Gun Metal Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

and grimaced. It was bitter. He shook out two packets of sugar and poured them both in.
    Kenner grinned, clearly thrilled to be there. “Fuckin’-A, man! I thought you were freaking crazy. I never figured Langley would give us jack. But we asked around, and hey, you were right.”
    Thorson nodded. His heart was racing, but he’d perfected his poker face, and he was sure the other two couldn’t tell.
    Derrick Saito tried his coffee again, grimaced again, and reached for more sugar. “There’s enough brass at Langley who hate that dyke. It didn’t take me more’n a day to find the right guy.”
    â€œBut you were careful?”
    Saito shrugged off the question as stupid.
    Kenner leaned over the table. “She’s living in Italy! Crappy little town on the Mediterranean. Caladri. Deal they cut with her was: She stays off the grid, the Agency leaves her the fuck alone. She starts poking her nose into Agency business, the Agency fries her ass.”
    Thorson said, “Sure.”
    â€œGet this, bro: NSA’s been monitoring all comms from her known contacts. There’s this guy called Diego. Mex gangbanger, former GI. The bitch and him pulled off some shit around Europe before she moved to Los Angeles. NSA reported— today , man—to-fucking- day !—that this Diego’s in Caladri.”
    Thorson’s heart hammered. “Yeah?”
    â€œCaladri was a one-horse town before the meat shortage!” Jake Kenner laughed at his own joke. “No way this beaner is there on accident. NSA reports to the Agency. Agency checks with Eye-talian intelligence. Wops say Diego runs with another gangbanger named Guzman, and says the two of them are pulling some scam in Florence. So the smart money says the bitch either stays put in Caladri, or she pops up in Florence. Either way, we got her ass in the crosshairs. Yo?”
    Kenner offered a fist. Saito reached up and bumped knuckles, but he did so with the distracted air of a man who would rather not have made the gesture but knew that if he didn’t there’d be this weird tense moment, and who needed that?
    Owen Cain Thorson said, “I could use you guys. Ten thousand dollars. Each. Interested?”
    Kenner said, “Shit, yes! Charges against us were bullshit! We should be on Agency time, right now! What they did to you? Double bullshit! Be good to show the suits in Langley that they took a dump on the wrong peeps. I’m in, man!”
    Saito sipped his coffee and nodded.
    Owen Cain Thorson smiled and gripped their hands. His hand shook, and both of the men noticed. Thorson did not.
    He was within days of meeting Daria Gibron. The same Daria Gibron who had ambushed him in Manhattan. Who had embarrassed him. Embarrassed the Agency. Embarrassed the U.S. intelligence community. Who had gutted his career and his family name.
    He felt the pressure of the Glock automatic tucked under his arm. It felt as if God was reaching down with a single finger and nudging Thorson’s heart.
    Jake Kenner gulped all of his coffee in one swig, his Adam’s apple bobbing, then belched. Saito eased out of the booth, and Kenner followed.
    Kenner said, “We gonna do this bitch?”
    Thorson stood. “Yeah,” he vowed. “We are.”

 
    Five
    After lunch, Diego got in his rental and drove back to Florence. Daria said she had business to wrap up and would join him the next morning.
    She grabbed a scruffy white canvas bag, tube-shaped with canvas handles, slung it over one shoulder, and walked away from the grotty little village of Caladri and its loathing of outsiders. Daria knew the name was from the Lombardi dialect and translated as House of Thieves.
    She tightened her shoelaces and crab-climbed her way down the craggy rock face to the shore. There were no sandy beaches here and no commercial dock.
    Daria wore a wash-faded pink bikini bottom under her cutoffs. She retied her black, straight hair into a