Page 16 of Edge of Oblivion (Night Prowler 2)
She recognized only one word of this languidly delivered answer, which was chiuso—closed.
“It’s okay.” She gave him the international sign for approval: a thumbs-up. “Please— per favore—take me to the Colosseum.”
He shrugged and kept on through the snarl of evening traffic, several times barely avoiding hitting one of the dozens of scooters that whizzed by the taxi at lightning speed. They turned onto Via dei Fori Imperiali, and Morgan watched it grow closer and closer, a hulking giant erected right in the heart of the city nearly two thousand years ago. The cab slowed to a stop at the curb. This garnered a chorus of irate honking and shouts of “Spostati!” from the line of cars behind them.
“Grazie,” she said, the only other Italian word she knew besides please. She leaned over the front seat, touched her hand to the driver’s shoulder, and met his eyes in the rear-view mirror.
“Grazie,” she said again, softer. He nodded, slowly, and she left him with a smile and the impression he’d been paid for the ride. And handsomely tipped.
Though denied access by locked iron gates, three times the height of a man, that closed off every arched entrance, throngs of people still strolled around the grassy perimeter of the Colosseum, talking, laughing, smoking, taking pictures in front of it. She felt like a tourist herself, awed and amazed, craning her neck to gaze up in wonder. She’d only ever been allowed out of Sommerley once, on a trip with Leander to Los Angeles, and that city was so elementally different from this one that trying to compare them would be like comparing water to fire.
But Rome. Oh, Rome.
Even the air was different here, warm and soft and filled with life, ripe with birdsong and honking horns, nearby laughter and far-off singing, heady with the scent of fresh-baked bread and sun-
warmed stone. A stocky, bespectacled man with a mouth like a dried prune approached and said something to her in Japanese, gesturing to his camera and his tiny, smiling wife standing a few feet away beside a low fence.
“Of course. Yes!” she said, without realizing she’d never held a camera in her life and had no idea how to operate one. Her confusion became quickly apparent, and the man, in broken English, gently showed her how to focus the lens and which button to push.
When it was done they were beaming and bowing and shaking her hand, and Morgan experienced a feeling so unfamiliar and strange it took her a moment to identify. Like optimism but stronger, a buoyant confidence and goodwill and sweet anticipation all rolled into one.
Hope. She felt hope.
The Japanese couple thanked her one last time and moved away, leaving her standing stunned and alone, awash in sentimentality for this new bud of feeling she’d glimpsed, which she knew without question wouldn’t live long.
And neither will you, a small voice whispered in her ear, if you don’t get going.
She stared up at the golden stone bulk of the Colosseum.
One look inside, she decided, just a tiny bit of sightseeing since she’d most likely never have the opportunity again, and then she’d figure out where to begin her search.
Starting off at a casual stroll, Morgan made her way across the greenbelt of grass and around the cobblestone-paved perimeter, wondering at how open it was, how accessible even with the iron gates. She could walk right up and touch it. And she did, running her fingers over cracks and bumps and warm, roughened stone, over a small, faded patch of blue-and-black graffiti on the inner curve of a graceful Ionic column, missed by whoever was tasked with removing it. She moved on, noting with no small satisfaction that she was alone and unwatched—practically free—in a foreign country, something that even two months ago would have been unthinkable, a total impossibility.
She couldn’t help the wicked smile that curved her lips, wondering what he had done when he’d discovered her gone. She hoped it involved a stroke.
Around a turn where the outer façade abruptly gave way to what was left of the shorter, inner amphitheater walls, she paused to look around. Few tourists were near this section, only a group of teenagers sitting cross-legged perhaps fifty yards away in a semicircle under the boughs of a gnarled fir tree, smoking something sweet and acrid that didn’t smell like tobacco. One of them snorted and punched another in the shoulder, and they all fell into fits of giggling.
She doubted very much if they’d notice what she was about to do.
The strappy heels she kicked off into a corner, though she hated the thought of leaving her favorite pair of Chanel sandals out in the open like sitting ducks. Then with one final, furtive glance around, she wrapped her hands around the cold iron bars of the gate, looked up, and began to climb.
Caught between fury, disbelief, and that same odd, fleeting admiration he’d felt at the hotel when she’d—almost—made a porter regurgitate his lunch on him, Xander watched the lithe, confident figure of Morgan scale the outer façade of the Colosseum like a spider advancing up a wall.
There were hundreds of people within shouting distance, hundreds more speeding by through evening traffic on the boulevard just beyond. She was totally exposed. Only one of them would have to look up to see the pair of long, bare legs, the dark hair like a brushstroke down her back, the white blouse stark as daylight against the night.
What was she thinking? Was she thinking? If any of the lingering tourists snapped a photo of her—worse, a video, nightmare of nightmares—they’d both lose their heads.
He’d seen Ikati executed for far less egregious offenses than this.
Secrecy. Silence. Allegiance to the tribe. That was all there was, for all of them, since the beginning of time, all that kept them safe against exposure, against discovery.
Evidently Morgan was done with all three.
For the third time since he’d made her acquaintance less than eight hours ago, Xander was spun on a wheel of emotion, from anger to amusement to surprise and beyond, all of it fighting for dominance at once. He hadn’t felt this— much—in nearly twenty years, since he was sixteen, deep in the throes of an agony so profound he’d never been able to speak of it again.
He darted out from beneath the gloom of the row of shaped cypress where he’d been standing, ran with long, silent strides to a stretch of wall where no tourists lingered, and pressed his body full against it. He exhaled, took a step back, and melted into the warm, scratchy stone.
“Wow.”
