firearm on him.
“Let me guess,” she said. “He owes you money.”
“He owes me a lot of money,” Petrone corrected. “He borrowed a book. He was supposed to bring it back in a few days, but I haven’t seen him since.”
He shook his head and ran a hand through his dark hair, releasing a chuckle.
“I should have known,” he said. “I loaned it to him because I knew him, but that’s why I should have known better.”
“How long have you known Jack?” Espy asked.
“Too long. At least ten years.”
Espy nodded. “So, what was the book he ‘borrowed’?”
Up until now, Espy was under the impression that the Italian viewed her as an ally—someone who could understand his anger against the man who’d deprived him of something of value, and probably not for the first time. Now she sensed something else in the pause before he responded.
“Who are you?” he finally said, ignoring her question about the book.
Espy moved deeper into the store, placed her hands on a glass countertop. Beneath the glass lay an assortment of rare and expensive items. The entire shop and its merchandise suggested that Petrone was not a man hung up on a single item’s expense, which meant his anger at Jack had less to do with the value of the book than it did the principle of the thing.
“My name’s Esperanza,” she said. “I’m a friend of Jack’s.” She turned away from the counter and aimed an apologetic smile at Petrone. “You won’t hold that against me, will you?”
“I might say a prayer for you,” Petrone said.
“Actually it’s Jack who’s in need of prayer. He’s missing.”
“Missing?”
“We think so, yes. The last time anyone saw him, he was boarding a plane for Libya. Before that, we know he was in Milan.” She locked eyes with the Italian and shrugged. “Who knows? You might be the last person he talked to before he disappeared.”
“I might?” Petrone asked, surprise on his face. He looked from Espy to Romero, who had not moved from his spot near the door.
“That’s why we’re here,” Espy said. “If we can figure out what Jack was working on right before he went missing, it might help us find him.”
Petrone was slow to reply, his expression appearing as if stuck between a willingness to help and a refusal to speak another word, followed by their expulsion from the shop.
“The way I see it,” she said, “your helping us find Jack means that you stand a better chance of getting your book back.”
“If he hasn’t already lost it or sold it,” Petrone said.
While Espy thought she knew Jack well enough to believe he wouldn’t sell it, she could buy into the losing angle. She didn’t have to put voice to that, though, as Petrone raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“I loaned him a book about Milan Cathedral,” he said. “The Tower of God. It’s a rare eighteenth-century history. Very rare. Only seven are known to exist.”
“And you let him take it?”
“Sometimes he has a way of making you do things that you would not normally do,” he said, his cheeks coloring.
“Do you know why he wanted it?”
“No,” Petrone said. “Although he did seem more interested in the construction of the building than he did the history.”
Espy took the information and rolled it around in her mind. She didn’t know what to make of it, not yet anyway. “And he didn’t tell you where he was going next?”
Petrone shook his head and then glanced from Espy to Romero and back. Reading his face, Espy couldn’t tell if his anger had been replaced by concern for their mutual friend or a genuine desire to see Jack punished for the unreturned book.
“If you find him,” Petrone said, “tell him if he comes into my store again, I’ll kill him.”
After she and Romero emerged into the evening air, she answered Romero’s unspoken question. “Jack owes him money.”
Romero uttered a grunt devoid of surprise and started down the sidewalk after his sister.
17
They had secured Templeton in the back room, and Jack couldn’t help but ponder the similarities to his own confinement a few days before. He’d had nothing to do with Templeton’s treatment, however. The men of the village had taken the initiative to take him into their custody the moment he began asking them questions about a lone American they might have discovered wandering in the desert. It hadn’t taken Jack long to become something of a local celebrity and it seemed the villagers had something of a communal