Fatal Cover-Up

And that place wasn’t here.

“Talia...” He squeezed harder on her elbow, causing her to flinch. “Are you okay?”

She jerked away, surprised at her response. How did she explain that she was scared stiff? That no matter how hard she tried to fight the panic that had welled up within her, it wouldn’t go away? And that she had no idea how to shake it?

Instead of answering, she took him down a side street, to a quiet spot she knew was located off the beaten path, and slipped under a darkened archway. She’d always been drawn to the places off the main thoroughfares, where you’d never find tourists and their cameras. Her father had first showed her a number of Rome’s hidden jewels, and those excursions had given her a zeal for the city that went far deeper than simply a shopping list of famous attractions.

She slowed down once they were inside the private courtyard and took in the familiar old buildings, with their twisted grapevines climbing up the sides, earth-colored paint jobs and flower-lined balconies. A woman glanced down from a third-story window and smiled before turning back to her laundry hanging in the wind above them. It was a quiet place, a reminder of what Rome had looked like decades ago. Simple. Unencumbered. And how her heart had once been before it had lost so much.

She turned around to face Joe, then held up her palm to stop him from talking. Not yet. She needed her heart to stop racing. She didn’t need him feeling sorry for her. She just wanted to find a way to put an end to this before someone else got hurt.

“I’m sorry.” She drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly then sat down on a cracked step leading up to one of the apartments. “I just need a quiet place to calm my nerves for a few minutes.”

The sun shone on him as he looked down at her, bringing out red and blond highlights in his hair. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

She swallowed hard. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re an FBI agent. You know how to handle situations like this, but I don’t. I’m used to spending my days showing tourists this city, but this... I don’t know how to deal with people threatening my life and the lives of my family.”

“Which is why I’m coming with you. So you don’t have to deal with this on your own.”

“And if that’s not enough?” She heard her voice rising and pressed her lips together in an attempt to stop her emotions from spiraling out of control. He didn’t deserve her backlash. “The point is that you can’t guarantee my protection. Or my sister’s. We don’t know who’s behind this, but we do know how far they are willing to go. They’ve already murdered at least one person.”

He sat down beside her. “Take a deep breath.”

Talia frowned. She didn’t want to take a deep breath. She wanted to run away as far as she could and forget any of this happened. She wanted to go back to a time when all she had to worry about was the occasional obnoxious tourist. Not this.

Besides, she’d come to Italy to get away from losing Thomas, and now it was as if it was starting all over again. She didn’t want to deal with her past. Didn’t want to relive to the moment when her heart had been broken by all the lies he’d told her.

She looked at Joe, who was sitting just close enough to where their shoulders were touching on the narrow staircase. She really didn’t know anything about him. Only that he’d agreed to come with her, and that her heart kept telling her to trust him. But was his presence going to be enough to keep her safe? Thomas had been a cop, and it hadn’t saved him. Nor had it stopped him from betraying her.

But Joe wasn’t Thomas. And it wasn’t fair for her to make that comparison.

“I just feel as if it’s happening all over again,” she said, breaking the silence between them. “The days after Thomas’s death were like a nightmare. Not only did I have to deal with questions from our friends about what had happened, but the police believed that I knew about what he had been doing. That I had somehow been in on it. After he was killed they brought me in to an interrogation room, read me my rights and made me sit for hours of questioning.”

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