He went to the bed where Seven was curled up in fetal position, clutching a pillow. Even as upset as she was, she was gorgeous. His eyes traced the contours of her athletic calves, which tapered into ankles that were strong but thin. It was wrong to want her at a time like this, but he did.
God, she smelled like a distillery.
She looked up at him. Waiting for Carver to speak.
“I lost a partner too.” His own words surprised him.
Seven swallowed hard. “Really?”
He nodded. “About a year ago.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed, keeping his back to her so she wouldn’t see the manifestation of his desire in his pants. He put a hand on her calf. Patted it lightly. He felt her cozy up to him. Just close enough so that they were touching.
And he let himself think about Megan O’Keefe. They had been followed to a rendezvous at Arlington House, and they’d escaped into a section of ancient tunnel underneath it that had been built by Robert E. Lee, who had lived there before the civil war. He never should have let her walk point as the partially flooded tunnel led them under the Potomac. He had seen her green eyes bloodshot with fear and felt her tremble at the frenzied screech of the rats up the tunnel walls. It had smelled like burnt oranges down there. And there had been things in the water. Black snakes six feet long. Carp nearly as big around as his waist. She shouldn’t have been there to begin with. It was his fault. She had been a NASA cryptologist when Speers had paired them up, and he had objected, at first, to working with an academic like O’Keefe on a mission that was likely to get hairy. He never should have demanded that she take weapons training. And he never should have pretended he hadn’t fallen for her on that summer night in the train station. He should have done everything differently.
“Hey Blake,” Seven murmured from behind him. He was transported back to the present.
“Yeah?”
“Would you just sit there while I go to sleep?”
The very thing that was hardest for him. Sitting still.
“Sure,” he nodded without turning around. “Go ahead and get some shuteye. I’ll be right here.”
He would be true to his word. With one last task to do before getting some rest, Carver took his phone he had purchased earlier that day out of his pocket and prepared to upload evidence to the mission cloud. Before leaving the church crypt, he had snapped death portraits of the Black Order assassins. Then he had pressed the ends of their gunpowder-blackened fingers onto his phone screen to get their prints. Fortunately, he had an app for that.
Now he navigated to the mission cloud, which resided at a hellishly convoluted URL that only a security specialist could love. Once there, he entered the 23-digit passcode without hesitation.
He uploaded the death photos and the prints to the site with a simple message for Arunus Roth to ID the men. Then he put the phone away and waited for Seven to fall asleep.
*
The number of lacerations and bruises Nico had suffered kept his shower forcibly brief. He stepped out onto the marble tile, pausing to note the thinness of his white figure in the bathroom window before wrapping a towel around his waist. He opened the first aid kit he had found in the suite’s kitchenette and began applying Neosporin to several wounds on his arms, neck and ear. Then he used all eight bandages.
Wearing only the towel, he ventured out into the darkened living room and looked to see if any alcohol had escaped Seven’s thirst. He smiled as he found a Peroni beer. He cracked the lid and inhaled the fumes, savoring them before drinking.
Wow that was good. It wasn’t like the Italians made the world’s best beer. But any beer tonight was good. He was alive.
He walked back to the bedroom and opened the computer. He connected to the hotel wireless, and for the first time, saw the results of the search queries he had run at the church. Excitement pulsed through his veins. This was big.
He felt mildly astonished with himself. Where was the resentfulness he was accustomed to feeling? Where was the victimization? Why didn’t he want to blame anyone for the fact that his left ear would need a plastic surgeon? He felt something he had not felt since he began committing cybercrimes for the thrill of it. Invincibility. He had been pulled back from the abyss tonight, and that in itself was proof of his power.
Now he understood why he didn’t miss Madge. From the very first letter she had written him in prison, her goal had been to rehabilitate him. To convert him. To own him.
It was true that he had hurt people using his skills in the past. Madge had helped him understand that. But she had also wanted him to let go of those skills completely. And he had. Quit cold turkey. There hadn’t been so much as a mobile device in the house at Kei Mouth. Given all that they had been through, and given the way the Feds had “repaid” him for his good deeds during the Ulysses Coup, leaving it all behind had made sense at the time.
But in the process he had allowed Madge to transform him into someone else. Someone average, in an anonymous place, with aspirations that nobody would ever care about. That wasn’t who he was.
He closed his eyes, resolving to hold onto this feeling of renewal. His life was his again. There was only one piece missing. The control of his own destiny.
*
Carver woke on the couch. He patted his chest, feeling for the shoulder holster to make sure he had not been disarmed during sleep. The weapon was still there. Then he glanced at his wristwatch. Good. It wasn’t dawn yet.
He went to the balcony for some fresh air. A few street vendors were sleeping on the Spanish Steps in the very spots where, a few short hours from now, they would sell knockoff designer sunglasses, handbags and other wares. In the Piazza di Spagna he could see the illuminated Fountain of the Barcaccia, which had been created by Bernini’s father, Pietro. The 400-year-old public artwork was such a kid magnet — they were always leaping on and off the thing, drinking from it, throwing stuff into it — that Carver had never seen it unobstructed. Here, stripped down to its core, it was shockingly plain. A partially submerged boat that seemed to be sinking fast.
He spun around, detecting movement behind him. It was Nico, dressed in a fuzzy white hotel robe. He opened the balcony door.
“Can’t sleep?”
Nico shook his head. “I think Wolf is in Rome.”
Excitement stirred within Carver. “Say more about that.”
“A private Learjet owned by the World Fellowship Initiative landed at Ciampino Airport last week. There’s a good chance that Wolf was on it.”
Carver felt as if he had known it all along. Despite the killings in London, Washington, Seattle and Geneva, Wolf’s past and present always seemed to point to the Eternal city.
He put his hands in his pockets and held Nico’s gaze. “A lot of people would have given up after what you went through tonight.”
Nico seemed stunned by the lack of irony in Carver’s sentiment. “Well, out of the frying pan and into the fire, as they say.”
“I won’t let you down when this is over. I want you to know that.”
Nico held his gaze for a moment before gathering himself. “This sincerity stuff is a little awkward coming from you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I was about to look at the stuff we took from the crypt. Care to join?”
Nico went to the little kitchenette and found the manila envelope next to the toaster. He dumped its contents out onto the Formica countertop. It was a hasty assembly of loose notes, receipts and documents.