“Nothing.” She smiled and moved her head toward him. He leaned in for the kiss and gently pushed his tongue between her lips. She laughed a little and kissed him back for a few seconds before becoming self-conscious and breaking away.
“Later,” she said, facing back into the street, “without the audience.” She scanned the crowd, reassuring herself that no one had been looking, anyway.
“You’re so Anglo-Saxon,” said Chris, joking.
“And you’re such an Italian stallion.”
“Oh, yeah. Trust me, before the night’s out I’m getting a medallion and a chest wig.”
She laughed and they went back to watching. Her eyes were snagged immediately by a man sitting at the café directly across from them. He didn’t look Italian, but apart from that he was nondescript, average looking, a guy in his forties maybe, short hair, medium build, a face that seemed designed to be lost in a crowd.
And that was the intriguing part, because she’d singled him out, and now Ella was certain she’d seen him before. She closed her eyes momentarily but couldn’t picture him and had to open them again to remind herself what he looked like.
He seemed to be studying the passaggiata, so she took the opportunity to study him in turn, staring as she tried to recall where she might have seen him. Maybe it had been in the railway station in Rome, or on the Ponte Vecchio perhaps, or at the Duomo.
She became uneasy at the possibility of him having been in Rome and Florence, and after trying to shake the thought for a while she said, “Chris, see the guy sitting across from us, short-sleeved blue shirt, forties.”
“What about him?”
“I know it sounds weird, but I’m pretty certain he was in Rome and Florence.”
“So who do you think he’s stalking, you or me?” She laughed. “Look, somewhere like Italy, everyone goes the same places. There’s probably loads of people here who were in Rome and Florence.”
He was exaggerating, ignoring the fact that Montecatini was hardly one of the most obvious stops on a tour of Italy. And yet he was probably still right; in Thailand last year she kept bumping into the same people, sometimes in the most unlikely places.
She looked at the man again, annoyed that it was troubling her, finally making an effort to dismiss it altogether.
“It’s nice here, isn’t it? More relaxed.”
“Doesn’t seem as hot, either. Maybe we should stay here a few days, take in one of the spas, chill out.”
“Suits me,” she said. “Venice can wait.”
She looked back across the street. It took her a moment or two to pick him out again, and when she did, she noticed he was looking agitated, an edginess that rubbed off on her. He was looking up the street and she looked in the same direction, but nobody stood out from the crowd.
She glanced back and jumped nervously. He was staring directly at her now, getting out of his seat. She began to panic, thoughts crashing into each other. A group of kids walked in front of her, and by the time they’d passed he was halfway across the street and looking up it again.
He was reaching under his shirt for something as he walked, and then it was there in his hand, a gun. This couldn’t be happening. This guy had been following them, she knew it, and now he was heading toward them with a gun. Her heart stalled, and for a second she couldn’t speak.
“Shit! Chris!” She didn’t have time to say any more. She heard Chris respond but couldn’t make out what he said. The man was almost on top of her, and then she heard the gunshots, deafening, followed by screams, shouts, panic.
He was standing in front of her, his back to her. He’d fired two shots, and a few yards away in the street, two men had fallen. He looked around quickly, took two steps forward, aimed at the head of one of the men, and fired again. Another shocked chorus from the crowd.
Ella heard Chris again, some garbled expletive, and the man was back with them, his face close, no longer edgy but calm and authoritative.
“Come with me.”
Ella got to her feet but heard Chris saying, “No fucking way.”
“Come with me or I’ll kill you right now.” He was pointing the gun at him.
“Do what he says, Chris.”
They walked quickly through the panicked street, and it took her a while to notice that the gunman was leading her by the arm. They were all mute, a tight ball of silence moving swiftly away from the chaos behind them. She looked at Chris a couple of times but in the shock and confusion of the moment he wasn’t taking anything in.
They’d just seen two people killed, and now they were walking away with the killer, a man who’d threatened Chris too, and yet they were going quietly, unquestioning, putting up no resistance. They were all moving with a shared sense of urgency, because somehow in the time-lapse nightmare of the last few minutes, it had seemed as if he was protecting them.
“You get in the passenger seat,” he told Chris. “Ella, in the back, lie down.”