"We'll have a money order delivered for your fee," Sabrina promised Harry the Hacker over the phone the next morning.
"I take all major credit cards," Harry happily announced.
Sabrina scoffed. "My Italian is no fool to give you his credit card number." With the phone cord stretched as far as it would go, she could just reach the sink in her motel bathroom. There she opened a tube of peach lipstick. "Knowing your reputation with computers, what kind of an idiot do you think he is?"
"I don't know." Harry giggled. "But a man who's spent four years running after one ancient piece of junk strikes me as a guy who hasn't got all his marbles."
"He's got enough to avoid getting ripped off by the likes of you," Sabrina retorted, drawing the lipstick over her lips. It was the truth. Vincenzo spent money like he had a lot of it—but also like he knew damn well how to hold onto it.
Yes, he had all his marbles in the money department, but in some others...? Frowning, Sabrina replaced the lipstick cap. "How soon can you get any solid information on Alan Miller?" she asked Harry.
"Expedited? Twenty-four hours."
Sabrina considered the time span. They ought to be safe staying put for that long. Any longer, though, and Lise could catch up. Sabrina preferred working without the female gangster looking over her shoulder. "Fine. I'll call you tomorrow morning."
She strode out of the bathroom and hung up the phone, then couldn't help glancing toward the closed door connecting her room to Vincenzo's. Another frown creased her brow. If only she could forget how Vincenzo had looked when she'd opened that door to speak with him earlier this morning. It was obvious he hadn't slept. There'd been dark shadows under his eyes and hollows beneath his cheekbones.
Sabrina had been so shocked, she'd blurted right out, "You look like hell."
"Do I?" Vincenzo had run a hand through his hair, smiling faintly. "I did not sleep well last night." He didn't elaborate, however, as though insomnia were an ordinary state of affairs.
That nearly threw Sabrina, nearly made her feel...almost sympathetic toward him. But then she took a mental step back. She asked herself: why couldn't he sleep? Illness of some sort was a possibility, of course, but so was a guilty conscience. In fact, a guilty conscience made a hell of a lot of sense, and could explain this whole fantastic quest of his.
She kept this theory in mind as Vincenzo, looking remarkably innocent, and quite beautiful despite his dark hollows, asked, "Sabrina, do we leave here today?"
Shielding herself from all his good looks, Sabrina admitted, "Probably not. Harry has to get back to me, and once I tell him what I want he'll need time... I doubt we'll know where to go before tomorrow."
"Va bene." He nodded. "Then I will take you somewhere." His eyes drifted down, catching on her bare feet. He cleared his throat. "Once you have finished dressing."
Sabrina's toes had curled into the rough carpet of the motel room. She hadn't thought of herself as particularly 'undressed' before that moment. Caught off guard, then, she hadn't been able to think up an excuse to get out of going wherever it was he wanted to take her.
He had a habit of...surprising her that way. Getting her to do things she'd never wanted to do, and making her feel oddly nervous in the process.
Scowling at the memory, she returned to the bathroom, where she was applying some mascara when a sharp knock sounded on her outer door.
"Damn!" She wiped a smear of mascara from her cheek, then glanced at her watch as she stalked toward the door. "You're early," she complained, throwing open the door to the upper floor walkway.
But it wasn't Vincenzo who stood outside the door.
Darrel wore a stupid grin and a T-shirt too tight for his bulging muscles. "Far be it from me to keep you waiting, honey."
Lise's attack dog. Bile instantly rose to Sabrina's throat. "What are you doing here?"
"Thought you'd lost me, did you?" Pushing past her, Darrel strolled into the motel room. "That was a neat little juggling act you pulled in New York, but as you can see, it isn't that easy to shake Darrel."
"So I see." Sabrina watched as Darrel fingered the sleeve of the cream jacket that she'd left over a chair. Then her gaze went to the door connecting her room to Vincenzo's.
"Don't worry about the mark." Darrel picked up Sabrina's jacket. "He's down in the parking lot, smoking."
Vincenzo definitely smoked too many cigarettes, Sabrina thought in disgust. "I'm not the one who should worry." She resisted the urge to snatch her jacket from Darrel's meaty fists. "You're risking the whole job, coming here."
"Nah, I wouldn't piss off Lise like that." Darrel lowered into the chair, cradling Sabrina's linen jacket. "You might ought to know. She says I get you, any way I want you, if you don't deliver this painting."
"Is that so?" Sabrina carefully disguised how close she came to losing her breakfast. To show Darrel fear would be idiotic.
"Uh huh." Darrel leaned back in the chair and fondled her jacket's breast pocket. "Lise wants an update."
"There's nothing to tell, so far."
"You don't have the painting?"
Sabrina crossed her arms over her chest. "Would I be hanging around the mark if I'd finished the job?"
Darrel's gaze went from Sabrina's new jeans up to her lipstick.
Despite herself, Sabrina felt color rush to her face. His implication was obvious.
Darrel's mouth twitched. "Yeah, he's awful pretty, but don't get too attached, doll." His grin widened, revealing the silver cap on his left front tooth. "You don't wanna have a conflict of interest here, or something."
Sabrina snorted. Ignoring the warmth that remained in her face, she stalked to the outer door. "Lise's going to get her painting."
Darrel stood as Sabrina jerked open the door. His smile was lazy as he carelessly dropped her jacket. "O' course I want Lise to be happy, but if she isn't...?" He strolled toward the door and paused opposite Sabrina, grinning. "Oh yeah, and just try losing my tail again, Sabrina honey." He laughed as he turned and walked away. "Just try."
~~~
Vincenzo took Sabrina to a lake. It was a spreading, wild lake with undulating shores hemmed with trees. She'd seen this kind of thing on postcards, but never in real life. It was so picture-perfect it took her breath away.
After a short walk, they ended up on an old, unused wooden dock. Other than the crowd of naked trees and an occasional hawk soaring overhead, they were alone.
Crossing her arms over her chest, Sabrina planted herself against a weatherworn post and glared at the breeze moving the surface of the lake into small, restless wavelets. She felt a similar restlessness inside. Anxiety and vague anger. Behind her, Vincenzo sat leaning against another post. She knew from a quick glance that he had his hands behind his head and his eyes closed. Maybe he was catching up on the sleep he'd missed the night before.
Sabrina ground her teeth together. Darrel had caught up to them. This meant she now had Lise and her attack dog breathing down her neck. If that weren't bad enough, Darrel had made the most insulting insinuations.
Sabrina wasn't getting in tight with her mark. Come on. She was a professional. She'd only put on lipstick—and a dab of mascara—because there was no other way to compete with Vincenzo's physical beauty. That's all. She wasn't attracted to him.
"You look cold." Vincenzo's voice, coming out of the natural silence, startled her.
"I'm fine." Answering over her shoulder, Sabrina clenched her fists and moved them into her jacket pockets. Did he have to be so solicitous?
Behind her came the sound of a sigh and Vincenzo lumbering to his feet. "You are cold," he corrected.
"No, I'm not."
She moved from her post to walk away from him, but somehow he got in front of her.
He took hold of her wrists. "Come," he said. "I warm your hands."
"No," Sabrina repeated, but he was already drawing the tight fists from her pockets.
"It's all right," Vincenzo coaxed. "I'm not going to hurt you."
She stiffened. Damn right he wasn't going to hurt her. She'd never let him close enough to try.
"There." Vincenzo managed to open her fists. He began to rub the ends of her fingers, very gently. "Isn't that good?"
No way. It was an invasion. It was terrible, it was just awful—although, actually...it kinda felt...good. Sabrina stared downward, shocked. Vincenzo's light touch made her fingers tingle with a delicate and intriguing warmth.
She didn't like being touched. Oh, she could stand it in a purely sexual situation and if she'd gotten herself hot enough, but what was going on here was something else. They were just holding hands.
She couldn't stand holding hands.
But right now Vincenzo's touch was practically making her purr.
Glaring downward, she wondered how this was working. Was he using a special hand lotion?
"You do not like to be touched," Vincenzo observed.
"No," Sabrina agreed. Although she was definitely liking it now.
"Hmm." He began to make circles on the insides of her wrists with his thumbs. "Everyone needs to be touched."
"You don't say." She would have pulled away then, just to prove him wrong, but this was so pleasant. If her hands had been butterfly wings, he wouldn't have creased them.
"Oh yes," he said. "Touching is necessary. For life, yes?"
"For life." What the hell did that mean? Meanwhile, the delicate warmth was spreading, shimmering up her arms. It had to be some chemical he was using. She thought of pulling away again, but instead her eyes drifted closed.
He kept up the gentle rubbing. "Someone hurt you."
She didn't answer. Yes, of course someone had hurt her. She could still see the black iron fence, her hands clutching it for dear life. Other hands had reached out from behind her, grabbing, pulling, wrenching her away. And the pain: the pain of her fingers, struggling to hold on and then a sharper pain in her shoulder, with the needle. She shook her head, wanting to dispel the memory.
"Relax," Vincenzo commanded.
She stopped, blinked her eyes open, and realized her fingers were gripping his. She was clinging to him.
Whoa. Weird. Way weird. With a careful outward breath, she loosened her death grip.
"It's all right," Vincenzo soothed. He was gazing down at her. "Was it a rich man who hurt you?"
Sabrina stared at him.
"Is that why you resent me?"
She kept on staring at him, fear beginning to curl inside her. He was manipulating her: with his touch, with that calm, low voice. But what did he want? Wasn't he getting enough from her? She was going to find his damn painting, wasn't she? Deliberately, she drew her hands from his completely.
Vincenzo's eyes were dark. "Tell me what he did to you."
He looked so damn sincere. But she knew he wasn't. In fact, the story he wanted to hear ended with the moral that his kind were never sincere.
"It wasn't a 'he,'" she blurted. "It wasn't what you think."
"I think—?"
"I wasn't raped. In fact, sex wasn't involved at all."
He simply looked at her. Water lapped quietly on the pilings below. Other than that, the silence stretched. He waited.
"It was four of them, all right?" Why was she explaining? She hoped it was to squash any idea he had of manipulating her. But maybe it was only that bottomless patience of his. "A whole family," Sabrina went on. "And yes, they were rich. Filthy rich. As a matter of fact, they were a lot like you."
Something rippled across the composed surface of Vincenzo's face. "Like me? How?"
Sabrina sneered. "They wanted my trust." And boy, had they gotten it. After which they'd pulled off the biggest con of all.
Vincenzo looked deeply unhappy. "I will never betray you, Sabrina."
Her gaze swept up to his face. The elegant lines there expressed earnest sincerity. She had a feeling he actually believed his own statement. He would never betray her.
"Right," Sabrina scoffed. "Yeah. We'll just see about that, won't we?"
He continued to look unhappy.
It wasn't until Sabrina turned away, back toward the restless surface of the lake, that she remembered.
She was the one who was going to betray him.
~~~
Harry had news for them by the time they got back to the motel.
"That was fast," Sabrina observed, returning the message that had been left on their hotel phone. She sat atop the worn bedspread beside the night table.
"Hey, am I good, or what?" Harry demanded.
Sabrina's gaze drifted to Vincenzo, where he leaned a shoulder against the wall. He'd followed her through her motel room door and didn't look inclined to leave. Well he was paying for it, Sabrina mused. He probably had a right to listen in. "What have you got?" she asked Harry.
"First of all, Alan Miller is dead."
"Dead," repeated Sabrina. Too late, she regretted the indiscretion. Vincenzo's eyes sharpened on her like two black knife blades.
"Dead, as in deceased, kicked the bucket, bought the farm, shipped out, may he rest in peace," Harry elaborated, gleeful.
"I see," Sabrina replied.
Across from her, Vincenzo quietly started to go gray. She had to admit: this was not heartening news.
"Dead," Vincenzo put in, sounding hoarse. "Alan Miller is dead?"
The bleak look in Vincenzo's eyes made Sabrina return her attention to Harry. "Have you checked if he left anybody?"
"Now that's what you paid me for." Dear Harry was boasting again. "A widow, in California. And I have an address."
"Harry has an address for Alan's widow." Sabrina relayed this information so Vincenzo wouldn't collapse onto the carpet, as he appeared in danger of doing.
"Does he think the widow might have the painting?" Vincenzo seemed to be grasping for straws.
"Now, how should Harry know?" Sabrina scrambled for a pencil, feeling harried and oddly anxious. After scribbling down the address for Alan Miller's widow, she bid Harry good-bye and hung up the phone.
With his back against the hotel room wall, Vincenzo had closed his eyes.
"That's called progress," Sabrina declared. At least it was progress assuming Alan Miller's widow had kept the painting—assuming Alan Miller had ever had it at all. But it was a direction to head.
With his eyes still closed, Vincenzo shook his head. He looked like a man awaiting execution.
Not for the first time, Sabrina felt something pull inside her, something sort of...sympathetic.
This was stupid. Probably dangerous. Vincenzo wasn't sympathetic. He was rich. And Sabrina was beginning to wonder if his crimes didn't go a lot further than wealth.
As if to deepen her suspicions, Vincenzo said, "This is the work of the dark forces. They do not want me to find the painting."
"Dark forces." On the bed, Sabrina crossed one jeans-clad leg over the other. "Now, why do you call it that? Why would you think..." She waved a hand in the air. "...fate has it in for you?"
Slowly, he opened his eyes. "It is what happens. Darkness."
Sabrina shook her head. "It's how you choose to describe it."
His brows drew down. "It is what happens. Four years I have been looking for the Lady, but always some obstacle rises to stop me."
"Yeah, now that's interesting right there," Sabrina remarked. "Four years. Why four years, Vinnie?" She'd asked him before, and he'd evaded an answer. She tilted her head. "Did something happen four years ago?"
His deep frown froze.
"Was it something in Milan?" Sabrina persisted. "Is that why you won't go back there?"
All the color drained from his face.
"What is it you're so desperate to avoid?" She paused, raising an eyebrow. "Or should I ask 'who?'"
Jackpot. Over his pale face a cool, clear rage settled. Yep. There was a 'who' back in Milan, all right. And whoever it was roused a side of Vincenzo Sabrina had not yet seen.
He looked positively murderous. And yet, black as his anger was, Sabrina sensed something even darker underneath it. She wasn't sure what could be darker than murder, but Vincenzo's face made her imagine something could be.
He'd done something back in Milan. Sabrina had no idea how this guilty act was related to the Madonna, but it was clear Vincenzo had something on his conscience. Something big.
Oddly, on seeing this evidence Vincenzo was as black-hearted as she'd supposed, Sabrina felt cheated. As if she'd expected something different.
"This is not your place, to ask." His words were sharp as icicles. Normally coffee-warm, Vincenzo's eyes had gone cold as flint.
"Fine." Sabrina shrugged. "I don't care about the past—" Not in any relevant way, anyhow. "Except that it seems to make you want to give up all the time."
If looks could kill, Sabrina would have been in grave danger. "I am not giving up." Vincenzo spaced the words precisely. "In four years I have not given up."
"No." The same guilty conscience that made him fear failure also wouldn't let him give up the quest completely.
"In fact—" Abruptly, he turned aside. Sticking his hands in his jacket pockets, he took a pace away. "In fact, I would like to know what you plan to do next."
He'd changed the subject very neatly.
"So, Sabrina?" For the first time since she'd met him, Vincenzo's voice hit the harsh, commanding tone of a rich man. "What do we do?"
Reflexively, she stiffened. "Obviously," she sneered. "We go after the widow."
Vincenzo nodded. "Your Harry gave you an address?" With his hands in his pockets, he kept turned away from her.
"He did." Sabrina scowled. "She lives in California. Laguna Beach."
"California," he murmured, apparently digesting this. It wasn't possible to see his face, the way he kept turned away from her. But the commanding tone of a rich man dimmed. "We are going to fly there from here, yes? No bus?"
Briefly, Sabrina thought of Darrel. He wouldn't expect her to take the easy route and fly. "No bus," she agreed.
Vincenzo's shoulders relaxed. "Thank God," he murmured.
"Not that we don't have to be careful," she warned. Meanwhile she watched his stiff, proud stance relax. The ugly rich man was disappearing.
"Of course. Naturalmente." Vincenzo sounded eager again, and completely compliant. When he turned around, he was smiling. "Whatever you recommend."
Whatever she recommended. Sabrina frowned. His anger—and the guilt—it was all gone, slipped into thin air as if it had never been. "I'll take care of the arrangements," she told him, slowly trying to puzzle it out.
"Very well." Vincenzo made for the door. He was back to his sweet, innocent self again. "I will leave the details in your hands."
"Right." No more commands from on high. That person was gone.
"You will call?" Vincenzo opened the connecting door. "To let me know when we go?" He had the oddest look on his face: questioning—no, apprehensive. As if he feared she might leave him behind.
"Well, yeah," Sabrina replied. "Of course I'll tell you when we're leaving." She had to. Finding his blessed Madonna meant a hundred grand, didn't it? But as he left the room, she felt decidedly uneasy.
A black-hearted villain had stood before her, using anger and arrogance to block any revelation of his dark past. And then, right in front of her, he'd changed back into a clean, sweet angel.
Devil or angel? One of them was a disguise.
The oddest thing was, she wasn't completely sure which.
Scowling, Sabrina reached for the phone. She needed to make plane reservations, not ponder Vincenzo's true nature. Besides, wasn't it obvious the devil persona was the true one? He'd obviously committed some crime in Milan. Nothing to prosecute, perhaps, but big enough to leave a helluva dark blot on his conscience.
While dialing the number for the airline, Sabrina assured herself of this truth. Whatever Vincenzo's reasons for wanting this painting, they were not pure.
Which was just as well, Sabrina thought, tapping her fingernails against the phone. Because she planned to get it first.