Page 102 of Out for Blood
I read the caption:Always the best party of the year.
“Look at the date,” Jagger said.
“This time last year.”
Jagger nodded. “There are more pictures from the year before, and even the year before that.”
I rubbed at my jaw. “She’s a regular at the party.”
Jagger sat back in his seat. “Looks like it.”
“So we have to get into the party. Either that or her hotel.”
“Hotels are probably booked,” Jagger said. “Especially the Quisisana.”
“What the fuck is the Quisisana?”
“Only the most exclusive hotel in Capri,” Jagger said. “It’s where she stayed last year, which I only know because I recognized the pool in one of the social media pictures.”
Of course he did.
“Okay, so no hotel,” I said. “What about the event itself?”
“Better odds,” Jagger said. “It’s held at the Villa Lysis.”
“Somebody’s house?” I asked.
“Not anymore. It’s owned by the municipality of Capri now, but Maison Valmont takes it over every year for the event.”
“Odds that she’ll meet up with Kaprolov?” I asked.
Jagger considered the question. “Fifty-fifty.”
We knew Alina met up with her father all over the world. The cropped pictures of her with the older man — wearing some rich-guy watch Jagger recognized — appeared in Paris and Austria, Prague and Ibiza on her social media page.
“So we tail Alina to the event,” I said, “keep an eye on her.”
Jagger nodded.
“How do we get in?” I asked.
“We pretend we’re one of them.”
43
CASSIE
I lookedout the window on our way to the Hotel Punta Tragara, the cliffs of Capri dropping to the strikingly blue waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea, so clear we might have been on a tropical island.
We’d landed in Naples just as the sun was rising and had taken a taxi to Calata di Massa where a boat had been waiting to ferry us across the water to Capri.
Now we were piled into one luxury SUV (Jagger had explained that cars were frowned upon on the island, the roads narrow and hard to navigate), winding our way up the hillside to our hotel.
I had no idea who’d set it all up — Jagger probably — but I was getting used to the fact that the Hawks’ talents went beyond robbing banks and giving me orgasms.
I’d slept most of the flight, grateful for the Kings’ plane and the huge comfortable seats, but I was still exhausted. The craziness of the past months had worn me down.
I felt like I could sleep for a year.
