“I don’t think we should be reopening this subject,” Stephanie said. “Not now, and maybe not ever.”
“I apologized for what I said back at the restaurant. All I’m saying now is that I would rather be groped than beaten up. I’m not saying that being groped isn’t unpleasant; it’s just easier to take than being beaten and physically injured.”
“What is this, a contest?” Stephanie questioned derisively. “Don’t answer that! I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Daniel was about to respond when he gasped, stopped in his tracks, and tightened his grip on Stephanie’s hand. Stephanie had been looking down at the ground so she could navigate over a large hunk of stone when Daniel’s response shocked her into raising her eyes. When she did, she gasped as well.
A hulking figure had leaped into their path, holding a huge handgun and pointing it at them with an outstretched arm. Daniel, more than Stephanie, was aware of a red dot just beneath the gun’s barrel.
Neither Daniel nor Stephanie could move, as the man slowly approached. He had a sneering expression on his broad, flat-featured face, which Daniel recognized with a shudder. Gaetano came within six feet of the stunned and immobile couple. At that point, it was abundantly clear that the gun was aimed directly at Daniel’s forehead.
“You made me come back, asshole,” Gaetano growled. “A bad decision! The Castigliano brothers are very disappointed you did not return to Boston to safeguard their loan. I thought you had gotten my message, but apparently not, and you made me look bad. So goodbye.”
The sound of the shot was loud in the humid stillness of the night. Gaetano’s arm holding the gun fell to his side while Daniel staggered backward, dragging Stephanie with him. Stephanie screamed as the body fell heavily, facedown, arms out to the sides. There were a few muscular twitches, but then all was still. A large exit wound on the back of his head oozed blood and gray matter.
twenty-two
9:48 P.M., Monday, March 11, 2002
For the duration of several heartbeats, Daniel and Stephanie did not budge. When they did move, it was only to allow their eyes to engage each other after having been transfixed on the prone body sprawled at their feet. In their befuddlement, they did not even breathe, each vainly hoping the other would explain what they had just witnessed. With their mouths agape, their faces reflected a mixture of fear, horror, and confusion, but fear quickly won out. Without saying a word and unsure of who was leading whom, they fled by scrambling over the low wall to their left and ran headlong back the way they had come in the direction of the hotel.
At first, their flight was relatively controlled, thanks to the illumination provided by the ground-level display lights directed at the cloister. But as soon as they passed into the darkness, they encountered trouble. With their eyes now accustomed to the cloister’s lights, they were like blind people rushing across an uneven, obstacle-filled landscape. Daniel was the first to trip over a low bush and fall. Stephanie helped him up but then fell herself. Both suffered minor abrasions, which they didn’t even feel.
Marshaling their willpower, they forced themselves in their blindness to walk to avoid further falls, even though their terrified brains were screaming at them to run. Within minutes, they reached steps leading down to the road. By then, their eyes were beginning to discern details in the moonlight, and by seeing the terrain, they could up their pace.
“Which way?” Stephanie demanded in a breathless whisper when they gained the pavement of the road.
“Let’s stick to the route we know,” Daniel hurriedly whispered back.
Hand in hand, they fled across the road and descended the first of the garden’s many flights of hand-laid stone steps as rapidly as their slip-on dress shoes would allow. The steps’ unevenness contributed to their difficulties, although on the intervening patches of grass, they sprinted full-tilt. The farther away from the cloister they got, the darker it became, but their eyes progressively adapted, and the moonlight was more than enough to help them avoid careening into any of the statuary.
After the third flight of stairs, their exhaustion slowed them to a jog. Daniel was more out of breath than Stephanie, and when they finally entered the sphere of illumination coming from the pool and what they felt was relative safety, he had to stop. Stooped over, he put his hands on his knees and panted. For a moment, he couldn’t even talk.
With her own chest heaving, Stephanie reluctantly glanced back the way they had come. After the shock of what had happened, her imagination had them pursued by all manner of demons, but the moonlit view of the garden was as idyllic and peaceful as it had been earlier. Somewhat relieved, she turned her attention back to Daniel. “Are you okay?” she managed between breaths.
Daniel nodded. He still couldn’t speak.
“Let’s get into the hotel,” she added.
Daniel nodded again. He straightened up, and after a brief glance of his own back the way they had come, he took Stephanie’s outstretched hand.
Permitting themselves to walk, albeit quickly, they skirted the pool and started up the flight of limestone stairs that led up to the Baroque balustrade.
“Was that the same man who assaulted you in the clothing store?” Stephanie asked. She was still breathing heavily.
“Yes!” Daniel was able to answer.
They passed the villas and entered the candlelit, deserted reception area of the spa, which also functioned as a pass-through into the hotel from the pool complex. After the shocking carnage they’d witnessed up in the ruined cloister, and the subsequent terror it had engendered, the spa’s simple Asian aura, cleanliness, and utter serenity seemed otherworldly to the point of being schizophrenic. By the time they entered the Courtyard Terrace restaurant filled with smartly dressed diners, live music, and tuxedo-clad waiters, they felt even more discombobulated. Without speaking to anyone or each other, they passed into the hotel proper.
In the high-arched reception area, Stephanie pulled Daniel to a stop. To their right was the living room, with guests carrying on quiet conversations punctuated with muted laughter. To their left was the open entrance of the hotel, leading out to the porte cochere. Liveried doormen stood at the ready. Ahead were the individual reception desks, only one of which was occupied. Above, tropical fans turned lazily.
“Whom should we talk to?” Stephanie questioned.
“I don’t know. Let me think!”
“What about the night manager?”
Before Daniel could respond, one of the doormen approached. “Excuse me,” he said to Stephanie. “Are you all right?”
“I think so,” Stephanie responded.
The doorman pointed. “Do you know your left leg is bleeding?”
Stephanie glanced down and for the first time realized how bedraggled she looked. The fall she had taken in the darkness had soiled her dress and torn its hem. Her thigh-high hose were in worse shape, particularly below her left knee, where they were shredded. Runs extended all the way down to her ankle, along with a rivulet of blood descending from her knee. She then noticed that her right palm was also abraded, with tiny pieces of broken shell still clinging.
Daniel had not fared much better. There was a tear in his trousers just below the right knee, with an associated bloodstain, and his jacket was peppered with broken shell fragments and had all but lost its right side pocket.
“It’s nothing,” Stephanie assured the doorman. “I wasn’t even aware I’d hurt myself. We tripped out by the pool.”
“We have a golf cart right outside,” the doorman said. “Can I give you a ride to your room?”
“I think we’ll be fine,” Daniel said. “But thank you for your concern.” He took Stephanie’s arm and urged her ahead, toward the door that would take them back to their room.