Page 78 of Fastest Kill

"Don't call the police."

Frederica made an irritated sound. "I'm not an idiot, Baba. We are coming to you, and we will deal with it."

"My girl…" Tore said with a wheezy laugh.

She kept him on the phone but didn't speak much after that, just enough to let him know she was there, a voice in his ear while he sat in the dark garden with whatever was broken in him and waited.

She listened to his breathing and kept everything she was feeling locked up tight. She could fall apart later, once her father was safe and Despina was back with him.

When they landed in Rhodes, Frederica pushed their driver aside and got behind the wheel. Dario got in beside her before she could drive off without him. Rodrigo and the others could follow.

The gate to the house was still open when they arrived. That was the first clue that told Frederica how wrong the night had gone. The ornate iron gate that Despina locked at sundown because "a locked gate is the first conversation you have with anyone who wants to get inside," was wide open. Frederica was out of the car and pulling a gun from her shoulder holster before she told Dario to follow her. She didn't need to. He was beside her with his own gun drawn. She pointed to the garden path on the left side before gesturing to the one on the right. Dario nodded, and they split up.

She found Tore lying on his side in the long grass at the base of the old, stone figure of Hermes rising above him in the dark, face worn smooth with age and salt air.

Tore's fingers were resting against the carved plinth, like he had reached for it at some point and simply stayed that way on his side. His face was gray, and the left side of his shirt was dark and soaked.

"Baba." She was on her knees, her hands moving over him with the systematic checking her mother had taught her before she was old enough to understand why a child might need to know how to assess a body for damage. Cracked ribs with a deep gash that accounted for the blood on his shirt. His shoulder was dislocated, not broken. The cut above his hairline had bled a lot but had stopped. Nothing immediately fatal.

"I told you I couldn't get up," Tore said, which was the most ridiculous thing he could have said in that moment.

"You also told me you were fine over the phone when we were landing, which was a lie."

"I was fine-adjacent?" Tore took her hand. "It was Morosini's men. I saw one of them at a dead drop years ago."

"Good. Now, he's made himself an even bigger target," Frederica growled and squeezed his hand.

Dario found them, assessed Tore with a quick, practiced look. He crouched down, slid one arm under his knees and the other under his shoulders. "On three."

Dario lifted him up, and Tore made a sound through his teeth that wasn't a word, but definitely a curse, then set his jaw until they got him to the car.

The others had pulled up, and Kon opened a back door where Athena had the first-aid kit already unpacked on the seat.

"The plane's still on the tarmac," Rodrigo told Frederica. "We can have him back in Venice in two hours, and our doctor has already left the villa in Tuscany to meet us there."

Tore started to object, but Frederica narrowed her eyes, and he quickly stopped objecting.

"Get him settled on the plane for me," she told Rodrigo. "We'll check the house and follow."

Rodrigo's eyes moved to Dario. Something passed between the brothers, and Rodrigo nodded and got in the car.

Frederica watched the tail lights disappear down the hill and turned back to the house. They went through it together, room by room, switching on lights and making sure no one was left hiding in wait.

Frederica forced herself to read the story the house was telling in the same way she read any scene after a brawl: what moved, what broke, what direction, and how many.

Kitchen: a chair overturned, a mug shattered on the tile, two patches of blood on the floor near the door to the garden that were not her father's. Her mother had been in the kitchen when they came in. She had put two of them down in this room alone, and the bodies had been dragged away. At least that saved Frederica from having to drop anyone in the ocean that night.

Front room: nothing disturbed. They hadn't come through the front. Side entrance.

Hall: a long scrape on the plaster where something heavy had hit the wall. A bloody handprint at chest height, dragged downward from someone catching themselves or trying to.

Despina had made them regret entering her house and then some.

Frederica took the stairs. Her parents' room was untouched. They hadn't come up here. She stood in the doorway for a moment, taking in the neat bed, the books on the nightstand, the small icon of the Theotokos that had hung on the wall since before Frederica was born. Her mother's reading glasses were folded on top of a notebook. A wine glass she hadn't rinsed before everything went wrong.

She crossed to the wardrobe and pushed the clothes aside. The safe was at the back, exactly where it always was, and undisturbed. She entered the combination—her own birthday, which was the only sentimental habit her mother had ever admitted to—and opened it.

Her rifle was there inside its case. Cleaned, assembled, scope detached, and stored in its own foam cutout. Despina had carried this rifle for decades.