“You are worse than this Barrington!” Casselli shouted. He waved a hand. “Take her back to her room!”

“Do you still want us to kill her, Don Leonardo?” one of the men asked.

“No. Not yet! When I say!”

The men dragged Hedy away. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with!” she shouted back at him.

Casselli sank into a chair and mopped his brow. Perhaps she was right; maybe he didn’t know who he was dealing with.

First, this Barrington, now this Arthur, who was a friend of the Pope! Casselli didn’t even know the Pope! He wasn’t much of a Catholic, but he feared the Church. If he killed this girl, she would precede him into the next world, and the Church’s wrath would be waiting for him.

—

She’s confirmed her location,” Stone said. “She said she could almost see Capri.”

“Dante,” Jim Lugano said, “do we have enough on Casselli to raid this house on the cliff?”

“Having enough is not the problem,” Dante replied. “It would require nothing less than a full-scale military assault to take the place, and the girl could die in the middle of that. We would be moving out of the world of criminal justice and into the world of politics, where anything could happen. Who knows who Casselli has bought?”

“We’re just going to have to find another way,” Stone said.

45

Hedy was returned to her little room and locked in. But in the past minutes—the first time she had been let out of her prison—she had learned a few things. They were on the Amalfi Coast, she had been right about that. Now she had to start finding a way out of this room and then out of the house.

She found a wire coat hanger in her closet and began trying to shape part of it into a lock pick. She didn’t know much about picking locks, but this one was large and old-fashioned and used a large key. She worked on it until dinner came, and at the scraping of the key in the lock she jumped back onto the bed.

Lasagna this time; she ate it greedily, pouring the wine down the toilet, as usual. Maybe picking the lock had not been such a good idea. The woman who brought the food was a little smaller than she; maybe she could be overcome. She knew where the key was—in her apron pocket. She looked around for a weapon, should she need it. Nothing, only a rickety caned chair, very old. Nothing to tie the woman up with, either, and she would have to be gagged, too, and there was nothing for that, unless she started tearing up the sheets. She tried it, but without a cutting tool, she couldn’t make it work.