Massarra turned off the wipers. “You said you had a friend you stayed with, in Chianti?” She glanced at Celeste in the back seat. “Giovanni? Perhaps I could drop you there?”
“It’s not a bad idea.” Celeste leaned forward. “Giovanni sent you a text, saying we could come back there, right?” she asked Jess. “If we needed help?”
Jess nodded. “But I haven’t talked to him. And how did…?” She looked at Celeste, flicked her chin in Massarra’s direction.
“You fell asleep, but Massarra and I talked for hours. I told her about where we stayed, about your father. If anyone has communication gear to reach Ben, I’d bet Giovanni has it. Short wave radios, all sorts of stuff in his office.”
Jess nodded. It did make sense.
“And…” Celeste whispered, beckoning Jess to lean closer. “…We don’t know what’s happening. Maybe this is just a small part of something larger. We need to get somewhere safe.”
Jess hadn’t thought of that. Was this the first salvo in the start of a global war?
Images of New York burning flashed through her mind. They had the radio on, but they could only find Italian stations. None of them, not even Massarra, spoke Italian well enough to decipher what the radio announcers screamed about. They kept the radio on anyway. After stopping at a gas station on the way out of Rome, they managed to piece together that there hadn’t been any other attacks. Not yet, anyway.
Massarra took the exit for Autostrade A1, the highway connecting Rome and Florence. The skies cleared, patches of blue showing through, and apartment blocks gave way to rolling hills.
“Giovanni’s castle withstood a thousand years of everything the world threw at it,” Celeste said to Jess in a low whisper. “Those Etruscan caves, I’ll bet people hid in there from earthquakes, eruptions…”
Jess stared at a village nestled on a mountaintop in the distance. High up. Protected.
“Okay,” Jess conceded, “let’s go back to Giovanni’s place.”
Celeste squeezed her shoulder. “Good.”
Even so, something about this felt wrong. The most important thing in any crisis was to collect information and find a safe place to regroup. Jess just lived through a horrific disaster, but that wasn’t it. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was, but something wasn’t right.
Then again, they didn’t have many options.
Massarra had probably saved their lives not once, but twice in the past twenty-four hours, and Castello Ruspoli was about as safe a place as she could imagine.
“Massarra, can you take us to the Castello?” Celeste asked, sitting back. “It’s 45 minutes off the A1, to the west.”
“Yes,” Massarra replied. “But I can’t stay. Do you know the way?”
“I know the way.”
Jess settled into her seat and watched the countryside slide by. The drive from Rome to Castello Ruspoli wasn’t far—not in North American terms, not even two hours. The change in scenery was dramatic; in twenty minutes they went from cityscape to the rolling, baked-earth hills of central Tuscany. Surreal. She watched a man in a tractor till his fields, as if that mattered anymore.
At Bettole they pulled off the main highway and wound their way through small towns. At open-air cafés, people stood in groups watching TVs, images of a wrecked Rome flashing as they passed. The setting sun lit high, thin clouds pink as Massarra pulled the car onto a dusty road with a sign for Castello Ruspoli. Climbing the zigzag road up the side of the hill, through the olive groves, at the top they followed a brick-walled alley to the main castle gates.
Massarra stopped the car at the entrance. It was closed. “This is it, yes?”
Staring out the windshield, Jess saw the first star of the night in the darkening sky—not a star, she realized, but Venus. But there were no lights in the castle. Strange.
“Yes, this is it.” Jess stepped out of the car, arranged her crutches, and swung to the small wooden entrance beside the massive iron portico gates. “Hello?” she called out.
“Are you sure you won’t stay the night?” Jess heard her mother ask Massarra.
“I will make sure you have somewhere to stay, but we need to go,” came Massarra’s quiet reply.
“It was nice to meet you again,” Celeste said to Massarra’s uncle as she got out.
Jess searched for a buzzer, a knocker. Nothing. She banged the door with her fist, as hard as she could. “Giovanni!” she yelled. “It’s Jess and Celeste.”
The place felt deserted.
Had something happened? Maybe Giovanni left for Florence. Massarra could drop them there, but the prospect of another city felt dangerous. And how or why would they look for Giovanni anyway? She liked being in the countryside. Open space. Calming her breathing, she listened. Crickets sang in the silence, their chirps echoing off the walls.
She turned to Massarra and Celeste. “I don’t think anyone is”—the door to the castle swung open—“here.”