Arcadia Awakens (48 page)

“What happened? I mean, to keep you out of school.”

“I was pregnant.”

“In love?”

“No, only pregnant.”

“Oh.” For a moment Iole seemed to be wondering whether it would be all right to ask more questions. “But then where’s your baby? At home?”

Rosa shook her head.

“Did it die?”

“I’m not sure if it was ever really alive.”

“It hasn’t missed much not watching TV, anyway.”

Rosa gave her a smile. Iole shyly returned it.

A quiet signal sounded. “’Scuse me,” said Rosa, taking the cell phone out of her jeans pocket. After their arrival at the hospital she had called the judge. Quattrini and her team were already on their way from Catania to Palermo, right across the island. It would take her ninety minutes by helicopter. Quattrini had said two hours at the most.

At the moment Rosa was not interested in the possible consequences of her call. All she knew for certain was that she was going to hand Pantaleone over to justice for his orders to kill Alessandro, and she had said so to Quattrini on the phone. “I’m standing by our agreement. We’ll talk when you get here. But keep the police off our backs until then. Can you do that?”

Yes, she could, Quattrini had assured her. On the condition that Rosa and Iole didn’t move from the hospital.

“Okay,” Rosa had said.

“Can I count on you this time?”

“Sure.”

“I’d like you to swear it.”

“I could be keeping my fingers crossed and you’d never even notice.”

“Swear on your aunt’s life.”

“What?”

“You heard me. On the life of Florinda Alcantara.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she had replied, “I swear it. If I’m lying, may Florinda burn in hell … not that I can promise you they’d want her there.”

Now, an hour later, she was staring blankly at the cell phone.

Iole realized that something was wrong. “What’s the matter?”

Rosa did not reply. Her fingertip was hovering over the keypad, but she still hesitated.

“Rosa?”

“A text message,” she said. “From my sister. From Zoe.”

“What does it say?”

“She probably just wants to tear me a new one.”

“But you haven’t even read it yet.”

Rosa got to her feet. “Wait here, okay?”

Iole pointed to the security guard. “He’s not going to let us leave. When you bring someone to the hospital with a bullet in his head, they don’t let you go home just like that.”

“I’ll only be a minute, okay?” Rosa left her on the plastic chair and strode down the white corridor. The security man in his dark blue uniform moved to intercept her, but Rosa pointed to the nearby door of the ladies’ room, and he nodded.

She shut herself into one of the cubicles. The message was from Zoe’s number, no doubt about that. Reluctantly, she read the text.

we need help
, it said, but she had to read it three times before she could take it in.
were captured went in car not sure where deep ravine.
And finally:
not too good but alone no guard ask alessandro he may know where come help us.

As if dazed, she stared at the characters. The message looked like any other: black lettering on a white background.

Had Cesare sent his men to intercept Zoe and Florinda on their way back from the tribunal? He would have to eliminate them to cover up for a breach of the concordat. And everyone who had known their whereabouts was very probably dead.

She didn’t need Alessandro’s help to identify the place. The end of the unfinished expressway. Cesare must have planned for them to disappear inside one of the ancient Siculian cave tombs on the rock face of the canyon. If they were held captive in there, it would be next to impossible to find them. But if they were still out in the open, it wasn’t too late.

She couldn’t wait for Quattrini. Couldn’t just sit there doing nothing.

Taking care not to let anything show, she went past the security guard and back to her chair, where she talked quietly to Iole.

Soon after that, the girl suddenly threw a fit of hysterics. Screaming, Iole flung open the door to surgery and raced along the corridor, calling Fundling’s name again and again.

“Hey!” shouted the security man. Cursing, he gave chase.

Rosa waited two or three seconds, then jumped up and hurried in the other direction, walking faster and faster until she was almost running.

Two minutes later she was driving the black Jeep out of the parking lot, turned onto the A20 going west, and raced at top speed toward the end of the world.

S
HE HAD NEARLY REACHED
Her Journey’s end when another text message came in.

florinda dying come quick.

Rosa tried to call Zoe back, but only got her voice mail.

When she had passed the barricades and was turning onto the asphalt, the next message reached her.

gagged only fingers free idiots forgot to take my cell

phone

Rosa tapped in an answer:

can you read this?

yes

sure there’s no one with you?

After a few nerve-racking moments of waiting:

yes

She briefly contemplated asking Quattrini for help after all. But the judge was likely to be unforgiving, now that Rosa had made herself scarce yet again.

Suppose she tried Alessandro? As soon as the idea of him came to her, her mind was in turmoil, and she couldn’t think straight. But there was no use hesitating now.

what’s wrong with Florinda?
she texted Zoe back.

injured
came the answer, after an endless wait.
bleeding to death

Rosa’s arms felt too heavy to hold the wheel. Even driving straight ahead cost her an effort.

It was midday now. Dense gray clouds were moving north, rolling over and over in the sky like smoke from a gigantic fire. As if all Africa were in flames on the other side of the Mediterranean. Storms were raging in the upper strata of the atmosphere, and strong gusts of wind buffeted the Jeep.

with you soon
, she typed, to reassure Zoe and herself. Only a couple of miles now. On her visits to the unfinished expressway with Alessandro, it had never seemed so long. Today it went on and on to the horizon.

zoe?

hurry

Quattrini would have tried to stop her, so she called emergency services and asked them to send an ambulance. Asked how many injured people there were, she had to answer evasively. “Probably two. One seriously injured.” They wanted to know her name; she declined to give it. Was she sure, they asked, that this wasn’t some stupid hoax call? “No, goddammit, it’s not!” Then she must give her name. “Lilia Dionisi,” she said.

When she broke the connection, she had a devastating feeling that she would wait in vain for help to arrive. She stared grimly ahead over the steering wheel, but she still couldn’t bring herself to call the judge. Not yet.

A text message from Zoe arrived.
can hear you

And next moment,
and see you

Rosa slowed down as the horizon sank lower and lower, and the mountains on the other side of the ravine came into sight. The place where the road stopped short loomed ahead.

A dark line at the edge of the abyss.

Someone was lying on the asphalt a few feet from the drop.

She trod on the gas once more. Everything was muted: her perception, her feelings.

As she came closer, she could make out details. A woman’s slender body in a black skirt suit, torn pantyhose, no shoes.

She was lying on her side, facing the abyss, with her back to Rosa. Her long blond hair fanned out over the ground. The cold winds from down below blew single strands in the air, making them dance around her head like golden snakes.

Florinda, thought Rosa. But where was Zoe?

As she braked she looked around. Builders’ rubble was piled on both sides of the road, and the remains of structures to consolidate the former bridge. The debris formed an irregular rampart, many feet high in some places, broken down in others. Walls of rock rose high beyond it, the edges of the track that had been blasted into the mountains to build the expressway.

She stopped the Jeep only a few yards from the edge. Florinda lay three feet from the driver’s door, motionless. Rosa couldn’t see whether she was breathing.

Before she got out, acting on a sudden impulse, she opened the glove compartment. She was driving a Mafia vehicle, so there should really be—

No. Chewing gum. Tissues. But no gun.

Now she did tap in Quattrini’s number after all, placed her thumb on enter, but didn’t press the key. She kept the cell phone clutched in her fist as she got out and went over to her aunt.

“Florinda?”

Even as she said the name she realized her mistake. The clothes were Florinda’s, yes, but it wasn’t her wearing them.

“Zoe!”

She fell to her knees with a cry. The cool winds coming up from the depths below tugged at her hair. She began to feel terribly cold.

She let the cell phone drop and rolled Zoe over on her back. Blond strands spread over her sister’s face. Her eyes were closed. A rivulet of blood at the corner of her mouth had dried and cracked; red flakes of it were falling over her white throat.

Her hands trembling, Rosa tried to feel Zoe’s pulse. She couldn’t find it.

She threw her head back and let out a wail of agony. It echoed through the ravine like a chorus of ghosts replying from the ancient cave tombs in the rocks.

Her fingers were shaking too much to search for the pulse again. Frantically, she tried once more. At Zoe’s throat. Her left wrist. Then her right wrist. Her sister’s skin was cold and white.

Deep in her mind, doubts stirred, although pain and despair almost numbed them. There was no cell phone here.
Zoe couldn’t have sent any text messages.

“Good afternoon, Rosa.”

She was taken by surprise, yet not truly shocked.

Salvatore Pantaleone stepped out from the stones and rubble beside the expressway. The old man’s white ponytail was tossed over one shoulder. His eye patch was like a black hole in his face, attracting far more attention than a good eye. This was the first time that Rosa had seen him by daylight, and he looked to her grayer, bowed down with worries, exhausted.

He had Zoe’s cell phone in his right hand.

“I’ve learned more about using this thing,” he said, looking at the little device as if he surprised himself, and after a moment he shrugged his shoulders. He swung his arm back, and then flung the phone with considerable force down into the abyss.

“It was you.”

“We had to meet somewhere you wouldn’t set your new friend the judge on me.”

She had pushed one hand under Zoe’s head and was still keeping it off the asphalt. Now she laid it gently down on the road surface, stroked her sister’s cheek with her left hand, and struggled with her grief.

But her body refused to obey her. It was as if it had been separated from her mind. She had to force herself to turn her attention back to him.

“Did you kill Zoe?”

“I did it for you. I regret it, but it was necessary.”

Rosa tasted vomit rising in her throat, and swallowed it down. “Where’s Florinda?”

“Not here.”

“Is she dead, too?”

“You are the new head of the Alcantara clan now. Just as I said you would be. We’ll work together as a team, you and I. It may take a little while for us to get accustomed to each other, but—”