“But—”
“Go,” Luca says softly. “And take a different route if you don’t want trouble.”
The bartender’s mouth drops open and he backs away, hurrying off in a different direction.
“Come on,” Luca says, seizing my hand.
I go with him, but I can’t help throwing a look over my shoulder to try to catch sight of our pursuer. “We’re running?” I say, as we do, indeed, run down the stairs to the door at the bottom. Luca shoves at the bar across the middle and it opens to the outside just like our brief friend said it would.
“What would you rather do?” Luca asks, shoving it shut behind me, and looking left and right.
My heartbeat has been speeding up ever since we heard those footsteps, and at first I assumed it must be fear. But it’s not.
It’s excitement.
“Fight?” I suggest. “Two of us, one of him.”
“It would be the height of bad manners to shed blood at the opera,” Luca says reprovingly, as he takes off to the left, around the corner. “I assume,” he throws back over his shoulder.
“You assume correctly, although it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened.” I trot with him around the corner. It takes us right up to the canal’s edge, but there are no handy gondolas or motorboats to jump into. It’s too early for the water taxis to be arriving to ferry patrons away from the opera.
“Come on,” Luca says, grabbing my hand. We run on to the little bridge just ahead, and through to the other side. There’s a small alley there, and Luca stops abruptly, pulling me into it when I try to keep going. “Wait,” he murmurs, standing in front of me in the protective manner I recognize from all my bodyguards. We’re deep in the shadows, but we still have a partial view of where we just came from, back over the bridge.
I hear them again: the footsteps, hurrying along, then slowing cautiously as they approach the corner we just came around ourselves. We have a perfect view of the corner.
What if whoever’s coming has a perfect view of us, too? “Luca, maybe we should—”
“Wait.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
FINCH
Afigure comes around the corner, shadowed by the low roof of the portico, and stops dead, staring straight at us. It’s the IFF guy. It’s definitely him; his shadowy figure looks exactly the same as it did in the catacombs.
I tense to run or duck, my hand squeezing Luca’s so tight that he might lose a finger, but then our stalker looks the other way. I hear a soft curse carrying across the water. He strolls a little further down to stop in a patch of moonlight, and unbuttons his jacket.
For a very brief moment I feel Luca’s hand squeeze back at mine, but then the man takes out a packet of cigarettes. He takes his time shaking one out, then reaches into his inside pocket once more—only to take out a lighter.
With a soft snick, a glowing yellow flame lights up his face, and he seems to look right at us for a moment before he touches it to the end of his cigarette. Then he leans against the railing and begins to smoke, casually, calmly, all the while looking down at the water of the canal.
Luca begins to push me further down the alley, a finger to his lips to make sure I step carefully. Once we’re through, we find a few more side streets and alleys, until Luca judges we’re far enough away to start running without being overheard.
I run with him, but there’s no panic in our pace; it’s steady, leisurely, a matter of putting distance between us and the opera house. We hit a wider street and slow even further to a fast walk.
All the while I let Luca pull me along with him while he looks this way and that, until he finally makes for a very dark, very narrow alleyway. He bundles me into it, then leans up against the wall, face twisted towards the brighter street as he listens out for our stalker again. We stay like that for a long time, and I’m so damn proud of myself for keeping quiet and not asking any questions that I resolve to make Luca praise me for it later, too.
Eventually, he peels himself off the wall and beckons me back into the street. It’s deserted; we’ve come a ways from the touristy areas, which worries me a little. This is the kind of street where a vengeance-seeking Irishman might be able to get up close and personal in his killing.
But it doesn’t worry me quite as much as itshould, somehow. The way my heart is beating is closer to elation than terror. Luca takes my hand again as we walk quickly through streets, taking corners here and there randomly as we head in the general direction of our palazzo. After a few minutes, he actually begins to swing our arms and gives a chuckle.
“Well, well,” he says. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”
“Honestly? Yeah. It kinda was.”
He raises an eyebrow at my response. Then he glances around us again, but this time there’s an air of playfulness to it—and he pulls me into a doorway, keeping my face in the shadows, and kisses me deeply and soundly.
“Do you know how much I love you?” he asks me afterward.
