“It’s the old one.”

“That’s how they knew where you were,” Jim said. “They waited until you stopped at Hadrian’s Villa, then sent somebody to intercept you. By the time they got there, you had already moved to the restaurant, and they picked you up when you left there, right?”

“Right,” Stone agreed. “I guess I’d better start using the new SIM card in the new phone.”

“Don’t throw the old one away,” Jim said. “It might come in useful later.”

38

Hedy swam up through a fog into something like sunlight, coming from the glass-brick window. They had been feeding her well, she thought, but they had also been drugging her. They had taken away her bonds, too. She was free within the room’s space of about eight by eight feet. She figured it was a maid’s room, but it showed no signs of having been occupied; the paint was fresh, the furniture new. She heard the door open. The woman came into the room and set a tray down on the table next to the bed. “Mange,” she said.

Hedy got her feet over the side of the bed and looked at the tray. Two fried eggs, pancetta, orange juice, coffee. Which one had they been using to drug her? The eggs weren’t scrambled, and they looked untampered with. She stuck a finger in the orange juice and tasted it: a slight bitterness. That one. She took it into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet, then she went back, ate the eggs, bacon, and bread and drank the coffee. The caffeine made a difference.

How long did they take to come back for the tray? Sometimes until they brought lunch. Maybe she had some time. She retrieved the phone from under the mattress and switched it on: three percent left on the battery; it was going to go any minute. She tried calling Stone, but the call wouldn’t go through. She hit the text icon: Running out of juice. Leaving the phone on until it goes. Find me please! She set the phone on the windowsill for the best chance of getting a signal. She had no idea if he had received the earlier texts. After it sent, she went through and deleted all the texts she had sent and received.

The phone made a weak little noise. She picked it up and looked at it: the battery on-screen turned red, then the screen went dark. It was done.

From outside she began hearing clanging and banging noises. They went on all day, and she finally figured out that they were dismantling the construction elevator. She had been hearing banging and power tools inside the house for what seemed like days. Now all that was silent; all she heard was a vacuum cleaner, maybe two.