Page 65 of Skotos
When several minutes of silence passed, Will turned back toward me and made to stand; but, likethe snapping of a branch, something sharpened in the old woman’s gaze again, and she looked past Will and directly at me, pointing with a gnarled index finger.
“You have to find him,” she said, her voice suddenly lucid. “He is afraid, and he is alone. My boy has no one else. He is so alone. Please, help him. Help my boy.”
She gripped Will’s hand again, then reached for mine. “Promise me,” she whispered. “Promise you will find my Lucien and bring him home.”
“I promise,” I said, resting my other hand on Will’s shoulder, needing his touch, his strength, to weather the emotions of the moment.
Thesignoranodded, accepting our pledge, then leaned back in her chair. Her breathing was shallow but steady, her eyes drifting shut. As we turned to leave, her voice cut through the stillness again, but now it held a terrible, unmistakable clarity.
“There are men who wear crosses but serve the Devil,” she said. “If they find him first, I will never see him again. Never see my boy. Never again.”
Her sobs filled the tiny bedroom.
Will stood and stepped back, our shoulders brushing, neither of us caring if the sister orsignoracaught how intimate the simple brush was. I glanced out the window, down the street. The daylight had shifted. The shadows were longer, and thebreeze no longer rustled leaves among the nearby trees.
The black sedan was still there.
Watching.
Waiting.
And something deep in my chest began to twist.
As we turned and stepped through the door, behind us, we heard the creak of wood. Glancing back, we sawSignoraMarini gently rocking, the chair whispering against the floor in time with a lullaby only she could hear, a woman lost in a tangle of memories, love, and warnings—her voice and presence fading like the last flickers of a dying candle.
1. Camp X was the unofficial name of the secret Special Training School No. 103, a Second World War British paramilitary installation for training covert agents in the methods required for success in clandestine operations. This Canadian black site was the location for Will’s and Thomas’s initiation into the world of spycraft in https://books.authorcaseymorales.com/crimson , book one of this series.
31
Will
“So can we walk through this?” I said, trying to keep the edge out of my voice. “We’re chasing a half-lucid woman’s cryptic warning to an abandoned chapel well outside the city, based on what? Her son maybe mentioning it once? Or more likely, herthinkingshe remembers her son mentioning it? That’s our plan?”
Our taxi rattled over a pitted country road, tires crunching gravel, cypress trees closing in on either side like silent, watchful sentries. I kept glancing over my shoulder at the increasingly distant skyline of Rome, wondering—again—why the hell we were leaving it behind. Thomas sat across from me in the rear-facing jump seat, his arms folded and expression unreadable.
He didn’t blink. “Do you have a better plan?”
I opened my mouth—then closed it. Becauseno. No, I didn’t.
“I’m just saying,” I muttered, looking out the window, “this feels like grasping at that mist out there.”
“Maybe,” he allowed. “But sometimes shadows point the way.”
I glanced back at him. “That was very poetic.”
“I’ve been reading more,” he said with a smirk.
I rolled my eyes. “So whatisthe plan? We check out this chapel, find a dusty pew or two, maybe a few bat droppings? Then what?”
“Then we see what’s there—or what isn’t.”
“And after that?”
He tilted his head like he was weighing his words. “Then we stop by our favorite tailor.”
Favorite tailor? Had he lost his marbles? Did I miss the part where he banged his head against something at the nursing home?
Thomas merely stared, one brow arched, as if to say, “The tailor, you idiot. You know, the one in Washington I can’t mention because we’re in a cab with a foreign driver who might understand English?”
