Stealing Jia (Coletti Warlords #12) - Gail Koger Page 0,4

him up, I dropped my shields and reached out mentally. Time to get the information I needed and end the date from hell.

Giovanni’s sweaty palm slid up my thigh.

I stabbed him with my fork.

Sir Grab-A-Lot yelped and yanked his hand away. “You bitch!”

“Si, I get that a lot.” I jammed the heel of my stiletto into his crotch. “Touch me again and I will turn you into a eunuch.”

A whimper broke from him.

I clouded Giovanni’s mind until he could no longer think clearly. “What have you done with the people you’ve abducted?”

Blinking rapidly, he said, “They are in my lab.”

“And where’s your lab?”

“Hidden in the catacombs beneath the Cistercian medieval church in San Gagliano. Once inside the catacomb you follow the red crosses down the corridor, through a burial chamber and it’s the second door on the left.”

I caught a fleeting glimpse of crowded cells and piles of rotting bodies. “Are the people from the bar in Verona there?”

He nodded his head.

“What type of security do you have?”

“I have…” Giovanni shook his head. “This is not right.”

“Tell me.”

“No!” With a roar of fury Giovanni shot to his feet. His chair crashed to the floor. “Who are you?”

“Just a girl, looking for a guy.” I stood.

A pressure injector appeared in Giovanni’s hand. “You will tell me everything.”

“That’s my line.”

Giovanni lunged at me.

I dodged his outstretched hand and lashed out with a solid sidekick to his left knee. Thwap!

Giovanni yelped as his knee buckled and he fell headfirst into the table. Whoosh! His hair caught fire.

Squawking loudly, Giovanni yanked off his burning wig and threw it. The wig landed on a mummified body. Poof! It went up in flames.

“Holy Mary Mother of God.” I looked around for a fire extinguisher.

“You are a dead woman,” Giovanni yelled and raised the pressure injector over his badly scarred scalp.

I grabbed a bottle of champagne off a nearby table and whacked him with it. Giovanni’s eyes rolled back in his head and down he went.

Flames raced along the walls, setting another body on fire and another and another. Panic-stricken patrons ran for their lives as the thick black smoke made breathing difficult.

Without even thinking about it, I tied a cloth napkin over my face and yanked a fire extinguisher off the wall. Pulling the pin, I quickly sprayed the burning bodies. Merda! The flames kept spreading.

A brawny firefighter suddenly tossed me over his shoulder and ran for the exit.

“I can walk. I can walk.” He totally ignored me. I caught a brief glimpse of Giovanni climbing to his feet before the smoke enveloped him. A savage rage was etched into his features. Our next meeting would be memorable.

Chapter Two

The Carabinieri are a military branch of the Polizia and their weapons bunkers have all sorts of goodies. I bypassed their security systems and went on a shopping spree. Some thermite grenades, a nifty sword, an Asus laser rifle, a matching pistol, and body armor. Not the good stuff like the Coletti warriors wore but more protection than my jeans and a tee-shirt would provide.

I paused by a crate of Falcon rocket launchers. Hmmm. Would I need one? A mental picture of Giovanni’s lab formed in my mind. He had a small army of thugs working for him and I was going in without any sort of backup.

I’d admit I had serious trust issues after Bianca, my former best friend, framed me for a series of murders. Not only did Bianca look enough like me to be my twin, she claimed she was my cousin. She knew how much I wanted to find my family and used it against me. Only my talent to cloud minds kept me from being arrested. There were only two people who were loyal to me. Sister Sarah and Adam, the brother I had always wanted. But Sister Sarah was pushing eighty and the evil scientist was doing God knows what to Adam. I would save him, no matter what the cost.

Merda! The crate didn’t list any instructions for the rocket launchers. Hopefully, it was a simple point and shoot. I plucked one out of the crate and placed it on my platform cart. I now had enough weapons to hold off a small army. Once I rescued Adam and the other kidnap victims, I would take great pleasure in obliterating Giovanni’s entire base. If some ancient stiffs got toasted in the process? C ’est la vie.

Walking past several unconscious guards; I loaded the stolen goodies into my battered van and headed for