The Florentine Cypher: Kate Benedict Paranormal Mystery #3 (The Kate Benedict Series)

by Carrie Bedford

  “Santini’s men,” Claire muttered. “The bastards.”

  “Who is this Santini?” Ethan asked.

  Between us, Claire and I stumbled through an abbreviated version of what had happened since I found the Della Pittura in Ethan’s safe on Friday night. I related my arrival in Florence, our trip to Venice and our visit to Luca Gardi.

  “We found a notebook of Dad’s, a list of artworks and a strange diagram. Then Kate and Leo were able to decipher the code for the instructions on how to open the vault,” Claire told him.

  Ethan’s eyes lit up for a second. “Leo? Is he here?”

  “No,” I said. “We did it by phone. He’s going to be so happy to hear that you’re okay. We were all worried, to put it mildly.”

  “But then we were kidnapped by Santini,” Claire said.

  “Good grief.” Ethan’s eyes were bright with tears. “I put you two in so much danger.”

  Claire pulled a tissue from a box on his bedside table and dabbed at his cheeks. “It’s not your fault. Besides, it’s over now. We’re all fine, apart from your poor knee.”

  “It’s not that bad.” He smiled, but I guessed he was being brave. “I wonder if Dad would mind very much if he knew we’d given up the book and the key?” he asked.

  “He wouldn’t mind,” I said. “He’d want you both to be safe.”

  “Which we are now, thank God,” Claire said.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she and Ethan still had auras.

  In the long silence that followed, I listened to the rain beating on the windows and a soft swell of thunder rolling over the city.

  “So you managed to escape from the villa in the country?” Ethan asked finally, returning to our recounting of the events of the past three days.

  “Actually, Dante rescued us.”

  “Well, I can’t wait to meet this Dante chappie. He seems to be quite the hero.”

  I wasn’t so sure.

  “Yes. That’s what he’s been working on today.” Claire’s eyes shone and her cheeks were flushed pink. “I should go thank him for everything he’s done.” She stroked Ethan’s hair back from his face. “I won’t be long, and then we’ll work out how to get you home to my flat. I can look after you until you’re well enough to go back to London.”

  London. My heart beat faster. I looked at my watch. It was later than I’d thought, almost six o clock. There were no flights out of Florence to London at this time of the day, but I’d go to my dad’s for the night and get an early morning flight. With any luck, I’d still make it to the Randall meeting. The prospect of spending an evening at home with Dad made me happy.

  As Claire stood and walked across the room, I looked from her to Ethan, my euphoria dissipating. They were both still in danger. I couldn’t understand it. Why weren’t they safe? Unless, for the first time since I’d started seeing auras, these were different. Could they signify something else?

  My thoughts were all tangled up. I couldn’t think straight. I’d never been wrong about auras before.

  Claire reached the door and opened it. Rocco stood there, braced as usual with his feet apart and his arms crossed across his broad chest.

  “Rocco, did you help rescue Ethan? Thank you so much.”

  Rocco smiled. “Prego.” You’re welcome.

  “I want to talk to Dante.” Claire stepped forward to pass him.

  “He’s on his way up. He said to wait here. He’s just giving you time to reunite.” It was by far the longest speech I’d ever heard from him.

  Claire turned back and sat on the bed with Ethan. I couldn’t settle, still grappling with the presence of those auras, so I paced around the room and then asked Ethan if there was a loo I could use. He directed me to the white-painted door the nurse had come through. It led to a small bathroom with a toilet, a sink and a stone-tiled shower with glass doors. A cluster of medicine bottles and a white box containing two clean syringes lay on the counter of the vanity. Poor Ethan must have been in a lot of pain. I picked up one of the bottles, labeled as hydrocodone, a powerful painkiller. Last year, I’d learned more about pharmaceuticals than I’d imagined possible, while helping to rescue my doctor friend Anita. When I put the bottle down on the counter, I noticed that the one next to it was for diazepam, a sedative. No wonder Ethan appeared so dazed and disoriented.

  I splashed water on my face. A quick glance at the mirror showed the ravages of sleepless nights and stress. Pale skin, dark circles under my eyes, and dry lips. My hair at least was clean and had dried into soft waves after my morning shower but I couldn’t wait to get into different clothes. I was still wearing what I’d put on at my father’s house two days ago.

  I dried my face and hands. While we waited for Dante, I’d call Dad. He’d come to get me. That thought lightened my step as I went back into the bedroom, where Ethan and Claire were talking quietly, holding hands. It would have been a touching scene if not for the auras that eddied over them.

  There was a light knock on the door, and then Dante walked in.

  Claire jumped to her feet. “You found Ethan, thank you!” she cried, throwing herself into Dante’s arms.

  He stroked her hair and then pushed her away gently. “Please. No thanks are needed. Sit down and we’ll talk.”

  “How? How did you rescue him?” Claire asked, but Dante looked at the nurse, who’d already closed her book. She stood when he spoke to her, asking her in fast Italian how Ethan was doing. She responded that he was improving and his knee was going to be fine.

  “Bene, bene.” Dante looked around as though seeking somewhere to sit.

  “Here,” I offered, standing up. “Take this chair.”

  I settled on the bed next to Claire, careful not to jostle Ethan’s leg.

  “I’m so glad it all worked as you planned.” Claire leaned towards Dante. “Did you give Santini the diagram? Did he get into the vault? Where did you find Ethan?”

  Dante crossed his legs and gazed up at the ceiling. He seemed pensive and preoccupied, not really listening. After a while, he looked over at us.

  “I have something to tell you.”

  Claire nodded, smiling. She held Ethan’s hand. I shifted around in an attempt to ease the pain in my back, but I was concerned that I’d hurt Ethan, so I got up and leaned against the wall instead. My skin prickled with worry. Claire and Ethan still had auras. Something wasn’t right. Had Dante somehow stolen Ethan from Santini without giving up the diagram? If so, then Santini wasn’t done with us. He’d be searching for us, looking for this wretched piece of paper that would give him access to the vault. I had a feeling Dante was about to deliver that bad news.

  Dante pulled his pristine white cuffs straight, looking directly into Claire’s eyes. “Let me explain exactly how this will go,” he said. “Ethan remains here. Claire, you and Kate will come with me. You’re going to help me open the vault.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Ethan’s head jerked up. I pushed away from the wall, adrenaline coursing through my body.

  “I don’t understand,” Claire said to Dante. “You want to open the vault?”

  “That’s correct. And you’ve found the code that explains how to find the lock, I believe.”

  How did Dante know that we had decoded the instructions? While my brain wrestled with that question, I asked him another, more obvious one.

  “But you don’t have the key,” I said. “How are you able to get into the vault without it?”

  “Santini has the key.”

  “You’re working with Santini?” Claire’s voice shook. She appeared to have gone into shock, her face as white as the blanket that covered Ethan, her eyes wide and round.

  Dante ignored her question. “Sit down, Kate, where I can see you.”

  That was all right with me. I’d guessed all along that Dante was involved but still, my knees had started to shake. I stumbled back to the bed, perched on the edge and grasped Ethan’s hand.

  “I don’t understand,” Clai
re said. “You told us earlier that you don’t believe in the vault or the Custodians. You said Santini was stupid to be so obsessed with it.”

  He shrugged. “There was a time when I thought that way, yes. But when the Della Pittura resurfaced, I decided to explore the possibility that the vault still held the Custodians’ treasure.”

  “But you rescued us.” Claire’s voice trembled.

  She stood up, rocking slightly on her feet. I was worried she might faint.

  “I didn’t rescue you,” Dante said. “I kidnapped you so that I’d have something to negotiate with. My brother may have the key, but you two have more information that he needs. And you were able to confirm that the diagram is an important component in the protection of the vault.”

  “Did you kidnap Ethan in England?” I asked. “It was never Santini?”

  “That’s right,” Dante said. “Ethan knew nothing of any use to me, but, as long as I had him, I could draw you both in. Unfortunately, my idiot crew lost you in Bologna, and Santini got to you before I did. Still, that was a minor hiccup. It all worked out in the end.”

  “But Santini told us he had Ethan,” I said. “Why would he lie about that?”

  “To make you do what he wanted, which was to give him the key. He was aware I had Ethan all along.”

  I remembered how Santini had looked confused for a moment when Claire asked him where he was keeping her brother. I should have picked up on that. “So are you collaborating with your brother or competing with him?” I asked.

  Dante shrugged. “Whatever it takes to gain access to the vault.”

  Dark shadows hung in the corners of the room. I heard rain tapping like fingernails on the window and the breathy whispering of the wind. Dante kept checking his watch, an expensive Swiss model that gleamed against his tanned wrist. “Enough chat. It’s time to go. Santini is on his way from Arezzo.”

  “We can’t help you,” I said. “We don’t know anything.”

  “I think you do. Claire said that you’d worked on deciphering the code with your brother. I checked into him. He’s a brilliant mathematician and he’s worked on cyphers. I am quite sure he solved the puzzle. And I’m equally sure that you lied to me when you claimed you hadn’t done it.”

  He stared at me with the gaze of a scientist examining a sample in a lab, curious but detached. “You don’t lie well. Your neck flushed red when you told me you hadn’t finished working on the code.”

  “We don’t know anything.”

  “That’s a shame.” He gestured to the nurse to come to him. “It would be too bad if Ethan were to die of an accidental overdose of opioids. Sadly, it happens all the time. People in acute pain swallow down the medication their doctor has provided and then take a little more to hurry things up, looking for relief.”

  The nurse looked at him with no expression on her face.

  “Ofelia, I think your patient needs something to ease the pain in his knee.”

  Without answering, she went into the bathroom.

  “Ok, stop,” I said. “We have the code. We’ll help you.”

  I realized that Santini hadn’t taken the time to look at our mobiles. If he had, he’d have found the decoded instructions in the text from Leo.

  “You were the one who stole the Della Pittura?” I asked. “You have it?”

  “Yes. However, without the provenance list, I didn’t have what I needed to decode the instructions. But you have the answer to that. My brother has the key, and I have the schematic. Between us, we can gain access to the vault. Santini and I will put aside our differences, for now at least. There’s a fortune at stake, which makes the effort worthwhile.”

  “How did you know about it?” Claire asked. “About the Della Pittura?”

  “Your father was an intelligent man. Not long after he found the book in your grandmother’s attic, he discovered the underlined keyword in the book and the cypher text on the provenance document. About four months ago, he came to Florence, asking questions. He was discreet but, still, information has a way of coming to me. That’s how I run my business, by listening. Who’s buying what, who’s selling. And so I heard about a reporter sniffing around for a story about a hidden vault.”

  “And you started seeing Claire after you heard about Simon’s investigation?” I asked. “All that crap about love and destiny was a complete fabrication?”

  He shrugged. Claire’s cheeks flamed red. “You’re disgusting,” she said.

  Dante shook his head. “I liked you, Claire. It wasn’t just about the vault.” His eyes rested on her, his lips pursed. He had a pained look on his face. Perhaps there was a beating heart behind that stony facade. But I wouldn’t count on it.

  When the nurse reappeared with a small brown bottle in her hand, Dante shook his head, so she put the bottle in her tunic pocket and went back to her place by the armoire. What kind of nurse would deliberately overdose a patient? But then, I reflected, what kind of cardinal would have gunslingers and kidnappers on his staff? We’d got mixed up with a very dangerous family.

  Claire had been in a kind of trance, but now she seemed to come out of it. She took a few steps towards Dante.

  “Did you kill my father?” she asked.

  “Not personally.”

  “But you had him killed. By Rocco or another of your hooligans. How did you manage it, Dante? On English soil, you managed to do something convincing enough to be written off as a tragic car accident?”

  Dante looked at his watch again, not hiding his impatience. “My men adjusted the brake cables so that they would fail gradually. Once he was driving at speed on the motorway, an accident was inevitable. The first time he had to decelerate behind a slower-moving vehicle…”

  “A slower-moving lorry,” Claire corrected him. Ethan’s hand squeezed mine hard.

  “A lorry, yes,” agreed Dante. “When he tried to slow down, the brakes failed and his car ran under the lorry.”

  “And he was decapitated,” finished Claire. “Do you know what it’s like to hear that from a policeman? You’re despicable, Dante.”

  She lashed out and slapped him on the face, leaving a vivid red imprint. He pushed her away, rubbing the inflamed skin on his cheek.

  “How could you?” she asked.

  Dante threw his hands up as though he’d had no choice but to kill Simon Hamilton, kidnap Ethan, and take Claire and me captive, too.

  Claire’s anger seemed to evaporate after she hit Dante, replaced by violent sobs that shook her body. She groped her way towards the bed and sat on the edge, her head down on her knees.

  “I assume your men also killed Ben?” I said.

  Dante nodded. “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, as they say. Refusing to let my man search the office and threatening to call the police.”

  Ethan looked bewildered; he was probably still too sedated to fully understand what was happening.

  “Look,” Dante said. “I’m not a monster. I only did what I had to do to stay one step ahead of my brother.”

  I shivered, wondering what constituted a monster in Dante’s world.

  A gust of wind rattled the window, throwing rain like pebbles against the glass. I clambered to my feet and walked towards the window, taking a couple of deep breaths on the way. Gradually, the shakiness in my legs subsided and my pulse rate settled. Claire was so emotionally tied up in this that she wouldn’t be able to think clearly. She’d just found out that her so-called boyfriend had killed her father, kidnapped her brother, and lied to her for months. Ethan was injured and sedated. I had to focus if we were to get out of this alive.

  There was no way Dante would release us. But we had to go along, to stop him from killing Ethan right now. I leaned against the windowsill, running through our options. As they were so limited, my thinking time should have been short, but my mind was spinning, throwing out threads of ideas that broke as soon as I grasped at them.

  Dante had no aura. The air over Claire and Ethan was moving fast. The message was c
lear enough. Dante was safe, Claire and Ethan weren’t.

  I remembered that Santini had an aura too. I didn’t care whether he died or not, but I pondered what it might mean. Did Dante plan to kill his brother too, once he had access to the treasure? And if that were the case, could we change the outcome by aligning ourselves with Santini? If the three of us ganged up on Dante, would we all survive this? But how would I convince Santini that he was in mortal danger?

  A bell tolled somewhere in the city. I turned around to see Dante looking at his watch. “Okay, enough,” he said. “It’s time. Kate and Claire will come with me. If you cooperate, you will all be released. If you don’t, Ethan will be killed. Are we clear? Ofelia, if you don’t hear from me by eight o clock, you know what to do.”

  “What?” demanded Claire. “What will she do?”

  “She’ll administer a lethal dose of sedatives to Ethan and she’ll disappear.”

  “We’ll tell you what you need to know,” Claire said. “You go to the vault and we’ll stay here with Ethan.”

  Dante smiled. “No, cara. I want you there, with Santini and me, to be sure you tell me the truth. How can I trust you not to give me the wrong code? No, you have to be present. You have to be vested in the successful opening of the vault. Once you’ve helped me achieve that, then you will be safe.”

  I didn’t believe that for a second. I calculated my chances of taking him down and decided they were zero. And Rocco was standing in the doorway with a gun in his hand. If we were to have any chance of escaping, it would be by outwitting Dante, not overpowering him.

  “There’s something I need to tell you before we go,” I said as he stood up and adjusted his blue silk tie.

  Dante sighed. “Yes?”

  “You’re going to die today.”

  “Very funny. Start moving. You too, Claire.”

  “No, really. I know when someone is going to die. An aura appears, which looks like air rippling over your head. You know how air trembles over hot sand, that sort of mirage effect? It’s like that. And when the aura moves fast, it means death is imminent. Your aura is racing. That’s a very bad sign.”