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