On Midnight Wings

23 DEADLY LITTLE PUPPET GERMANTOWN, TENNESSEE THE BLUE MAGNOLIA INN

CATERINA CORTINI STRAPPED ON her shoulder rig, then tucked her SIG Sauer P220 into the holster before pulling on her black blazer. After zipping up her overnight bag, she took one final glance around the motel room with its blue magnolia wallpaper to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything.

Doing this was normally second nature. Done without thought.

But, given the distracting nature of the headaches she’d been enduring off and on over the last week, she made herself look again, more slowly. There. On the nightstand. Her black leather gloves.

Shaking her head in disgust, Caterina grabbed the butter-soft leather gloves and stuffed them into a pocket of her blazer. That never would’ve happened a week ago. Something was wrong—very wrong. She could feel it.

The headaches. Her difficulty sleeping, concentrating.

Her mind felt full of writhing worms.

Could be a brain tumor, a budding aneurysm. I should see a doctor.

She should, yes. And she would. But it would have to wait until after she’d finished her assignment and Heather Wallace was no longer capable of betraying anyone—let alone Dante Baptiste—ever again.

Díon had said that the intercept team was scheduled to stop in Little Rock, but he hadn’t known where they’d be staying with their unwilling guest. Caterina knew from experience that only certain motels were SB authorized and approved—by the accounting department, anyway. And in Little Rock, there wouldn’t be more than four or five authorized motels. She would simply check each one.

That would be the easy part. Getting to Heather without killing fellow SB agents would be harder. Of course, if she had no other choice, then she wouldn’t hesitate to end their lives as well. But she hoped it wouldn’t come to that this time.

Words once given to her by her mentor in black ops—a man recently killed in a vicious home invasion—were words she believed in and lived by.

With each life we end, we alter the future, end possibilities. We become agents of destiny. Severing some, fulfilling others. A hard and honorable duty.

Yet sometimes, it simply felt hard.

Grabbing up her bag, Caterina left her room, checked out of the motel, then went to her rented Nissan Sentra. Unlocking it, she tossed her bag into the backseat, then slid in behind the wheel. She sat there for a moment, motionless, one hand on the steering wheel, the other hand on the door, questions and doubts prickling like thorns at the back of her mind.

I’ve seen Heather Wallace fight at Dante’s side, seen her risk her life for him. Seen him risk life and sanity for her. I truly believed that she loved him, would always stand beside him.

How could she fool all of us—me, the llygad, Dante himself? It doesn’t seem possible.

(it isn’t)

Pain throbbed at Caterina’s temples. She stared out the windshield and into the silent parking lot, troubled in a way she had never been before.

I don’t know if I can trust my own thoughts.

(you can’t)

Her stomach clenched at the smells wafting into the car—car exhaust from the nearby highway and spicy fried chicken from the Popeye’s next door—which seemed to intensify the pain drilling into her skull. She shut the Nissan’s door.

Rubbing her forehead, Caterina tried to summon up particulars from the transcripts and photos Díon had shown her of Heather meeting with the FBI in various locations, but her mind blanked and the details eluded her, the images blurred.

“Dannazione,” she muttered. She was wasting time.

Unbidden, an image of Renata—slim and small and graceful, dark eyes and pale skin, her chestnut brown hair a cap of Roman ringlets and curls that swept against her white shoulders—popped into her mind and something deep inside of Caterina unknotted in inexplicable relief.

“Sing to me, Mama,” she whispered, as though she were once again a child who played at night and slept at dawn, a mortal child adapting to the nocturnal rhythms of a vampire household. “Sing to me.”

Still rubbing her forehead, Caterina imagined her mother doing just that, crooning a familiar bedtime lullaby in a voice as comforting as flannel and hot cocoa on a winter night.

Fi la nana, e mi bel fiol / Fi la nana, e mi bel fiol . . .

Pain needled Caterina’s temples, behind her eyes. Burned white hot as each imagined and melodic note hooked bits of memory and knitted them together. Wincing, Caterina squeezed her eyes shut. An image took shape.

“Relax,” Díon murmurs. “Submit.”

Caterina tries to move, but her body refuses to cooperate. Díon’s mental fingers are still planted in her brain.

“You’re going to be my sleeper spy, my link to Baptiste and his household . . .”

“I won’t help you. You might as well just snap my neck now.”

Díon laughs, the sound low and amused. “You say that as if you actually have a choice in the matter, mia bella assassina . . .”

Caterina’s eyes flew open. Her heart kicked against her ribs as a stark and furious realization poured through her aching mind. Díon—the bastard had used her, had . . .

Worms wriggled, writhed. And the realization dropped away like a child into an uncapped well. The pain in her head faded, vanished. Caterina blinked. What had she been thinking? Something about Díon . . . something about . . .

Little Rock. Heather Wallace. Backstabbing puttana.

But not for much longer.

The redhead’s remaining time could be counted in hours. Only two and a half stretched between Germantown and Little Rock. Less, if Caterina goosed the speed limit.

Caterina started the Nissan and drove out of the parking lot.