Tracy moved forward, cocking the safety catch on her pistol with an audible click.
“You won’t need that,” Hunter said blithely, turning around and looking at her for the first time. “I’m unarmed. As you can see.”
He held both arms out wide and smiled guilelessly. Tracy could see at once what had drawn Sally Faiers to him. That fatal, boyish charm. Poor Sally.
“I’ve been expecting you. I trust you’ll join me for dinner?” He gestured to the seat at the head of the table.
Tracy played along. Lowering her gun, she placed it carefully beside her plate and sat down.
“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble, Mr. Drexel.”
He gave a little bow. “I try.”
“Will Kate be joining us?”
Hunter’s eyebrow shot up momentarily.
He’s surprised I know her name.
“Not tonight.”
“Is she here? In Italy?”
Tracy threw out the question as if it were a casual inquiry about the weather. The whole situation was so surreal, she figured she might as well.
Hunter opened a bottle of Château Mouton-Rothschild with a satisfying pop.
“I don’t know. The truth is I don’t know where she is.”
“But if you did, you wouldn’t tell me, right?”
He filled Tracy’s glass with a sigh, then sat down beside her. “It’s not Kate you want, Miss Whitney. She’s not the enemy. I’d rather hoped you might have figured that out by now, especially considering how much the two of you have in common. And what a fan she is of yours.”
Tracy waited silently for him to continue.
“Kate worked for the CIA for many years, as a computer expert back at Langley. She was part of the team that tried to track you and Jeff Stevens, back in your heyday. You didn’t know?”
Tracy shook her head. She’d suspected that Althea might be an intelligence agency insider, but it hadn’t occurred to her that that might explain the link between the two of them. She felt like she knew me because she’d tracked me all those years. But I never knew her. It seemed so obvious now.
“Did Sally Faiers figure it out?” Tracy asked. “Is that why she was killed?”
A dangerous glint flashed in Hunter’s eyes.
“I feel terrible about Sally. I loved her.”
But even as he said the words, Tracy clocked him looking at her hooker dress appraisingly. She couldn’t figure the guy out.
Seeing her confusion, Hunter said, “There’s a lot you don’t know, Miss Whitney.”
“But you’re going to enlighten me. Right?”
The smile was back, like sun breaking from behind the clouds.
“Let’s eat.”
CHAPTER 29
THE MEAL WAS DELICIOUS, some sort of chicken and onion stew with olives and anchovies. To her surprise, Tracy realized she was hungry. She waited for Hunter to eat first before tasting her own food—after all the death and destruction he’d caused, poisoning would not be beyond him—and did the same with her wine. But before long they were both eating and drinking, and despite the gun still resting beneath Tracy’s fingers, the tension between them had eased.