Page 41 of Skotos (Of Shadows & Secrets #6)

Will

T homas gunned the motorbike, and I clung to him with both arms, my thighs tightening around the seat as we picked up speed.

The stolen Vespa—God bless Italian efficiency—leaped forward like a hound loosed from its leash.

The black sedan was already half a block ahead, weaving through light traffic like a shark through shallows.

“Don’t lose them!” I shouted.

Thomas didn’t answer.

He leaned into the first sharp turn, taking it so tight my boot scraped against the stone curb. We skidded around the corner, bouncing over the uneven cobblestones.

The sedan cut down a narrow side street, forcing an old delivery truck to slam on its brakes. The squeal of tires and the screech of horns rang out.

Thomas veered around the stalled truck, clipping a vendor cart stacked with oranges. Fruit spilled everywhere in a citrus explosion .

We burst onto another street lined with tourists, scattering them like startled pigeons. Somewhere behind, a policeman shouted and blew his whistle, but his words were lost in the roar of the engine and the pounding of blood in my ears.

The black sedan was still ahead, weaving like a drunk, barreling through the Eternal City with reckless abandon.

A tram clanged toward an intersection.

The sedan didn’t slow. It gunned it, barely slipping past the crossing rails before the tram cut across behind it.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I shouted. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Thomas didn’t hesitate, shooting forward, his jaw set, eyes locked on the path ahead.

The tram’s bell shrieked as we ducked beneath the crossing arm and raced over the tracks, narrowly avoiding disaster by mere inches. A woman’s scream from the side of the tram was all that marked our crossing.

The world around me passed too quickly to absorb.

We hit another patch of cobbles—larger ones this time, centuries old and laid by men who never dreamed of motorized transport. My spine took the brunt of the abuse—but so did my sense of balance. I clung to Thomas as though he was the only thing keeping me on the breathing side of life .

“If I die,” I hissed into Thomas’s ear, “tell the Vatican to invest in fucking asphalt.”

He didn’t look back, but I could tell he was grinning. “If you die, I’m driving this thing off the Tiber. We go together.”

Another hard turn.

The sedan clipped a bicycle, sending the rider tumbling. Thomas swerved to avoid him, nearly tipping us over, and I had to bite back a curse. My grip tightened on his jacket, my heart punching against my ribs like a battering ram.

The sedan was still in sight, but it was pulling away.

“Shortcut?” Thomas asked over the roar.

“Anything that doesn’t end with me face-planting into a statue of Caesar.”

“No promises!”

I could hear the smirk in his voice. The bastard was loving this, while I was just trying not to shit my undershorts.

We turned down a narrow alley barely wide enough for the bike. The walls closed in.

Old stone and plaster rushed past in a blur.

Laundry flapped above our heads like surrender flags.

A dog barked angrily from a balcony.

Thomas took a hard left, tires screeching as we cut between a pair of stopped cars. An old woman screamed and dove out of the way, her baguette flying into the air.

We zipped past fountains, down another crooked lane, then across the narrow front steps of a café, forcing diners to leap aside.

The sedan made a sudden right onto a pedestrian walkway, scattering people in every direction. We followed. Horns blared behind us and people screamed, a chorus of chaos and panic.

We turned again and again—each alley growing narrower.

At one point, we barreled through a market stall, a hail of tomatoes bursting behind us. I ducked instinctively as a hanging awning smacked me in the back of the head. The city blurred into a frenzy of noise and color and danger.

Exhaust and garlic and sunbaked stone filled my lungs.

My knuckles were white where they gripped Thomas’s jacket, and my head throbbed from where I’d been smacked.

“They’re heading for the Tiber!” I shouted.

Thomas nodded and begged the engine for more speed.

The river rose ahead. The Tiber’s edge was a rough, weathered place—less postcard, more pulse of the city’s industrial veins.

Along the riverbank, the road turned to old stone pavers that sloped gently toward the water, darkened by centuries of tide and time.

Warehouses lined the dockside road, blocky and brutalist, their facades cracked and faded from years of rain and neglect.

Some bore peeling signage—logistics companies, old shipping names, forgotten brands of oil and wine.

Stained-metal shutters covered massive loading bays.

Chains dangled from cargo hooks like iron vines.

A few warehouses still showed signs of life—forklifts moved crates, men in grease-streaked overalls shouted to each other in coarse Roman dialect, radios crackled with static and the faint strains of opera.

And in the middle of it all, the black sedan sped like a demon loosed from confession, disappearing into the blinding light of the riverside curve.

We were almost on them when one of the rear windows rolled down. A gloved hand emerged—its owner’s long black sleeve billowing in the wind.

A flash.

The sound of the world cracking.

The whiz of a bullet zipped past my ear.

Thomas jerked the handlebars.

Another shot.

Sparks danced off the cobbles near the bike’s wheels.

“They’re fucking shooting at us!” I yelled.

“Thanks, I didn’t notice!”

How can he be such a smart-ass in the middle of a bike-chase-gunfight ?

Thomas yanked the handles, turning straight into the loading zone of a warehouse.

That’s when it happened, when everything lurched from high speed into slow motion, and I saw disaster rearing its dragon-like head before us. A forklift hauling pallets appeared in the alley from a side entrance. The driver didn’t see us.

Thomas shouted and swerved, but it was too late.

We clipped the pallet stack and slammed sideways into the corrugated metal siding of the warehouse. Pain exploded through my ribs and elbow as we hit the ground. Thomas flew off, landing some dozen feet away. The motorbike skittered away on its side, its heels spinning.

The forklift driver jumped down and shouted in Italian, but I couldn’t understand his words. My eyes were locked on the black sedan disappearing around a bend.

“Damn it!” I yelled, slamming my palm into the pavement and immediately regretting it.

Thomas rolled onto his side with a groan, one arm gripping his shoulder.

“You okay?” I asked, crawling toward him.

He nodded faintly, but his jaw was clenched. Blood seeped through the fabric of his shirt, dark and spreading fast. His earlier wound had split open again .

“Of course,” I muttered. “Of course you’re bleeding again. We can’t go two days on a mission without you leaking.”

Thomas offered a weak grin. “You should see the other guy.”

“We didn’t catch the other guy.” I pulled off my jacket and pressed it against his arm. “Let’s hope this warehouse has a first-aid kit. Or whiskey. Maybe both.”

“Hell of a date, Will.” He leaned his head back against the wall and laughed, breathless. “Can we just do dinner and a show next time?”

Fucking Thomas Jacobs.

Thomas snorted, then winced. He was trying to act brave or strong or . . . stupid. Yeah, stupid was more likely. The man needed to admit when he was hurt and let me help him, damn it. Why did guys have to be such idiots?

The forklift operator jogged toward us. I barely registered the sound. My focus was entirely on Thomas, on his shallow breathing and the way his eyes fluttered slightly before he forced them open.

He was slipping. I needed to move, but even as I started to help him up, he grabbed my arm, weak but insistent.

“Will . . . they could come back.”

I blinked. “What? ”

“We don’t know who’s in this warehouse. The shooter—he might not have been alone. Or they may circle around to try to finish us off.”

That thought hadn’t even registered through all the panic.

I looked around and was suddenly hyperaware of every shadow, every open door, every tiny movement.

The sounds of distant machinery echoed off the walls, though I couldn’t tell which direction it came from.

Thomas was right—we might’ve driven straight into a trap.

Worse, we might already be stuck in its jaws and only need to wait for the killing blow.

“Okay,” I said, forcing calm command into my voice. “We’re leaving. Now.”

I helped him to his feet, slinging his good arm over my shoulder. He swayed, nearly toppling us both, and hissed but didn’t complain.

Typical Thomas.

He was bleeding like a gutted pig but still too proud to say a word.

We half stumbled, half hustled toward the edge of the warehouse district. The forklift operator, more curious than angry now, pointed toward a yellow-roofed Fiat idling near a loading dock. I flashed a wad of lire at him and nodded. “Taxi. Ospedale . Subito .”

I wasn’t entirely sure I’d used the correct words—or if I’d just ordered a side dish with a butter sauce—but the man got the message. We reached the cab and tumbled into the back seat, Thomas collapsing beside me.

“I hate this,” I muttered.

“What, being shot at?” Thomas rasped.

“No, watching you bleed, asshole.”

He glanced at me, surprise flickering in his expression. Then he nodded once, and leaned back against the seat. If he wasn’t fighting back or making some snarky comment, his wound had to be bad. My mind raced almost as rapidly as my heart.

I couldn’t lose him. I just couldn’t.

Damn it, I wouldn’t.

I looked out the rear window, my heart still hammering. The sedan had vanished—but one image refused to leave my mind. The shooter’s arm, extended through the open window.

The sleeve had been long, black, and flowing. It was a cassock—a priest’s cassock.

Unless it was still a disguise.

God, why couldn’t anything be simple?

I turned back to Thomas. “I saw the shooter.”

“What?” he asked, his eyes struggling to focus.

“I saw his arm, his sleeve. It looked like priest robes, but not just any robes—something more. Maybe someone high-ranking or ecclesiastical.”

“You got all that from a sleeve?” Thomas’s face darkened. “We’re not just chasing killers.”

“No,” I said. “We’re chasing clergy. ”

We sat in silence for a moment, the hum of the engine the only sound between us.

“We need to decide our next move,” I said quietly. “No more wasting time.”

“Hotel’s compromised. So is the Vatican. Wherever we go, we have to assume someone’s watching.”

“We need a fallback, a place off the grid.” I nodded. “Somewhere we can plan and turn defense into offense. I’m tired of chasing shadows. I want to shoot them.”

Thomas groaned but nodded. “What about that café Enzo used to run? The one near the ruins?”

Enzo was a contact of ours during the war, one of the sympathizers who resisted the rule of Mussolini.

America had struggled to find men like Enzo, men willing to do what needed to be done to win their country’s freedom.

In France, they were attacked, invaded, occupied.

Their people wanted to fight back. Italy had been a different matter altogether.

“Enzo’s dead, remember?”

Thomas winced again. “Yeah, but his nephew’s still running it . . . or was, last I heard. His name is Armando or Marco, something like that.”

“Something ending in O?” I smirked.

Thomas flicked me the bird as his eyes danced. “His place is quiet and tucked away. No one’s watching out there. ”

I considered it. “Okay. It’ll give us a place to regroup and get you patched up.”

“And after that?”

“We find the cassock-wearing bastard with the pistol and end this before they get another shot at the Pope.”

Thomas let out a shaky breath, then smiled grimly. “Now that’s the Will I fell for.”

I turned to the driver. “Piazza d’Oro. And step on it.”