“Nothing new from Lisa. No dreams. No sketches. Did you find anything out in Rome about the Romanos?”
“Only that Gino was on the verge of bankruptcy and their estate was mortgaged to the hilt. He resigned from his position at the bank three weeks ago and the bank is trying to keep it from the investors. Lisa’s trust fund seems to be intact, because it can’t be touched until she is twenty-one. But I can see how the Romanos could be frustrated about having all that money just out of reach and be bitter toward Lisa.”
“And do they have any connection to this Santara?”
“Not that I’ve been able to establish yet,” he said, then added, “And now that you’ve squeezed everything I know about the Romanos out of me, it’s time that you—”
“I haven’t squeezed everything out of you, only what’s happening now with them. If they’ve had anything to do with hurting Lisa, I want to know them like you know them.”
“That would be a difficult feat to accomplish.” He made an impatient gesture as she opened her lips. “Okay, I’ll try to give you what you want. Gino is old money, inherited his estate and partnership in the bank from his father. Likes the good life, was a playboy when he was younger, spent money like water, never married until he was in his fifties. Then he met Teresa Matalo, good family, but impoverished. They couldn’t keep up with the rest of their set. All her life, Teresa was subject to slights from the society that she’d been taught was all-important. When she was twenty-five, she met and apparently seduced and then married Gino, almost thirty years her senior. She took over everything in his life and made him like it. Most of the time. She was always trying to find ways to move up and secure her position in society. She’s beautiful, totally self-serving, perhaps the most ambitious woman I’ve ever met.” He reached for his phone and brought up a photo. “And she has the equipment to make most of those ambitions bear fruit.” He handed her the phone. “Gino and Teresa.”
It was a photo of a man and woman sitting at a table beneath an umbrella. The man was in his fifties or sixties, handsome, a little overweight, with black hair threaded with silver and wearing a gray business suit. The woman was much younger, sleek, blond, blue-eyed, with almost perfect features, and wore a navy blue dress that had to be by a designer. “You’re right, she’s stunning.”
“I’m right about the rest, too,” he said tersely as he took the phone back. “Now stop cross-examining me and tell me what the hell I’m doing here. I believe I told you that you weren’t invited, and yet here you are.”
“Because I’m more generous than you,” she said curtly. “And since I may not have a choice, I might be forced to issue you an invitation of my own.”
He went still. “If that means what I think it means, I believe you’d better let me get this plane on course before you make any explanation.”
“Whatever.” She looked out the window at the ground below gradually disappearing from view. “The quicker the better.” Now that the decision was made and the action taken, she was being bombarded by doubts. She was working mostly on guesswork, wasn’t she?
No, dammit, it felt right.
Ten minutes later, Caleb turned to her. “You’ve changed your mind? You’re going to let me link with you and Lisa and question her?”
“No, I didn’t say that.” She moistened her lips. “In Lisa’s eyes, it’s probably much worse than that.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m going to do the one thing she’s been fighting against from the beginning. I’m going to let you take me to Lisa and try to get her away from Santara.”
His body became even more rigid. “You lied to me? She did manage to communicate something to you?”
“I didn’t lie. But I suppose you could say that Lisa did manage to tell me what I needed to know. She’s been trying to do that all along. Today I just concentrated and tried to put everything together. I believe I know where she’s being held, Caleb.”
“Talk.”
“She was taken to that gray stone house in a helicopter and that meant probably no really long distances or high mountains. The time factor she told me about indicated that, too.” She held up her hand as he started to speak. “I know, that’s not much. I was getting frustrated, too. But when I asked her if she’d noticed anything else about the place where she’d been taken, she said she’d gotten an impression it was sort of golden. Very casually, she just threw it into the mix and moved on.”
“And?”
“There’s only one place on earth that I’ve ever been that would have that kind of strong impression on someone who was in the emotional state Lisa was at the time. I spent six months there as an art student because I was drunk with the sheer headiness of waking up to that golden light.” She paused. “The Greek Isles, Caleb. If those sketches hadn’t been black and white, I would probably have shown how it cast that wonderful glow on everything that—” She shrugged. “The light pervades everything. You’ve been there, haven’t you? Do you see what I mean?”
He slowly nodded. “I never noticed it from an artist’s point of view. But I’ve heard people talk about its effect on them. I guess I don’t tend to embrace the light as much as you do.” His lips twisted. “Maybe I’m more fire and brimstone.”
“Anyway, the moment I realized the possibility, I started to try to pull it all together. I spent hours on the computer, calling real estate companies and tourist bureaus to track down the exact location. A large gray stone house on the coast with a tower that overlooked the ocean and an island some distance away. Mountains to the north, a garden … The island helped. The curving road leading to the top and that flat, triangular area to the east that was fairly unusual. But there are so many islands.… Over six thousand, but not nearly that many are inhabited. And that road leading to the top of the island indicated it was inhabited. Still, I nearly went blind Googling them all. I found two that were similar and I did a scan of the areas on the coasts within view of them. One in the Aegean Sea had no mountains anywhere near it. The other one had mountains. That was in the Ionian Sea, fairly close to the boot of Italy.” She met his eyes. “And it also had a gray stone house with a tower.”
“Show me,” he snapped.
She pulled out her computer and found the page. “The stretch of coastline is called San Leandro. It’s hard to tell anything much from this overhead satellite view, but it’s—”
“Close enough,” he said, interrupting, not taking his eyes off the computer page. “Because I’d bet that square near the house is a helicopter pad.”
“I wondered about that. But I didn’t see a helicopter.”
“Which only means that they were dropped off.” His gaze was raking the rest of the screen. “But this isn’t good enough to show us any details of where Santara’s men would be located. It would take extensive reconnoitering to make it a safe hit.”
“Then you believe me?”
“I believe you believe it. Show me that sketch you did of Lisa looking at the island again.”
She dug into her bag and pulled out her sketchbook. She flipped it open to the correct page. “It’s the island of Zakyos. You see the triangular shape on the lower east side? The island is small and it has only fishing and a small inn in the hills open to tourists during the summer.”
His brows rose. “You did some research.”
“As much as I could on the computer. I need to do more, but that may have to be on the phone. But I had a three-hour wait for you at the airport and I didn’t want to waste it.”