again to be certain she wasn't in a heap on the floor.

For a moment he lowered his head into his hands, ordered himself to breathe, just breathe. It was his first up-close and personal experience with violent death. Fresh, violent, and real, he thought, and took one more shot of brandy from the bottle.

It wasn't an experience he wanted to repeat.

“I'm going to order up some food. Something hot.” He peeled out of his wet jacket as he spoke. Keeping an eye on the door, he stripped, tossed his wet clothes aside, and pulled on slacks and a shirt.

“Miranda?” With his hands in his pockets, he frowned at the door. Modesty be damned, he decided, and pushed it open.

She'd put on a robe, but her hair was still streaming with wet as she stood in the center of the room, her arms wrapped tight around her body as she rocked herself. She sent Ryan one look of unspeakable misery. “Giovanni.”

“Okay, all right.” He put his arms around her, cradled her head on his shoulder. “You did good, you did fine. It's okay to fall apart now.”

She only clenched and unclenched her hands against his back. “Who could have done that to him? He's never hurt anyone. Who could have done that?”

“We'll figure it out. We will. We're going to talk about it, step by step.” He cuddled her closer, stroking a hand down her wet hair as much to soothe himself as her. “But your mind has to be clear. I need your brain. I need your logic.”

“I can't think. I keep seeing him, lying there. All the blood. He was my friend. He came when I asked him to. He. . .”

And the full horror of it struck her, a brutal slice to the heart that cleared her head to shocking, vicious clarity. “Oh God, Ryan. I killed him.”

“No.” He pulled her back so that their eyes were level again. “Whoever bashed in the back of his head killed him. You get over that, Miranda, because it's not going to help.”

“He was only in there tonight because of me. If I hadn't asked him, he'd have been at home, or out on a date, or sitting in some trattoria drinking wine with friends.”

She pressed her fisted hands to her mouth, the eyes over them swimming with horror. “He's dead because I asked him to help me, because I didn't trust you and because my reputation is so important, so vital, I had to have it done my way.” She shook her head. “I'm never going to get over that.”

However miserable her eyes, her color was back and her voice was stronger. Guilt could energize as well as paralyze. “Okay, then use it. Dry your hair while I order some food. We've got a lot to talk about.”

She dried her hair, and slipped into white cotton pajamas, then wrapped the robe over them. She would eat, she told herself, because she would be ill if she didn't. She needed to be well, strong, and clearheaded if she was going to avenge Giovanni.

Avenge? she thought with a shudder. She'd never believed in vengeance. Now it seemed perfectly sane, perfectly logical. The term “an eye for an eye” circled grimly in her head. Whoever killed Giovanni had used her as a weapon as cold-bloodedly as they'd used the bronze.

Whatever it took, however long it took, she would see that they paid for it.

When she came out of the bedroom, she saw that Ryan had ordered the waiter to set up the meal on the terrace. The rain had stopped and the air was fresh. The table sat cheerfully under the bright green-and-white-striped awning and candles flickered over the linen cloth.

She supposed it was designed to make her feel better. Because she was grateful to him, she did her best to pretend it did.

“This looks very nice.” She managed what passed for a smile. “What are we eating?”

“Minestrone to start, then a couple of Florentine steaks. It'll help. Sit and eat.”

She took a chair, even picked up her spoon and sampled the soup. It stuck like paste in her throat, but she forced herself to swallow. And he was right, the heat of it thawed some of the ice in her belly.

“I need to apologize to you.”

“Okay. I never turn down an apology from a woman.”

“I broke my word to you.” She lifted her gaze, locked on his. “I never meant to keep it. I told myself a promise to a man like you didn't have to be kept. That was wrong of me, and I'm sorry.”

The simplicity, the quiet tone, touched his heart. He'd have preferred it otherwise. “We're going at this at cross-purposes. That's the way it is. Still, we've got a mutual goal. We want to find the original bronzes. And now someone's upped the stakes. It may be smarter for you to back off, let this go. Proving you were right isn't worth your life.”

“It cost me a friend.” She pressed her lips together, then made herself spoon up more soup. “I won't back off, Ryan. I couldn't live with myself if I did. I don't have many friends. I'm sure that's my fault. I don't relate well to people.”

“You're being too hard on yourself. You relate fine when you let your guard down. Like you did with my family.”

“I didn't let my guard down. They just didn't pay any attention to it. I envy you what you have with them.” Her voice trembled a little, so she shook her head and forced down more soup. “The unconditional love, the sheer delight all of you have with each other. You can't buy that kind of gift.” She smiled a little. “And you can't steal it.”

“You can make it. It just takes the wanting to.”

“Someone has to want the gift you're making.” She sighed and decided to risk a sip of wine. “If my parents and I had a better relationship, you and I wouldn't be sitting here right now. It really goes back to that. Dysfunction doesn't always show itself in raised voices and fists. Sometimes it can be insidiously polite.”

“Have you ever told them how you feel?”

“Not the way I imagine you mean.” She looked past him, over the city where the lights gleamed and the moon was beginning to ride the clearing sky. “I'm not sure I knew how I felt until recently. And it doesn't matter now. Finding who did this to Giovanni matters.”

He let it rest, and since he'd decided it was his turn to deal with practicalities, he removed the covers from the steaks. “Nobody understands the way a slice of red meat should be treated better than the Florentines. Tell me about Giovanni.”

It was a fist to the heart and the shock of it had her staring at him. “I don't know what you want me to say.”

“First tell me what you knew about him and how you came to know it.” It would ease her in, he thought, to the details he wanted most.

“He's— He was brilliant. A chemist. He was born here in Florence, and joined Standjo about ten years ago. He worked here primarily, but did some time in the lab at the Institute. That's where I worked with him initially, about six years ago the first time.”

She lifted a hand and rubbed at her temple. “He was a lovely man, sweet and funny. He was single. He enjoyed women, and was very charming and attentive. He noticed details about you. If you wore a new blouse or did your hair a different way.”

“Were you lovers?”

She winced, but shook her head. “No. We were friends. I respected his abilities, very much. I trusted his judgment, and I depended on his loyalty. I used his loyalty,” she said quietly, then pushed away from the table to walk to the parapet.

She needed a moment to adjust, yet again. He was dead.
She couldn't change it. How many times, she thought, for how many years, would she find herself adjusting to those two single facts?

“It was Giovanni who called me to tell me the bronze had been discredited,” she continued. “He didn't want me unprepared when my mother contacted me.”

“So, he was in her confidence?”

“He was part of my team here, on the project. And he'd been called on the carpet when my findings were questioned.” Steadier, she walked back to the table, sat again. “I used his loyalty, and our friendship. I knew I could.”

“Today was the first time you talked to him about the bronze being a copy?”

“Yes. I called him when you went downstairs. I asked him to meet me inside Santa Maria Novella. I told him it was urgent.”

“Where did you call him?”

“At the lab. I knew I could catch him before the end of the workday. I took the bronzes, and I went down the stairs, out the back courtyard while you were at the desk. He came right away. It couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes.”

Enough time, Ryan mused, for him to have told someone of the call. The wrong someone. “What did you tell him?”

“Almost everything. I explained that I had the bronze that Ponti had tested, that it wasn't the same one we'd worked on. I told him as much as I could about the
David
. I don't think he believed me. But he listened.”

She stopped pushing her steak around on her plate. Pretending to eat was too much effort. “I asked him to take the bronzes into the lab, to run tests, to do a comparison. I said I'd contact him tomorrow. I didn't give him the hotel because I didn't want him to call or come over. I didn't want you to know what I'd done with the bronzes.”

Ryan sat back, deciding neither of them was going to do the meal justice. Instead he took out a cigar. “That may very well be why we're sitting here, enjoying the moonlight.”

“What do you mean?”

“Put your brain to work, Dr. Jones. Your friend had the bronzes, and now he's dead. The murder weapon and the
David
were left on the scene. What connects the two? You do.”

He lighted the cigar to give her time to absorb the thought. “If the cops had found those statues on the crime scene, they'd have gone hunting for you. Whoever did it knows you've put enough together to look for answers, and that you're skirting the law enough to prevent you from bringing in the police.”