Chapter 16: Day Fourteen

The lemon trees swallowed him.

We heard a car start on the lower road, and then it was gone.

A baby was crying somewhere behind me.

Sixty people sat without moving, and every one of them was looking at me.

My father sat down heavily in his chair.

"Close the ports," he said to the man beside him. "The airport. The ferries. Call every family."

The man went.

My aunt came and put her arms around me.

I let her.

Over her shoulder I watched Dario take out his phone and walk to the wall where the underboss had jumped.

By dark nobody had found him.

By eleven I knew where Brent was staying.

Everyone in Palermo knew. He'd been drinking in the hotel bar on the waterfront for three nights, telling the barman about his ex.

"I'm going," I said.

Dario was standing at the window of my father's study with his arm in the sling.

"I know," he said.

"You're not going to stop me?"

"I'm going to sit in the lobby. Where I can see the elevator."

I went up alone at a quarter past five in the morning.

I had sat in my old room for hours first, deciding.

Brent opened the door in yesterday's shirt.

He hadn't been to bed.

The room behind him smelled of whiskey and room service.

The TV was on, tuned to an American business channel with the sound low.

In the corner of the screen was a clock counting down.

STRATTON FREIGHT: LODESTAR LICENSE EXPIRES MIDNIGHT ET.

Forty-three minutes.

"Giulia," he said.

He looked at me.

"Someone shot at me on Wednesday night," I said.

The color went out of him.

"What?"

"On the coast road. Through the windshield. Dario's driver took a bullet under the collarbone."

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