Run To Rome

“Grazie.” Trent brushed his lips across her cheek before rising to his feet.

Simone stood as well, and put a hand on his arm. “I will be out in a moment to properly bandage Rachel’s wound and administer the antibiotics.”

Trent rubbed her shoulder. “Take your time, I know this is hard.”

“Si, but better if I keep busy, or else I will stare at the door, wishing him to enter.”

Halli preceded Trent out of the room, but stopped in the living room. After a glance to make sure Rachel wouldn’t overhear, she faced him. “What are you going to do?”

“About…what?”

“The video. The cops suspect you shot Lorenzo, and my video proves you didn’t.”

Confusion drew his brows together. She hesitated voicing her suspicion outright, but for Ben’s sake, she had to know exactly where they stood. With effort, she put some backbone into her next words. “I need to know you’re not going to suddenly decide to save yourself at the last minute and my brother gets the short end of the stick.”

Indefinable emotion flashed in his eyes, was eclipsed by anger, and then his expression went completely blank. “I cannot believe you just said that.”

When he moved to brush past her, she caught his arm. It was his left arm, and his jaw clenched as he jerked free.

“You’re the one who pointed out the possibility to Lapaglia,” she reminded. It took everything she had not to add, You’re the one who stole the card from my camera.

“I need him to believe he’s got the most to lose here, or he’ll never make the trade. It’s as simple as that, sweetheart.”

I, not we. Halli held her chin high even though she wanted to cry in despair. Trent stalked away, leaving her stranded in the same spot she’d started yesterday. Desperate for help but unsure who to trust. God, this was exactly why she hated being dependant on someone other than herself.

A touch on her shoulder made her jump. Simone murmured some words in Italian, then said softly, “Do not worry. Trent is an honorable man. He will do what needs to be done.”

Hardly reassuring coming from the woman who’d accused him of murder and pointed a gun at them less than an hour ago. Had she figured out yet that saving Ben meant giving up the evidence that could convict her lover’s killer? Halli followed her into the kitchen and saw Trent had picked up her camera. Had he put the card back?

Please, let him have put it back.

“Explain for me what is going on,” Simone requested as she started Rachel on IV antibiotics.

His gaze flicked to hers for a split second before shifting to Simone. Halli read his shuttered expression and spoke before he could.

“Yes, please, explain for all of us. Or are you going to pull the ‘it’s safer if you don’t know’ bullshit again?”

He glared at her, and again, she read his expression. Pain in the ass.

Jerk, she silently replied.

He set aside the camera, faced Simone, and boosted himself up to sit on the kitchen counter. Halli frowned at his presumptuous choice of location, but Simone didn’t give him a second glance as she began to apply a new bandage to Rachel’s leg.

“My brother came over here about five months ago to film a segment for his latest documentary on the black market trade of exotic and endangered animals,” Trent began. “As you know, two months later, he was found dead in my villa and the police ruled it a suicide. Blamed it on his depression, said he wasn’t taking his medication. But I talked to him that morning and he was fine. I grew up with him, I knew the signs.”

Halli’s chest tightened in unavoidable sympathy. The combination of grief and anger that’d appeared on paper in his journal was twice as potent when it bled into his gravelly voice.

“Still, I questioned my judgment, wondered if maybe I had missed something…until I remembered a conversation we’d had a few days prior. He’d gotten footage of a smuggler based in Lenno importing illegal animals from Switzerland, via Lake Lugano.”

“Alrigo Lapaglia,” Halli stated.

Trent nodded. “Sean was excited about following the lead and I was on location on the last day of a hellish shoot that was three weeks behind schedule. I barely listened, gave him a virtual head pat, told him his film would be great, and went on my way.”

“This was revealed to the police?” Simone asked the question before Halli could.

“Yes. And their response is what started me digging deeper. All Sean’s camera equipment had been confiscated at the beginning of the police investigation—if you’d even call what they did investigating. When I requested everything be returned, there wasn’t a single bit of film for the two months my brother had been in the country. His notes, contact list, cell phone, all of it was gone. Sean was meticulous about stuff like that. He filled notebooks for every film he ever made, even as a kid. So I laid it all out for Lorenzo to see what he thought.”

Simone’s hands paused over Rachel’s leg as she looked up at Trent. “And he offered to help you?”