He kissed her again, tucked the covers around her neck.
“Nicholas?” Her voice was only a whisper of a sound.
He leaned over her.
“Please, don’t leave me behind.”
And she was asleep in the next moment, her breathing steady. He touched the pulse in her throat, to reassure himself, he supposed. She was alive, and she would recover, and he thought about all the good works he’d be performing over his lifetime. It wasn’t even a partial payment for her life. He kissed her, straightened the covers, and stepped into the hall where the doctor was waiting. “Dr. Sienza, may I have a word?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’ve lost my mobile and I need to make a call.”
“Use mine.” She handed over a small cell phone. He looked at it with a smile.
“I know, it is a dinosaur. My son dropped my smartphone off the balcony last night and shattered the screen. At least this one still works.”
“It’s fine, thank you.”
“I will check on your wife—sorry, your partner—while you make your call.”
“She’s sleeping.”
“Ah. Good,” Dr. Sienza said, and went back to reviewing a chart.
He stepped away and dialed Adam’s mobile. Adam answered on the first ring, a little out of breath.
Nicholas said, “It’s me.”
“Where have you been? What happened to you? You’ve been offline for over an hour, we’ve been trying to call. Louisa and I were getting ready to find a plane to fly us to you—”
Nicholas managed to stem the tide. “Adam, I apologize. It’s a very long story. There’s been an accident and Mike was hurt. We’re at the hospital in Castiglione Del Lago. Have the Kohaths left yet?”
“No. No one’s been in or out since you disappeared off my radar. Wait, Mike’s hurt?”
“She’ll be okay. Is Kitsune’s tracker working?”
“It still hasn’t moved, and I’m wondering if the electromagnetic pulse affected it somehow. This long with no movement—stop stalling, tell me what happened.”
“We sort of flew out of a tunnel on a motorcycle high above Lake Trasimeno and she smacked her head on a log or something when she hit the water.”
Adam said, “Louisa, don’t pull the phone out of my hand! Okay, okay, I’m putting him on speaker.”
Nicholas filled in Adam and Louisa, but only the highlights.
When he’d finished, Louisa said, “Lots of nice detail at the beginning, then we have CliffsNotes. You’re obviously leaving out massive amounts of info, but we’ll get it out of you later. You promise Mike’s okay?”
“I do.”
Adam said, “What do you want us to do now? We’ve been on hold here, running numbers and watching satellite footage.”
“We need to talk more, but first I’ve got to go to the car. All my backups are in our go-bags in the boot. Oh, yes, Mike and I found Lilith Forrester-Clarke buried in the tunnel. We need to get back into that palazzo.”
“You’re not going in alone,” Louisa said flatly, and it wasn’t a question.
“Absolutely not. It’s time to get the cops involved. I’ll rustle up a couple from the police station across from the hospital. You two pray the locals aren’t on the Kohaths’ payroll. Give me a couple of hours, then I’ll check in again. S
till nothing from Ben in London or from Savich?”