The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) (14 page)

How many people were on the bus? Maybe thirty?

I walked past the Hotel Santa Lucia.

How many got off the bus at my stop? Three?
I could not remember. Perhaps I did not even notice, distracted by my second encounter with the Naples police.

Now, I could only see two people. One man was some distance away from me, walking in the other direction. The other was still behind me, keeping pace with my own movement.

Katrina, stay calm. Your mind is playing tricks on you. This man may be merely another passenger now headed toward his own hotel.

But I had consciously observed him looking at me.

He doesn’t strike me as a tourist. Are there homes near here?

I approached the bridge, resisting the urge to break into a run.
Running will only make you look scared, Katrina. It will make you look like a victim. That is what attackers want. Easy prey. Don’t give it to him. Be confident.

I turned onto the bridge.

A teenaged couple was crossing the bridge in front of me, holding hands. I could hear the footsteps of the strange man behind me. Nobody else was in sight.

The street that led off into the seafood district was much darker than I had thought it would be. The only sound I could hear was the rhythmic lapping of the waves against the sides of the bridge, and their ebb and flow washed away my confidence that the restaurants would still be open.

The teenaged couple entered the castle through its arched opening. Instead of turning left and entering the seafood district, I followed them.

The man behind me followed as well.

The castle was wide open; there was no ticket booth of any kind. It appeared that one could just meander through at leisure. A stone walkway wound upward toward the top of the castle. Over the high wall bordering the walkway was a drop to the street of the seafood district below. The couple strolled up the path and I followed.

The walkway passed by a series of dungeons, and the couple faded slyly toward one of them. Wordlessly, the young man pushed his mate roughly against the bars of the gate barricading the dungeon and began kissing her with abandon. As he advanced from the girl’s mouth downward and began hungrily kissing her neck, she tipped her head back and caught my eye. His hand was snaking its way into her shirt. Her glance told me to get lost.

I ducked beneath an archway and began briskly climbing a staircase through a dimly lit passageway.

When I heard the footsteps behind me advance to keep pace with my own, I began to understand that I was
not
just being paranoid. This man had been following me from the start and was now deliberately staying only steps behind me.

I reached the top of the staircase and stepped under another archway. To my horror, I suddenly emerged onto a large terrace. It was open almost three hundred sixty degrees around and offered panoramic views of the Bay of Naples. Short, squat cannons pointed out in all directions through low openings in the waist-high stone wall. Beside them were small piles of cannonballs at the ready.

I ran toward a cannon and reached down for one of the cannonballs, but it was far too heavy for me to throw with any accuracy. I let it fall back onto the pile.

The only other object on the terrace was a spindly statue depicting a centaur-like creature. It stood a few feet from the stone wall, positioned as if the centaur was looking out over the water. The statue was clearly too thin to hide behind.

As I hurriedly scanned the expansive space, I realized all too clearly the purpose of it. This had been a formidable fortress. Both its location and its structure were perfect for the function. There was no way to sneak up on the inhabitants of this castle.

I quickly realized the irony of my situation. On the terrace of a two-thousand-year-old fortress designed to offer failsafe protection from invaders, I was suddenly completely exposed and simultaneously trapped. A wrong turn had traded the narrow, cryptic passageways of the castle for a sacrificial altar, and I was the lamb. Except for one skinny statue, there was nothing to hide behind and nowhere to go except back through the archway. And the man from the train station was coming through it.

I ran behind the statue. It provided abysmally thin protection, and the backward cocked head of the centaur suddenly seemed mocking.

The man emerged from the archway, and suddenly the darkness surrounding me was not nearly complete enough. I could see into his eyes. They still bore that same cold, emotionless expression.

“
Katrina!
” he said.

As if reeling from a physical blow, I scrambled backward until I felt the stone wall slam into my lower back. “
What do you want?
” I practically screamed.

“
I have a message from Jeff!
”

But his hand was reaching into his pocket, so I gripped the wall with both hands and jumped.

The water was dark but surprisingly warm.

My only thought was to swim as far from the castle as possible before emerging, and suddenly I was very grateful for my daily habit of running four miles a day through deep sand and then up a steep cliff. I was able to hold my breath for a long time and swam at the lowest depth possible through the dark, murky water for as long as I could.

Still, the weight of my clothes and the purse yet dangling from my arm slowed me considerably. When I could no longer continue, I surfaced and took in deep breaths of the cool night air.

I looked back at the castle behind me and gasped at its height. I was lucky that a boulder instead of open water had not broken my fall. But the desperate jump had served its purpose. Looking up at the castle in the distance, I was confident that my form in the dark water would be nearly impossible to detect from the terrace.

I turned and looked toward the shore. Nearby was a short dock. I remembered it. The dock jutted off from one side of the castle bridge, near the boats of the marina. There had been sunbathers on it earlier in the day when I had crossed the bridge on my quest for seafood. Now, the dock was abandoned. But it was not far from the shore that paralleled the street my hotel was on.

I took a few more deep breaths and continued swimming. When I reached the shore, I looked around before exiting the water, acutely aware that a fully clothed woman with a purse emerging from the bay would scarcely go unnoticed. I saw nobody.

Leaving a trail of seawater behind me, I walked toward my hotel.
You just have to get through the lobby
, I thought to myself. Without slowing my pace, I wrung out my clothes to the best of my ability. I squeezed as much water as possible out of my hair and then tied the thick locks into a knot crudely resembling a bun at the nape of my neck.

After a thorough survey of the area, I finally paused just long enough to dump my purse upside down onto the sidewalk. A small river and all of my belongings poured out of it. As quickly as possible, I wrung out the ruined leather itself and then began picking up objects one at a time, shaking them off, and dropping them back into my purse. At least I was no longer dripping excessively.

The concierge at the front desk gave me a strange look but did not say anything except to wish me a good evening. I returned the greeting politely, as if there was nothing unusual about my condition, and then hurried upstairs to my room.

Campania can get worse because you could cut into a Camorra group, but another ten could emerge from it.

-Galasso Clan Boss

Pasquale Galasso (1955–)

Chapter Ten

I walk down the rows of hospital beds, taking in the hopelessness of the nameless victims. An IV drips into one arm of each. A teenaged voice pleads with me. I look toward her.

The girl is my daughter. Alexis is fifteen.

I awoke feeling almost hung over, as if I had been drugged. After a few moments reviving, I realized how well I had slept. My body was stiff and sore, but, nonetheless, I felt refreshed, calm, and aware.

I finally roused myself from bed and stepped into the bathroom to inventory my belongings. On the floor were my soggy blue jeans and T-shirt, along with my underwear and the one pair of tennis shoes I had brought to Naples. I picked up one damp shoe off the floor and poured a small river of sand into the wastebasket before giving up and adding all of my salty, sandy clothing to the wastebasket.

Sitting in the sink’s bowl was my leather purse, still saturated with water from accompanying me into the sea. I reached inside the purse and began withdrawing its soaked contents, sorting through them to distinguish the salvageable items from the hopelessly ruined. The cursory survey made me realize with some relief and a great deal of apathy that
almost
everything in my purse could be replaced.

The absolutely essential items—money, driver’s license, credit cards, and passport—were all rinsed in the sink and laid out on towels to dry. The non-essential items that could not be salvaged followed my clothes into the wastebasket.

I flipped through my passport; the pages were intact. I realized that the stamps might not be legible, and I briefly wondered if I would have a problem returning to the United States. I was also all too aware that I might never have the opportunity to find out.

I had no idea what to do with the two waterlogged iPhones that were now my only connection to the world outside of Naples. My cell phone was frozen on the home screen, with no response from any of the icons. I tried to power it off, to no avail. Jeff’s phone was also frozen but indicated a new text message, which, of course, I could not retrieve.

I set both phones on the bathroom counter and looked into the mirror. For a long, long moment, I simply stared into my own eyes, asking myself what to do next.

My stomach growled and brought me back to the present. I walked into the bedroom to order room service. Then I drew back the curtains, opened the French doors, and stepped out onto the balcony.

It was another brilliant, sunny day in Naples. Dozens of small boats whirred around the bay like children at a playground. But above them, Mount Vesuvius was like a lurking predator.

I approached the balcony railing and rested my forearms upon its cool metal.

Jeff and I are now engaged to be married.

I am at my desk in my office at San Diego State University, where I lead a large research laboratory. A text message pops up on my phone:
White?

I frown at the message and then glance up at the clock on my desk. I have lost track of time, again. I rub my weary eyes and look back at my phone.

I text back:
What are you talking about?

Jeff’s response:
Maybe pink

Then, in a second bubble:
With flowers

My phone rings.

“Did you mix the wrong chemicals and kill some brain cells?” I ask.

“Yep!” Jeff says. “But that was years ago, in college. And don’t tell my mom.”

I laugh, and the tension from my day begins to dissolve.

“Hey, Kat, are you still working? Can you get away?”

I glance down at the document in front of me. “Sure. What do you have in mind?”

Thirty minutes later, Jeff’s car zips into an upscale neighborhood along the coast, just as the sky is fading to shades of red. He turns toward a private cul-de-sac and keys in the access code to open the gate.

“Oh, look,” I observe. “The house next door must have found a buyer.”

Jeff glances casually at the real estate sign in the front yard, now tagged “PENDING.” “Oh, yeah,” he says casually. “I met them. Nice people.” He is smiling.

Jeff pulls into our driveway. This is the home we have just closed escrow on, and I still cannot believe I get to live here.

Jeff opens the elegant front door, and we slide past the various construction items strewn before us, heading straight for the staircase. When we reach the master bedroom, Jeff quickly loops an arm around my waist to stop me. “Careful,” he says and points down at my feet. I step around a messy pile of painting supplies on a canvas sheet near the doorway. We walk through the room and out onto the terrace.

“Wow,” I say, and the breeze from the ocean breathes away the last traces of stress from my work day.

I run my hand along the terrace railing. “This turned out beautifully!”

“Yeah. They did a great job. I love the design you picked out.” Jeff reaches forward with both hands and grabs a section of the brand new ornate iron railing. He gives it a vigorous shake. The metal does not budge.

“Hold on a minute,” he says and disappears into the bedroom while I lean against the railing and stare, amazed, out at the view that is now mine to enjoy every day. I lazily trace a finger down the black metal design, still warm from the day’s sun.

I leaned upon the metal railing of my hotel room balcony, watching the boats drifting randomly through the Bay of Naples. And I sighed.

The key piece of data I needed at that moment, the one seemingly trivial thing I was most desperate for, I had lost. I needed my daughter’s phone number. I needed it more than anything. But I did not know it from memory. I only knew where it was located in my “favorites” on my iPhone. And now, that was useless.

But I did have one number—one single number—that I might be able to use.

I stepped back into the bathroom and shuffled through the damp papers on the bathroom countertop. I found a ticket stub.

Dante Giordano’s cell phone number was severely smeared, and I could not distinguish whether one of the numbers was a one or a seven. Another number might have been a four or a nine.

I reached into the bathroom wastebasket and withdrew my blue jeans, now stiffening from the seawater. In one of the pockets, I found the other ticket stub. On it I could see that the numbers in question were a seven and a four.

Together, the two papers in my hand provided the only phone number I had left for anyone in the world.

There was a knock on the door, and a man’s voice announced that room service had arrived.

The concierge directed me to Galleria Umberto I, explaining with admirable tact that it was the city’s largest shopping mall. It was also less than a mile from the Hotel Santa Lucia and contained Naples’ largest Apple store. I thanked the woman sheepishly and dropped the street map she had provided into my damp, and somewhat smelly, purse.

The Galleria was the most beautiful shopping mall I had ever seen. I stepped inside to find an expansive open space topped with an ornately painted dome—architecture I would have found more appropriate in a cathedral than a commercial building. Extending back from the entrance was a long corridor flanked with marble façades that appeared to be at least three stories high. The ceiling was an arched crystalline network of clear glass, exposing the blue Mediterranean sky.

I collected the replacement items I needed, including a new leather purse, and happily tossed the ruined purse into a garbage can.

The man behind the counter at the Apple store laughed heartily when he saw the two iPhones I laid on the counter, but he did not speak a word of English. After a frustrating few moments, a passerby stopped and offered to translate. The message I finally got through my interpreter was that Apple could not guarantee salvation of the phones, but if I bought two new ones a technician could transfer the data in an hour. Apparently the SIM cards would survive anything.

I wondered if this was merely a ploy to sell me two new phones, but I really did not care. I was happy to pay the money to regain my contact information, so I handed over my phones.