The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(19)

“Nana . . .”

—

“I’m sorry,” Mia said, as she shivered beneath a blanket.

She huddled with her grandmother in the basement, stashed against the wall between old moving boxes. A dusty kerosene lamp burned at their feet, casting jittery shadows on the stone. The electricity had been out for five hours now. The Farisi men went out to investigate the clamor four hours ago. They had yet to come back.

Mia’s eyes glistened in the flame light. “I should have never gotten so worked up about those stupid girls at the mall.”

Vera squeezed her arm. Though the woman put on a brave face, Mia could hear the strain in her voice. Every instinct she had was screaming that her son and grandsons were dead.

She stroked Mia’s arm. “I know, peanut. I’m just sorry you never had proper advice on these matters. You could have used a mother in your life. Or a sister.”

Mia rested her head on her grandmother’s shoulder. “You’re all the mother and sister I need.”

Vera bit her lip and looked away. She hadn’t prayed since September of 1943, when Allied tanks rolled into Salerno. Lord only knew what was happening out there now. She held Mia tight and sent her broken thoughts upward. Please, God. Don’t let her die. If I should fall, please bring her to someone who’ll care for her.

A loud creak from upstairs turned Mia’s gaze. “Dad?”

She jumped to her feet. Vera clambered after her. “Mia, wait . . .”

“Dad, is that you?”

Halfway up the steps, she felt a strong vibration on her wrist. Mia barely had a chance to notice the glimmering bracelet before a bright yellow haze enveloped her, surrounding her in a near-perfect sphere.

Vera threw off her blanket. “Mia!”

“Nana, what’s happening?”

The walls trembled with violent force. The piercing creaks of metal and wood filtered down through the ceiling. The entire house above them seemed to be screaming. The whole world was coming apart.

—

The candles in the grave began to sputter. Mia clenched her jaw and kept digging, her throat whistling with each desperate gulp of air. She couldn’t shut out the image of her grandmother, helplessly clawing at Mia’s egg of light as she cried puffs of steam. Winter breath in the third week of July . . .

“No . . .”

. . . in a town ten miles north of the Mexican border.

“No!”

And then something terrible happened. The house, the roof, the heavens themselves, came down on top of them. In a span of a scream, everything Mia knew disappeared in a sea of white. Gone.

“NANA!”

With a final shove, Mia fell back against the earth. The plank pierced the ground and toppled over. Mia caught a soft new glow across the ground. She looked up.

Sunlight glimmered down through a thin slit in the ceiling. Little blades of grass flapped around the edges. Beyond that, a hint of blue sky and clouds.

As she breathed in the air of a whole new world, Mia Farisi curled into a ball and cried.

—

She had no idea how long she stayed there in the dirt. Minutes. Hours. A lifetime. At some point in her stupor, she caught a quick shadow above her. A fat black nose traveled up and down the slit, sniffing excitedly. Yellow paws tore at the hole. Soon the retriever was yanked away. Now Mia looked up into the wide blue eyes of its owner.

“Sweet Jesus . . .”

After twelve minutes of digging, the hole was wide enough to lower a stepladder. Mia emerged into the side yard of a two-story home in some posh but foreign suburb. She’d been buried so close to the house that a few lateral scrapes would have revealed the foundation.

Her rescuer, a thin and elderly man in a faded maroon sweat suit, stared at Mia like she’d fallen from space. He scratched his cheek in bewilderment.

“This is crazy. I’m thinking I should call someone but . . . Christ, it’s my yard. What will they think?”

Mia didn’t reply. Her tears had made streaks of clean on an otherwise dirt-caked face, but now her gaze was dry and distant.

“I can’t even fathom what you’ve been through, girl. And I want to help you. But before I call the police, I need to know that you can talk. You have to tell them I didn’t do this to you.”

The retriever ran barking to the front lawn and returned moments later with a stout young woman in a pea-green uniform. She consulted a small device in her hand, then looked to Mia.

The old man waved his palms. “I found her like this! I didn’t do this!”

“Ease it, gramper. You’re not in any trouble.”

The woman kneeled down by Mia, brushing the dirty brown hair from her face. She studied the bracelet on Mia’s wrist.

“You poor thing. You must’ve been through hell and back. What’s your name, kitten?”

She continued to stare ahead, speaking in a tiny doll’s voice. “Mia.”

“Mia, my name’s Erin Salgado. I work for Salgado Security. We’ve been hired to find you and bring you to safety. You’re going to be okay.”

The old man furrowed his brow. “You were hired to find her but you didn’t know her name?”

Erin shot him a frosty glare. “If you’re doubting, call the poes. I fig they’ll have more questions for you than for me.”

“Look, hey, I was just asking.”