Consumed by Fire (2 page)

The woman was model thin, model tall, and had an interesting rather than a beautiful face. She was exquisite, as so many Italian and French women were, and Evangeline had learned long ago not to feel inadequate, but for some reason those lessons vanished in her sleep-fuzzed brain, and she knew she was a grubby mess.

The man didn’t help. He was just a bit taller than the woman was, perhaps six feet, and if the woman was gorgeous this man was simply . . . she couldn’t think of the word for it. Unlike his companion, he was dressed casually, wearing khakis and an open-neck shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal tanned forearms: he looked like a beautiful, slightly decadent Italian nobleman come back to life. He had an elegant face, black hair that flowed around it in artful waves, and the kind of dark, liquid eyes you could drown in. His mouth was made for sin, his lean body had a whipcord, tensile strength, and Evangeline was in love.

She shook her head and laughed softly at the notion, and the sound caught their attention. They’d been so deep in conversation they hadn’t noticed her sudden appearance, and they both jerked their heads in her direction with lightning speed, making her feel even more conspicuous.

She straightened her shoulders, gave them a smile and a polite “
bongiorno
,” and moved past them into the darkness of the main church. Signore Corsini was still praying, bent low, and although she didn’t want to bother him, she didn’t want to go back the other way. It would look extremely odd if she immediately turned around, and she preferred not to face the glorious couple again. She dipped her fingers in the holy water and crossed herself again, her back to them, and started up the aisle.

She could feel their eyes on her, which was ridiculous. There was no reason for them to watch her—she was obviously just an American tourist wandering around the hillsides, and she should be the last person to interest them.

She was mentally slapping herself upside the head. What the hell had gotten into her, to worry about what people thought of her? She didn’t want to look like that woman, no matter how stunning she was, no matter what kind of man she attracted.

And she didn’t want a man like that. He was too handsome, too elegant, too self-assured, and worse than that, there was a burning intensity behind those dark brown eyes that made her even more uncomfortable.

When she dated she preferred ordinary mortals, men who were slightly offbeat. She liked normal men, people you bumped into at the Laundromat, slightly awkward, slightly rumpled, though she couldn’t stand academics, most of whom had the morals of an alley cat. A life in academia, following her parents’ example, was not particularly conducive to romance if her fellow professors made her skin crawl, but Evangeline was fine on her own most of the time. She considered the fact that she even enjoyed sex to be a major triumph, and she no longer had anything left to prove.

But this man was something else. Maybe she’d been alone too long: one look at that decidedly dangerous man and she’d practically swooned at his feet. She wasn’t sure why she thought he was dangerous—the only likely danger was to her heart. No, he wouldn’t even get that far. Maybe he was simply a danger to her self-esteem. Whatever the problem, she didn’t want to get any closer.

She approached the altar first, remembering at the last moment to do that sort of dip she’d seen others do, and then turned back. When her parents had bothered to take her and her sister to church at all, it had been to the local Unitarian church, and she wasn’t that familiar with the arcane rituals each faith demanded, though she did her best.

She thought she heard the sound of a car, and some of the tension left her. They were gone. She needed to start back to town if she was going to make it to her hotel in time for dinner, and she was famished. Turning, she started back down the aisle, pausing to look at the man still bent in prayer. She hid her smile—he’d probably fallen asleep as she had. Sooner or later he’d wake up and drive himself home in one of those cars—the Bentley, she guessed. It was logical to assume he would be returning to the hotel; maybe if she asked him, he would give her a ride down. But who knew how long the old man might doze, and he might not be planning to return at all, but continue up over the hills.

She wrinkled her nose. There was an odd, almost sewage-like smell in the air. There was no plumbing up here, just an open well, and someone must have used the place for an emergency bathroom. She shrugged. These things happened—she only hoped the priest was alert enough to notice and get whoever looked after the place to clean. But it wasn’t her concern.

She turned back to the entrance of the church and halted. Someone was standing there, silhouetted by the bright sun. A man, and while she could hope it was a priest she knew fate wasn’t with her. All right, she could handle it. Handsome men usually had very little brains, and she could outthink almost anyone. She kept walking toward him.

James Bishop watched the girl move toward him, wishing he still smoked. She’d obviously been clambering around the hills all day, and she was a dusty, dirt-streaked mess. She’d clean up well—he had an eye for such things—and she moved well. In fact, if this were simply a cover, then she’d done a good job with it. She could almost convince him, if he could afford to be convinced.

He couldn’t. Claudia had been very clear.

“I don’t care if she saw us kill Corsini or not, she saw us. When the news gets out that someone was garroted in the old church, she’ll remember seeing us there.”

He’d shrugged. “What does it matter? We’ll be long gone, and we’ll look completely different. No one will connect either of us with the hit—we’ve made sure of it. We just go ahead as we’d planned—spend the night in town and then move on. She’s no danger to us.”

“Since when have you become so sentimental? She’s a liability, and I’m not about to endanger myself because you’re feeling sentimental.”

“Our orders concerning collateral damage have changed and you know it. We don’t need to add to the body count,” he’d said irritably. He’d had no choice but to kill Corsini’s chauffeur—the man had tried to cut his throat—but he still had blood on his hands, and he was feeling like god-damned Lady Macbeth. There was only so much Claudia’s perfumed wipes could remove, and even he couldn’t bring himself to rinse his hands in the font of holy water at the entrance to the church. Too much of his ancient Catholic upbringing coming back to haunt him, he thought.

“Changed for the worse,” Claudia had snapped. “I don’t care how squeamish Peter Madsen is, I’m not going to feel comfortable until she’s disposed of. If you’re too much of a pussy to do it, I will.”

Bishop had kept his temper under control. “I’ll check her out. If I think she’s a problem, I’ll take care of it,” he’d said shortly.

“She’s a problem.”

“That’s for me to decide.”

“No, it isn’t. Cut her throat, dump her with the chauffeur, and then get your ass back down to the town.”

He’d given her the silky smile that always pissed her off. “And what makes you think you’re in charge here, Claudia? You’re the operative, I’m the handler. You took care of the old man, but I’m overseeing the operation. I make the decision—you live with it.”

Claudia had snarled at him before taking off in the Lexus, peeling out of the parking space and tearing down the hill at suicidal speeds. He’d watched her go for a moment. It would make things a lot simpler if she simply took one corner too fast. She was unstable, and that was always a concern. Sooner or later Madsen was going to have to do something about her, but that wasn’t his problem. He was just going to have to put up with her bad temper back at the hotel.

Which was the least of his worries. If he had to silence this particular witness he was going to be in a thoroughly rotten mood himself.

She had stopped and looked at Corsini, and he wondered if she could see anything. She didn’t look perturbed, just continued down the aisle toward him, and for a crazy moment he thought of a bride walking to meet her groom. Some bride, he thought, the trace of a smile tugging at his mouth. She looked as if she’d been rolling in dust, she had scrapes on her long legs, and her hair beneath the bandanna was a mess.

She finally reached him, and if there was a slight hesitation in her step only he would have noticed. She looked him in the eye, plastered a totally fake smile on her face, the same one she’d given them before, and greeted him as she had before, in American-accented Italian, though this time with a hint of a question in her greeting.

He answered in the same language, with a better accent. “Good afternoon, signorina. It’s a very fine church, isn’t it?”

She was definitely nervous, looking up at him uneasily despite her friendly smile, but that could be simply because she was alone in a deserted place with an unknown man. For Claudia that would be enough to blow her head off. He wasn’t as trigger-happy. “Very fine,” she agreed. “I’ve been studying it.”

“You are a student?” He was stringing out this inconsequential conversation while he covertly watched her. She was looking at him as if he were a murderer, he thought resignedly. He was going to have to kill her after all.

“Sort of,” she answered, and he wondered why she was prevaricating. It raised his suspicions. “If you’ll excuse me, signor, I have to get back to town . . .”

“You’re American, aren’t you?” he said suddenly in English. Maybe he could get a better sense of her in her own language.

She looked startled. “Y . . . yes. And you?”

“From Connecticut,” he lied, but an East Coast polish went better with his current incarnation. He was actually from the endless winters of Wyoming, from miles and miles of emptiness and spiky mountains and bone-deep cold. “What is your area of interest?”

She clearly wasn’t in the mood for idle conversation. She seemed anxious to get away from him, and that might have sealed her fate. “Medieval clerical architecture,” she admitted finally. “With an emphasis on walled towns. And now I really need . . .”

“You picked a good town for it then,” he said, cutting off her excuse to leave. “I haven’t been back home for a number of years, but unless things have changed drastically I wouldn’t think there’d be a whole lot of jobs in that area.”

“I teach college. I already have my degree, I’m just working on a project.” She seemed to struggle with the words, and he wondered what she really wanted to say. What was she covering up?

“You’re an academic?” he said, and she winced.

“I suppose so,” she said reluctantly. “Excuse me, but I really need to go.” She was already edging away, and he kept himself from reaching for her. If she ran he could catch her. That, or bury a bullet in the back of her brain with the same amount of care it took him to tie his shoes.

“Do you have a car?” he asked, stalling her as she turned to leave.

She blinked those gorgeous green eyes of hers. They were startling—a clear emerald color that had to be from contacts, just as his own eye color was.

She was looking at him warily, filled with distrust. Shit.

“I don’t need a car.”

“Look, I’m driving down into Cabrisi. You must be staying there—it’s the only town in the area, and you’re on foot. Let me give you a ride. Trust me, I’m perfectly harmless.” He held up both hands in a surrendering gesture.

“I don’t think . . .”

“Look, I saw you here, and I don’t like to leave a single woman alone up in these hills with no protection. Not when it’s getting dark.” He gave her his patented engaging grin. “For all I know you’re some kind of super-spy, with epic martial arts skills and lethal weapons all over you. But in case you’re not, I just thought I should hang around and offer you a ride.”

She was judging him, he thought, looking at him as if trying to decide whether he was as harmless as he appeared. When she said nothing, he simply shrugged. “It’s no skin off my ass,” he continued. “I’m trying to be the good guy here. I know, I’m a stranger—you have no reason to trust me, but I’m not about to hurt you. Just give you a ride into town before the storm hits.”

She jerked her gaze to the sky, and he knew she hadn’t even noticed the storm clouds swirling down on the Tuscan hills. “I wondered why it had grown so dark this early,” she said inconsequentially. And then she met his gaze, and her doubt and distrust had vanished. “I was going to ask Signor Corsini for a ride when he finished his prayers but I think he’s fallen asleep.”

He froze, all sentimental weakness vanishing. If she was connected to their recent hit then he’d have no choice. “Signor Corsini?” he echoed. The less he said, the more she’d have to come up with. It was an old trick, but an effective one.

“The old man who’s praying. He’s staying at the same hotel I am. I see him at dinner. He’s very sweet.”

She was staying at the Villa Ragarra, the same hotel they were using. That made things both easier and harder. Easier if she really was a liability and he had to dispose of her. Easier for him to find out what she knew if they were staying beneath the same roof, harder to keep Claudia from going after her. Claudia liked to kill.

“At that age he’s probably got a lot to answer for,” he said easily. “I wouldn’t count on him being ready before the storm hits, and maybe he needs to atone while he drives down the hill. He’s probably got any number of Hail Marys to make.”