The Sleepless Stars (26 page)

“Please,” I coaxed him. “I can—”

A spray of pink mist and the shockwave of another gun firing from the doorway seemed to come simultaneously. In slow motion, I watched Grey’s head snap backward, most of his brain emerging from the shattered remnants of the back of his skull.

Adrenaline cut through my shock, and I whirled to face the new threat. Another man stood in the doorway, a satisfied smile on his face as he turned his aim on Ryder, now exposed. Tyrone, Grey’s accomplice. And brother, if what they’d told Ryder was true. Lazarettos, like me. The thought filled my mouth with bile.

“What did you do?” I asked, not caring that this was not the time for either conversation or recrimination. I staggered to my feet, stepping in front of Ryder, putting myself between him and Tyrone. “I was trying to help him. Why—”

“He would have rather died than let you touch him, dear Angela. I did my duty, as did he. Besides, only one can return triumphant, bringing the prize home.”

“Prize? What prize?”

“You, Angela. You are the prize.” Tyrone tried to step to where he’d have a clear shot at Ryder, but I moved to block him once more.

This do-si-do was getting us nowhere. I lunged for the ledge, where I had a view of the entire city, including the more than lethal drop to the stone steps below. Maybe I didn’t need the grenade. “Stop. I’ll jump—and I’m guessing you want me alive.”

His jaw tightened with dissatisfaction, but he nodded and holstered his weapon. “Come with me, and Detective Ryder lives.”

“No. You leave now.” I swung a leg over the parapet. Stalemate.

Tyrone sighed, gestured with his hand. Devon appeared from behind him.

He approached me, both hands out, palms empty. “It’s over, Angela. Give me the grenade, and I’ll get an ambulance for Ryder.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “No...” But even the single syllable emerged uncertain. “No,” I tried again, but the second try wasn’t any better.

Devon kept coming closer, finally stepping past Ryder to reach me. He took my arms and guided me down, then slid one hand into my pocket and took the grenade.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “They promised a cure for the children. Hold them to that. Will you do that? For Esme?”

I nodded, my entire body numb as he escorted me down the steps, Tyrone holding his pistol on us, leaving Ryder behind. He was alive. That much I’d accomplished, at least.

But how many more lives had my cowardice condemned?

<<<>>>

RYDER FELT PEOPLE
moving around him. Above him. Then a frigid breeze. Sirens in the distance. He opened his eyes, surprised that they were closed and that he was lying on his back—hadn’t he been standing?

“Rossi?” He looked around—not that there was much to look at. An open door, its wood splintered and pocked by bullets. An empty bell tower. Except for the corpse across from him. Grey. Dead. Had Ryder done that? Streaks of blood on the stone surrounding Ryder—his, he assumed from the blood streaming down his face.

He clawed his way to a sitting position, then to his knees where he could look out over the parapet to the street below. Ambulance lights in the distance, but what grabbed his attention was the black Town Car sliding to a stop at the curb.

Two men escorted a woman down the steps from the cathedral.

“Rossi!” he cried out, but the wind swept his voice back into his face like a slap. She never looked up. “Rossi,” he tried again but could barely choke the word clear.

Ryder called her name long after she vanished from his sight, the men bundling her into the Town Car just as the ambulance arrived. He slumped against the rough stone ledge, leaning his head on it, looking out over the city.

The moon, that gorgeous plump, overripe moon that had filled the sky earlier when he’d first spotted Rossi up here had long since set. In its wake was a smudge of blood red, far away on the eastern horizon. Too dull to provide any helpful light yet bright enough to cloak the stars and erase them from sight.

Ryder’s blood turned sticky as it clouded his vision and choked one eye closed. Yet, even as his mind dazed and grew dim, the world around him going deaf and dark, still he whispered her name.

AFTER DEVON AND
Tyrone escorted me to Tyrone’s car, we left Devon behind and drove out of the city. Tyrone radiated furious energy—I could see it in his white-knuckled fists, in the tight line of his lips. He’d said he needed me alive, but I knew he wanted to kill me.

Something stopped him—presumably the person on the other end of a muttered phone conversation he had. Thanks to Daniel’s and Leo’s memories, I could understand Italian somewhat, but not when it galloped past so fast that the words ran together. Finally, he hung up and settled back, reduced to simply glaring at me.

Me, I had so many questions, so many second thoughts, so many regrets... I curled up in the corner of the seat, my back to Tyrone, my face pressed against the cold glass of the window, my eyes closed, although sleep was not an option.

We finally arrived at an airstrip hidden somewhere among the fields of a farm. No one was in sight except for a pilot and two more anonymous men who came and opened my door. Tyrone left me, walking to the rear ramp of what appeared to be a small cargo plane. I didn’t recognize the logo, some airfreight service. For the first time, I became frightened—they could be taking me anywhere.

Then I saw the crate. Plastic, three feet square on each side, solid, except for four rows of air holes along the top wall. The kind of cage you’d transport an animal in. I planted my feet and shook my head, trying to escape back into the rear seat. The two men laughed, pulled me out of the car, and held me dangling in the air, shouting to Tyrone in Italian.

“Because of her, Michael and Tommaso are dead,” he called back. “As long as she is alive when I bring her to Mother, she can travel like the animal she is.”

I fought back, kicking and twisting, using my knees, elbows, anything I could, but they grabbed my shoes and stripped them off, along with my jacket. Then they handcuffed my wrists behind my back, carried me to the crate, and lowered me inside, pinioning my feet against the door when I tried to kick it out. They slammed it shut and locked it.

“Where are you taking me?” I screamed in frustration.

No answer except their laughter.

The space was too tiny to sit up. I folded my body and curled up on one side. Ryder would find me, I thought. Hell, Flynn was probably hanging on to the plane’s undercarriage right this second, a bowie knife clamped between her teeth.

The image made me smile and brought fresh tears. Flynn wasn’t under the plane. I wasn’t even sure if she was still alive. Ryder... No, with that head injury, all I could do was hope he was okay. Besides, this was my family, and I’d seen their power, knew what they could do. Last thing I wanted was for Ryder to get himself killed. I prayed that he wasn’t looking, that he never found me. Because that would mean his death, I was certain.

The plane took off, rumbling and jolting down the runway before wallowing its way into the air. The crate was held by cargo ties—orange straps that I could see beyond the air holes in the top. But they weren’t tight enough to keep it from sliding back and forth with any slight movement from the plane. They had me restrained; there was no reason to treat me like an animal. Why were they so frightened of me?

I remembered the way Tommaso and Michael Grey had looked at me before they died. They had been scared. Of me. Maybe I could use that.

At the very least, I could make their trip as hellish as mine. I banged and kicked against the solid walls of the crate, shrieking in frustration. The only response came when one of the men draped a quilted cargo blanket over the crate, blocking any view I had left through the air holes.

The cargo hold stank of aviation fuel and machine oil and rotten fruit. Either we were flying into a storm, or the pilot was avoiding detection by not climbing high enough to avoid turbulence, I wasn’t sure, but the ride grew so rough that the crate bounced off the metal floor, straining against the cargo ties holding it in place.

Finally, my motion sickness overwhelmed me, and I vomited. The rank fluid covered me, the stench making me even more miserable.

The unseen men exclaimed as the smell leaked past the blanket and filled the cargo hold. The turbulence eased off finally. The blanket was removed, and one of the men appeared above me. He yelled at me in Italian, then jammed water bottles into the air holes, dousing me with the liquid, diluting the vomit until the smell was bearable. Then he vanished once more. Leaving me soaking wet, freezing cold, and sloshing in bilious water trapped at the bottom of the crate.

Miserable. Frightened. Powerless. Exactly what they wanted.

I was tired of giving them what they wanted. At least I could make myself more comfortable. Maybe even give me a chance to fight back when we arrived at our destination. Show them I hadn’t broken. Not yet.

I tucked my knees up to my chest as tight as they would go and leaned back, stretching my handcuffed wrists down over my butt. Once I got them past my hipbones, I was stuck—not enough room to stretch forward, so no choice but to lay my head down into the foul water polluting the bottom of the cage. Every muscle screamed as I twisted and folded and inched my wrists up while pulling my legs down. Several times I thought I’d never fight free, not with the walls of the crate blocking every movement, but I refused to give up and finally my hands slid just far enough for me to edge my wrists past my heels.

I lay curled up, panting, the exertion filling me with a momentary sense of relief, my motion sickness and sodden shivering forgotten. I raised my hands before my face, grinning at them as if they were small miracles. Of course, I was still handcuffed, trapped, but I felt in control, no longer subject to the random whimsy of gravity.

With my hands in front of me, I could reach for Ryder’s pendant. My touchstone. I pressed it to my flesh, closed my eyes, and imagined his arms around me. A calm settled over me, my breathing steadied, and I was able to enter a fugue, casting my senses out beyond the crate.

The men were across from me, sleeping. I could hear their rhythmic breathing. We’d already been flying for several hours, but in what direction? Italy? Or some far-flung hidden lab? The only light inside the plane came from dim red and green lights along the floor and ceiling. Nothing more to be learned.

Which left me with nothing more to do except wait. But that didn’t mean I had to waste the time. Gingerly, but with more confidence than I’d had before in the isolation tank, I reached for Leo’s memories of his work with Tommaso. I needed to know everything I could before I faced my family.

By the time we finally landed, I’d thrown up until my stomach was emptied and had also peed myself along the way. Sometime during the long flight, the blanket had slid free from the crate. Tyrone and the men had slept through it all.

As soon as the plane stopped, I saw Tyrone pass my crate on his way off the plane. The other men sprang to their feet and removed the cargo straps.

Through the open doors of the cargo bay, I caught a glimpse of sunshine, blue sky, no clouds, the scent of salt water and the sound of seagulls mixed in with the roar of jet engines. A quick transfer to the back of a van—no windows, no light, more nausea, but I was able to down the bottle of electrolyte solution they threw in to me. Proof that despite my discomfort, they still needed me alive.

Another few hours’ drive before the doors opened once more, then the crate lurching as the men grunted to push it onto a boat.

Not a cargo ship, a motorboat, not very large from the little I could see as they secured the crate to the deck. A tarp was thrown over top, blocking both my vision and my air. The ride was rocky, my body slamming from one wall to the other as if the driver was trying to ensure that I arrived at our destination with the maximum amount of bruises. I lost track of the time, but it felt as if I lost another night to the journey.

I retched and dry-heaved but had nothing left to vomit. And little energy to fight. My muscles were cramped and locked into place from the confinement, and my vertigo was overwhelming. All I could do was clench Ryder’s tree of life pendant, holding on to my one last tie to him.

Finally, we stopped. The tarp was thrown off, and I hauled in gulps of fresh sea air. The bright sunshine of the noonday sun made me blink. The crate was raised, then slid forward, then dropped onto solid ground, although my stomach still felt as if we were bouncing along the waves. I braced myself, wanting to fight, to kick, to show them I hadn’t broken.

“Open it,” an unseen woman’s voice came.

The door to the crate opened. Before I could launch any attack, the men grabbed my ankles and dragged me out into the sunshine. My legs were so numb I couldn’t stand, couldn’t do more than twist my torso so that I could get a good look at my destination.

I was on a concrete jetty, the motorboat tied up to the piling behind me. In front of me was a large, ornate, wrought-iron gate. It had lethal-appearing spikes jabbing up from its top edge and also equally deadly horizontal spikes protruding out. No one was getting up and over it alive, it seemed to proclaim. It was obviously ancient, hundreds of years old, standing a good twelve feet high and at least that wide.

The wall it was set into was brick, covered with cement or stucco. Higher than the gate by two feet or more, also with spikes lining its top edge. The wall extended in both directions as far as I could see, the seawater lapping against its base, green algae smeared at the high-tide line. At the far reaches of my vision, the wall curved—an island. This was an island.

The men grabbed an elbow each and hauled me to my feet. I couldn’t stand, my legs sagging uselessly beneath me.

“Welcome to your new home,” the woman said from behind me, her voice anything but welcoming.

I twisted my head, fighting free of the curtain of wet hair that clung to my face, until I could see her. She was a little taller than I am, same dark hair, same dark eyes, a wrinkle-free face, yet I’d still peg her age in her fifties. Something about those eyes...they were...without mercy.