He heard a laugh of exultation—the shooter must have guessed how close he’d come—and he prayed that Olivia would be able to slip past them unnoticed.
The white lights of the boathouse were still visible, but that was all. Thick clouds covered the moon and stars.
David dropped the oars, pulled off his shoes, and shrugged his coat from his shoulders. And then he groped for his valise under the thwart. He couldn’t leave it behind, but he thanked God the original papers were still hidden away in Chicago.
The gunman shouted something that was plainly a taunt, and fired again. The bullet sizzled into the water by the bow.
David slung the valise over his shoulder, then bunched his coat on the seat and tucked his open cell phone on top of it, with just a hint of its light shining clear. Let them follow that, like a beacon, farther into the lake, he thought.
And then he slipped overboard.
The water was so frigid it took his breath away, but he put both hands on the stern of the rowboat and shoved it off as hard as he could. In seconds, it was invisible even to him.
Then, using the breast stroke to minimize any splashing, he started back toward the dock. His clothes, plastered to his body, were heavier and more cumbersome than he’d imagined, and the valise acted like a drag.
But when he heard the other boat come near, he stopped swimming altogether and let himself drift on the water. All he could make out was the shape of the boat, a black hulk moving through the black water, and the silhouette of a man hunched in the bow, who was talking—and no doubt issuing directions—to the rower whose back was turned. David was no more than five or six feet away, so near that the blade of one paddle almost smacked him as he ducked his head below the water. He felt the ripple of the boat’s wake lapping the surface above him.
But once it had gone by, he raised his head, clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering, and started swimming in earnest, eager to get his blood pumping again.
But where was Olivia? He didn’t dare call out to her, and he heard nothing at all.
He swam on, the lights of the boathouse glimmering fuzzy and white behind the lenses of his soaking glasses. What he wouldn’t give right now for just a sliver of moonlight on the water, enough to give him a glimpse of Olivia moving safely toward the shore.
In the distance, he heard the phht of the silencer again, followed by the pop of something exploding—the end of his cell phone—and then a cry of joy. The shot must have caught the thing dead center and blown it to smithereens. They probably thought at least one of them, whoever had been holding it, was injured or dead.
He kept swimming, though it was increasingly hard to tell if his feet and legs were cooperating. His whole body was starting to go numb, and the valise felt like a millstone.
He took deeper breaths, cutting through the water as fast as he could, trying to keep himself in line with the lights of the boathouse while searching desperately for some sign of Olivia.
The bulky outlines of the tethered boats eventually loomed into sight, and he moved toward them, his arms as heavy as lead weights. But when he finally threw an arm over the side of one of them, he felt an icy hand clasp his own and pull him up.
“Come on, David! Come on!”
He looked up and saw Olivia’s face, her dark eyes shining in what looked like a frame of frozen hair. Gasping, he hauled himself into the boat, banging his shins and elbows on the thwarts, but his limbs, blissfully, were too cold to feel the pain.
He hugged Olivia’s shivering body to his own, but neither one of them had any heat to share.
“They’ll be back,” David said. “We have to get going.”
He stood up shakily, then clambered after Olivia onto the dock. There was only one place he could think of going before they froze to death. Clasping hands, they ran back up the hill, down the path, and out of the park.
A car rolled by, with a couple of kids who saw them emerge onto the street, drenched and shoeless, and they shouted something derisory as they drove past.
But down the block, David saw that the lights were on in the house of the Marquis di Sant’Angelo.
“It’s just a little farther,” David said, and Olivia immediately understood.
On the doorstep, clutching each other against the cold, David felt the security camera taking them in, and he shouted, “You have to help us!” into the intercom.
The door flew open this time, and the servant stood back to let them in. They stumbled, still dripping and nearly frozen, into the marble foyer, where a man in elegant dinner clothes, his black tie hanging loose at his throat, was standing at the top of the stairs.
“Ascanio,” he barked, “get some blankets!”
David nodded his thanks, his head quivering from the cold, his arms thrown around Olivia.
“I’m Sant’Angelo,” the man said, leaning hard on an ebony walking stick as he descended the stairs. “You’re safe here.”
But David didn’t know what safe felt like anymore.
Chapter 31