Trigger Page 10

  “We haven’t seen the last of him,” I said with conviction.

  “Why would those men in the van be after us?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, but I think Chase may know something about it.”

  “Why would he?” Ann asked, taking another big gulp of wine.

  I went to the balcony and stepped out into the cool night air. The moon was barely a sliver, so it was very dark outside. A noise overhead startled me. Someone was on the rooftop.

  Alarm flared inside me for the second time that day, and I backed away from the railing. I didn’t know if whoever was up there had seen me, but I wanted to be ready. I grabbed the empty wine bottle and got into a defensive stance.

  Anna opened her mouth, probably to question my unorthodox behavior, so I gestured for her to keep quiet. The noises coming from the tile roof were now directly overhead. Holding my breath, I waited. Suddenly it was silent.

  “Would you please put down that wine bottle? I won’t hurt you.” The words were a breath in my ear.

  Reacting aggressively, I tried to raise the wine bottle weapon but found myself pinned in a viselike grip. Instantly I let my whole body go completely limp. Instead of releasing me, I heard my attacker give a soft chuckle. I started to struggle until I heard his voice.

  “Jordan! Relax, it’s me!” Chase said, letting me go.

  Pulling away, I spun around to glare at him.

  “What are you doing, pulling some crazy ninja maneuver like that?” I hissed.

  He held his hands up defensively, all amusement gone from his face.

  “I needed to get to you without those buffoons who are watching the hotel seeing me.”

  I stared at him dumbfounded. Who was watching our hotel?

  “Nice move going limp like that; it would throw most attackers off.” His tone was admiring and cautious at the same time. “You sure you didn’t take some sort of self-defense class at some point?” It was half-question, half-statement.

  “No, I learned that from reading Nancy Drew books,” I said.

  “Nancy Drew?” Shaking his head, he gestured for me to go inside. “I need to talk to you.”

  Anna watched the whole exchange from her position on her bed, with a pastry in one hand and wine in the other.

  “Who is watching the hotel?” I demanded.

  “Your Italian buddies have stationed a couple of officers in an unmarked car outside the hotel to keep an eye on you.”

  Immediately upon entering the room, he shut and locked the doors to the balcony, checked to make certain the main door was locked, and then scoped out the inside of the closet, the bathroom and under the beds. I barely registered his whirlwind of activity because I was focused on what he’d said.

  “Why would they have cops watching us?” Anna asked.

  “I’m not sure if they’re just trying to make sure people don’t get in to see you, or if he wants to keep track of where you are at all times.” He grimaced as he voiced the second option.

  Done with his frenzied search of the room, he was now leaning against a wall so he could see both the doorway and the window without moving.

  “Why have you been watching them watch us?” I asked.

  “I have been watching you in case the men who botched that kidnap attempt today come back to finish the job,” he stated calmly.

  My arms and legs suddenly felt heavy. I sat down on the bed. Dozens of thoughts swirled through my head.

  “Why do they want to kidnap us?” I asked. My words sounded funny, like I was speaking softly from the far end of a large, empty room.

  “Although they tried to kidnap both of you, Jordan was their primary target.”

  His tone was calm, like he was talking about the weather and not an abduction attempt. While he spoke, he kept flicking glances at the door and the balcony like he expected someone to burst through one or the other at any moment.

  “I think that it’s time you explain this whole situation to us from the beginning.” I fought to keep my voice steady.

  If what he was saying was true, then not only did I need to keep my composure, I needed to know exactly what was going on so I could deal with it.

  “I am not sure we have time for me to tell you everything.”

  “Then give us the short version!”

  I was exasperated, but refused to be deterred. At his request, I had lied to foreign law enforcement officers and now he was telling me I was the target of kidnappers. I wanted, no, I needed, answers.

  When he spoke, I could tell his words were slow, deliberate and carefully chosen.

  “You, Jordan, are the target of an international bounty hunt. That is why those men tried to kidnap you. I’m not sure where, when, or how, but they will come for you again and this time they will probably not fail. The fact that you’ve evaded them once will be unacceptable to them and to their employer. If you’re left on your own, there is no way for you to escape them indefinitely, despite the abilities you’ve displayed which have helped you elude them until now. I don’t know why they want you, but I know they will stop at nothing to get you.” He paused and then added, “I also know that there is only one way to avoid them.”

  Taking it all in, I sat motionless, waiting for what he would say next.

  “You’re going to have to trust me.”

  I searched his eyes, finding truth in them, which shook me to the core.

  “You’ll need to leave Monterosso with me tonight. In order for us to get out of here alive, you’ll need to do everything that I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. Once we’re somewhere safe, we’ll try to figure out exactly why they’re after you. Then we’ll figure out how to stop them,” he said with a chilling, harsh finality.

  I was stunned, completely unprepared.

  “What is your part in all of this?” Anna’s voice was a squeak.

  As preposterous as what he said was, I believed him. Anna recognized this, so she cut to the exact thing I wanted to know most: what his involvement was.

  “I work for a competitor who received information about the bounty placed on you by this rival company. They didn’t have the details about why it was placed on you, so I was sent to observe you and find out the reason for their interest.”

  “Observe me?” My tongue was sluggish as I formed the words, as though I were inebriated.

  “Basic reconnaissance from a distance, although I obviously failed.” He muttered the last part to himself.

  “How long have you been observing me?” I demanded.

  It was obvious he didn’t want to answer.

  “If you want me to trust you then you need to tell me everything.”

  “Versailles.”

  I had not expected that. “Really? You saw us get booted out of Versailles?”

  “Yes.”

  More in control now, my mind sped ahead. “The train and then Vatican City.” I didn’t need his confirmation to know I was correct.

  “Yes, that is where you first saw the other men who had been following you since you left the hotel. I was impressed that you spotted them. They were not the best, but they weren’t bad.”

  “I could tell something wasn’t right about them.” I shrugged, not sure how else to describe what had been innate.

  Chase’s face was unreadable. “I watched from a distance until the guy with the spiky hair approached you at the Colosseum. I wasn’t supposed to intervene, yet I felt compelled to act. I was surprised he got that aggressive with you in public. He was either desperate or incredibly inept.”

  “You stuck around after. That wasn’t part of your plan, was it?” I asked.

  “No, it wasn’t. I told myself that by staying it would discourage that guy or his friends from coming back.” He was frowning as if still trying to convince himself he had done the right thing.

  “You were following us the entire time we were in Rome?” I was thinking about the date with Marcello and Francesco and the feeling that we were being watched.

  “Yes, I
was there that night. So were they,” he said, responding to both the asked and unasked questions.

  Against my will, I found myself flushing.

  “So are you some sort of secret agent or something?” Anna asked.

  “No, I am not a secret agent.” His tone was flat.

  I raised my eyebrow at him skeptically.

  “The term we use is operator or operative,” he said, relenting under my scrutiny.

  “Operative? Are you talking James Bond stuff here?” Anna asked.

  “James Bond is a tux-wearing pansy compared to the people I deal with,” he smirked.

  “But you are involved in some sort of espionage, right?” I pressed, ignoring his quip.

  “You could say that.”

  “Look, I’m done with the vagueness and the word games. Tell the truth or we go find Marcello and Francesco and get them to help us.” I didn’t want to resort to threats but he wasn’t leaving me with any choice.

  “You’re a spy, or a spook or whatever, just not a government one?” I asked when he continued to hesitate.

  “No.”

  “That’s it!” I said in exasperation, heading toward the door.

  With a side-step, Chase blocked my path, gesturing for me to return to my spot on the bed. After a brief stare-down, I reluctantly returned to my earlier position.

  “I’m not a spy in the sense that you are thinking of. I don’t work for a government-controlled agency like the CIA or FBI. I work for a private company conducting both surveillance and tactical operations.” He was as offhand as an accountant describing his daily activities.

  “Tactical operations, surveillance—what have we gotten involved in?” Anna said, sounding bewildered

  “Much more than you ever could have bargained for.” Chase seemed almost apologetic.

  “But why are they after me?” Having accepted the scenario he presented, I was now focused on the reason for it.

  “I don’t know, but I intend to find out.” His voice had a steely edge that was both frightening and exhilarating at the same time.

  “I’m not anyone special or related to anyone important. I don’t know anything or anyone or have a bunch of money. It just doesn’t make sense!”

  “There must be something you have that they want.”

  “Like what? Don’t you think if I had something worth kidnapping me over, I’d know what it is?”

  “Maybe it’s something you don’t know you have. Has anyone approached you and given you anything, or said anything to you that seems unusual?” I was shaking my head before he finished the sentence.

  “Has anyone suspicious been around you or your belongings? Has anything felt strange or out of place in any of the places you’ve stayed, when you’ve been on a train, or any interactions with people?”

  “Other than at the Colosseum, and then today, no one strange has approached us. Whenever we leave our bags anywhere, they are locked and the room is locked, so no one could have slipped anything into them.”

  “Maybe it was something you’ve seen. Has any place that you’ve been, person you’ve been around, or anything that’s happened to you, or around you, seemed out of place, or memorable for any reason?”

  “A couple times I’ve gotten the feeling I’m being watched, but we know that was either you or them.” Quickly flipping through a perfect mental slideshow of the whole trip, I came up with nothing. “I really can’t think of anything else.” I flicked a look at Anna and she was also shaking her head. If I said I couldn’t recall anything, then she knew enough about my memory to know it was undoubtedly the case.

  He looked thoughtful for a minute. “Maybe it was something you were given or saw before you left for Europe. Think carefully; is there anything that happened that seemed out of the ordinary while you were in the States?”

  Thinking back over the last several months at home I came up with nothing again. I shook my head to let him know I was drawing a blank.

  “Maybe it is someone you know, back home or here. Are any family members, friends, family of friends or acquaintances famous, wealthy, or anything?” he postulated.

  “My brother is an All-American football player at Stanford, but other than that we’re all pretty ordinary. No one is a celebrity or tied to anything powerful like the government or an important company that I know of.” I was coming up empty on all avenues he had suggested. “It couldn’t have anything to do with my brother, could it?”

  Terror clogged my throat as I considered the possibility that Carter may be mixed up in all this. What if he was in danger as well? More than anything I wanted to call him to make sure he was ok, but I knew that I couldn’t do that. If he found out I was in trouble, he would want to come here to help me. If they were after me, and he wasn't involved, I wasn't about to drag him into the middle of it.

  “It is conceivable that someone would go through you to try to get to him, but I don’t think that is what this is. They were specific about obtaining you, and that seems extreme if they are trying to get to your brother. Anna, do you have any ideas?”

  “No, I’ve no idea what they could possibly want. You said that they were specifically after Jordan, right?”

  Chase nodded.

  “The two of us have been together almost constantly since we got here. Anything that she has seen and anyone she has met, I have too. I would think they’d want both of us if it was something that happened here.”

  “Almost?” he quizzed her.

  “We haven’t followed each other into the bathroom stall or on your motorcycle jaunt the other day,” she said. “All the rest of the time we’ve been together though, so it can’t be something we saw or someone we met since we arrived in Europe.”

  Her logic was sound, but it didn’t give us an answer.

  “It must be something you’re completely unaware of,” he mused. “We need to find out what it is because the only way to stop them is to give them what they want, or prove to them that you don’t have it in the first place.”

  “What if that isn’t enough?”

  He fixed a questioning look at me.

  “What if they don’t want anyone to know about it or me?”

  His expression darkened. When he spoke, the power and tone of his voice was unnerving. “I won’t allow anything to happen to you.”

  The room was dead quiet as we all considered everything that had been said.

  “So you don’t know why they are after me, but your company knew they were and sent you to find out why?” I said, breaking the silence.

  He nodded.

  “You said you were supposed to observe, not interfere. What were you supposed to do once you found out what they wanted?” I demanded.

  “My directive was to report back to them when I learned the reason they were after you and wait for further orders.”

  Seeing the distressed expression on my face, Chase crossed the room to sit on the bed next to me. He lifted my chin so I was looking at him when he spoke.

  “It started out with observe and report back. That is all I thought it would be, just another mission. But it wasn’t. From the first moment I saw you I knew that you were different, that this mission would change…everything.”

  I gazed up at him silently.

  “I’ve always carried out my objective, no matter how difficult the assignment. I have been able to stay completely detached and completely in control. Until you.”

  He ground his teeth together as though it was physically painful to admit this weakness.

  “This lack of control has been difficult for me to accept, so I’ve tried to avoid you, but that didn’t last. When I was away from you, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. When I was with you, all I could think was that I was putting you in more danger by being close to you. It was an impossible situation!”

  The reason for his moodiness and tendency to vanish and then reappear out of nowhere was finally clear.

  “I was watching you this afternoon when I saw them coming for yo
u. I acted without thinking about anything but your safety.”

  For one of the few times in my life, I was at a complete loss as to what to say or do. I had been on an emotional rollercoaster since the previous evening when we had kissed, and now it seemed like that ride was not only going to keep going, it was going to get wilder.

  “So what do we do now?” I managed to get out.

  “Now, we need to get you to some place safe,” Chase said, standing up suddenly.

  “Like where?” I asked.

  “I’m not exactly sure where we are going, and that is probably a good thing. We don’t want them to know where we’re heading or that I‘m with you. Those men will be coming back for you, and the Guardia’s involvement complicates things even more. We have to get away from here now.” He started pacing.

  “Wait a minute!” exclaimed Anna.

  We both glanced up at her, a little startled. In the emotionally fueled moment with Chase, I had forgotten she was even in the room. It seemed like Chase had as well.

  “Why don’t we just go to Marcello and Francesco and tell them what is going on? Can’t they help us?” Anna asked.

  “The people we are dealing with have cops in every country on their payroll. Even if the ones we deal with directly are clean, those around them may not be, so it’s safer to leave them out of it. Besides, an in-depth discussion with any law enforcement agency would not be advantageous for me. I will tell you everything when we are out of here. I’ve wasted enough time, so pack some things quickly, necessities only.” He crossed the room to peer cautiously out the window.

  Despite his command, both Anna and I remained frozen.

  “Come on,” Chase said, “Once you are in their hands I don’t know if I’ll be able to get you back. We have to get out of here now!”

  Even with the threat of imminent danger, I still couldn’t force my muscles to move.

  Chase stopped pacing to stand in front of me. His voice was taut with urgency as he spoke. “Jordan, I know that you’re unsure and what I’m asking you to do is far from easy. What you need to understand is there are pivotal moments where the decisions you make will shape the rest of your life; where your chosen course of action can mean living or dying. This is one of those moments. Trust me.”