The Bone Chamber

“Done. Hitting the window as we speak.”

Sydney ran out the doors, grabbed two fistfuls of dress, yanking it up as she bounded down the steps. Heavy drops of rain hit her in the face. She glanced behind her, saw Carlo and Leonardo emerge through the doors. They hadn’t yet seen her, and she ducked behind a sedan. “I could use a little help here, guys. They’re on the steps, looking for me now.”

Griffin said, “Get her the hell out of there. Now.”

“I’m working on it.”

She heard Carlo shouting out to one of the valets, just as the sound of an engine revved. A moment later, a black Mercedes pulled up. “Hop in, darlin’,” Tex said, as he threw the door open.

“Stop them!” she heard Carlo shout.

She jumped in, closed the door as he took off. Wheels screeched across the paved stones. She buckled her seat belt. “This isn’t the Lancia we came in with.”

“I was a little pressed for time. And this was parked in front of it. Lucky for us, all the keys are conveniently left in the ignition.”

He sped toward the gates. Sydney glanced behind her, saw Carlo and Leonardo running toward the BMW that the valet was bringing around for them.

“We’re going through,” Tex said.

She turned, saw the gate, their car bearing down on it. Solid, massive. A guard stood front and center, his gun out, pointed at them. Tex stabbed the gas pedal. The guard jumped back, fired.

The driver’s window shattered. The Mercedes hit the heavy wrought-iron gate. Metal crunched. The gate flew off, tumbled over the car, bounced onto the roof, then landed behind them, taking a couple of torches with it.

Tex slowed into the turn, maybe a bit too much. She glanced back, saw the BMW gaining on them. The Mercedes swerved, and Sydney grabbed the dash. “Tex?” She looked over. Saw him slumped in his seat. “Tex?” she yelled.

He didn’t move. The car continued forward. The one working headlight lit up the curve in the road, the cliffs, and the lake below. She shook Tex’s arm. No response. “Tex!”

“What’s wrong?” Griff’s voice in her ear.

She grabbed the wheel as the car gained momentum. Rain splattered against the windshield. She steered into the curve. The back end started sliding. Just reach the trees.

Please, not over the cliff. Anywhere but the cliff…

15

Griffin stood on the cliff overlooking the sheer walls of the deep crater lake, the rain beating down on his coat. He brushed the water from his face, tried to keep his vision and senses clear as the comandante of the Nemi police questioned him in heavily accented English. “And what is it you are doing at Lake Nemi at such a late hour?”

“Writing an article on travel,” Griffin called out over the wind. He’d already given the officer a fake U.S. passport with the name Roger Reynolds, and apologized up front for not being able to speak a single word of Italian. “I saw the car go over the cliff and came up to see if I could do anything to assist.”

“A gracious effort,” the comandante replied. “But as you can see, there is nothing to be done.”

An answer Griffin would have to be content with. Not even Giustino or Marc, two high-ranking carabinieri, could step in, make their presence known at this time. Hence the delay in Griffin’s arrival. He’d had to leave his team down in Nemi before coming up to investigate. By the time he’d arrived, the local police were already on the scene, and everything he’d gleaned was from overheard conversations and eavesdropping on their radio traffic. Apparently Carlo Adami was being questioned back at his villa. Adami’s only admission was that a car was stolen and the guards shot at the driver. He was, however, allowing the police access to his grounds, small consolation, since the locals embraced Carlo, not realizing what he was truly involved in.

For now, all he could do was watch and wait. And hope Tex and Sydney were not lying at the bottom of the steep-cliffed volcanic lake.

There was no sign of the car, no sign of either of them. Just the report of a lone unidentified witness seeing the car with a single headlight go off the cliff.

“Signore?”

The comandante stood there in the driving rain, waiting for Griffin to acknowledge him. But Griffin couldn’t take his eyes off the lake below. Tex knew the dangers, knew what he was getting into when he’d come into the unit three years ago from the NSA. But they were wrong to assume that Sydney Fitzpatrick had the faintest idea, even if she was FBI. He should never have allowed her to assist.

“Signore Reynolds,” the comandante shouted over the wind. “You should step away. There is nothing you could have done. Nothing.”

He laid his hand on Griffin’s shoulder, tried to draw him away, but Griffin refused to move. “You’ll send down divers?”

“As soon as the storm abates. For now you should go back to your hotel. If you like, you may call our office in the morning.”

“Thank you.”

Griffin stood there several minutes more at the cliff’s edge, staring out over the lake, not even bothering to brush the rain from his face, wondering if Tex had left when ordered, perhaps this entire catastrophe could have been averted. “Damn you, Tex,” he whispered, his voice lost in the wind. “Why didn’t you listen?”

When there was no answer, he turned away, not giving up hope that his friend might still be alive, that Sydney might still be alive. The lights of the villa farther up the hill were visible, and he thought of Tex racing down the hill, recalled with acute clarity the panic he’d heard in Sydney’s voice as she cried out for Tex to respond. What the hell had happened up there?

Hell, he couldn’t even figure out what had happened here. Between the rain and the cops trampling everything in their haste to respond to something they thought was a simple car accident, there was nothing left of the crime scene. Just mud and grass, he thought, walking back to the van, pulling open the door, sliding in, his mind turning about Sydney’s panicked cry, again and again, trying to make sense of it.

There was no sense in death.

“Damn it, Tex,” he said, then slammed his hand on the top of his steering wheel. It didn’t lessen the pain, and knowing he still had a job to do, he turned the key in the ignition, switched on his headlights, and turned on the windshield wipers, listening to the rain beat down on the roof of the van. And that was when he saw the sparkle of something, like broken glass in the road in a place where no glass should be.

This was supposed to be a solo car accident.

He pulled forward slightly, and whatever he saw disappeared, so he shifted to park, engaged the emergency brake, then got out, kept his gaze fixed to the wet road. He walked up. His heart pounded in recognition.

A diamond bracelet. The one Sydney had been wearing when she’d dressed for the party. Here on the side of the road near the stand of bay trees. Not near the cliff where the car went over. Not anywhere it should have been, he thought, looking in both directions, before bending down, picking up the piece of jewelry from the pavement, noting the open clasp.

“Did you find something, signore?” the comandante called out, walking over.

Griffin palmed the bracelet, shook his head. “No,” he said, casually dropping it into his pocket. “I thought I had, but it was a bottle top.” He made a show of kicking at something, giving a shrug.

The comandante nodded, went back to his work, and Griffin looked at the area just off the side of the road, saw the water sluicing down, turning the shoulder into mud. He strode back to the van, then took off, driving down the hill, when what he really wanted to do was drive up to the villa and search it room by room.

Only when he was out of view of the police did he pull over, turn on the cab light, and examine the bracelet. He