The Kill Order (23 page)

39

Venice, Italy

M
arc was already up when Lisette emerged from the bedroom.

He was talking to Dumas and looked upset. “What the hell is going on that we can’t even hide a witness?”

“I worry about her being here,” Dumas said. “I don’t think we have the means to protect her. Not when we don’t know who is hunting her. Who are these other people?”

“I’m not sure. They spoke English.”

“The problem is how to get her on a plane without being stopped before she gets through the airport.”

“Or killed before she gets there.”

“It would be nice to know whom we can trust.” Dumas looked up, saw Lisette. “Coffee?”

“Please.” She held out the phone and battery, pulled apart, knowing Marc was not going to be happy with what she had to say. “It’s the one Piper used to text Giustino. From the kidnapper. There might be an issue with it.”

Dumas eyed both pieces. “But how? If the battery is out?”

“I have a feeling Piper may have put it back in. A call came in, which was when I noticed it and removed the battery a second time. I’m afraid I was a little too out of it to realize—well, the damage is done.”

“A call?” Dumas said. “Who calls a dead man?”

“No one,” Marc said. “Unless you didn’t know he was dead, or you realized the phone was missing and wanted to track it.”

“I fear it is the latter,” Dumas said. “But perhaps we can use it to our advantage?”

“How?” Lisette asked.

“A decoy. We will send the phone in the opposite direction, hoping they follow it instead of you.”

Marc opened a cupboard that contained an assortment of tools and equipment. He intended to clone the phone, and after a glance at the monitors, seeing it was still clear outside, he got to work.

Piper emerged a few minutes later, just as he managed to bring up the numbers on his computer screen.

“The incoming calls,” Marc said, pointing to the screen, and scrolling through the numbers. Most were blocked, but a few were not. “Now the outgoing . . .”

Marc tapped the screen that showed a U.S. area code for the Bay Area. “San Mateo County?”

Piper gave an apologetic sigh. “South City. My brother, Kenny’s, phone. Why should it matter? This phone doesn’t even belong to me.”

Marc swore in Italian.

“What?” Piper asked. “I didn’t think I was ever going to see him again. I mean, what would you do? I wanted him to be able to call me.”

Whoever these people were, they’d already monitored Lisette’s phone, thereby locating Piper at the convent. If, for some reason, they were monitoring the kidnapper’s phone, then it might be an issue. Lisette hoped it wasn’t, that they were giving too much credit where it wasn’t due. It did not, however, answer the bigger question. Who exactly was looking for Piper? Kane’s men? Or someone else?

It was Marc, however, who pointed out the real danger. “Let us hope they are not monitoring your brother’s number as well.”

“But it was just a text, and not even from the same phone I used to call Lisette when— Oh my God . . . This is all my fault.” Her face paled as she turned to Lisette. “He’ll be okay, won’t he?”

“I hope so,” Lisette said.

“Are his foster parents in any danger? Can we protect them, too? They have other kids there.”

This was snowballing, and she worried that if they weren’t able to give Piper the answers she wanted to hear, she’d do something foolish, jeopardizing their safety. That was something she hoped to avoid. For the girl’s sake and theirs. “I think,” Lisette said, “that as long as he is not near them, they are safe. What I do worry about is that they might try to use him to get to you. Our friends will look into it. I promise you.”

“But we have to warn them!”

“Where does he live?”

She gave Lisette the address, adding, “If he’s not at home, he’ll be at school. He goes to South City High.”

Marc abruptly left his chair, undoubtedly to pass on this information to Giustino. When he returned, he said, “Our immediate concern is coming up with a solid plan to get you safely out of this country. It’s clear they know you’re here. If we want to get you out of Venice alive, it’s got to be completely off the grid.”

“He’s right,” Lisette said, then asked Dumas, “About using a decoy? What’s your plan with that?”

Dumas picked up Piper’s stolen phone. “We send three people to the Marco Polo Airport, with tickets in your true name on a return flight. They carry this phone, which we will turn on at key places to send key texts.
If
they are monitoring the phone as we suspect, they should follow it and our decoys to the airport, while you three are leaving by a different route.”

Marc went back to pacing the room, while everyone watched him. “I like it.”

“I don’t,” Piper said. “How will that help my brother?”

“Our friends in the States will be helping him,” he said, stopping at the window, and staring out across the
rio
at the
campo
and the pseudo-Palladian marble archway above the entrance to the church. “Giustino is contacting them now. Let us work on the more immediate plan. So we must carefully compose a text to your brother to let our enemies know what route to take. One that won’t be as suspicious.”

Lisette thought about how close they’d been to being caught, all because of that damned cell phone, and the temptation of one young girl to contact her brother . . . The question now was if they were going to be able to get out of the country at all.

L
isette and Dumas had stayed behind at the safe house with Piper. Giustino left to make the arrangements with his men to set up the travel plans and the decoys who would be leading a false trail to the Marco Polo Airport, where three air tickets back to Washington, D.C., were waiting under their real names. Marc, on the other hand, was picking up the forged passports that Giustino had arranged under their new assumed names. They’d been gone several hours, which was to be expected, considering the number of documents and plans that had to be finalized. Still, if all went well, Lisette thought, looking out the window, they’d be on their way to Rome within the hour. Dumas was watching the monitors, and Lisette kept watch from the windows, since the cameras did not cover the entire square. Despite the ungainly proportions of the church and campanile in respect to the
campo
, she savored the view. Too bad she was here to work, she thought, envying a couple of idlers sitting on one of the benches, enjoying a sliver of sun as they read their newspapers. A glance at the sky, however, foretold the sun would not last, as dark clouds moved in, threatening rain.

Piper walked up beside her. “It’s like stepping back in time,” she said. “You can almost imagine what life would have been like centuries ago.”

The shrill ring of someone’s phone echoed across the empty space, the acoustics of the building intensifying the sound. Dumas laughed. “So much for the illusion of stepping back in time, no?”

A moment later, the roar of a motorboat cut through as it pulled up to a dock on their left. It idled there, the three men content to sit in their boat, not seeming to care that the engine noise was disturbing anyone, or that their boat’s fumes were polluting the clear Venetian air.

“Suddenly a popular location,” Lisette said, then saw a man standing in the shadow of the church doorway talking on his cell. He turned his gaze toward the
rio
, where the boat was docked. She glanced that way, saw another man on the boat talking on his cell.

Talking to each other?

Her instincts went on high alert, and though she didn’t think anyone could see in through the partially closed dark green wooden shutters, she stood off to one side. “Those men are watching our direction and talking to each other.”

Dumas cracked open the shutter of the far left window about a quarter of an inch, allowing just enough room to peer out without being seen from the outside. “On the boat?”

“I think he’s communicating with the man in the church doorway. I could be wrong.” One of the men from the boat walked over to join him. “If you have any suggestions, Father, this is the time.”

He turned to the monitors. “I’d say we make our exit via the boat dock at the rear. That is, assuming it is not also covered.”

“And?”

“The monitor is showing nothing unusual. Where’s Piper?”

“Here,” she said, standing not too far away, looking alarmed.

Poor girl, Lisette thought. “It may be nothing. But stay close.”

Lisette turned her attention back to the window, and just when she was thinking that it could all very well be something innocent, one of them looked toward the safe house and nodded. She stepped back, even though she knew she couldn’t be seen. “We’re definitely being watched.”

“I’ll check the back exit,” Dumas said. “The monitors don’t allow a view far enough down.”

Piper watched him leave, then asked, “Are we still going home today?”

Lisette looked over at her, saw the worry in her eyes. “Of course.”

She seemed relieved to know she wasn’t being left behind.

“Have a seat,” Lisette told her. “It could be a long wait.”

Father Dumas confirmed as much on his return. “We are being watched from the back as well. They are just outside the view of the cameras.”

Lisette focused out the window and saw someone across the
campo
quickly duck into the shadows of the church. “Tell me you have something more than a prayer book to throw at these guys?”

“Unfortunately no. My work is more of the intelligence type.”

Great. One gun between them. Hers.

Piper stood next to her. “We need to call the police.”

“We can’t,” Dumas said. “We have no idea if it was your phone that led them here or someone is monitoring our traffic in another way. Giustino was careful, but perhaps they saw through our ruse last night when we rescued you from that wardrobe.”

Lisette called Marc’s number, listened to it ring, and was relieved when he answered. “We have a bit of a situation,” she said.

40

San Mateo, California

C
arillo glanced at the clock, saw it was just after seven, and was tempted to let the call go to voice mail, knowing that whatever it was this early couldn’t be good. He did not, however, because the area code was from Italy, which was where the girl, Piper, had fled to. “Carillo,” he said.

“Giustino here. Is Tex with you?”

“Asleep in the other room.”

“Good. If you could be so kind as to take him your phone. It is possible his is compromised.”

“That would have been nice to know a lot earlier. Some reason mine isn’t?”

“The possibility exists, but the margin is greater for his. Therefore . . .”

“Great. I’ll just drag my ass out of bed and get him. Long day.”

“
Grazie
.”

Tex was asleep on the couch, facedown, when Carillo walked in.

“Yo. Tex. One of the Italians on the phone for you.”

Tex stirred. “Tell him to call back in the morning.”

“News flash, Sparky. It’s morning.”

Tex shifted on the couch, reached out blindly, and Carillo stuck the phone in his hand. “What . . .” His tone was anything but pleasant. Then again, he and Carillo had spent the last couple of days running round Mexico. They flew home, arriving a little after nine last night, and both had been too tired to do much more than drink several beers, then go straight to bed.

And though that was where Carillo wanted to return to, he knew that the moment he did, Tex would be back, informing him about something he didn’t want to hear. Or do. Which was why he plopped down on the chair and waited, while Tex conversed in Italian, impressing Carillo that he could do it in his near-comatose state.

After several minutes, Tex held out the phone for Carillo. “Here.”

“What was that lively discourse about?”

“The girl they picked up apparently has a brother. Kenny.”

“And that means what to us?”

“Welfare check. Low-key.”

“The location being . . . ?”

Tex finally sat up, looking around, as though it finally hit him that there was still work to be done. “He’s texting you the kid’s address. But figures the high school might be a better option. Something called South City.”

“That’d be South San Francisco High,” Carillo said.

“Guess we’ll need to set the alarm. Don’t want to miss the first bell.”

Carillo looked at the wall clock. “Yeah. Probably gonna miss that. Maybe the tardy bell.”

And so it was they ended up at the boy’s school that morning. While Tex waited in the car, Carillo stood in line behind a slew of kids apparently turning in notes for being sick, late, or wanting to go home. Budget cuts. The office was short staffed, and the secretary overwhelmed by a phone that rang constantly. Her two student aides were busy fielding the notes, and since he wasn’t about to announce who he was with about a dozen witnesses, he stepped back, standing in the doorway of an empty counselor’s office waiting for the crowd at the counter to thin, and the secretary to get off the phone.

A good thing, it turned out, because two men walked up, cut in front of the kids so that they were first in line at the counter. Both were dressed in dark suits, and one held up a black credential case, flashing some sort of ID at the student aide, then asking for the kid by name. Kendall Lawrence.

Carillo didn’t recognize either man, but he certainly knew the government-spook type when he saw them.

Or rather, the creepy government-spook type. These two gave him a bad feeling, and he decided now was not a good time to be spotted. Stepping back into the empty office, he pulled off his tie, tossed it on the chair by the door. Then, after unbuttoning his top shirt button, he grabbed a sheaf of copy paper from the shelf by the desk, acted like he was looking through the papers, then walked out into the main office, hoping he looked more scholarly than he felt. One of the aides, a brown-haired girl with a long ponytail, nodded at the two men, then glanced over at the secretary, who looked up the kid’s room number on her computer. The woman covered the mouthpiece of the phone, said, “Mr. Albertos. Room 143.”

“I’ll get him for you,” the girl told the men, then headed toward the door.

Carillo stepped aside, allowing her to go first, then followed her to the classroom. After she went in, notified the teacher, then exited, he stopped her just outside. “You’re one of the TAs in the office this period?”

“Who are you?”

“New sub. Any chance you can take this paper to the athletic office? They need it to make flyers.”

“Sure.”

“Thanks.”

She took off in the opposite direction and Carillo waited for the kid to exit the classroom. He walked out about sixty seconds later, carrying a backpack.

“You’re Piper’s brother? Kenny?”

The kid looked wary. “How do you know her?”

“She’s, uh, in a bit of trouble. Asked us to look you up, make sure you’re okay.”

“Who are you?”

“Tony Carillo, FBI,” he said as he flipped open his credentials, then guided the kid away from the classroom door. The last thing he needed was to have the teacher walk out and be able to identify him later on should there be an inquiry. Sort of ruined the whole under-the-radar thing. “Don’t suppose you know of any way to get out to the parking lot without going past the office?”

“Why?”

“There’s two guys waiting there for you, and I guarantee they’re not on your sister’s side. Or yours. Piper was pretty adamant about getting you out of here.”

“No offense, but she’s like, not here, so how do I know you’re really who you say you are?”

“You don’t, but it’s me or the two waiting for you in the office, and I have no idea who they are, so take your pick.”

“Why are they looking for me?” Kenny asked.

“Your sister witnessed a crime. She’s in trouble.”

The kid stopped in his tracks.

“We need to hurry.”

“What do you mean she’s in trouble?”

And no sooner had the words left his mouth than the two suits came walking around the corner in the hallway.

“That would be them,” Carillo said softly.

The men looked up, saw Carillo and Kenny, their focus sharpening, and he figured they had about twenty seconds to come up with a Plan B, since getting out undiscovered at this point was long gone. Before he could even think of something, Kenny slung his backpack onto his shoulder, then walked straight toward the men. “Oh my God, Dad,” he said. “You’re
such
a jerk! I didn’t hit him first. He hit me.”

The two men eyed Kenny as he headed straight toward them. “Hey,” the taller of the two said. “Are you Kendall Lawrence?”

The kid gave them a withering look. “I wish. Maybe then I wouldn’t be grounded.
God
I hate my life.”

“Yeah?” Carillo said, thoroughly impressed, while doing his best to keep up with the kid. “You hate it now? Wait until your mother finds out.” He ignored the two men, walking past them, as he followed Kenny around the corner toward the office. Just before he turned, he saw them reach the classroom, one of them pulling open the door. Carillo quickened his pace. “There’s a blue Crown Victoria parked out front with my partner at the wheel. Head for that.”

Before they reached the car, the two men burst out of the office door. “Police! Stop!”

Kenny looked toward them. “Police?”

“Trust me,” Carillo said. “They’re not.”

The kid hesitated.

Carillo opened the back door, shoving him into the car, then got in the front passenger seat. “Time to go,” he told Tex.

“Hey!” The goons ran toward them.

Tex started the car, hit the gas, and raced out of the parking lot, his tires screeching. And the one thing on Carillo’s mind was that if they were law enforcement, or government agents, he sure as hell hoped they didn’t copy his license number. FBI or not, kidnapping minors from school grounds was still very illegal. “Buckle up, kid. I have a feeling this is going to be a wild ride.”