"I did not know!" Candares insisted again, and Remington tensed as Jack Gianelli pointed the gun in his right hand directly at the old man.
"Stop lying!" he yelled. "She told me that she wrote you. That she begged you to let her return home. That you ignored her letters."
Partially hidden by the granite corner of the crypt, Remington called out, "Let him go, Gianelli!"
"Nice of you to join us, Steele," Gianelli replied, taking a firmer hold on his gun. "Come out so I can see you - or I'll shoot him now."
Remington hesitated, and heard the hammer pulled back on the gun.
"I'm not a patient man, Steele," Gianelli said again. "And I wouldn't try anything." He lifted his left hand. "If I move my thumb for more than a few seconds, we'll all be blown to bits."
"Once more into the breech," Remington murmured as he stepped into the open. "I'm here, Gianelli. Let him go."
Gianelli glanced in his direction. "Where's your partner?" he asked.
"I sent her back to the house for more help," Remington lied.
Laura saw Sgt. Valdez approach the area where Gianelli was holding the Ambassador captive. He had a clean shot, and she held her breath as she expected him to raise his gun and take aim. But he didn't, and Laura frowned, confused.
"Is he telling the truth, Alberto?" Gianelli called out as Valdez joined him, his gun on Remington, who Laura could now see was standing beside Candares.
"It's possible," Valdez responded, giving Remington a grim smile. "Senor Steele."
"So you're in on it," Remington realized. "Why?"
"Alberto is my cousin," Gianelli informed him.
"Alberto," Candares said, sounding tired. "Why would you do this? Why would you help him in this?"
"My mother used to talk about how her sister's heart was broken because of your damnable pride, Tio," Alberto Valdez explained. "She always blamed you for Tia Rosaria's death." Seeing Candares' surprise, he sneered. "I remember Maria. How beautiful she was. How special. So when Jack approached me yesterday and asked for my assistance in setting up a meeting between the two of you, I knew who he was. Tia Rosaria told my mother about the letters."
Laura saw Remington glance at the Ambassador, who had gone even paler than he already was. "Letters?"
Jack backed away a step, and then reached into his coat pocket to withdraw several envelopes, which he tossed onto the ground between himself and the other two men. "Alberto found these a few months ago, *Grandfather*," he ground out. "Hidden in your study." He glanced at Remington. "They're all from my mother- written between the time my father deserted us and the time I was born, all begging for a second chance - or at least some kind of help. She was penniless, had no skills. She'd been raised as a princess- and knew nothing about life on the street."
"So she turned to prostitution to make money to support herself- and later, the two of you," Remington continued. He looked at the Ambassador. "Is this the truth, Ambassador? Did you know where she was and refuse to help?"
Candares bowed his head. "I am sorry. My foolish pride caused so much pain, so much hatred - I could not stand to have her back here after what she did. And the idea of raising the son of a man like that- I could not consider such a thing. It would have ruined my family's reputation." He lifted his eyes to look at his grandson. "I was correct. Look at you. You are no better than a street thug, threatening myself and Mr. Steele with a pistol, threatening to set off a bomb like a common terrorist."
Jack Gianelli's dark eyes narrowed dangerously as he stepped closer to the old man. "I should kill you now," he threatened.
Laura stayed within the darkened shadows of the crypts that surrounded the men, until she was directly behind Jack Gianelli and his cousin. She managed to come within a few yards of the men, and paused, ducking behind an ornate headstone.
Remington saw movement in the shadows behind Gianelli, and controlled his reaction when he realized that Laura was there. "Maybe he's tired of your hollow threats," Remington suggested to Gianelli. "You realize that you won't get away with this. Murdering an Ambassador isn't something you can just walk away from. Not like you walked away from murdering your mother and the men she'd been with the week before."
Gianelli's nostrils widened, somehow telling Remington that he'd been right. The trail of bodies that lay behind this man was a long one.
Valdez looked startled by Remington's words. "What are you saying, Senor Steele? Jack told me that Maria was beaten by one of those men."
"You mean you didn't tell him, Jack?" Remington questioned. "Jack wanted his mother to stop working the streets. He hated what she had become. When she couldn't, he lost his temper and beat her to death, didn't you, Jack?"
"Is this true?" Valdez asked his cousin, the gun that he held pointed toward Remington beginning to waver slightly. When Gianelli didn't answer, Valdez swung his arm around, training the gun on him. "Answer me! Did you kill Maria?!"
"She lied to me," Gianelli tried to explain. "I told her that I would take care of her, that I wouldn't let anyone hurt her anymore. She promised me that she would change, that she would give it up. But I came in one night as a man was leaving - and I could smell her on him. She tried to deny it, to tell me that she had refused him, but I knew better."
"You-" Valdez finger tightened on the trigger, but not before Jack Gianelli's right hand came up and fired a bullet into his cousin's chest. Valdez collapsed like a rag doll, his gun flying behind Gianelli- coming to rest between Gianelli and where Laura was hiding.
Candares moaned, grabbing his chest as he collapsed as well.
Remington glanced at Laura, who leapt from her hiding place to grab the gun, as Remington took advantage of Gianelli's distraction to jump toward him, knocking the gun from his hand. He kept one eye on Gianelli's left hand, however, watching for any sign that he had relaxed his hold on the detonator. He made a grab for the device, but Gianelli rolled to his feet and held up that hand.
"I wouldn't Steele," he warned, watching as Laura joined them, handing Remington the gun he'd dropped.
"Check on Candares," Remington told Laura, who started to move in that direction.
"Don't bother, Miss Holt," Gianelli said. "He'll be dead soon, anyway."
"You try to get away or release that button and you'll die, too," Remington pointed out.
Gianelli shrugged. "I don't really care anymore, Steele," he said. "Nothing more to live for, anyway. You took the only thing I cared about away. And the knowledge that my grandfather is dead is all I need to take with me."
Remington held out his hand. "Give me the detonator, Gianelli. You can get help. It doesn't have to end this way-"
"I'm afraid it does," he said with a sad smile, and released the button. Remington dove to catch it, hearing Laura's gun discharge over his head.
He caught it and quickly placed his thumb on the button, looking up at Laura, who was kneeling beside Jack Gianelli's body. "He's dead," she told him, coming over to help him up. "You're limping again," she noticed as they moved toward the Ambassador. "Your ankle?"
"I'll be fine," he insisted, checking for a pulse. "Ambassador?" he said, and the old man drew a shuddering breath that seemed to cause him pain. "Ambassador, hang on. We'll get help," Remington said.
"Too late," Alejandro Candares replied in a rasping voice colored by the pain in his chest. "Too late for many things. I did try to find her," he told Remington. "After her mother died. It was a- promise to her. But Maria had moved again- and no one knew where she was - or what had happened to the - child she had - written about."
He drew another breath, and his face went slack in that way that only death could cause. Ambassador Candares was as dead as his grandson. Untying the fastenings of the explosive laden vest the old man had been wearing, he looked at Laura. "Get that bloody thing off of him, will you?"
While she worked, Remington went around the area, collecting the letters that Jack Gianelli had thrown in his grandfather's face. They were all addressed to Rosaria Candares, with the return address of Maria Candares Gianelli, New York City, USA. The actual address changed a few times, but she had made the attempt to contact her parents. Laura approached him cautiously, holding the vest out from her body with one hand. "Do you think he was telling the truth?" she asked. "That he *did* try to find her?"
"Whether he did or not doesn't really matter now, does it?" Remington asked, glancing to where Jack Gianelli lay dead. He gave her the letters. "Here. Hang onto these."
"What now?" Laura wanted to know as he took the vest from her with his right hand.
"Go to the house and call the authorities. Tell them that an attempt was made on the Ambassador's life. That the would-be assassin shot Sgt. Valdez when he tried to stop him, and that we killed the assassin to stop him from blowing us all to bits."
"And the Ambassador?" Laura asked.
"The truth. That the excitement was too much for him. He had a heart attack."
She eyed the vest and detonator warily. "And what are *you* going to be doing?"
"Don't worry, I've no intention of trying to destroy the bloody thing. I'm going to put it down over there-" he nodded toward the edge of the graveyard, "and then wait for you to come back."
*****
Late that evening, Remington and Laura sat before the gas fireplace in their suite, glasses of wine in hand, and the stack of letters sitting before them on the hearth. The authorities had accepted their story about an assassination attempt easily, and had even accepted that things had happened too quickly for them to notify anyone except Sgt. Valdez, who had gone with them eagerly since the Ambassador had been his uncle.
They had confessed to having come to the city to retrieve a kidnapped client from Jack Gianelli, who had only used that client to finance his trip south from Los Angeles. Once they had sent their client back to Los Angeles, they had stumbled upon Gianelli's plot to assassinate the Ambassador for unknown reasons.
While the authorities hadn't been pleased by the American detective's failure to check in with them upon his arrival, they had been too grateful for his attempt to save the Ambassador to press that displeasure in any way. Even if the attempt *had* failed in a way.
Remington sighed deeply, gazing into the fire, drawing Laura's attention. "You're still upset that things turned out the way they did, aren't you?"
"If Gianelli had only listened to his grandfather instead of being deafened by the hatred that he felt-" Remington shook his head sadly.
"How did you know that Valdez would turn on Gianelli that way?" Laura asked.
"Luck. I could tell that Valdez had been close to his cousin- and anyone involved in her death would be a target for revenge. It's the reason he was willing to help Gianelli to begin with. He blamed the Ambassador for her death."
Laura picked up one of the letters. "What are you going to do with these?" she wanted to know.
Remington took the letter from her and tossed it into the fire, then threw the others in as well.
"You're destroying evidence," she pointed out.
"I'm protecting the reputation of a man who did a lot for his country- even if his personal life was a shambles. There's no reason for anyone here to ever know the truth." He watched as the last of the paper caught, then stretched his long frame out on the floor, resting his head on his hand. Those brilliant blue eyes reflected the fire- both inside and outside, and Laura found herself lowering her head toward his, stretching out beside him on the soft rug.
"Now then, Mrs. Steele, I believe that we have some unfinished business to attend to," Remington murmured as their lips met - and all was silence in the room.
The End
Of "Steele With a Twist 5"
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