The Devil's Triangle (A Brit in the FBI 4)

Everyone nodded. Lia said, “Don’t fret, no one is taking any chances.” She looked at her watch. “You need to go, find Kitsune.” She gave them a salute and stepped out the door, quickly blending into the crowds of tourists.

A minute later the three of them left the hotel, too, turned right, and walked over the bridge. The Hotel Danieli was on their right. Up and over one more bridge, dodging immigrants selling selfie sticks and people abruptly stopping to take pictures of the Bridge of Sighs, and then they were at the entrance of the Doge’s Palace. A few more steps and they were at the eastern edge of the Piazza San Marco.

The piazza was huge, magnificent; the buildings a testament to Venetian wealth from her heyday. The Doge’s Palace on their right was like something out of a fairy tale. There was color and noise and too many people.

“Even though we don’t look like tourists,” Nicholas said against Mike’s ear, “no one’s paying any attention to us.”

She snapped to attention. “He is.”

Nicholas looked to his right. The man he’d seen from his hotel room balcony was standing at the corner of the palace, in the shade, still chewing on a toothpick.

“And to your left,” Mike said.

Nicholas looked left, saw another man sitting at a small round table, alone, wearing dark-tinted sunglasses. Even with his eyes hidden, it was clear he was staring at them. They kept walking.

“Any more?”

“There are men at every corner,” she said. “Are they Kitsune’s people, or the guys after her?”

Nicholas stopped abruptly, knelt down, and retied the laces on his right boot. He took in the men following them, the two ahead of them. They were all armed.

He stood back up. “I don’t know. Go carefully, Mike.”

“We should have met her in the hotel.”

“You know she had to have a crowd to hide in. In her shoes, I’d have picked the piazza as well.”

They kept walking, past the stalls selling tourist T-shirts and oven mitts and harlequin masks.

The bells of Saint Mark’s Basilica began to ring. In her ear, Mike heard Lia say, “Ugh, that’s so loud. I’ll never be able to hear you over it. Stay away from the bells.”

“Roger that,” Mike said.

They turned left into the main piazza, crowded with more people than she could count, and children and pigeons. Scores of people sat at the outdoor café tables, six cafés by Nicholas’s count, drinking espresso and prosecco and nibbling potato chips. The lines from the basilica tours extended out into the piazza. So many people, Mike thought. We can’t control the scene.

“Over there, Nicholas, the blonde with long hair, and big straw hat sitting. It’s Kitsune and she just signaled me.”

The woman at the table didn’t look anything like the Kitsune he remembered. She looked like the rest of the hordes in the piazza, all casual and relaxed, sipping a glass of wine. Then she straightened and started shaking her head.

“Crap.” Nicholas spoke rapidly into his mic. “We’re compromised. Abort. No way to control this scene. Abort, I repeat, Louisa, Lia, abort.”

Kitsune looked straight at Nicholas, and he saw the fear an instant before the piazza erupted in gunfire.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Nicholas dove to the right, knocking Mike off her feet.

Screams filled the air as bullets started to fly through the piazza.

Lia was shouting in their ear

s. “I see some of the shooters. Louisa, move to your left, two columns, the man in jeans and black T-shirt.”

Nicholas yelled into his mic. “Lia, we’re blind. Where are the shots coming from?”

“I can’t tell, too many people are running. I’ve lost them. Louisa got one of the shooters.”

Mike shouted, “Kitsune’s gone!”