“Don’t do it!” Marcus yelled.
Ferrol backed toward his bathroom door.
The firing stopped outside.
Marcus could hear helicopters landing.
Ferrol said, “My parents died in this room, many years ago. They died by fire. Since then, I’ve had a mortal fear of fire and a mortal fear of death. I thought I could cheat death. I was wrong.”
“Put the lighter down.”
“My notebooks,” Ferrol said. “At least my work will live forever.”
He flicked the lighter and erupted in a fireball.
As he fell backwards into the bathroom, Marcus heard him screaming.
“The beast! The beast! The final beast!”
Marcus dropped the shotgun and tried to pull the bedspread off to suffocate the flames.
But, as he was tugging at the heavy fabric, he felt an explosion go off inside his head.
*
At a great distance, Marcus heard a familiar voice.
“My friend, can you hear me? Please, can you hear me?”
Opening his unbandaged eye felt like the hardest thing he had ever done. It wanted to stay shut, to keep him cloaked in darkness. He was lying on a rug. His bandage was soaked through. Blood was pouring down his shoulder.
“Roberto,” he said, weakly. “Did I tell you I was here?”
“Yes, of course. If only I could have arrived sooner. My God, look at you.”
“Give me a cigarette.”
Lumaga helped him sit against the bed. He lit a cigarette for him and put it between his lips.
A Spanish GEO officer emerged from the bathroom and gave Lumaga a thumbs-down.
“That’s Ferrol Gaytan in there?” Lumaga asked.
Marcus didn’t answer. He closed his eye and in the darkness, he saw someone standing in the distance.
“Marcus, please stay with me!” Lumaga said.
The cigarette dropped away. “The girls are in the basement,” he whispered. “It’s all in the notebooks.”
Something curious was happening. As it got darker and darker, the figure standing there got brighter and brighter until Marcus recognized her.
“Alice,” he said in a voice that Lumaga couldn’t hear. “I wasn’t there for you, but you’re here for me.”
40
Six months later
“Come, let me see you!” Dr. Spara exclaimed. “How are my two favorite patients?”
Victoria and Elizabeth bounced into the doctor’s examination room at the Bambino Gesù Hospital and gave their Bruno Bear the hugs he demanded. Leonora and Armando Cutrì followed them in and shook Spara’s hand.
“So, we’re coming up on their six-month anniversary of their bone marrow transplants,” Spara said. “How have they been?”
“Full of energy,” Armando said.
“Their appetites are very good too,” Leonora said.
“How’s their Italian coming along?”
Elizabeth answered in Italian, “We speak like natives!”
“Like natives, eh?” Spara said.
“I’m an Italian girl!” Victoria exclaimed.
“Of course, you are,” Spara said in English. “Come on. Up on the scales. You know the drill. Height and weight.”
Spara did his measurements and wrote down the results.
“Tell us, Professore,” Armando said.
“I’m pleased to say that each of them has grown two centimeters.”
Leonora began to weep.
“Why is Granny crying?” Victoria asked her sister.
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “Are you sad, Granny?”
“No, dearest ones, I’m not sad. Just give me a minute.”
Her husband followed her into the hall and gave her his pocket handkerchief.
“They’ll get old and they’ll die, like all men and beasts,” she said, drying her eyes. “At least they’re in God’s hands now, not the Devil’s.”
About the Author
GLENN COOPER is a Harvard-trained infectious diseases physician who became the CEO of a large public biotech company in Massachusetts. He sold his company in 2009, about the time that his first novel, Library of the Dead, was published. He has been a full-time writer ever since, with fourteen top-ten bestselling thrillers published in thirty translations, and eight million copies sold.
@GlennCooper www.glenncooperbooks.com
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