Convicted (Consequences)

shows you, please don’t...”
    She grinned. “I won’t open the door. I’m going to sleep.”
    Phil closed the door to her bedroom. Seconds later, she heard the door to the suite open, close, and lock.
     

     
    By the time they reached the plane, Claire wasn’t sure where they were, or who they were. The Alexanders were gone—forever. At Phil’s urging, she agreed to keep Harry’s card with a phone number tucked inside her carry-on bag. Phil said it was just in case . Prior to their departure, he examined everything—her purse and clothing—everything, to be sure there were no more tracking devices. The best part of his plan, in Claire’s opinion, was when he found another couple scheduled to leave Venice the same time as their reservations. Ingeniously, Phil planted the tracking device in their luggage. Eventually, the FBI would learn it wasn’t Phil and Claire; in the meantime, his diversion bought them some additional time.
    It wasn’t that Claire wasn’t willing to work with the FBI or any other branch of law enforcement to bring Catherine down. It was—well—she was hurt. Yes, it may be petty in the grand scheme of her troubles; nonetheless, she needed time to process the new notion of who Harry was and who he wasn’t.
    He was an FBI agent.
    He wasn’t her friend—or at least—he wasn’t the friend she thought he was.
     

     
    The haze of sleep faded slowly as the harshness of Tony’s new reality filled his consciousness. Fighting the need to wake, he heard the sound of another person breathing. Instinctively, he reached for the source. As his hand brushed the rough surface of the cheap sheet covering the twin-sized mattress, he pushed away the disappointment and contemplated the turns in his life. Forcing his eyes to open, he faced the drab, dimly lit interior of the hostel.
    The room where he’d slept held ten twin beds—all occupied. As he looked about the room, Tony even noticed that one bed contained two people. Laying his head back on the pillow, he exhaled and questioned this reality. Venice, Italy had always been the lap of luxury. From the first time he visited with his grandfather, it was a milieu of opulence. Looking up at the cracked plaster and listening to the sounds of multiple sleeping people, Tony knew the customary five star suites and gourmet meals were nearby; nevertheless, until he reached Geneva and accessed the safety deposit box, they might as well be a million miles away.
    Rubbing his face, the softness of his recent beard growth continued to catch him by surprise. It was part of his new persona. The proprietors of the hostel didn’t know him as Anthony Rawlings or even as Anton Rawls. No, the identification he carried, as well as the passport he held, contained a different name.
    His departure from the United States had been well planned, well executed, and well—sudden. After the FBI agents removed him from his hotel suite, Tony was given two options: be retained on charges stemming from harming Claire Nichols or disappear and allow the FBI to continue an ongoing investigation. The Federal Bureau of Investigation guaranteed the charges would eventually be confirmed, amended, or dropped—though their disclosure was less than full. The fact the FBI offered an out— a plan B—seemed preposterous. Tony knew something wasn’t as it appeared. After all, when it came to deceptive appearances—he was the master.
    It was, without a doubt, the card game of Tony’s life. As he listened to the potential choices, he maintained his poker face and kept his cards close to his chest.
    The FBI made it perfectly clear; he was going to be protected from the undisclosed threat. How he chose to accept that protection was up to him: incarceration or temporary vanishment. Although the agents offered a minimum security prison with many liberties, incarceration didn’t sound appealing, even if it was, as they said, for his own good .
    Tony chose option number two.
    Of course, Anthony Rawlings wouldn’t take their offer at face value. Being the true businessman, Tony negotiated the terms of his disappearance. During those negotiations, he failed to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars he had socked away in Swiss bank accounts. The FBI made demands: all contact with anyone from his past was forbidden . No one could know about his current situation, with the exception of Brent, since the bureau had a gag order signed by him. Tony agreed to the loss of contact and offered