David Morrell - Burnt Sienna

“What do you mean?”

“When Christina was thirty, she died in a fall from a hotel balcony in Rome. It seems Bellasar wasn’t enough for her. She had affairs with every man who came along. One night in Rome, Bellasar broke into her room, found her with a woman, and couldn’t keep control any longer. They fought. It ended when she went over the balcony.”

“He murdered his sister?” Malone tasted bile. “But according to this dossier, he wasn’t charged.”

“The only witness was the woman Bellasar found her with. Bellasar paid her off. The story was that Christina had been doing drugs, which was true, and that she’d toppled over the railing. The bribed witness died in a hit-and-run accident three months later.”

“And ever since, he’s been searching for someone to replace his sister.”

She knew she had to try to sleep. She couldn’t risk fatigue dulling her thoughts. More, her plan depended on Derek’s knowing she had slept.

At first, she pretended, merely closing her eyes and tilting her seat back. Furious ideas buzzed through her mind, interrupted by bursts of fear that she strained to repress. She had to make rage her solitary emotion. To steady herself, she concentrated on the drone of the jet’s engines. The darkness behind her closed eyes deepened.

A hand shook her roughly.

“Uh…”

“Wake up.” Potter shook her again.

Groggy, she blinked, adjusting her eyes to the harsh lights in the cabin, noting that outside it was dark.

“Get in the rest room.”

“What?”

“We’re about to land,” Potter said. “Get in the rest room. Stay there until I tell you to come out.”

As the jet descended, Sienna saw lights below and recognized the glitter of the Promenade des Anglais along Nice’s harbor.

“Damn it, do what I tell you.” Potter yanked her seat belt open and pulled her upright so hard, her teeth snapped together. He dragged her to the back and shoved her into the rest room.

As the door was slammed in her face, Sienna remembered a time when Derek would have killed Potter for treating her like that, but now Derek hadn’t even bothered to glance at the commotion.

Hearing the engines change pitch as the jet descended, she braced her hands against the rest room’s walls. Moments later, with the slightest of bumps, the jet landed. Whatever Derek had in mind, it wouldn’t be long now. She prayed that he wouldn’t keep demonstrating his contempt by staying away from her. Her plan depended on getting close enough to talk to him.

The harsh light in the rest room made her look as sick as she felt. The bruise on her jaw, from when Ramirez had punched her, was alarming. If there’s ever been a time when I need to look good, she warned herself, this is it. A sink drawer contained basic cosmetics. Hearing voices in the main cabin (probably immigration officials checking the plane), she hurriedly tried to make herself presentable. Trembling, she washed her face, removing the specks of dried blood. She did the best she could with her hair, applied powder to the bruise on her jaw, and used a little lipstick, her lower lip stinging when she put pressure on it.

The door was yanked open.

Potter glared. “Move.”

She didn’t give him time to repeat the order. Veering past him, she headed along the aisle. She did her best to hide her nervousness, to look as confident as if she were still in Derek’s good graces. But her determination faltered when she saw only bodyguards and not Derek waiting at the exit.

As she went down the steps toward the tarmac, she paid little attention to the sweet smell of the sea, even though she knew she should savor it – she might never experience it again. She couldn’t let anything distract her. The helicopter was already warming up. She had a sense of events moving terribly fast. With bodyguards on each side and in back of her, she was herded toward the open hatch, and in another sign of how much had changed, no one offered to help her in. She climbed up, hoping to get Derek to look at her. She failed, but she did manage to take the seat next to him before a bodyguard claimed it.

For a moment, she was afraid that Derek would change seats, but the bodyguards took the others, leaving only one in back, which Potter, his expression more dour, sat in. She fastened her safety harness. The hatch was closed. Aggravating the uneasy sinking feeling in her stomach, the helicopter took off.

Except for the muffled roar of the engines, the compartment was silent.

“I had a strange dream,” she said to Derek, not looking at him.

He stared ahead, giving no indication that he had heard.

She waited a moment, trying to seem confused. “I was falling.”

Again no response.

As the helicopter rose into the darkness of the hills, she concentrated to remember everything as vividly as she could. The locked room next to Derek’s bedroom. The portraits of his other wives. The photographs of Derek’s sister. The details in them. The scrapbook.

Derek’s sister had died on June 10.

A newspaper on the plane had been dated June 8.

“It wasn’t like the usual nightmare about falling,” she said. “Where everything’s dark and you don’t know where you’re falling. This was almost like it was really happening.”

The muffled rumble of the helicopter’s engines filled the silence. Her heart pounded so hard that she thought it would burst. She’d pushed what she needed to say as much as she dared. If Derek didn’t respond…

“Falling?” Derek’s voice was so subdued it took her a moment to realize that he’d spoken and to figure out the word.

“Onto a street.” She remembered the death certificate had said that Christina died at 3:00 A.M. “It was night. But I saw streetlights and the headlights of a car and lights in some windows. The reflection on the pavement rushed toward me. Then I hit, and other kinds of lights exploded in my head, and I woke up.”

“Falling,” Derek said.

“The pain when I hit was…” She lapsed into silence.

Thirty seconds.

A minute.

I failed, she thought.

“And where were you falling from?”

She didn’t answer.

“Was that not in the dream?” he asked.

“A railing.” She paused as if trying to come to terms with the detail. What she said next was full of puzzlement. “On a balcony.”

And now, at last, Derek turned and assessed her.

“A balcony,” he said.

“Of a hotel.” She shuddered and looked at him, searching his eyes, trying to establish emotional contact. “I could feel my insides rush up. It was like it was really happening.”

“A balcony.”

Lights glowed in a valley ahead.

The pilot identified himself to the compound. He got permission to come in.

The chopper descended.

“Someone called me Christina.”

Derek’s gaze was more intense.

“A man. I don’t understand. Why would I respond to someone calling me Christina?”

“I’ve had enough of this,” Derek said flatly.

“What do you mean?”

“Who told you about her?”

“I still don’t -”

“The CIA?”

“You know someone named Christina?” Sienna asked.

“There’s one way to end this. Describe the balcony.”

“I…”

“If the nightmare was so vivid, you ought to have seen what you fell from. You’ve made such a drama about this. Describe the balcony.”

Sienna hesitated. She was going to have to guess, but if she made the wrong choice… She remembered the photographs she had seen on the wall of the locked room. One of them had shown a teen-aged Christina on a balcony, leaning against an ornate metal railing, a view of St. Peter’s in the distance. Had the hotel been a favorite?