He did not have to wonder for long. He followed the Russian to the parking area, stopping to watch as he waved at the woman behind the wheel of a large white RV. The Colonel quickly made a note of the number on the plate and the fact that it was a British vehicle. He also noted that the woman was attractive, in her thirties, with long blond hair hanging straight to her shoulders, a butcher-boy cap planted over it, a white spaghetti-strap top, and an armload of clanking bracelets.
The Russian got in, gave her a long kiss, then gave her the bag. She dived greedily into it, pulling out a mass of lace and ribbons that seemed to delight her because she kissed him again, lingeringly, as if promising a reward later. And then she switched on the engine and screeched out of the lot before the Colonel could make a move.
Interesting, he thought, rechecking the number on the plate, which he had punched into his iPhone. He’d soon find out who that was, and what the Russian was up to.
12
Verity
Verity thought it was weird how fate took over and simply put you on a path, quite different from the one you’d expected to follow, meaning for her an angry divorce—a fight over money and a house, the stinging loss of love that had meant so much to her and so little to him. His name was Rancho.
“Like, Rancho?” she’d exclaimed, disbelieving, when he introduced himself at, of all places, a local horse event.
He was the most exotic creature she had ever met: Argentinian, he said, sitting astride a glossy little polo pony with too-thin ankles that did not look strong enough to carry his weight, yet which careened up and down the field in a whirlwind of hooves and clumps of turned-up sod, while he leaned dangerously from the saddle whacking at a minute ball with a mallet, which is what she found out they call the stick they hit the ball with in polo, a game that had never previously interested her. And boy, he did it well. And my, he looked good doing it.
It took only two months for there to be a wedding of sorts; not the floating-down-the-aisle event Verity had somehow always imagined in her future, but a runaway register-office affair in London, with only the cleaning lady and a passing delivery man for witnesses. As weddings go, it was about as anonymous as you can get. And after the first few hectic nights, all sex and wine, and sex and food, and sex and long walks in St. James Park, which was right next to the Ritz where they were staying—on her credit card as she later found out—she realized she bored him. Especially after he escorted her to her bank and asked her to withdraw her savings, which she did, then passed over to him. A couple of thousand was all, because she was not the trust-fund baby he’d believed. It was her birthday money from over the years—it added up by the time you got to your midtwenties, which is when godparents started to give up on you, thinking you were old enough to take care of yourself. And she was, just about, until she married him. Finally, she just bolted. Took off like the young polo ponies he loved more than her. In her rush to get out, to never see him again, she’d stupidly left whatever was in the bank, and her jewelry.
And now what? She had just survived a hair-raising, death-defying ride to a temporary stopover in a place she had never been before yet somehow knew, with a woman she did not know, and a future that was indecipherable from where she was sitting, gazing awestruck at the pink-stucco villa and the gardens with the low-clipped hedges enclosing flower beds heavy with the scent of jasmine, far better than any manufactured perfume. And the sky an endless blue. And a maniac on a Ducati Monster somewhere out there who had tried to kill them. Or tried to kill the woman whose car it was, whose house this was.
She turned to look at her. “Who the hell are you, really, anyway?” she asked. “And why do you wear those silly crochet gloves?”
Mirabella