Too late, I realized the shield around me had fallen to a single woman walking in front of me. The tight dress she wore barely covered her ass. A waterfall of curly black hair cascaded over her shoulders, the split ends reaching that ample backside.
“No, Ange, I went alone, I left his cheating ass back in Tom’s River,” the woman barked into her phone with a nasal New Jersey accent, “that F-ing skank can keep him, for all I care. I’m going to enjoy my freedom.”
She’d taken the cruise alone? That could be useful. While she listened to whoever Ange was, I padded past her and up the street. I stopped in front of the window to a jewelry store, head on the signs in the display, but eyes straining my peripheral vision to study my target.
She carried a small handbag dangling at her hip. A white credit card shaped badge hung from a lanyard around her neck. The spring break before last, Katie and I had taken a short cruise. Those badges got you on and off the ship. My unlucky new friend should have nursed her breakup back in Jersey. She was about to have a bad vacation story to share with Ange. I had a way off this island.
“When he got us reservations at Lucinda’s, I thought he was going to pop the question,” the woman replied to Ange as she passed. Her head turned to the display of rings. “Hold up, I just saw the perfect ring. You know what, I’m going to go try it on, maybe I’ll buy myself a ring, I’m worth it. I’ll flash it in front of that bitch when I get home. Bye, Ange.”
She brushed past me. Her hands banged against the door to the jewelry store. It careened open, startling the man behind the counter. He stood from his stool and shook his shoulders before greeting her.
Oh, she almost took the fun out of it, making it so easy. I sounded like Alexei, wanting a challenge. That was his game because I only played to win. If that meant shooting fish in a barrel, I’d pull the trigger as many times as it took.
As the unluckiest woman in Syracuse tried on her first ring, I finally followed her into the store. The shop keeper looked away from the other woman and offered a nod. I matched it and his attention returned to hawking his ring to my target.
I browsed, hidden eyes watching the shop keeper and the street beyond the window all while appearing to look for that perfect ring or necklace. I tried on a silver ring only to put it back. The shopkeeper’s sharp eyes darted my way when I returned it to its display. Running a jewelry store alone, you needed eagle eyes to catch pickpockets and snatch-and-grabbers.
My father had tried to keep me from the men in his world, the dangerous men like Alexei, though I’d been fated to marry one of them eventually. If he’d known some of the skills I’d picked up from his body guards and thugs over the years, they would not have survived his extreme disappointment. I wasn’t any old average shoplifter, when I wanted to exercise my fingers.
While the shop keeper watched my right hand at the rings, my left palmed a necklace out of the window display, just out of the man’s view. My right hand moved to a wide gold bangle, fingers ghosting over the metal. The man’s eyes flashed my way and out of view; a diamond ring joined the necklace in my other hand.
Two men in linen suits stormed down the road outside. Their eyes flashed in every direction, glaring at every woman they passed. I turned my body away, slowly, just a customer browsing the next display case. The men continued down the street and out of view.
“I just don’t know, if you dropped the price by €1,000, maybe I’d buy it,” the unlucky woman said to the shop keeper.
“That is impossible,” the man replied in English. He snatched the diamond ring back from the woman. “It is a full carat and that’s only the center stone. The metal and jewels alone are worth more than that!”
She’d annoyed him, it was like she wanted me to do this. Maybe my luck had been so bad since Alexei had burst into my life that the universe owed me one. At this rate, I wouldn’t even feel guilty for ruining her trip.
“Haggling like that, you’d get eaten alive at the Italian market back home,” the woman huffed. She stepped back from the counter. “You just lost yourself a sale, buster. I’ve got to get back to the ship anyway.”
She turned to storm out of the store but I’d already moved. We collided, knocking her off balance. Knobby fingers grasped at anything to stop her fall. They found my arm and latched on for dear life. If I’d kept my balance, that might have saved her from sprawling onto the tile floor.
Instead, I’d rolled into the fall. Her shoulders and ass landed at the same time. She kept her head from the tile. A crack to the skull might have left her injured, more than a bruise or two. That would have sent a spasm of guilt through me. So much for winning over everything, I guessed. It seemed concussing my victim was my limit, even though my plan worked better with her unconscious.
She groaned, expressing all the air out of her lungs when my elbow jabbed her chest after I landed on her. Knocking the wind out of her was fine, she’d recover. Annoying and loud as she’d been, by now a small part of my mind was already planning how to make it up to the woman. She’d get an envelope stuffed with few thousand dollars in the mail with no return address for sure.
As she thrashed about underneath me, my left hand slipped past her purse. The necklace and ring dropped on top of it, half inside the large pocket. The fingers on my right hand curled around the thin lanyard. I rolled off her and jerked my arm as I stood.
The lanyard yanked her neck up. Wide eyes, tears smudging the dark liner, glared up at me. The thin cord snapped behind her neck and she dropped back to the floor. I mentally added $5k to the inevitable envelope. Her fingers grasped at my arms. One of those talon like nails dug in, but I shook her off. The envelope lost a thousand bucks for the scratch.
“Taccheggiatrice, taccheggiatrice!” I yelled thief in Italian once I sprang to my feet. My finger pointed to the jewelry hanging half inside her purse.
The shop keeper had rounded the counter to help when we tumbled to the floor. His eyes followed my finger and the concerned frown on his face twisted into a scowl. The wrongly accused woman shook her head, she pointed at me but I’d knocked the wind out of her good. That damn envelope just doubled in thickness.
Before the shop keeper had even moved, I’d dashed out the door. Up the street, I slipped down another alley, It snaked back and forth, all but deserted. Behind me, the shop keeper’s voice rang out for the Polizia. The envelope ballooned up to 40k. What was the going rate for a night in an Italian jail?
I couldn’t let it get to me now. At the end of the maze-like alley, I spotted water on the horizon. I needed to find the cruise ship’s pier. It was near enough to where Oleg had moored the dinghy. An old city like this might have its charm but the streets were a maze. I’d gotten turned around more than once in my flight.
I found myself on the wall of the old city, the port stretched out in front of me, both the cruise ship and Alexei’s yacht floating out in the center. The wall continued down to my right; below it a few hundred yards away were the piers. Oleg stood at head of the nearest, his eyes scanning the streets leading from the old city.
To avoid him, I kept a street back from the sea wall but followed its curve. By the time I caught up with a group of tourists returning to the ship, the lanyard hung around my neck. The picture of Nicola De Luca didn’t have my cheekbones and I didn’t share her crow’s feet but the glasses I’d nabbed hid those facts. Her less than sunny disposition and willingness to share it had probably made an impression among the staff. They’d give the ID a glance and let me by without wanting to incur the unlucky woman’s wrath.
Two lines had formed in front of the entrance to the cruise ship’s pier. One of the large tenders had already left, packed with passengers. I stepped into the line the furthest from Oleg’s sentry position. He hadn’t looked my way yet, but every advantage counted.
At the front of each line, a man wearing a bright red polo shirt with the cruise line’s logo on the breast held a tablet and logged each passenger before letting them pass. He asked them a question too, but I couldn’t hear from this distance. The one in front of me had fallen to the monotony of the task. He only offered the most cursory of glance at each passenger before his eyes fell back to the tablet.
Oleg stood rigid suddenly but his head was turned away from me. I followed his gaze. A small group of men in linen suits jogged down the sea wall in the distance. They slowed at every street, gazing down them before continuing on. By now, only a few people remained in the line ahead.
