Chasing the White Lion by James Hannibal (best free e book reader .TXT) 📗

The other two ignored her. Val walked away from Tyler. “Don Marco won’t leave Campione for the same reasons Jafet won’t leave his office.”

“He’ll come,” Tyler said.

“He’ll want to, because you’re the one who’s asking, but I’m afraid he’ll still say no.”

“I won’t be asking. You will. Don Marco won’t leave Campione d’Italia for me. But he’ll do it for his only daughter.”

CHAPTER

FORTY-

THREE

ADAMANTAS MARINA

MILOS CALDERA

MILOS, GREEK ISLES

FINN, MAC, AND DARCY did not return until dusk, cutting across the caldera in a pair of rented powerboats. And they did not return empty-handed. Black canvas bags bulging with their purchases filled up a quarter of the houseboat’s living room. When Talia tried to unzip one, Darcy slapped her hand away. “What are you trying to do, blow up the boat?”

“I just wanted to see,” she said, rubbing her smarting fingers.

“So did the curious cat, yes? And look what happened to her.”

Bunking with the chemist that night had charms of its own. Eddie stayed well past his welcome, and something in the way he and Darcy talked science made Talia want to put her earbuds in. There were passionate undertones hidden in all the technical jargon. “Time for you to go, Eddie. It’s late.”

“Am I being too loud?”

“No.” Talia caught his elbow and led him to the door, all of two steps from the edge of Darcy’s bunk. “You’re being too . . . here. I need to sleep.”

“We’ll be quiet. We can talk with the lights off.”

“Not a chance. Out.”

They both glanced at Darcy, who had lost interest and started digging in her purse. Eddie lowered his voice. “But we were connecting.”

“Connect tomorrow, when I’m not around. Good night, Eddie.” She pushed him out and closed the door.

With Eddie gone, Talia began a nighttime ritual she had started many years before, after losing her father. Any first night in a new bed, she read a worn copy of The Cat in the Hat.

She had barely passed the title page when Darcy set her purse down and propped herself up on her pillows, playing with what Talia took to be a ball of clay. “He is sweet, no?”

Talia lowered the book to her lap. “Always has been.” To her, Eddie was like a little brother—not the annoying kind, but the kind who needed protecting. “Darcy . . .”

“Yes, mon amie?”

“Where do you see things going? With you and Eddie, I mean.”

Darcy kept playing with her clay, molding it into a little man. “Nowhere. Anywhere.” She shrugged, and in the process, tore one of the clay man’s spindly little arms off. She frowned and tried to stick it back on. “We are having fun, and for me, that is enough, yes?”

“Does he know that?”

Darcy let go of the repaired arm, and it stayed in place, now shorter and grossly uneven with the other. “Does he know what, mon amie?”

“That you—” In that instant, the clay’s yellow tone and glossy sheen registered in Talia’s mind. “Darcy, is that . . . ?”

“X-dough. Swedish plastique.”

“And you thought I would blow up the boat?”

“Don’t be silly. X-dough has the stability of C4, with improved plasticity. Watch.” Darcy smacked her hands together, squishing her art. “See? Safe. You cannot set it off without detonators.” She held the little man, now as flat as a pancake, in her palm and placed two tiny black discs where his eyes would go.

“What are those?” Talia asked.

“Detonators.”

“Darcy!”

She showed Talia another one, holding it between her thumb and forefinger. “Look how small they are—the latest advance from Singapore.”

The Cat in the Hat could wait until their next location. At the moment, she needed to keep Darcy from playing with bombs in bed. Talia slapped the light switch. “Go to sleep, Darcy. Let’s hope we both live to see the morning.”

She rolled over against the bulkhead side of her bunk, and the moment she closed her eyes, trying not to picture Darcy playing with plastique, her phone rang. Talia nearly jumped out of her skin. “Yes?”

“There you are.”

The caller’s voice rose from the bottom of a well of static, but Talia recognized it. “Jenni?”

“Were you in the bathroom? You let it ring for like two full minutes.”

“No. The call has to . . . Let’s just say it has to pass through a lot of junctions before it reaches me. What’s going on?”

“Mom tried to call yesterday. She never got through.”

“Wendy’s number is not on the list.”

A long pause. “You can call her Mom too, you know. Even if you don’t sign the adoption papers.”

“Jenni, it’s nighttime here. Are you calling to catch up or—”

“Two things. The police came to the house. Except, I don’t think they were police. They said you didn’t show up at work. I told them they were mistaken. You’re on vacation. But Mom’s worried.”

The police. Unlikely. Jordan hadn’t taken long to make her next move, escalating the game. “Did they ask where?”

“I told them I didn’t know.”

Smart. But Jenni had always been quick on the uptake. “Thanks. I’m okay. And I’m sorry it upset . . . Mom.”

She could almost hear Jenni smiling at her use of the word. “That’s okay. I’ll handle it.”

“You said there were two things. What was the other one?”

“I got a call from Ewan Ferguson.”

Talia sat up in bed. “The guy from Compassion International—the one on the ground in Thailand.”

“He has a lead on the missing kids.”

CHAPTER

FORTY-

FOUR

MILOS NATIONAL AIRPORT

MILOS, GREEK ISLES

MOONLIGHTPOOLED on the hangar floor beside Tyler’s AS2. He kept the overhead halogens off, in case Jafet had eyes watching the airfield. While the others slept, he and Val had driven out there to await Don Marco’s arrival.

Val walked the threshold between the polished concrete and the airfield’s cracked asphalt—agitated, unwilling to sit down at the folding table Tyler had pulled out for them. She still wore the black one-piece, but she had added a thin white shirt and a matching skirt that fell to her ankles. Both billowed in the breeze coming off the water. He watched her for a time, then disappeared