Roscani looked at the object – or objects – intertwined in a single water-sodden mass of blood, flesh, and clothing pulled from the lake, discovered by the elderly owner of the villa on whose manicured grounds they now stood, while the tech-team people took photographs, made notes, interviewed the man who had come upon it.

Who could tell who they were, or had been? Except Roscani knew; so did Scala and Castelletti. They were the others – two, it looked like – who had been onboard the hydrofoil that brought Father Addison to Villa Lorenzi.

Damn, Roscani wanted a cigarette. Thought about bumming one from one of his detectives. Instead he pulled out a foil-wrapped chocolate biscuit from his jacket, unwrapped it and bit off a piece, then walked away. He had no idea how the men here were butchered, except that they were – butchered. And he would bet a year's cache of chocolate biscuits that it was the work of the man with the ice pick.

Moving to the water's edge, he stared out at the lake. He was missing something. Something of what had happened should be telling him something.

'Mother of God!' Roscani turned quickly and started back across the lawn toward the car. 'Let's go! Now!'

Immediately Scala and Castelletti left the tech crew to follow him.

Roscani was walking, half running as he reached the car. Getting in, he snatched the radio from the car's dashboard. 'This is Roscani. I want Edward Mooi taken into protective custody right now! We're on our way.'

An instant later Scala swung the car in a wide arc, spewing gravel onto the freshly cut lawn. Roscani was beside him. Castelletti in back. None said a word.

79

10:50 a.m.

Harry watched and listened as the sunlight faded to shadow and then darkness, and the wood-and-steel cage lowered, creaking, between the rock walls. Down there, somewhere, was Danny. Above was the dirt road through the trees and the farm truck they had left hidden in the brush near the edge of the wooded circle at the end of it.

One minute passed. Then two. Then three. The only sounds were the creak of the cage and the distant hum of the electric motor as the lift descended and they passed the occasional safety lamp mounted in the rock. With the coming and going of the light, Harry could see the quiet nuance of Elena's body under her habit, the strength of her neck held high above her shoulders, the soft sweep of her cheek punctuated by the angular bridge of her nose, a before unseen sparkle in her eyes. Then suddenly something shifted his attention away from Elena. It was an odor of mossy dampness. Pungent and vividly familiar. One he hadn't smelled in years.

Instantly he was transported to the afternoon of his thirteenth birthday. He was wandering alone in the woods after school – woods with the exact same mossy-wet smell that surrounded him now. Life had taken them all in a rush. In less than two years he and Danny had lost their sister and father to tragic accidents and seen their mother remarry and move them into a house of chaos with a distant husband and five other children. Birthdays, like other things personal, became lost in a tide of confusion, uncertainty, and readjustment.

And though he tried not to show it, Harry was as lost and dangling. Eldest son, older brother, he was expected to be the leader of the household. But of which household, when there were already two older boys in his adopted family who seemed to run everything?

The whole thing made him reticent, afraid to step in any direction for fear something else would happen and things would become even worse than they were. The result was that he quietly withdrew. With few friends in the school they had been transferred to, he kept more and more to his own company, reading mostly, or watching TV when someone else wasn't, or, more often, just wandering as he was now.

This day was especially difficult – his thirteenth birthday, the day he was officially a teenager and no longer a child. He knew there would be no celebration at home – he doubted the others even knew it was his birthday; the best he might get in recognition would be a present or two from his mother given to him with Danny there in her room, away from the others and just before bedtime. It was, he understood, that she was as lost herself, and simply afraid to single out her own children in a much larger household and in front of a husband she felt beholden to. Still, it made the celebration of his birth seem secretive and forbidden. As if he were hardly worth it, or, worse, as if he existed in name only. So the best he could do was wander in the woods and let the day pass, trying not to think about it.

That was – until he saw the rock.

Away from the trail and half hidden by brush, it caught his attention because something was written on it. Curious, he climbed over a log and approached it, pushing foliage-aside as he went. When he reached it, he saw what was written – large, clear words freshly scratched in chalk.

WHO I AM IS ME

Instinctively he looked around to see if the person who had written it was nearby and watching. But he saw no one. Turning back, he studied the words again. And the longer he looked, the more he became convinced they had been put there solely for him. For the rest of the day and into the night he thought about it. Finally, just before he went to bed, he wrote them down in his school notebook. And when he did, they became his alone. It was his 'Declaration of Independence'. And in that one, single, momentous instant, he realized he was free.

WHO I AM IS ME

Who he was and what he became were in his hands and no one else's. And he determined to keep it that way, promising himself never to have to rely on anyone else again.

And mostly it had worked.

Suddenly bright fluorescent light hit Harry in the face, jolting him from his memory. Immediately there was a solid bump as the cage touched the bottom of the shaft and stopped.

Looking up, he saw Elena staring at him.

'What is it?'

'You should know your brother is deathly thin. Don't be afraid when you see him…'

'All right…' Harry nodded, then reached forward and pulled the cage door open.

He followed her quickly down a series of narrow passageways lit on either side by ornate bronze sconces and marked on the floor by a line of green Athenian marble that showed the way. Above them, the ceiling heights rose and fell without warning, and more than once Harry had to hunch over just to get through.

Finally a course of short, abrupt turns brought them into what looked like a central corridor, long and wide, with benches cut into the ancient stone the length of it. Turning them left, Elena walked another twenty feet and stopped at a closed door. Knocking lightly, saying something in Italian, she pushed through.

Salvatore and Marta stood up suddenly as they entered. And then Harry saw him. Partway across the room. Asleep on a bed facing them. An IV strung from a rack above it. Gauze bandages covering part of his head and upper body. He was bearded like Harry. And, as Elena had warned, frightfully thin.

Danny.