Page 41 of Light Me Up

“I’ll text Morelli myself,” she offered. “Give me his number. Worst case scenario, he pegs me as the crazy lady making trouble. I don’t give a shit. I’m used to it.”

Noah didn’t even dignify that suggestion with a response, but she wouldn’t give up.

“It’s the right thing to do,” she coaxed. “Then we leave. Like a shot.”

“Right. Like it’s ever that easy.” He pulled out his smartphone and tapped in a succinct message to Morelli. cross is a fake. watch yr back. He sent it.

Morelli’s attentive gaze ranged constantly over the room. Noah caught his eye, lifted his phone.Pointed to it.

Morelli reached into his pocket, read the text, and shot him astartled look.

He tapped his earbud, backing further away from the front of the crowd, speaking quietly to whoever was monitoring him. He texted something, and gave Noah a meaningful stare. The reply appeared onNoah’s display.

Go with security upstairs. I will join you asap to discuss.

Fucking great.And so it began.

Several of the security guards were staring at them now. One who’d been posted near the dais was moving toward them, forcing his way roughly through the packed crowd. Big guy, a head taller than anyone around him. He looked unfriendly.

Noah pulled out the key fob for the rental car and dropped it into Caro’s evening bag. “Wait for me in the garden,” he murmured. “Keepa low profile.”

“I’d rather we stayed together—”

“You wanted to text Morelli before we left, and I did it,” he said. “Now I want you to get the hell out of this building. Come on, babe. Humor me. Please.”

She looked rebellious, and trapped. “Shit,” she whispered. “Not fair.”

“Right. I’lltext you. Go!”

Caro threw up her hands in frustration, but she went, slipping into the crowd with sinuous grace. She was soon lost to sight, and the shield contacts he wore blocked the frequencies of her sig. Still, some part of him kept frantically seeking them anyway.

Noah didn’t like the security guy up close any more than he had from a distance. Black hair, gelled back, cold eyes, lantern jaw.

“Mi scusi,Mr. Gallagher,” the man said. “Signor Morelli requested that I escort you upstairs. Please come with me now.”

“Sure, fine.” He clenched his jaw and followed. The quickest way out of this mess had to be straight through it. He could not wait to be done with this place.

Noah had already background checked this guard earlier this afternoon, at the security headquarters right after they arrived. Mirko Vilardi, Italian citizen. Like Morelli, Vilardi had served in an elite branch of the Italian military before going into security work. He’d been on Folti’s payroll for about nine months. He’d checked out fine.

“Where is Mrs. Gallagher?”Vilardi asked.

“She went closer to get a better look at the cross,” Noah said. “Let’s leave her to it while we go upstairs.”

Vilardi muttered into his monitor and led the way. He had no scruples about pushing and shoving, so they made rapid progress to the tune of indignant squawks and angry murmurings. Noah used the time to repeat the data-dive on Vilardi as he followed him through the crowded room, racing farther and farther back in time, when there was less information. Data flooded across his inner visual field as he followed Vilardi up the wide staircase to the third floor.

Wait—what? It felt like a subtle speed-bump in his head when his AVP flagged an anomaly. Noah slowed the data-scroll and went back to check it out.

The item in question was a high-school type photo on Facebook, taken on a class trip in 2003. A band of teenagers on a ferry to Greece. Same T-shirts on all.Liceo Tecnologico.So this thug had started out as a computerwiz. Go figure.

Vilardi stopped at a door part way down the third floor corridor, murmuring into his mic, not for Noah’s benefit. “Sì, signore…we are at the blue room…yes,I understand.”

He studied the photo, enlarging it on the screen that his AVP projected onto his field of vision. Vilardi was tagged in the photo, but Noah didn’t immediately spot a younger version of Vilardi’s face in it as he followed the other man through the door. There were several burly dark teenage boys in the picture, but they were tagged with other names.

Then he caught it. The boy tagged as Mirko Vilardi was a shrimpy, skinny kid with wispy blond hair, light eyes, no eyebrows. A pale face that was mostly beaky nose.

He definitely wasn’t a young Lantern-Jaw. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Different boy. Stolenidentity?Fuck.

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