hands from her shoulders, then guided him to the table. “That’s impossible,” he finally said. “She was fine when I last saw her. She said—She told me—I can’t believe it.”
“I didn’t believe it at first, either, but it’s very real, and these people with me are working to find out who killed her.”
“Who are they?” he said, as he took a seat at the table.
She gripped his hand tighter, knowing he wouldn’t like this news any better. “Government agents.”
“What?” He tried to rise from his seat, and she pulled him back down.
“Don’t worry. They’re on our side.”
“The government’s never on our side.”
“You have to trust me,” Francesca said. “Trust me that they’re here to protect us and everything will be fine.”
“Alessandra’s dead. How can everything be fine?”
“Because she wanted this as much as you. You honor her by continuing with what she started.”
He gave a slight nod, seemed to calm, then turned his attention to the two agents, his expression guarded. “Who are you?”
Sydney held out her hand, and said, “Sydney Fitzpatrick, FBI. I’m here because my friend was killed looking into Alessandra’s murder.”
“This friend was an agent?” he said.
“A forensic anthropologist.”
He shook her hand, said, “I’m sorry about your friend.”
“Thank you.”
“And you? Who are you?”
“Zachary Griffin. I was a friend of Alessandra’s, and she asked me to help her. Unfortunately, I was too late.”
Xavier covered his face with his hands. “I shouldn’t have left her. Maybe I could have done something…”
Grief was better than blinding distrust, Francesca figured, and she turned to Griffin. “I think we could all use some coffee.”
He left to order the coffee.
“Xavier, I need you to listen to me,” Francesca said.
“Can’t I have a few moments?”
“We don’t have time. A friend of theirs was kidnapped by these people. Your life is in danger. All our lives.”
“What do you mean?”
“The people who came after Alessandra and Sydney’s friend? They’re after me, and they stole my computer. It had the e-mail you sent to me. Griffin thinks you’re in danger.”
“Why come after me?”
“Because they want what I have, what we’re looking for—and they’re willing to kill anyone who gets in the way of their plans.” There, she said what she hadn’t been willing to admit before. It did little to ease her guilt over the needless deaths. No, not deaths. Murders—something neither she nor Alessandra had foreseen. Alessandra’s murder had been totally unexpected, as had the attack up at the Passegiata. And while she couldn’t bring Alessandra back, she could damned well find the answers and thereby ensure that Alessandra hadn’t died in vain. But after the murder of the taxi driver, she realized that every step she took from that point on was as dangerous as walking on the highest, crumbling cliff with nothing but jagged rocks below. And now everyone she encountered on that walk was subject to the same torturous death, whether they were truly involved or not. “If you come with us, your life is in danger. I can’t ask that of you.”
“But if I don’t go with you, it seems my life is in danger.”
“I think so.”
“Then I go with you. For Alessandra,” he said, his voice catching.
“For Alessandra.”
He looked away, brushed at his eyes, and just when Griffin returned, said, “I think I’ll go see what’s taking that coffee so long.”
Xavier got up, walked to the front, then made a right toward the restroom instead.
As soon as he disappeared around the corner, she turned to Griffin and Sydney. “I would rather he didn’t come. He’s too young. He hasn’t even graduated college yet.”
“I think,” Griffin said, “that we can arrange for safe passage home, once we get him out of Naples. Until then, he’s probably safer with us than without.”
“All right,” she said, as the waiter arrived with their coffees. She dusted hers with cinnamon, then sipped at the steaming foam, trying to relax, telling herself that all would be fine. But then, they still had the tunnels to negotiate, and she looked at Xavier’s backpack, and the laptop she knew was within. And suddenly panic set in. She reached for the lanyard around her neck, worried that she’d lost the flash drive. But no, it was there.
That thought quickly fled to worse thoughts when, several minutes later, Sydney said, “Xavier is going to come out of there, isn’t he?”
The last thing Griffin needed was to chase after a college student and a professor, because he didn’t doubt for a second that if Xavier took off, Francesca wouldn’t be far behind