More Twisted

Anna Devereaux meant nothing. The question itself was the murderer’s last weapon—and he was using it on the cop who’d become obsessed with bringing him down.
    Why, why, why  . . .
    Boyle dropped the phone and raced up the hall to the prisoner lockup. “Where’s Phelan?” he screamed.
    The guard blinked at the frantic detective. “He’s right there. In the lockup, Captain. You can see him.”
    Boyle glanced through the double glass at the prisoner sitting calmly on a bench.
    “What’s he been doing since I left?”
    “Reading. That’s all. Oh, and he made a few phone calls.”
    Boyle lunged across the desk and grabbed the guard’s phone.
    “Hey!”
    He punched in the number of the lake house. It began to ring. Three times, four . . .
    It was then that Phelan looked at Boyle and smiled. He mouthed something. The captain couldn’t hear through the bulletproof glass, of course, but he knew without a doubt that the man had just uttered the word “Checkmate.”
    Boyle lowered his head to the receiver and, like a prayer, whispered, “Answer, please answer,” as the phone rang again and again and again.

A FRAID

    W here are we going?” the woman asked as the black Audi sped away from Florence’s Piazza della Stazione, where her train had just arrived from Milan.
    Antonio shifted gears smoothly and replied, “It’s a surprise.”
    Marissa clicked on her seat belt as the car plunged down the narrow, winding streets. She was soon hopelessly lost. A Milan resident for all of her thirty-four years, she knew only the city center of Florence. Antonio, on the other hand, was a native Florentine and sped assuredly along an unfathomable route of streets and alleys.
    A surprise? she wondered. Well, he’d wanted to pick the location for their long weekend together and she’d agreed. So, she told herself, sit back and enjoy the ride . . . . Her job had been particularly stressful in the past month; it was time to let someone else make the decisions.
    Slim and blonde, with features of the north, Marissa Carrefiglio had been a runway model in her early twenties but then took up fashion design, which she loved. But three years ago her brother had quit the family business and she’d been forced to take over management of the arts and antiques operation. She wasn’t happy aboutit but her stern father wasn’t a man you could say no to.
    Another series of sharp turns. Marissa gave an uneasy laugh at Antonio’s aggressive driving and looked away from the streets as she told him about the train ride from Milan, about news from her brother in America, about recent acquisitions at her family’s store in the Brera.
    He, in turn, described a new car he was thinking of buying, a problem with the tenant in one of his properties and a gastronomic coup he’d pulled off yesterday: some white truffles he’d found at a farmers’ market near his home and had bought right out from under the nose of an obnoxious chef.
    Another sharp turn and a fast change of gears. Only the low setting sun, in her eyes, gave her a clue of the direction they were traveling.
    She hadn’t known Antonio very long. They’d met in Florence a month ago at a gallery off the Via Maggio, where Marissa’s company occasionally consigned art and antiques. She had just delivered several works: eighteenth-century tapestries from the famed Gobelins Manufactory in France. After they were hung, she was drawn to a dark medieval tapestry taking up a whole wall in the gallery. Woven by an anonymous artist, it depicted beautiful angels descending from heaven to fight beasts roaming the countryside, attacking the innocent.
    As she stood transfixed by the gruesome scene a voice had whispered, “A nice work but there’s an obvious problem with it.”
    She blinked in surprise and turned to the handsome man standing close. Marissa frowned. “Problem?”
    His eyes remained fixed on the tapestry as he said, “Yes. The most beautiful angel has escaped from the scene.” He turned and smiled. “And landed on the floor beside me.”
    She’d scoffed laughingly at the obvious come-on line. But he’d delivered it with such self-effacing charm that her initial reaction—to walk away—faded quickly. They struck up a conversation about art and, a half hour later, were sharing prosecco, cheese and conversation.
    Antonio was muscular and trim, with thick, dark hair and brown eyes, a ready smile. He was in the computer field. She couldn’t quite understand