Chapter 5: The Fever Night

On Sunday I went home, and I took Cinzia's test with me.

A warning label in capital letters on a soup she knew would make me ill.

She had not wanted to poison me. She had wanted to see whether I would flinch at the smell.

I had flinched at nothing, and I had said the word allergic aloud, and she had laughed it off.

Now she knew I could be tested, and I knew she was testing.

Remo's house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac in the hills above the harbor, with a wall, a gate and a soldier in the guardhouse.

I had lived there for four years.

I had never once been alone in it with the safe in his study.

Before I left the apartment I texted Massimo, as agreed.

Going in. He's at his mother's until three. One guard at the gate.

He wrote back in under a minute.

I'm in the car at the bottom of the hill. Say a word and I'm through the gate.

I wrote: Don't.

He wrote: Then keep your phone in your pocket and the line open.

I put the phone in my cardigan pocket with the call connected and the screen against my hip.

The guard at the gate lifted a hand.

He was thirty, thick-necked, one of the men who had heard Remo's fever call on speaker.

"Miss Bell. You're better?"

"Much better."

"Good, good. The boss was worried." He grinned.

"Was he?"

"Told the whole crew about it last night. You know how he gets." He scratched his jaw. "He did the voice."

"The voice?"

The guard pitched his own voice high and sweet.

"Baby's sick. That breaks my heart. I'll be right home." He laughed. "Then he put the phone down and ordered another bottle. We nearly died."

In my pocket, the line stayed silent.

"That was last month," I said.

"Right, right. Last month." He caught my face and the grin slid off. "It was a joke, miss. Everybody likes you."

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