Fatal Error, page 15
She stopped her breathing. She heard footsteps on the undergrowth. Getting louder. Heading toward the car. Enzo returning? Or someone else?
She checked her aim, ensuring her shot would be above the lip of the trunk, but low enough to hit something vital. She frowned. What if it was someone else? A passer-by?
She took a deep breath. She had to wait. She couldn’t shoot a bystander. She had to identify Enzo before she pulled the trigger.
The footsteps grew louder. She rechecked the safety, and tightened her finger on the trigger. The footsteps stopped. One of the car’s doors opened, and the vehicle rocked as someone sat in the driver’s seat. Had Enzo returned? Or was it someone else? And what had he done while he was gone?
The starter motor churned, a mechanical squeal that sounded long overdue for oil. The squealing stopped, but the engine didn’t catch. The keys rattled in the ignition, and the birds resumed their calls. Jess forced herself to breathe.
The keys rattled again, and the starter motor began its churn. The car shook, the engine laboring. The churning stopped and the quiet returned.
A man swore. Enzo’s voice. The seat back separating them muffled the sound, but she was sure. His seat creaked. He muttered. Then nothing but silence. He didn’t move, didn’t speak, and didn’t try to start the car.
Seconds felt like hours as she lay with her back arched to bring her gun up, ready to face him. She breathed deep. Light trickled in through gaps around the number plate and taillights. She moved her feet. One of the holes was big enough to push a pen through.
She eased her knees up to her chest, and rotated to bring her face close to the hole.
He laughed. “We’ll be there soon. Though you might be happier where you are.”
She bit her lip.
The keys rattled, and the starter motor churned.
She shoved her eye to the hole, blinking and squinting. The car was on an unmade path off a main road. Trees lined either side. They were heading into a forest.
Across the road were houses. Vacation rentals. Small and brightly painted. Thin iron gates guarding their short driveways. Jaunty black and gold lettering proudly announcing their names.
There were no lights visible in the windows, and no cars in the driveways. She blinked. Straining to the left, she saw an elderly lady in a garden, digging, a wheelbarrow at her side.
Jess breathed hard. If she broke out of the trunk, could she make it across the road? And if she did, what protection would an old lady be? Or would she just invite a monster into the old woman’s life? Jess sighed. Better to stay where she was. For now.
The starter motor squealed. The engine caught, spluttering, idling rough until Enzo brought up the revs, smoothing it out.
Across the road, the houses waited patiently for their guests, oblivious to her plight. She longed to run for the protection of their walls, but she knew it was fruitless, he would find her, and kill her, and anyone who stood in his way.
Enzo engaged first with a crunch of gears. He drove forward twenty yards, and stopped. She saw a wide gate swaying in the wind. Enzo stepped out of the car. She saw his back as he closed the gate, securing it with a rusty chain and padlock.
She pulled back from the hole as he turned to walk toward the car. She was laying the wrong way around. The gun was pointing into the car. If he opened the trunk he would see her and the gun.
She swung her feet around to rotate to her prone position, her back arched and the gun pointed upwards, ready to fire on him. She panted. Sweat dripped from her forehead. She squeezed the grip of the Heizer.
He walked past. The gravel crunched under his feet. The car bounced as he sat in the driver’s seat. His door clanged shut, and he drove on.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Ford bumped over the rough lane. Jess lost her purchase on the side of the trunk and thumped into the seat back that separated her from the rest of the car. The car jolted over a hump. She lurched into the air, her head banging against a metal spar along the top of the trunk. She crashed down, her back landing on her hands, twisting the gun from her grip.
Her fingers scrabbled for it, but came up empty. She rolled over, hoping to trap the gun under her body, but she felt nothing.
The Heizer had disappeared.
The car turned a bend, shoving her head first into the side of the trunk. She pushed back with her shoulders, turning herself over, and staring into the blackness between her and the seat back, praying for a glint of gun metal.
She saw it pressed into the gap between the trunk floor and the seat back. Different shades of black in the darkness. A glimmer. Far from her hands.
She pulled her feet up, twisting her leg over to bring the toe of her shoe down on the gun. The car bounced. Her weight shifted, and her shoe mashed into the gun’s grip. She forced her forehead against the seat back, bracing herself. The car jolted again, snapping her head back. Her body bounced and lurched. Her legs stiffened to brace against the movement. Her feet pressed down. Down against the Heizer. Down and forward.
Forward through the gap.
She dragged herself along the seat back with her feet, burning her elbows on the trunk floor, angling her arms behind her, fumbling for the gap and the gun.
The car bounced and shuddered.
She felt the carpet and the back of the seat. Different textures on her fingertips. She probed the line where they joined, ramming her fingers into the space till they hurt. She twisted her hands, searching up and down the gap.
The gap.
Tiny and thin.
Like the Heizer.
Her eyelids sank down. The air eased from her lungs. Her stomach churned.
It was gone.
The gun was inside the car.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Morris stood at the hotel’s rear door. He squeezed the phone, and took a deep breath. “There’s no other way to say it, we were too late.”
“She’s gone?” said Vanelli.
“Out the back. He left a note.”
Morris stared at the long knife pinning a piece of white card to the doorframe by a wickedly sharp looking point. He bit his lip.
“And?” Vanelli said.
“And, what?”
“What does it say?”
Morris read the note aloud. “4:00 p.m. Your office.”
“That’s it?”
“Apart from the fact it’s pinned to the doorframe with a knife.”
Vanelli whistled. “The hotel cameras catch anything?”
“She walked to the back of the hotel with a man from the reception desk. Young guy. Santo Mola. Run him through your system, but my gut says he was duped. Someone, probably Ficarra, coshed Mola on the head, and pushed Jess into a white Ford.”
“His face?”
“Baseball cap.”
“License plate?”
“The cameras aren’t good enough.”
“I’ll have traffic get us footage around the hotel. Where’s Santo Mola now?”
“He’s on his way to the hospital.”
“Talking?”
Morris grunted. “Nothing much to say. Thought he was taking her to meet me.”
“Can he identify Ficarra?”
“It was a heavy blow. He’s fading in and out. So probably not.”
Morris clenched his teeth, and took a deep breath. “Look, Ficarra only took her because she shot his brother. That could have happened whether she was here or in the U.S.”
Vanelli took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. “I have a forensics team on the way. We can search the traffic cameras from our office. Get what you can from the hotel.”
Morris grunted.
“And Morris?”
“What?”
“This is Italy. You have no jurisdiction. You’re our guest. No right to take this into your own hands.”
Morris snorted. “Like that makes any difference. Ficarra’s already taken this out of both our hands.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The Ford came to a halt. The engine died. Enzo got out of the car. Jess twisted, bringing her legs around, ready to kick at Enzo. The trunk popped open. Daylight glared. Enzo stood to one side. She kicked, swinging her legs in a wide arc.
He caught her feet with ease. “Now, now.” He grabbed her other foot, dragging her legs over the lip of the trunk. “Play nice, and we’ll both get what we want.”
Again, she noticed that he spoke English with almost no accent of any kind. He might have been an American. Maybe he was.
She pulled herself up by her abs. He put his hand under her arm, and levered her out of the car. She breathed heavily. He looked a lot like his brother. Same black hair. Same dark eyes. Same sun worn features. The only thing lacking was a bullet hole. Unfortunately.
He smiled, and nodded to a ramshackle cabin.
She walked slowly, looking left and right. They were in a small clearing in dense woods. Trails ran through the undergrowth. They had arrived on the only road in and out of the clearing. The ground was soft underfoot. The air smelled of vegetation.
Steps led up to the door. She climbed slowly. Birds cawed. Enzo removed a padlock, and the door creaked open. He pushed her inside.
The cabin had one room. A single substantial wooden pillar supported the roof. Mildewed furniture lay around the room, long ago rotted from damp. A lone plastic chair sat in a corner. She curled her nose up. The scent outside gave way to interior odors full of rot and decay.
Enzo closed the door. He unlocked a brass padlock on a large trapdoor. The door covered a shaft with a rusty iron ladder running down into the dark. He reached into the shaft and flipped a switch. A feeble light glowed some thirty feet down.
A tunnel. Another tunnel. Enzo Ficarra had a thing for tunnels. She’d never been claustrophobic, thank God. Jess sighed. She stepped back.
Enzo shook his head. “I will lower you down.”
“No.” She shook her head furiously.
“Yes.” He took a leather harness from a collapsed chest of drawers, wrapped it under her arms, and buckled it under her chest. The leather stank.
She breathed hard.
He connected a rope to the harness, and looped it around the wooden pillar. “Sit on the edge.”
She looked at the drop. “You can’t be serious?” she grunted against her gag. “Just untie me.”
He leaned back on the rope, taking the strain. “After your friends have paid.”
She narrowed her eyes and stared at him. He wasn’t insane. He knew precisely what he was doing. Cold, calculating. Not an ounce of madness evident in any of his actions or his manner. She shuddered. She was surely staring into the eyes of pure evil. Just like his brother. Maybe worse.
He nodded to the shaft. “Sit.”
She knelt down, sliding her feet over the gap. Enzo pulled on the rope, and jerked her shoulders up.
“Over,” he said.
She swallowed, and slid off the edge. The harness wrenched against her shoulders. Her weight shifted from her feet to her shoulders. The pull grew more intense, the harness forcing her arms further behind her. The nylon zip-tie cut into her wrists.
She dangled in the air, bumping against the rock, looking down the shaft. Enzo let the rope out in bursts. She grunted as each jolt wrenched at her shoulders and threatened to rip her arms from their sockets. She gritted her teeth until her feet touched solid ground.
Enzo pulled back on the rope, stretching her up onto her toes. He raced down the ladder, landing a couple of feet from her. He smiled. “It’s easier going up.”
She clenched her teeth.
He turned her around, and unclipped the harness, letting her down off her toes. Her shoulders relaxed and the burning pain subsided. She bit her lip, and fought back the desire to sigh.
He flipped a switch. Yellow pools of light sprang into life, revealing a roughhewn tunnel. Twenty yards away was an alcove, and beyond that a line of heavy wooden doors. He pushed her forward. The tunnel floor was uneven, no more than bare rock worn down by the passage of miners and whatever they had mined.
Enzo stopped her at the alcove. A coffee table was set into the space. There was a lamp on top. He switched it on. She looked away for a moment as her eyes adjusted to the lamp’s glare, but not before she saw the table was covered with wide leather straps, much like the one Enzo had used to lower her into the tunnel.
Underneath the table were large black plastic bags. Industrial. Thick. Strong. Maybe even big enough for a body. She forced herself to look at them. Better to know what she was up against.
He pushed her forward. The ground grew rougher. She peered into the gloom. There was a line of doors on the right hand side. The first few were ruined, but those deeper in the tunnel seemed solid and held tightly sealed by large wooden beams.
“That one,” he said, pointing.
She stopped at the door. A glimmer of light crept around its edges. He lifted the wooden beam and the door creaked open.
The room was carved from the rock. A small cave with only one way out. A dim light bulb glowing on the ceiling. A dirty mattress lay on a rusty metal bunk. Around the walls were a series of metal hoops cemented into the blocks.
Enzo pushed her inside. Mold assailed her nostrils. He tossed a plastic bag on the bed. “Lie on it. It’ll ward off the damp.”
He ripped the tape from around her head, pulling the gag out of her mouth. The tape tore at her skin and pulled her hair out by the roots, but she sighed with relief. She held her hands out behind her.
He shook his head.
She sank onto the plastic sheet.
He pointed to her feet. “Give me your shoes.”
She didn’t move.
He pulled a zip-tie from his pocket. “Or I can bind your feet together. Your choice.”
She kicked off her shoes.
She looked at him, keeping her gaze low on his face, avoiding direct eye contact. “What’s going to happen?”
He backed away to the door. “Simple. You will stay here until the FBI pays for your release.”
He closed the door. There was a scraping of wood and metal as he dropped the heavy wooden beam into place. His shoes crunched on the rocks as he walked back up the tunnel.
The ceiling light went out. The image of the room and its pitiful light bulb faded from her retinas. She breathed out. Long and slow. The restraints cut into her skin, wild images raced through her mind, and the silence gnawed at her, but she was still alive.
She closed her eyes, and let the darkness swallow her and she wondered what Enzo would do to her when he found out she’d shot his brother.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Enzo closed the drapes, and switched on the light. The small rental home he had acquired was working out well. The owner had taken cash. Enzo had left the money in an envelope on the porch and the man had collected it. No forms to sign, no taxes to pay, no handshakes to make. Deal done. Anonymity for the price of two weeks’ rent.
He pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, from a package that boasted they were flesh colored, though he’d never seen flesh that color, dead or alive. They muted his sense of touch, and would make his job more difficult, but fingerprints and DNA were more important than the ease with which he could work.
He opened a plastic carrier bag, and pulled out a bright red mechanical alarm clock and two small boxes. The first box contained a cheap mobile phone. He’d bought it at a village store, one he knew didn’t have video camera surveillance. Inside the box he found the SIM card, but he didn’t insert it into the phone. The last thing he wanted was a cell phone signal tracing his location.
He switched on the phone. The battery showed it was almost fully charged. A message in red text complained it was unable to find a network. He dismissed the message, and programmed a phone number into the ninth entry in the speed dial list. He pressed the nine key. The phone made a series of bleeps, and the programmed number appeared in its crude display followed by a message indicating the call didn’t go through. He turned up the volume, and switched off the phone.
The second box contained two handheld radios, and a bundle of wires. He put the wires aside, and inserted the batteries in the first radio. Distorted classical music boomed. He turned the volume down, and tuned the radio to a frequency where he only heard static.
He turned the volume down on the second radio, and inserted its batteries. He tuned it to the same frequency as the first radio, and clicked a button marked Push to Talk. The first radio clicked. He tapped his finger on the plastic body of the radio, and heard the sound amplified through the first. Satisfied they were tuned to each other, he turned the radios off.
He pried the front cover from the phone, exposing the mechanism behind the buttons. He bent up the metal contacts for the nine key, so they could no longer touch. In the bundle of wires, he found two that had small clips on each end. He clipped one wire to each of the nine key’s contacts.
He picked up the alarm clock. The plastic cover came away easily, and the mechanism slid out. He located the alarm bell and hammer, and detached a small coiled spring from the hammer. The alarm clock clicked as he wound it. He set the alarm for a minute in the future, and waited. When the alarm activated, the hammer flicked forward, and rang the bell once. Without the spring it stayed in place. No ringing alarm, just the simplest mechanical switch.
He attached the wires to the hammer and the bell, winding them around the metal multiple times to ensure a good contact. He wound the clock and set the alarm.
Gently, he placed one of the radios face to face with the phone, and wrapped tape around them both. He lifted the bundle into a plastic box, and switched on the radio, checking it one last time before placing the lid on the box and sealing it with tape.
He put the box in the carrier bag, and the trash in another. Even if the house was traced to him, he had no intention of leaving incriminating evidence.
