“What are you doing?” she asked.
“This!” he said, pointing to her tattoo. “This!”
“What about it?”
He let go and showed her his phone. “Elizabeth drew this tonight. She saw it on the wrist of the Gray Woman.”
He saw fear. She opened her mouth to say something.
*
The door to Victoria and Elizabeth’s bedroom was open. Lumaga went in first, pistol up, ready to engage a threat. Odorico was a step behind.
She flipped the light switch.
Armando and Leonora Cutrì were duct-taped to chairs.
The girls’ beds were empty.
Lumaga ripped the tape off Armando’s mouth.
“The girls! They’ve been taken!” he cried.
*
“Look!” Carter shouted, and everyone snapped their necks back and stared into the night sky.
“Good God!” Mickey yelled.
Marcus’s lips parted, but he said nothing. He raised his good arm to protect his eyes.
Celeste looked up, started to flee, then ran back toward Marcus.
The rocky summit was suddenly bathed in a blinding, pure, white light.
24
The light came first.
The sound followed.
To Marcus, the noise wasn’t other-worldly. In the space of three or four seconds, he recognized the percussive whump, whump, whump.
“Helicopter!” was on the tip of his tongue, but he never got the word out.
A continuous deafening burst of automatic fire rained onto the mountain summit, splitting rocks and shredding flesh.
Later, when he described the moment to Roberto Lumaga, Marcus said he perceived the event in a kind of slow motion. What had taken no more than fifteen, maybe twenty seconds, played out over a much longer ribbon of time.
Carter was the first to be hit. Marcus turned toward him when he shouted, “Look!” A volley of lead tore through his torso, flaying his chest like a can opener and releasing puffs of goose down from his new blue jacket.
He saw their guide, Zanardi, tumbling off into the darkness.
And as he felt himself falling, he saw Mickey’s head disappearing in a red mist.
A weight was on top of him and he found it hard to breathe. His mouth filled with fabric.
Amidst ear-splitting gunfire, he heard low-pitched grunts. Or maybe he hadn’t heard them. Maybe he only felt vibrations.
Then, as suddenly as the aerial menace came, it was gone.
The summit was dark again.
Now, the only sound was the urgent call of nightjars, alarmed by the mechanical invader.
He used his good arm and shoulder to push the weight away from his face, and when there was a separation, he saw that the fabric in his mouth had been red.
He wriggled free until he was lying beside her.
“Celeste!”
When he ran his hands over her red jacket, his fingers got wet.
He heard a man shouting. It was Zanardi. “What in God’s name has happened!” he cried.
*
The Carabinieri command station at Torriglia was a tan building with banana-yellow shutters located on a sloping street near the center of the town. Roberto Lumaga arrived there the next morning on the first flight to Genoa.
Zanardi had raised the alarm after multiple attempts on a weak mobile phone signal, and when the police and emergency services finally arrived at the summit of Monte Prelà in the early hours of the morning, all they could do was pronounce Mickey, Colonel Carter, and Celeste dead. While he waited, Marcus shivered in his down jacket and numbly chain-smoked the rest of his pack. The first thing he requested from the rescuers was more cigarettes.
Zanardi remained at the headquarters until 6 a.m. and when he was finished giving his statement, he found Marcus and put his hands on his shoulders.
He said, “I apologize.”
“For what?” Marcus said. “You weren’t responsible for this.”
“It was my tour and it ended tragically. I should have refused to take you up the mountain in the middle of the night.”
“It wasn’t remotely your fault.”
Zanardi hung his head, unconvinced. “Who did this?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
Marcus reached for his wallet and pulled out all his euros.
“What are you doing?” Zanardi asked.
“Someone should pay you. Mickey Andreason can’t.”
“Put your money away,” the guide said. “I’m going home.”
*
Marcus seemed surprised when Lumaga showed his face.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” he said.
“And I wasn’t expecting this,” the policeman said. “All of them dead.”
“Except for me and our guide.”
“How did you survive?”
“I need a smoke,” Marcus said.
They went for a walk in the cloudy, warming air. The insouciance of the residents of the alpine town going about their routines clashed with Marcus’s boiling turmoil. He developed the shakes and Lumaga lit the cigarette for him.
“I also need a drink,” Marcus admitted.
“No problem.”
They were outside a restaurant. Lumaga tried the door and rapped on the glass.
“It’s closed,” Marcus said.
“Let’s see,” Lumaga replied.
The owner appeared and said through the door that he was closed.
Lumaga was in uniform. “Police business,” he said in Italian.
When the owner unlocked the door, Lumaga told him that this man needed a drink. The restaurateur eyed Marcus and asked if he was part of the terrible event on the mountain. Lumaga said he was and the man invited them in.
“Give him a whiskey,” Lumaga said, “and don’t worry about serving early.”
Sitting at a small table in the rear, Lumaga repeated his question.
Marcus drank half the glass and said, “It was Celeste. She fell on top of me. She took the bullets.”
“Was this a purposeful act?” Lumaga asked.
He finished the drink. The owner had been watching. He came with the bottle and refilled his glass.
“It might have been. I don’t know. She started to run away, but she came back. I’ll never know for sure. But she was part of it.”
“Part of what?”
Marcus showed him Leonora’s text and Elizabeth’s drawing.
“So what?” Lumaga asked.
“Celeste had the same tattoo on her wrist.”
“I don’t think I noticed it,” Lumaga said.
“You never slept with her.”
Lumaga paused and said, “Ah, I see.”
“I’m not proud of it. I was drunk and she was—how shall I put it—insistent.”
“It’s not my business,” Lumaga said, “but what are you saying? She lured you to the mountain to be shot?”
“I’m pretty sure
