Opening his fur-collared coat, Sant’Angelo drew a chair to the bedside, and said, “Tell me what happened.”
“David didn’t tell you already?”
“Franco? He told me nothing. He called, said you were here, and hung up before I could ask him a thing. I thought he would be here, in fact.” A look crossed Ascanio’s face that worried the marquis. “What did he not want me to know?” Sant’Angelo said.
Ascanio pointed a finger at the water, and the marquis held the straw to his lips again. And then, haltingly, Ascanio told the story of their assault on the chateau, of their final battle with Linz, and the ensuing fire and destruction. But when he was done, the marquis was still awaiting the one piece of information Ascanio had seemed to scrupulously elide. He only hoped it was an effect of the anesthesia.
“La Medusa,” he prompted, his eyes actually flitting about the room. “Where is La Medusa?”
Ascanio looked away, and Sant’Angelo pulled his chair so close to the bed it was scraping the rail.
“Where is La Medusa?” he said, his voice taking on an edge of steel. “And where, for that matter, is David Franco?” He hardly needed a map anymore to put the two missing pieces together.
And that was when Ascanio told him that David had made off with it. “I was in no condition to chase after him,” Ascanio pleaded. “They dropped me at the hospital, and that girl drove them off like a bat out of Hell.”
Hell, Sant’Angelo thought, was where he’d send them, if he didn’t get back what belonged to him. Hadn’t he told this Franco everything he needed to know? Hadn’t he revealed to him secrets that he had told no other man? And this was how he was to be repaid?
“He’s on his way home,” Ascanio said. “To save that sister of his! I’m sure of it.”
Sant’Angelo was sure of it, too. He had foreseen something like this happening. It was why he’d had one of his minions trace the call David had made from his home, and cross-check the name of hospice patients in that immediate vicinity. David’s sister, he’d learned, was named Sarah Henderson, and she was in a place called Evanston, just outside Chicago. In spite of everything the marquis had done for him, it was clear to Sant’Angelo that David had more important priorities right now than returning his property to him. First, there was his sister. Not unexpected. And ultimately, there was his loyalty to the woman who had sent him on this mission to begin with.
Plainly, the librarian was not as innocent as he’d seemed. That, or he had had some iron injected into him by recent events. Either way, Sant’Angelo had to grudgingly admire the man’s nerve.
But the time had come for the marquis to put aside all subterfuge. At long last, he had done away with his nemesis at the chateau—that black stain on the soul of the world—and now it was time for him to reclaim what was due him—La Medusa, and his long-lost love in the bargain.
“Tomorrow,” Ascanio was saying. “I’ll be able to go after him tomorrow!” He actually tried to rise in the bed, as if he could throw off the traction wires holding the leg in place and the IV line connected to his arm.
The marquis put a hand on his shoulder and pressed him back against the pillows.
“Rest,” he said. “You’ve done well. I can take care of things now.” And then, jabbing his cane at the floor as if he were impaling an enemy with each strike, he stalked out of the room, nearly knocking over the nurse, who had returned to chase him out.
Not two hours later, he was on his own private plane, taking off, in the teeth of an oncoming storm, for the United States. His pilot had begged him to reconsider, but when the marquis offered the flight crew a ten-thousand-euro bonus, all complaints ceased and a new flight plan was entered that would take them over Halifax and around the worst of the weather.
The marquis sat back in his plush leather seat, staring out the porthole window and wondering just how far behind this Franco he was. He understood why the man was in such a hurry, but the marquis had never intended for La Medusa to slip from his grasp again. Nor had he intended for it to be used, willy-nilly, by whoever found it. Only he, the marquis, and his faithful servant Ascanio, were to possess its powerful secret. Look whose vile hands it had fallen into for decades.
No, the marquis would not rest until it was back in his own safekeeping, and this time for good.
The plane hit a patch of turbulence, and the pilot came on to apologize. “Sorry, sir, but we may have to divert another hundred miles or so north.”
To the marquis, it felt as if Nature itself were trying to thwart him.