And at that moment, when I can finally feel my shoulders relax and I’m no longer gritting my back molars hard enough to crack one as I’m leaning into my cousin’s suggestion of drunken debauchery…
That’s the moment my phone rings.
“Dinna ya answer that!” Michael snaps.
The Imperial March from ‘Star Wars’ blares from my phone. “My special ringtone for your Da,” I say, “our Chieftain? The big bastard in charge?”
“So close,” he says morosely, “we were so fecking close to a proper wasted weekend.”
“Aye, Chieftain?” I move to a quiet staff hallway to take Uncle Cormac’s call.
“I got the results from the job,” he says, “well done, lad. Was my son of any assistance?”
“Ya wanting me to be honest?”
“Never mind,” he laughs, then he’s all back to business. “I’m sorry to be putting ya back to work after the promise of a weekend off and sending my son to raise hell with ya, but we have a problem.”
“Aye?”
“I’ll send you the data on our secure server, but I need ya to pick up a girl,” he says.
“I’m taking out a woman?” I ask, “We dinna kill females.”
“I dinna want ya killing her, but it’s urgent she’s picked up immediately. Ya remember Gavin Masters?”
“Arms dealer, US?”
“That’s him. His daughter took a runner. She’s been seen in Europe, most recently in Italy. She’s attracting a lot of attention and none of it is good. I need ya to pluck her out of whatever hellhole student hostel she’s hiding in and bring her back.”
My brow wrinkles. “Ya want her at the MacTavish estate or home to Daddy?”
“I want her brought here,” he says. “There’s something off about his request. He’s a good ally stateside, but I don’t trust him. Let’s have a sit down with her before we send her home.”
“What’s off about his request?”
Cormac pauses for a moment. “His request is, if you canna successfully extract her, kill her.”
Chapter Two
In which we learn that there's at least one club on the planet that will really make a guy pay for being an asshole to the waitstaff.
“Ivy…”
“Hey, sexy! Bring that sweet ass over here!”
Fucking American tourists.
Okay, I might be American but I never act like these frat boys soon to turn into equally misogynistic tech bros. They swarm across Italy like locusts, drinking and vomiting in the gutter and complaining that there’s not a McDonald’s within staggering distance.
Taking a fortifying breath, I turn to the table.“Cosa posso offrirvi, signori?”
The noisiest one wearing a red baseball cap backward says, “Huh?”
“What can I get you, gentlemen?” I emphasize the ‘gentleman’ part, hoping they might take the hint and act like one.
They don’t.
“Are you on the menu?” Backward Baseball Cap Wearing Guy leers.
