Page 66 of End of Days

They finally broke out of the cloistered alleys and on to an actual two-way road, the route taking them to a dead end with a hard right next to the gardens of Villa Medici, the home of the French Academy in Rome. An expansive greenspace, with acres of botanical gardens, it required Knuckles to basically conduct a U-turn, heading back in the direction he’d just traversed, but now on a different road called Via Sistina.

He watched behind him, seeing the motorcycle making the sameturn. That was a bit much. The motorcycle accelerated until it was just off his back bumper, waited for a car in the other lane to pass, then goosed the throttle.

It hovered for a moment right off the quarter panel of the sedan, then sped up, the two on the bike showing wide eyes as they left.

Knuckles said, “What was that all about?”

Brett snapped upright and said, “Which side is the gas tank fill?”

“What?”

“Which side is the gas tank fill!”

Knuckles looked at the display on his dashboard, saw the arrow, and said, “My side, my side. Why?”

Brett screamed, “Lock it up! Get out! Get out!”

Any other human on earth would have looked at Brett like he was insane. Fortunately, Knuckles was not like any other human on earth.

He slammed on the brakes hard enough to cause a skid. They skittered across the oncoming lane, hammered a guardrail, skipped back into their lane, and slammed into a retaining wall, crumpling the trunk.

Both snapped out of their seat belts and dove out of the car, crawling away on hands and knees. There was a smallwump,then a gigantic explosion, lifting the car off the ground, the shrapnel of sheet metal splattering everything around them.

The car slammed back onto the ground, burning furiously. Knuckles scrambled backward, away from the fire, screaming, “Brett! Brett!”

He saw Brett on the other side of the car running toward him and patting out a fire on his arm. Brett reached him and collapsed, saying, “You okay?”

Knuckles took over the fire watch of his clothes, patting out the flames and saying, “Better than you, I guess.”

They both sagged into the concrete for a moment, hearing sirensin the distance. Brett rolled over and said, “This is going to be a shit storm.”

Knuckles pulled out his phone and said, “Yeah, it is. We’ve got about five seconds to get the Taskforce to backstop our cover as State Department.”

He dialed his phone, looking at Brett, amazed at how close they’d come to being eviscerated in the explosion. Brett went up on an elbow, checking for other damage to his body. He said, “Looks like Shoshana was right. Those fucks are out for blood.”

Before the phone connected, his voice turned grim. “Out for blood? They haven’t seen that yet. But they will, so help me God.”

Chapter 43

Lia Vairo went through the gate to her apartment complex, glad that it wasn’t later in the night. While the flat was hers free and clear from the divorce, it left a lot to be desired as a place to live.

All too often she’d come home from a late-night crime scene and had been confronted by youthful revelers out to have a good time. Students at the nearby John Cabot University or the American University rented all of the flats on her block, and routinely became annoying after the sun went down, but she’d never felt a threat.

Well, almost never. There had been a time or two where she wasn’t sure they were students, but instead castoffs preying on students and had seen her, deciding to prey on her.

She’d made short work of those youths and continued to enjoy her flat, free of any financial encumbrances. Tonight, she parked her car and entered the courtyard to her complex, thinking about the woman and man she’d met at the last crime scene.

The man called Pike was not from the United States State Department. Of that she was sure. She could feel the violence coming off him like a waterfall. But he didn’t hold her attention. The woman did.

She was something else entirely, like she could see the world through a different lens. Lia was intrigued, and wanted to hear what they had to say tonight.

She went past the guard shack, waving at the man inside. He waved back, completely useless. The complex was supposed to be “gated,” but all it really encapsulated was welfare for the guards who sat inside and did nothing.

She went up the stairwell to her flat, seeing the usual students out on balconies giving her catcalls, which she ignored.

She reached the second floor and saw three men on the stoop, one smoking from a vape pipe, like he was trying to re-create the beatnik era of the sixties. There was no reason for them to be here, because the steps ended at her apartment only, which aggravated her no end each time it happened.

They shuffled to let her go by and she entered her apartment, kicking off her heels and immediately freeing her breasts from a bra, tossing it to the side.

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