Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [115]
At the same time, he saw Elena look up to see the sleek prow of the motorboat slide past the outcrop of rock and turn into the channel where they were. Instantly, the powerful beam of the searchlight came around, sweeping mercilessly toward them as the boat turned fully into the waterway.
Harry glanced over his shoulder. They were right at the cave.
“Get down!” he said.
Crouching over, Harry jerked the oars inboard and the prow of the skiff slid into the opening, ceiling and sides clearing by only inches. Then he saw Elena duck, her hand on Danny’s head. The stern slid through and they were inside.
Instantly, Harry was on his back. Grabbing the rock ceiling above them, pulling the skiff forward, hand over hand. Deeper into the cave. A heartbeat later the harsh beam of the searchlight swept past.
Abruptly the outboards throttled down. A half second later he saw the motorboat glide by. A blond man with a stark profile stood in silhouette to the far wall, one hand on the wheel, the other up tight under the throat of Salvatore Belsito. Then they were gone, the light trailing off with them, the boat’s wake washing into the cave.
Immediately Harry put his hands out to the walls on either side to keep the skiff from banging off them. His heart pounding, he raised himself up and listened. One second. Then two. Then he heard the outboards stop. A moment later the wash subsided and everything was silent.
85
THOMAS KIND LET THE BOAT SWING IN A slow arc, bringing it around, letting it come to a stop facing the way they had come, his eyes searching the cavern in front of him—the glistening walls with their jagged outcroppings, the deep green-black water reflecting the illumination from the searchlight in a thousand different directions.
“Sit down…” Slowly he eased the razor from Salvatore’s throat and nodded toward the bench along the gunwale behind him. The look in his captor’s eyes was all the warning the Italian needed, and he did what he was told. Then he crossed his arms and tilted his head toward the irregular ceiling of the cave, letting his gaze fix there, fix anywhere but at the body of his wife at his feet, the body he had put there after Kind had made him carry it from where he had killed her, at the entrance to the elevator.
Thomas Kind glanced back at Salvatore, then reached into his jacket. From it he took a slender, black nylon pouch. Opening it, he took out a small electronic headset. Putting it on, adjusting the earpieces, he clipped a tiny microphone to his jacket collar and plugged the lead wire into a packet at his waist. There was the faintest click, and a tiny red glow rose from the monitor light beneath his fingers. His thumb ran over the volume control, and the sound came up immediately. Everything was amplified. The echo of the tunnel, the crisp lap of water against its walls. Listening intently, he swung the microphone slowly and deliberately across the canal. Wall left to wall right.
He heard nothing.
He panned back. Wall right to wall left.
Still nothing.
Leaning forward, he turned off the searchlight, and the cavern went dark. Then he waited. Twenty seconds. Thirty. A minute.
Again, he swung the microphone. Left to right. And then back. And then back again.
“…wait…
He froze at the sound of Harry Addison’s voice, a whisper. He waited for more.
Nothing.
Ever so slowly, he swung back.
“…without an IV… ,” nursing sister Elena Voso said, her voice low and hushed like the American’s.
They were there. Somewhere in the dark ahead of him.
Villa Lorenzi. Same time.
Roscani squinted in the bright sunlight of Edward Mooi’s bedroom. The tech crew was still working the bathroom. Traces of blood had been found in the sink, the vague outline of a bare foot on the floor.
No one had seen the poet since he had returned