Shepherd One

CHAPTER TWO

It sounded like a child crying at the edge of her peripheral hearing. The type of sound that was distant and hollow, as if coming from the end of a long tunnel or part of a dream. Or perhaps it was something real on the cusp of waking. Either way, Vittoria Pastore heard it.

Raising her head slightly off the pillow, the mother of three listened.

The room was dark. The shadows still. Outside, a breeze stirred, animating the branches of the trees just beyond the bedroom window.

But nothing sounded.

After laying her head down onto the pillow, she once again heard the softness of voices beyond the bedroom door. The clock on the nightstand read 3:32 a.m.

Vittoria quickly set herself onto her elbows and listened, her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness. To her left by the window stood the armoire, an exquisitely crafted antique intricately detailed with hand carvings of cherubs alighting above the doors. Directly in front of her sat its matching dresser, its mirror reflecting the image of a woman who appeared vaguely disoriented. As if to parallel her thoughts regarding the uncertainty of the moment, errant locks of hair shaped like question marks curled over the woman’s forehead, giving her a more inquisitive look. Is there somebody out there?

Her answer came swiftly. The voice that called out to her sounded distant and hushed. Immediately she sat upright with her hands fisted and planted against her breasts. “Chi è là?” Who’s there? Her voice was barely above a whisper.

Silence.

She cried out once again, this time louder and more forceful. “Chi è là?”

“Mama? La mama, viene qui.” Mama? Mama, come here.

Although the voice sounded distant, she could not mistake the quality of her fifteen-year-old son, or the tone that was in transition of a boy becoming a man. “Basilio, è tre trenta di mattina. Che cosa è esso?” Basilio, it’s three-thirty in the morning. What is it?

This time Basilio’s cry held urgency to it, like a bemoaning of terror. “Per favore, mama. Per favore!” Please, mama. Please!

Suddenly the door at the opposite end of the hallway slammed shut, the reverberation felt throughout the house.

“Basilio?”

Nothing.

“Basilio?”

Vittoria tossed the covers aside and was standing at her door in less than a half dozen strides. Beyond her door the hallway remained in shadows. “Basilio?” Vittoria homed in blindly in the darkness with her hand and found the switch. Manning the lever, she played the switch — up, down, up, down — but the lights never turned on.

Slowly, she edged her way toward the children’s rooms, her arms stretched outward like a somnambulist, feeling her way.

In the daylight the walls were pastel blue, too bright for the non-European appreciative eye. But it reminded her of the brightly painted chain of houses lining the Venetian canals, her home. However, in the darkness, the color made the walls appear ominously dark.

Feeling her way down the corridor with her fingers tracing the many watercolor prints lining the walls and knocking most off balance, she gave them a drunken tilt. Something she would fix later.

Her steps were soft and quiet, the floorboards beneath her feet as cold as the pooling shadows.

From beneath the door leading to the bedrooms, light fanned out from the crack underneath the door.

“Basilio?”

The door opened slowly in invitation, as full light spilled into the corridor.

“Mama?”

“Basilio, che cosa l'inferno voi sta facendo?” Basilio, what the hell are you doing?

When she opened the door, she found her children sitting along the couch with Basilio, who embraced his younger sisters into a huddled mass, the children crying.

Standing beside them with the point of his assault weapon leveled was a man of dark complexion, wearing military fatigues and a red-and-white keffiyeh. Attached to the barrel of the assault weapon was a suppressor that was long and thin and polished to a mirror finish.

Sitting in a chair opposite the couch with one leg crossed over the other and his hands and fingers tented before him as he rested his elbows on the armrests, sat a man who appeared marginally older than her fifteen-year-old son, who looked upon her with the calm and casualness of an old friend. He was slight of build with an unkempt beard. His eyes, dark and humorless, studied her for a long moment before he finally directed his hand to a nearby chair.

“Please,” he said, “no harm will come to the children if you do as I say. This I promise you.” The man’s voice was gentle and held a honeylike quality to his tone. His Italian was flawless. “Please.”

Vittoria pulled the fabric of her gown across her cleavage and took the seat as required. Her chin began to quiver gelatinously as she eyed the intruder. “What do you want?” she asked.

The man did not answer. He simply appraised her while bouncing the fingertips of his tented hands together in contemplation.

“We have money. You can have it all. Just take it and leave us alone.”

“This isn’t about money,” he said. “This is about… ideology.”

She stared at him as if he was a living cryptogram, her head slowly and studiously tilting to one side.

“But I need your help,” he added. “I need something only you can give me.”

She pulled the fabric of her gown tighter.

The young man nodded to his counterpart, who lowered the point of his weapon and withdrew a knife from a sheath attached to his thigh. In a deliberate motion he brought the point of the blade up and rested it beneath the underside of her chin, the action drawing a crimson bead from her slightly parted flesh, which caused her children to cry out for clemency.

“What I want from you,” the man stated in perfect Italian, “is something quite simple.” He then pointed to a mini-cam recorder sitting on a tripod across the room. The indicator light was in the ‘on’ mode, the camera running. “What I want you to do,” he said, “is to look into that camera and scream.” He then leaned forward and spoke to her in a tone laced with menace. “I said… scream.”

And that’s exactly what she did.