No Place Like Rome Read online

  When I came out, Slash and Tito were on the balcony drinking coffee and speaking in low voices. They both looked up when they saw me.

  Slash stood, walked over to me. Without a word, he hugged me. “I’m sorry, cara. I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  “It’s okay. You didn’t know. I didn’t know. This was supposed to be about hacking, not murder.”

  “Come sit.”

  I sat at the table on the balcony. Slash handed me a glass of water and Tito studied me with his green eyes. “You held up pretty good back there for a novice.”

  Slash nodded. “She’s tough.” He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “You should know cara, that sometimes in our line of work, we see unpleasant things. Ugly things. We all have coping mechanisms. Sometimes we use humor, sometimes we don’t. I want you to understand that it is, in no way, a sign of disrespect. We will find out who murdered Serafina. I give you my word.”

  I nodded, threaded my fingers together on top of the table. “I realize that. I’m okay, Slash. Really. I just got shook up a bit. I get what needs to be done here. I’m back in the game. Time is of the essence.”

  Slash put his hand on top of mine. “Bendetetto says the police are already at the bank confiscating Serafina’s computer and files. Can you think of anything you might have seen on her hard drive that might help us?”

  “Well, sure I saw lots of stuff, mostly spreadsheets. I didn’t have time to review it all.”

  Tito sighed. “Too bad we couldn’t get another look at it.”

  “We can.”

  I went back into my room and retrieved my keychain. I disconnected the flash drive and carried it back out to the balcony. “At least we can look at some of them. I took three heavily encrypted files she had hidden and the gateway program that initiated the hack.”

  Slash stood up so quickly he almost upended the table. “You copied files? I thought you were only taking a look.”

  I gave him a sheepish smile. “Whoops.”

  “No, cara, you are brilliant.”

  He came around the table and kissed me hard on the mouth. After he released me, I realized my head was spinning. Whether from the kiss or the compliment, I’m not sure. Embarrassed, I glanced over at Tito, but he was staring out at the plaza, apparently not thinking it a big deal that Slash had just planted a huge one on me. Given his nonchalant reaction, I took it to mean it was not a significant male gesture despite my pounding heart. Nonetheless, there was an awful lot of kissing going on lately. Hands, cheeks and mouth. I guess it was some kind of Italian thing. Seeing as how I would be in Italy for an extended period of time, I supposed I’d better get used to it, although it sure did confuse the heck out of me.

  Slash took my flash drive to our small command and control center. He plugged the drive into one of the laptops while Tito and I watched over his shoulder.

  “Any file in particular stand out to you, cara?”

  “This one for sure.” I pointed at it. “Don’t know what quadro means, but it was all alone in a folder buried in two other folders. I did a standard search for cryppies and three files came up. For some reason the way she’d planted this one seemed odd to me. Amateur, but odd.”

  “Painting,” he murmured.

  “Is that what quadro means?”

  “Hmmm...” He began initiating a routine to crack the encryption. It wouldn’t be easy, but with the high-end hardware Slash had brought with him, added to the hacking experience between the two of us, at least we had a fighting chance. Once that one was underway, he started similar routines on the other files and leaned back in the chair. This would take some time.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now we should learn all we can about Serafina Lino. I’ll head back to the bank to find out about her first-hand from my uncle and her co-workers. You can call Finn and fill him in on our progress. Then you’ve earned some down time, cara.”

  I shook my head. “No. I’d rather work. Really.”

  He looked doubtful, but didn’t argue. “Alright. If you’re up to it, see what you can find about Serafina online. Tito will help you overcome any translation barriers.”

  Slash left and I retreated to my room to call Finn and bring him up-to-date. It was early morning in Washington and I caught him on the way into the office. I gave him the short and sanitized version of what happened, leaving out the part about finding the dead body. I didn’t tell him for two reasons. One, I didn’t know how secure my phone was and two, I didn’t want to re-live the experience while it was still fresh. Finn seemed satisfied with our progress and I promised to call him again soon. I sensed that he wanted to talk more, but he got another call and had to take it. I was kind of relieved to hang up because so much had happened to me in these past two days that I didn’t really feel like chatting about it yet.

  I returned to the living room and sat down in front of one of the laptops. Tito was already busy on another one. We worked for a while in companionable silence.

  Part of the reason I loved hacking was that I could lose all connection to the real world. Sometimes I had trouble navigating the real world. My virtual world was my zen, my center. I needed to get back to that for a while. Besides, right now, banishing the image of Serafina lying in the bed with her throat slit took precedent over everything else. I didn’t even want to think about what my dreams might be like.

  As a result of my unusual focus, it took me mere minutes to obtain the information on Serafina’s date and place of her birth, weight, height and eye color, and how many brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces she had. I learned her parents lived in a small town about thirty minutes south of Rome. Her mother was the principal of a local high school and her father a power broker. Serafina had gone to Sapienza University of Rome and majored in accounting. She had no criminal record and was free of any outstanding debts. I peeked into her two social media accounts and discovered she had zillions of friends. To my enormous relief, I was able to pass off the responsibility of reading through her posts to Tito since they were in Italian. I barely cared about my own social life. Being forced to read about someone else’s held as much appeal as a lobotomy.

  After about an hour, Tito leaned back in his chair and rubbed his neck. “She’s been dating someone named Marcus.”

  “For how long?”

  He shook his head. “Looks like maybe four or five months. They met online through a dating service.”

  “Marcus doesn’t sound very Italian.”

  “German, actually. Possibly Swiss. Hard to say.”

  My fingers poised over the keyboard. “Got a last name?”

  “No, and there’s no Marcus in her friend list.”

  I thought for a moment. “Does she mention the dating service she used? Maybe we can track him down from there.”

  He went back and started reading again. “Don’t see it yet, but she posted an amazing picture of gnocchi.”

  “Who’s that?”

  He glanced up at me. “Gnocchi? It’s a food, not a who.”

  “She posted a picture of food?”

  Tito nodded. “It looks incredible. She must have been a good cook. Damn. Now I’m hungry.”

  “I don’t get it. Why would anyone post a picture of their dinner?” I certainly didn’t want the world to know I usually ate cereal for dinner.

  He shrugged. “Why not?”

  I didn’t say anything. Clearly the social media frontier was way too complex for me to fathom at this stage of my life.<
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  Tito went back to reading and I checked on the progress of the encryption programs and saw that exactly diddley progress on the suspect file had been made despite the high caliber of hardware and software Slash was running. However, we were having better luck on some of the other files and at least two looked ready to crack.

  “Okay, I’ve got it,” Tito said. “Amore a Prima Vista.”

  “In English?”

  “Loosely translated it means ‘Love at First Sight. It’s the name of the online dating service.”

  I sat down, my fingers resting on the keyboard. “Can you spell it for me?”

  It took me about seven minutes to hack in to the system and another fifteen to go through the long list of clients.

  “There are forty-seven clients with the first name of Marcus and seventeen that have it as a last name. Do you know they have over six thousand clients?” The thought of six thousand people all wanting to date each other seemed unfathomable.

  I wound my hair into a ponytail and tied it back with a rubber band lying on the table. “Can you give me any more clues, Tito? Did she post a picture of him, mention his age, how he looked, or his hometown?”

  He sighed. “Lexi, I’m a man. I can’t think on an empty stomach. Can you order some gnocchi from room service while I look? Get coffee, too.”

  I stood and stretched. Walking over to the phone, I dialed room service and ordered two plates of gnocchi and coffee. I went to the bathroom, checked the status of the encryption programs and got some fresh air on the balcony while Tito continued to read.

  Room service and Slash arrived at the same time.

  “Gnocchi?” Slash said handing the waiter a tip and lifting a cover from one of the plates.

  I eyed the food over his shoulder. “It’s a long story, but it smells good.”

  Slash shook his head. “It will be infinitely inferior to Nonna’s gnocchi.”

  “Nonna?”

  Tito came over to the cart, grabbing a plate and some silverware. “His grandmother. Haven’t you ever had gnocchi, Lexi?”

  I peered closer at the food. “I don’t think so.” How could I be sure? It wasn’t as if I ever paid close attention to what I ate. Maybe I’d eaten gnocchi a hundred times before and didn’t even know it.

  Taking a fork, I stabbed it into the little roll. I bit into it and chewed. “Mmmmm...good.”

  Slash took my fork, skewered a piece of his own and popped it in his mouth. “Not even close.” He set the fork down. “So, what did you find out about Serafina Lino?”

  I took another bite. “Not much. Other than her vital statistics, we know she studied accounting at a university here in Rome, is the youngest of three brothers and one sister, likes to cook gnocchi and had recently started dating some guy named Marcus she met via an online dating service. We’re working on the dating service angle now. How about you?”

  Slash poured a cup of coffee, handed it to me and got himself another mug. “The police have confiscated Serafina’s computer and work files. Because her place was wrecked and there was no obvious evidence of a sexual attack, her death is currently being classified as a homicide as a possible result of a burglary gone badly. But that will soon change.”

  “Why?”

  “The police want to talk to you. Serafina’s co-worker told them about you.”

  I took a sip and coughed. Slash patted me on the back. My eyes watered. “Jeez. Is this coffee or gasoline?”

  Slash smiled. “Italians like their coffee strong.”

  I’m quite sure you could have started my car with it, but I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, so I kept my mouth shut.

  I looked around for the cream and sugar. “Okay, so we know the police will find out that I linked Serafina to the hack in Bendetetto’s computer.” I lifted the lid off the sugar bowl and dumped in four heaping teaspoons, considered a fifth. “I’m okay with that, I guess. It’s all official X-Corp business, although I’m not providing the particulars on the hack because officially I didn’t hack. I explored. Should I tell them I copied some files off her drive?”

  “Better not, cara. They will be embarrassed enough that in a few hours you managed to do what their team of experts failed to discover over several days. Presumably they have the same files. Let them follow the trail in their own way.”

  I shrugged and poured in as much cream as I could. “Tito, want some coffee?”

  “Please. Keep it black.”

  I admired his courage. Pouring him a cup, I took it over and he handed me his empty plate. “The gnocchi was pretty good, but I’ve had better.”

  It tasted delicious to me, so I didn’t complain. “Got anything yet on the boyfriend?”

  Tito took a sip of the coffee and didn’t even flinch. “Possibly. No picture, but she mentions an Austrian town called Feldkirch in relation to him. She refers to Marcus as a boy from a small town.”

  “Small-town boy,” I murmured. Sitting, I hacked back into the dating service database and typed in Marcus and Feldkirch. Up popped a name and a picture.

  “Bingo. Marcus Huber, age twenty-nine, originally from Feldkirch, Austria. He works as a pharmacist at the Pacifica Farmacia here in Rome, about three kilometers from here. I’ve got a home address, too.” I printed out his photo and the addresses and handed them to Slash who studied them and then put the paper in his pocket.

  “I know where the pharmacy is,” Tito said. “It’s not that far from here. I’ve been there a couple of times. We can walk.”

  Slash moved over to the computers to monitor the progress of the encryption programs. “We’re almost in on two of them, but we’ve got little movement on the big one.”

  “I know, which makes me all the more suspicious.” I took a small sip of the coffee and wished I hadn’t. It burned a sludge trail down my esophagus. I coughed again and Slash took the coffee away from me.

  “Add more cream or abstain.”

  “Excellent advice.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Okay, cara, your instincts were right. There’s something important in this big file. It’s specially encrypted. It’s got a different kind of protection than the other two. It may be something new. I’ve not seen anything like it and I’ve seen just about everything. I’m going to try a different approach.”

  I stood behind him, admiring his hacking moves and the way his elegant hands played the keyboard like a true master. “Sweet.” I whistled as he initiated a new protocol. “Are you going to teach me that?”

  He swiveled around in the chair, took my hands. The pupils in his eyes darkened. “Ah, cara, there is much I will teach you.”

  My heart skipped a beat. I wondered if it would be like this every time he touched me. I cleared my throat. “Thanks. I’d appreciate it.”

  He smiled. “Si, you will, cara. Appreciate it, that is.”

  Jeez. There went the pulse rate again.

  Slash stood. “Come, my friends. Let’s take a walk. It would be useful to have first crack at Marcus Huber before the policia figure out who he is.”

  “I thought I had to talk to the police.”

  “You will. All in good time. But let’s pay Marcus a visit first.”

  Tito rose from his chair. “I’m coming, too. If I have to read one more thing about women’s shoes and hot glances I’m going to cough up.”

  “Throw up,” I corrected. “Barf, hurl, kiss the porcelain god. Serafina wrote about hot glances? Why?”

  “How do I know? Am I a woman
?”

  “I’m a woman and I don’t write about that.”

  Slash chuckled. “Of course, you don’t cara. You don’t even have a social media account of any kind.”

  “That’s on purpose, you know.”

  “Si, I know.”

  Tito grabbed the plate with the rest of my gnocchi. “You finished, Lexi? I’m starving.”

  I motioned for him to eat it. He shoveled it in, then we headed out. Slash took a minute to hang the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the handle and then fasten a black gadget between the door and the jamb. He stepped back and a little red light on it began flashing.

  I peered at it. “What’s that? A bomb?” I was only half-joking.

  “Extra security. Let’s go.”

  I wasn’t going to get a better explanation, so we set off. It was a lovely afternoon in Rome. I took time to clear my head, enjoy the sights and admire the architecture. Slash and Tito didn’t rush me and pointed out famous landmarks as we passed. Tito even took a picture of Slash and me in front of a pretty bubbling fountain.

  Fifteen minutes later, Slash stopped in front of an off-white building with an ornate wooden door. I glanced up and saw the sign Pacifica Farmacia. Tito held the door open for us and we walked in. The place was small and cramped with all kinds of bottles and jars crammed onto wooden shelves, almost like an antique pharmacy might have looked. There were also plenty of contemporary items stacked neatly on white shelves. I recognized nose sprays, cough syrup and aspirin. Still, it didn’t look much like a typical American pharmacy.

  An older gentleman came out to greet us and Slash went to speak to him while Tito and I browsed the shelves. I picked up a long, thin box with directions in French and studied the picture of what looked like a thermometer.

  “Home pregnancy test?” Slash asked from over my shoulder.

  “Agggh!” I jumped, dropping the box on the floor. “I was just browsing. But not for that. Jeez.”