The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) (41 page)

“Let me speak to Moretti.”

“Sure,” John says, and his voice becomes more distant as he holds the phone away from himself to call for the Naples chemist.

“Romano,” he says. “Jeff’s wife is on the phone. Her name is Katrina Stone. She’d like a word with you about the isotope.”

I hear a muffled voice in the background and the shuffle of feet.

I know that voice
, I think.

Then there is a thud, and the line is disconnected.

A moment later, my phone is ringing. It is a video call.

The camera on John’s cell phone is evidently projecting from a desk or table. I can see a horizontal edge at the bottom of my field of vision. Beyond it, John is seated in a low chair. Blood is trickling down one cheek from a gash in his forehead. Behind him, I can see the Naples laboratory. It is unpopulated.

A pistol is held to John’s head. There is blood on the muzzle.

“
Katrina!
” John says urgently. “
Hang up! Hang up the phone! Don’t let him see where you are—
”

The muzzle of the gun crashes into John’s skull again, and his head drops to his chest for a moment. When he looks back toward the camera, the blood running down the side of his face is flowing steadily. He stops trying to speak.

The chest of a man comes into my field of vision as someone steps in between John’s chair and the cell phone propped on the desk. He stoops down casually and stares into the screen.

“Hello, Dr. Stone,” Carmello Rossi says casually. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“
You bastard!
” I shout. “
I’ll fucking kill you!
”

“Oh, that would be magic indeed,” he says. “And it appears you are incapable of such tricks. Perhaps your New Isis has led you astray.”

“You let him go—,” I begin.

“
Shut up!
” he shouts. “No, no, no, you will listen to
me
! You will listen to me, or your friend will have the privilege of dying just as valiantly as your husband did. Except, of course, for the fact that, while Dr. Wilson died utterly alone, this man’s death will have an audience of one.

“So instead, here is what you’ll do. You will hang up the phone now, and you will call my sister’s son. I am sure you have his phone number. You will give him your location in Cairo, and, when he has reached you, the two of you will call me back.”

“
NO!
” John shouts from behind him. “Don’t do it, Katrina!”

Rossi turns, and the muzzle of his pistol smashes across John’s head a third time.

“
Shut up!
”

“What he wants is in this lab—,” John manages, before the gun crashes down a fourth time, and this time he is out.

“Why did you kill Jeff?” I demand. “My husband was no threat to you!”

“Incorrect again, Doctor Stone. He would have found it. You—I underestimated you. I will soon fix that. But I knew from the start that your husband would find it. He would have brought international attention to my hometown. And that, I could not have.

“My network has survived for two thousand years. Without the interference of you and your husband, that Italian bitch, and this poor gentleman”—he points the pistol at John’s head—“it is sure to survive for two thousand more.”

“Now call my nephew,” he says again and leans into the phone once more so I can see his face. “This should not take so much thinking about. Do you not realize that I still have the power to kill your daughter? Your mother? Your sister? Perhaps I have not yet clarified the extent of my power. Just hang up the phone and call Dante—”

“That won’t be necessary,” a voice says from behind me.

I try to turn, but there is a flash of ink. Dante’s thick, tattooed arm snakes forward and snatches the purse from over my shoulder. And with it, the stolen gun that was my only means of self-defense.

“I warned you about Naples,” he says. “It’s never a good idea for a woman alone to carry a purse.” He tosses the bag to the ground.

Slowly, I raise my arms and turn around. Dante is aiming a pistol at me. He shakes his head sadly. “I tried to tell you back in Naples. I tried to tell you in Pompeii. I tried to convince you to just go home. Just let it go. Just forget about it. You wouldn’t listen.

“We make our own medicines, Katrina. They bring us a lot of money, but they also kill a lot of people. I’m tired of it. The isotope is our chance to finally control the traffic of a legitimate drug.”

You can make them kill each other.

But I cannot. Not when one is in Naples and the other in Cairo.

“Dante, do you really believe that?” I ask. “Do you really believe that the killing will end if you monopolize the isotope?”

My arms are still raised over my head, but Dante doesn’t seem to notice when I slowly lower them.

“My uncle said—”

From my laboratory in Naples, I can hear Rossi laughing.

“Of course it will,
figlio
,” he says. “It is the reason I dedicated my life to the study of chemistry. It is the reason I built a legitimate name for myself as a chemist. Do not listen to the woman. She has her own agenda.” He chuckles. “And besides, you should realize, my dear nephew, that the isotope is safer in our hands than in those of her pharmaceutical industry.”

Dante leans down toward the screen of my video phone and glares at Rossi. As he moves toward the phone, I, too, look into its screen. Rossi’s expression is sorrowful as he pleads with Dante.

“You must kill her,” he says. “And it will all end.”

He steps out of view of the screen, and I can see John again, unconscious and immobile.

Rossi approaches him. “Thank you, Doctors, for your sacrifice,” he says.

I squeeze my eyes shut and simultaneously turn away as the shot rings out.

I am sobbing. I am sobbing so hard I can barely breathe. I set the phone down on the bench beside me. I cannot look at the screen.

“It’s over, Katrina,” Dante says. “It is finally over. For whatever it’s worth, I never wanted any of this. I didn’t want it for you, and I didn’t want it for myself.”

He motions with the pistol, directing me to walk. Slowly, I comply, lacing my hands over my head as I limp, resigned, toward a small thicket of trees in the park. Dante follows from behind.

“Turn around,” he says. “Look at me.”

I turn to face him, but I cannot look into his eyes, the eyes of the boy who just days ago was my only ally.

Dante raises the gun in my direction one more time. Then he turns it around in his hand and offers me the butt.

For a moment I only stare at him, confused.

“Go ahead,” he says. “Take it.”

Timidly, I reach forward, almost certain he will whirl the pistol around and shoot me at the last moment. But he does not. My fingers wrap around the butt and my forefinger touches the trigger. The pistol is cold and heavy in my hand. But I am not trembling as I aim it at him.

“Don’t shoot me,” he says, and I wonder why, then, he has given me the choice.

“Come with me to the Italian embassy,” he says. “I will turn myself in to Interpol and confess everything I know about my family.

“My uncle made me believe that the isotope was our way out. But I can see now that he was lying. I could see the greed in his eyes through the video phone. He is never going to stop. Ever. Not for one legitimate drug. Not for a thousand. Not ever.

“I am the family’s computer hacker. I’ve never actually killed anyone. I mean, I’ve never pulled the trigger. I know that isn’t much of an excuse. But maybe if I tell them everything, they will go easy on me. Maybe one day I can even be the pagan theologist I would have been had I not been born into the Rossi crime family.

“But, please, don’t shoot me. All that will do is ruin you. And I don’t want to be responsible for destroying yet another life. Especially yours.”

It is hard to believe that the broken man before me now is the charming student who led me through the ruins of Pompeii. It is hard to believe that the compassionate young man who led me from the Naples police station is the same one who set me up to be brought there, who twice tracked me through the GPS on my phone, and who turned my private data over to the oldest crime family in Naples. And it is hard to believe that this remorseful boy has been involved in so many murders.