Page 2 of Enduring Caine
“Straight to business, as always.” Elliot chuckled quietly and returned his focus to his laptop. He lowered his voice further. “I told you in the airport I couldn’t give you any more details about the smuggling case, but I just received an email with something you need to know.”
I straightened, my eyes drifting to his laptop screen, but it had a filter preventing people from catching a glimpse from the side.
“You remember we talked about Antonio’s uncle last week?”
“Yeah.” At my insistence, Elliot had told me about a mysterious uncle, one neither Antonio nor his father wanted to speak of. Between that conversation and several revelations from Antonio afterward, I’d learned the uncle was Giovanni Ferraro and that he and his son, Cristian, were involved in smuggling stolen art and cultural heritage items.
“The TPC has someone in place within his organization, living at his estate.” The TPC was the Italian Carabinieri’s art crimes squad, similar to the team Elliot worked for with the FBI. “His communications have been sporadic the last few months, but he got a message out last week which included reference to a plan for Antonio.”
My eyes shot to the curtain between classes, toward the front of the plane where Antonio was sleeping. “A plan? For Antonio?”
“That’s all the information I have.” Elliot patted my forearm. “But don’t be surprised if his uncle reaches out to him while you’re there.”
My heart screamed in my chest. Antonio told me he’d gotten involved with them a decade ago, only leaving when he’d been shot and nearly killed. I leaned in closer. “Could this be related to what I told you about Antonio being recruited by Parker’s boss?”
Parker Johnson, the other man who’d tried to kill us—the one I wasn’t having nightmares about—had told me the people he worked for wanted Antonio. It sounded like a pitch to bring him into their organization, but no one knew why.
Elliot used his touchpad and keyboard, the light reflecting against his face shifting as his screens changed. “I thought the same originally, but I’m fairly certain Parker isn’t linked to the uncle.”
“He’s linked to the man you’re really targeting in your smuggling investigation?” Talking in vagaries was fraying the ends of my nerves, but most of this discussion was privileged intel. If the wrong ears overheard something on the quiet plane, it could ruin Elliot’s entire investigation into the smuggling ring. But people like that wouldn’t usually fly back here. They’d be on private jets or on enormous yachts, like the man Antonio and I thought might be behind all of it.
Maybe it was the fatigue hindering my judgment or an overwhelming need to put it all out there as clearly as possible, but I reached a hand to Elliot’s keyboard and touched five letters: F-I-O-R-I.
He paused, staring at the keyboard. Antonio and I suspected Pasquale Fiori was behind most of the crimes we’d encountered over the last half year. A stolen painting at an auction, a stolen fresco from Pompeii, more stolen paintings hidden away in Parker’s girlfriend’s house in Brenton. But he’d also been the man who took us onto his private yacht when I twisted my ankle while hiking. Who insisted Antonio couldpay him back laterfor that kindness.
When Elliot finally nodded, my heart slowed. That meant Antonio’s uncle, despite the wiretaps and undercover operative in his estate, wasn’t the centerpiece of the investigation. It shouldn’t have mattered. Antonio and his immediate family had little contact with Giovanni, but still, they were family, and that was important to him. Plus, his cousin Cristian had been the one Antonio called when he needed help, not just in Naples in September, but over the last couple of weeks in Brenton.
“What should we do, Elliot?” I was so tired. Bone-weary tired.
“Be yourself, Sam.” A smile creased his face, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Keep your eyes open and your brain engaged. You and Antonio make a good team, so lean on him and let him do the same with you.”
Be yourself. What did that even mean anymore? Should I be the skittish woman who jumped at every loud noise since the first shooting two weeks ago? Or the woman who wanted desperately to work with Elliot again, solving the world’s art crimes? Or the woman who wanted nothing more in the world than two weeks of peace and quiet with her injured boyfriend? “Can I tell Antonio about this? Warn him if nothing else?”
“Only if you think he won’t tip them off.”
“He wouldn’t.” I gave him the best smile I could, the muscles in my face protesting the entire action. “I don’t know how much more of this chaos I can handle.”
He closed the laptop lid and stared at it for a moment before turning to me. “Did your mother tell you she was the one who secured your internship with me after college?”
The same twisting feeling skittered through my stomach as it always did when she and the FBI came up in the same breath. Her urging reinforced my desire to join, while her death was the reason I left. “She said you two worked together on a case.”
He covered his mouth, hiding his reaction. In my experience, Elliot rarely displayed emotion other than pride in a job well done or the encouragement his team needed to accomplish those jobs. As quickly as whatever he was hiding came over him, it was gone, and the hand fell to his armrest. “She told me you put your whole heart into things, but your brain tries to hold you back.”
My mom, state prosecutor and apparently amateur psychiatrist. That about summed things up. My brain and heart had been battling over my relationship with Antonio almost every day for the last five months.
“I expect that’s what you’re going through now.” He squeezed my forearm. “You watched two people die after they’d drugged and kidnapped you. You had a friend turn his gun on you and Antonio. Your brain is trying to reconcile anger over what happened with the respect and faith in humanity you have inside you. Until that happens, your heart can’t grieve or heal.”
Maybe he was right. Which part of the event bothered me more? Watching the Scotts die or knowing that my old friend—a cop—was the one who killed them, just before he shot Antonio? And how much of my panic was the lingering fear over watching Antonio being whisked away by paramedics, then having to wait for him to come out of surgery?
“But here’s the hard truth. You don’t have to reconcile those things. You can be angry about what they did, but still regret the outcome. You haven’t been dealt an easy hand, Sam. The question is: What are you going to do with it?”
“Right now, I want to focus on two quiet weeks in Naples.” My gaze drifted to the curtain into the next cabin, to the seatbelt signs above, not really focusing on anything. “I should get back to Antonio.”
“I’m just a call away if you need me.”
I leaned over and gave him a hug. Not sure why I did—maybe it was him using my mother’s memory, the fatigue, or simply an appreciation for how much he always supported me, while still nagging me to come back to the FBI. He hugged me back.
With all my thanks stuck in my throat, I stood and made my way to first class in the dark.