Free The Pursuit by Janet Evanovich Page A

evening?” Nick asked them.
    “We were told to bring you to see Mr. Kovic,” the man in the doorway said, speaking with a thick Serbian accent. “For a friendly talk.”
    Kate tugged on the belt, tightening it around her prisoner’s neck. “What about the two men waiting up ahead? What were they going to do?”
    “Box you in so we could take you down to the car on Via Accademia. That’s all. Nobody was supposed to get hurt.”
    “Tell Dragan I’d be glad to talk with him,” Nick said. “He’s warmly invited for breakfast tomorrow on the terrace of my hotel. Say around eight?”
    “He won’t like this,” the man in the doorway said.
    “Tell him the lemon tarts are excellent,” Nick said.
    Kate removed the belt and stepped back.
    Nick kept his gun on the men as they left, then he dropped it into the purse with the second man’s gun. Kate slipped her knife back into her ankle sheath, and Nick carried the purse up to the old man, who was still working on his bag. The old man was unperturbed, as if incidents like this happened in his store every day.
    “We’d like this purse, please,” Nick said.
    “That will be a hundred euros,” the old man said.
    “The price tag says fifty,” Nick said.
    “That’s the price of a purse,” the old man said. “Gun totes are more expensive.”
    Nick paid him the hundred euros and they left the store.

N ick and Kate had dinner in their suite. Smoked red sea bream with a salty cinnamon brioche as an appetizer, followed by seaweed pasta with Venus clams, sea urchins, and chives as their entrée, and warm lemon cake with a lemon sorbet for dessert. They finished their meal with the obligatory icy shots of
limoncello.
    “The seaweed and sea urchins were okay,” Kate said, “but they’re never going to replace mac and cheese.”
    Nick sat back and watched Kate. “No matter where you go, you are who you are. You’re willing to try new things but more often than not you return to your cultural roots. I like that about you.”
    “And you’re the opposite,” Kate said. “You embrace your environment. You’re a human chameleon. It’s impressive, but sometimes I wonder if you’ve lost yourself. When you’re playing a role, are you standing on the outside looking in, or have you become that person and kicked Nick to the curb?”
    “Some of both,” Nick said. “When I’m in a con I’m outside, looking in. When I’m in my French country house I’m enjoying that part of me.”
    “And which one is the seaweed and sea urchin Nick?”
    “I like them. I have an adventuresome palate.”
    Kate thought his adventuresome palate was at least partly responsible for their new sexual relationship. Like seaweed and sea urchin, he would continue to enjoy her when their paths crossed, but she couldn’t see him settling for the monotony of monogamy. And she couldn’t see herself justifying the relationship once this assignment was completed. She had serious feelings for Nick, but in the end he was a felon and she was the FBI.
    —
    In the morning they showered, dressed, and went down to the lobby restaurant for breakfast on the wide terrace that jutted out over the cliff. The low stone wall along the edge of the terrace was adorned every few feet with marble busts of ripped men and voluptuous women. Perhaps the busts were an incentive, Kate thought, to encourage guests to take it easy at the buffet.
    Nick selected a table facing west, giving them a view across the gorge to Sorrento, the bay, and the villas along the mountainous peninsula. Kate, being Nick’s bodyguard, sat with her back to the view, preferring to keep her eye on the hotel and anybody who came out to the terrace. She was the first to see Litija stroll toward them like she was on a fashion show runway. Litija was wearing a wide-brimmed red sun hat, enormous round sunglasses, a white skintight dress with bracelet sleeves and a very short skirt that Kate thought could use a couple more inches of