Ultimate Weapon (McClouds & Friends #6)(105)

Just like him.

Cristo. He’d always congratulated himself for having left his own past behind so completely, for letting it affect him so little. But in the days that he had spent with Tamar, the scab had been torn away, revealing a festering sore he had not even known was there.

He had never really felt the pain of it, but he felt it now. Oh, yes, he felt it now. For her sake, not for his own, but it hardly mattered.

It was all the same f*cking pain.

Sex with her was like nothing he’d even known. He was a master of technique, an artisan of pleasure, but Tamar revealed his technique for exactly what it was. Empty tricks, sleight of hand. Forgotten, evaporated in the blaze of white-hot, screaming intensity that she provoked in him.

The very thought of it stirred him. His dick was hard. Her long hair swirled and stung their faces as they sped into the headwind. Drops of rain stung, too. Her arms held his torso gingerly like she was afraid to touch him.

She leaned forward and called into his ear. “Where are we going?”

He shrugged. “How the f*ck should I know?” he shouted back, the wind whipping the words away from his mouth. “I am open to any brilliant suggestions you might have.”

That shut her up. Menacing clouds scudded heavily across the sky. It was starting to rain harder

They spotted the rusty metal sign at the same time, full of what appeared to be small bullet holes. It advertised an agriturismo, a farm that sold local foodstuffs, some of which also rented rooms. Le Cinque Querce. Five Oaks. 5.2 km. Tam pointed at the sign.

He nodded, and slewed the Vespino around onto a narrow dirt road that had a canopy of overhanging trees and shrubs above and a deep, thorn-choked ravine below.

They bumped and thudded along the road, following crooked hand-lettered signs each time it forked into various orchards until they turned onto what could be called a driveway only in the loosest sense of the word: a winding kilometer and a half of rocky dirt track through an orchard of olives dotted with the occasional fig, lemon, or orange tree.

The place itself was an ancient casale of a mottled salmon pink streaked with yellow and and gray from hundreds of years of weather. Around it sprawled a humble fattoria and a powerful aroma of animal shit. Sheep, goats, and chickens wandered at will, and the sweet smell of raindrops pattering down onto the dust tickled his nose. He smelled pine, the aromatic herbs that clung to the crumbling drywall that lined the road. The flagstoned space in front of the casale was crowded with agricultural equipment, puddled oil spots, rusted-out cars.

It did not look promising as a hotel.

They shot each other doubtful looks as a door creaked open. A woman came out, as wide as a refrigerator, with thick, swollen legs like posts. She was a figure from another century, with a stringy salt-and-pepper bun, moles on her cheeks sprouting tufts of coarse hair, a black ankle-length dress with a blood-smeared apron, a heavy crucifix. A dead chicken swung by the neck from her hand.

“Sì?” she asked, in tones of deep suspicion.

“Is this the Five Oaks Agriturismo?” Val glanced around, looking for the oaks. None were in evidence. Rain splattered down more heavily every second, plastering their jackets to their shoulders, their hair to their faces.

“Sì,” the woman said slowly. Her scowling gaze lingered on the handcuff dangling from his bloodied hand.

“Do you have a room for two available?” Val persisted.

The woman grunted, eyes sunk deep in squinting wrinkles. “I would have to clean it,” she informed them, chin thrust out. “It is years that no one sleeps there. You must wait until it is cleaned.”

Val glanced up at the driving rain. “How long would that take?”

She shrugged. “A few hours.”

Hours? God help them. “We don’t mind if it has not been cleaned,” he wheedled. “Please, Signora, do not trouble yourself.”

She grunted again, rolling her eyes, and jerked her bearded chin for them to follow her.

They circled around the casale. Luxuriant weeds grew around the flagstones, and the path was carpeted by drifts of slimy dead leaves and lined with rotting canvas bags of unidentified detritus. Around the back of the sparsely windowed structure was a chicken run, a fallow garden full of heaps of dead brush, and a warped, ancient wooden door that hung upon heavy, rusty hinges that looked medieval. The door was as high as Val’s shoulder.

The signora wiped chicken blood from her hand onto her apron and yanked. The small door opened with a shriek of rusty hinges and warped wood. A shower of splinters and flakes of ancient whitewash pattered to the ground. There were no locks, just latches, sliding bolts.

She preceded them into a vaulted room and opened two shutters. The smell of mildew was overwhelming. Tiny transparent scorpions, alarmed by the sudden influx of light, chased each other across the windowsills in a panic. A shutter hung askew on a broken hinge.

There was a sagging wrought iron bed in the corner, a four-poster with a lugubrious rendition of the Madonna Addolorata painted on the iron headboard. The Madonna’s face was pallid and miserable, shadowy bags under her weeping eyes. She was swathed in black lace as she gazed into the sky and mourned her crucified son. The other three walls of the room were lined with a bizarre assortment of mismatched marble-topped dressers and termite-gnawed credenzas. There was an ancient, rickety table, two mismatched wooden folding chairs. No TV or phone, of course. Val pulled out Hegel’s cell. No coverage.