American. Rodrigo was stunned. The Americans had paid to have his father killed? That didn’t make sense. Their agreement was too valuable to the Americans for them to interfere; Salvatore had seen to that. Rodrigo hadn’t necessarily agreed with his father on their dealings with the Americans, but it had worked for a number of years and nothing had happened to upset the status quo.
Denise-or whoever she was-had effectively disappeared today, but now he had another link to her, to finding out who she really was and whom she was working for.
Rodrigo wasn’t a man who wasted time; that very night he flew in his private jet to Amsterdam. Locating Dr. Speer’s apartment was child’s play, as was forcing the lock on the door. He was waiting in the dark when Dr. Walter Speer finally came home.
From the moment the door opened, Rodrigo smelled the strong odor of alcohol, and Dr. Speer stumbled a bit as he turned to switch on a lamp.
Rodrigo hit him from behind a split second later, slamming him into the wall to stun him, then throwing him to the floor and straddling him, his fists delivering powerful one-two punches to the doctor’s face. Explosive violence stuns the inexperienced, throws them into such a state of confusion and shock that they are helpless. Dr. Speer was not only inexperienced but inebriated. He couldn’t manage anything in the way of self-defense, not that it would have done any good. Rodrigo was bigger, younger, faster, and skilled at what he did.
Rodrigo hauled him to a sitting position and thrust him against the wall, making sure that his head once more banged hard. Then he gripped the doctor’s coat and pulled him closer for a good look. He liked what he saw.
Huge red lumps were already swelling on the doctor’s face, and blood trickled from both his nose and mouth. His glasses had been broken and hung askew from one ear. The expression in his eyes was one of total incomprehension.
Other than that, Dr. Speer looked to be in his early forties. He had a shock of thick brown hair and was stocky in build, making him slightly bearlike. Before Rodrigo’s art work on them, his features had probably been ordinary.
“Let me introduce myself,” Rodrigo said in accented German. He didn’t speak it well, but could make himself understood. “I am Rodrigo Nervi.” He wanted to let the doctor know exactly with whom he was dealing. He saw the doctor’s eyes widen in alarm; he wasn’t so drunk that he was beyond all good sense.
“A month ago, you received a payment of a million American dollars. Who paid you, and why?”
“I-I… What?” Dr. Speer stammered.
“The money. Who gave it to you?”
“A woman. I don’t know her name.”
Rodrigo shook him so hard his head wobbled on his neck, and his broken glasses went flying. “Are you certain of that?”
“She-she never told me,” Speer gasped.
“What did she look like?”
“Ah-” Speer blinked as he tried to focus his thoughts. “Brown hair. Brown eyes, I think. I did not care how she looked, you understand?”
“Old? Young?”
Again Speer blinked, several times. “Thirties?” he said, making it a question, as if he wasn’t certain of his memory.
So. It had definitely been Denise who had given him the million dollars. Speer didn’t know who had given her the money-that was another trail to follow-but this confirmed everything. Rodrigo had known instinctively from the moment she disappeared that she was the killer, but it was good to know he wasn’t wasting time chasing down false leads.
“You made a poison for her.”
Speer swallowed convulsively, but a spark of professional pride lit his blurry gaze. He didn’t even deny it. “A masterpiece, if I do say so. I took the properties of several deadly toxins and combined them. One hundred percent lethal, if even a half ounce is taken. By the time the delayed symptoms are presented, the damage is so severe there is no effective treatment. I suppose one could try a multiorgan transplant, assuming there just happened to be that many organs available at one time and they were all a match, but if there was any toxin left in the system it would attack those organs, too. No, I don’t think that would work.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Rodrigo smiled, a cold smile that, if the doctor had been more sober, would have frightened him senseless. Instead he smiled back.
“You’re welcome,” he said. The words were still hanging in the air when Rodrigo broke his neck and let him drop like a rag doll.
Chapter Seven
Swain lay in his hotel bed the next morning staring at the ceiling and trying to logically connect the dots. Outside a cold November rain was pelting the windows; he hadn’t yet adjusted from the much warmer climate of South America, so he was definitely feeling a chill, even though he was snug in bed. Between the rain and jet lag, he figured he deserved a rest. Besides, it wasn’t as if he was totally slacking off; he was thinking. He didn’t know Lily, so he was hampered in his effort to figure out what she would do. So far she’d proven herself to be inventive, bold, and coolheaded; he’d have to be on top of his game to outthink her. But he did love a challenge, so instead of running around Paris flashing a photograph of her and asking strangers on the street if they’d seen this woman-yeah, like that would work-he tried instead to anticipate what she would do next, so he could get just that one half-step ahead of her that he needed.
Mentally he listed what he knew so far, which wasn’t much.
Point A: Salvatore Nervi had killed her friends. Point B: She had then killed Salvatore Nervi.
Logically, that should be the end of it. Mission accomplished, except for the little detail of getting away from Rodrigo Nervi alive. But she’d managed that; she had made her escape to London, pulled that slick disguise switcheroo and then doubled back. She could possibly have gone to ground here in Paris, using yet another of her seemingly endless supply of alternate identities. It was also possible she’d left the airport, changed her appearance yet again, then returned and taken yet another flight out. She had to know that everything any passenger did in an airport, outside of the restrooms, was caught on some camera somewhere, so she would expect that eventually anyone looking for her would nail down the switches she’d made, and from there be able to run the passenger list and deduce the identities she’d used. She had been forced to do her quick changes to throw off Rodrigo Nervi and buy some time, even though that meant she’d burned three aliases and wouldn’t be able to use them again without raising all sorts of red flags that would get her caught.