The Rome Prophecy

93

The blindfold is a big improvement on the hood.

Louisa is hugely relieved not to have her head covered and a rope tied around her neck.

It’s the kind of observation she never dreamt she’d make, but it’s true.

‘Relax. It’s okay,’ says a man holding her right elbow and helping her walk.

But it’s not okay.

Louisa still feels claustrophobic. Hidden claws are scratching at her lungs. She knows it’s only a matter of time before she has another fit if they don’t get this damned thing off her.

They make her climb several steps.

Steps that are steep and turn sharply in on themselves.

It’s a spiral staircase.

A never-ending one.

Her heart rate is alarmingly elevated, and it’s increasing all the stress she’s feeling.

‘You’re doing fine, it’s nearly over,’ says the voice at her side.

Louisa steps up, but there’s no step there. She stumbles. Unseen hands catch her. ‘You’re at the top. It’s okay.’

A door opens and she feels a rush of cold, wintry air.

Paradise.

The sensation of being outside stops her feeling panicky.

They make her walk for about ten seconds.

A car door clunks open.

‘Watch your head,’ says her new minder. ‘We’re putting you in a vehicle; you’re going to have to slide in.’

He grabs her by the back of her hair and manhandles her into the rear of the car.

Louisa can smell leather.

Leather and sweat.

She puts one down to the car’s upholstery and the other to the bulky body pressed against her.

Even without seeing him she knows he’s huge.

She knows it because her back-seat buddy has biceps like boulders and one keeps cracking the side of her head every time he shifts in his seat.

After several minutes of driving, a voice booms out from the front of the car. ‘You can take the blindfold off her now.’

The guy in the back seat squashes her as he fumbles around her head and unfastens it.

‘ Grazie.’ Louisa keeps her eyes closed to begin with. Even through her lids, the daylight is bright, and the tight binding has made her pupils and skin sore.

The first thing she sees is the back of the front passenger seat, then the windows on her side of the vehicle. They’re heavily tinted, the kind that are so dark that from the outside you can’t see in. She’s in some expensive four-by-four, but she can’t see any badging and can’t work out the model or make.

She turns to the man alongside her and tries to give him a friendly look. Year One psychology taught her that if kidnappers see their captives as human, they have more difficulty hurting them.

She’s not so sure it has any effect.

The guy’s every bit as big as she imagined, but surprisingly he’s rake thin and has arms like the hind legs of a bull. She realises that her inner prejudices equated the unwashed smell with someone fat.

‘Thanks for taking that off,’ she says, gradually widening her eyes to get them used to the light. ‘I thought I was going to pass out.’

‘Shut up!’ shouts the driver, without turning round. ‘Just sit there and shut the fuck up!’

Louisa takes the hint.

In the silence that follows, she works out that the short-tempered driver is Purple Cloak and the other two men in the car with her are the two Scarlet Cloaks she saw when they were holding her underground.

As they crawl over the cobbled and congested back streets, she takes strange comfort in the familiarity of seeing traffic jammed up all around her.

Are the doors centrally locked?

She thinks they probably are. It would be stupid if they weren’t.

And even if they weren’t, could she flip the handle and make a run for it without being grabbed by the half-bull, half-man creature sitting next to her?

She reckons not.

The most sobering thought is that if she tries and fails, she knows she won’t get another chance. They’ll watch her even more closely. Distrust her even more.

She has to be patient.

The chance will come.

She distracts herself with more traffic-watching. The road around her is now completely jammed. Car horns blare every other second. Drivers mouth madly at each other from their little vehicular goldfish bowls.

The traffic starts to move.

It’s like someone flicked a switch.

The car she’s in glides past a huge furniture van that’s now shoehorned down a side street and is no longer blocking the traffic.

They turn the corner and she instantly recognises where she is.

They’re approaching the Tiber.

Just minutes from the rendezvous site.