Day Of Confession

134

1:40 a.m.

Fifteen minutes later than the last time Danny had looked at his bedside clock. If he'd slept in those minutes, he didn't know. Harry had come in only a few moments earlier and gone to bed. It had been more than an hour since he'd gone out to check the battery chargers. Where he had been or what he had been doing in the meantime he didn't know, but he assumed he had been with Elena.

He had seen electricity building between them since Bellagio, and he knew that at some point it had to spark. It made little difference that she was a nun. Danny had known almost from the time she had come to care for him in Pescara that Elena was not the kind of woman who could continue to live the lifelong, cloistered, contemplative life required of her. That she should fall in love with his brother, of all people, was something he could never have foreseen under the wildest circumstances. And these – he grinned in the dark – were, far and away, the most turbulent circumstances that anyone could have ever foreseen. Turbulent and – the humor abruptly faded – terribly, terribly tragic. In his mind he saw the man with the gun on the bus to Assisi, felt again the explosion. Remembered the fire, the screaming, the confusion, the bus swinging circles. Remembered his reflex reaction of getting up, sticking as much of his identification as he could in the gunman's jacket. Abruptly that vision left, and he saw Marsciano through the wire mesh of the confessional, heard the pained sound of his voice. 'Bless me Father, for I have sinned…' Abruptly Danny turned away, put his head to his pillow, trying to drown out the rest of it. But he couldn't. He knew every word by heart.

Adrianna stirred at the sound and looked up. Eaton was getting out of the car, straightening his beige summer suit jacket, then walking off along the sidewalk toward where Scala was parked. She saw him sidestep the throw of a streetlight, all the while looking up at the dark loom of the apartment building partway down the street, then he disappeared in the darkness. Immediately her eyes went to the dull orange illumine of the dashboard clock and wondered how long she had been dozing.

2:17 A.M.

Now Eaton came back, sliding into the seat beside her.

'Scala still there?' she asked.

'Sitting in the car, smoking…'

'No lights on in the apartment building?'

'No lights.' Eaton looked over at her. 'Go back to sleep. You'll know when something happens.'

Adrianna smiled lightly. 'I used to think I loved you, James Eaton…'

'You loved the office, not the man…' Eaton looked back at the apartment building.

'The man, too, for a while.' Adrianna pulled her loose-fitting denim over-shirt around her, then curled up on the seat. For a long time she watched Eaton watch the building, then finally she drifted off.