Chapter 52

I LOOK DOWN AT the keypad.

Alessandra Betti.

I hit Send, press the phone to my ear.

“What did you find out?”

“There are many prints on the ring, as would be expected, including yours and your fiancée’s. Prints from overseas military personnel are easily accessed. Grace’s prints were also in the system as your significant other since she had access to your base in Frankfurt.”

“What about the overcoat man? Were his on there?”

“We have no way of knowing. But there is a third set of prints that might interest you.”

My breathing grows shallow.

“I’m listening,” I say.

“The prints belong to a man. A man who belongs to Interpol.”

I look out onto the canal and a gondola carrying a handsome young couple under the bridge. As they pass beneath the bridge they look at one another and smile longingly, and kiss. I see Grace and me sitting in their place, and it makes my heart grow as heavy as a stone. Makes it bleed.

“Interpol. We’ve had no contact with someone from Interpol.”

“But apparently your fiancée has, Captain.”

I turn and eye the shiny black gondola now having passed under the Ponte Rialto. The gondolier is precariously perched on the impossibly narrow bow while the young lovers nestle together in their red velvet-covered seats, the Venice that surrounds them a romantic dream come true. In the back of my mind, I picture my Grace, lying at the bottom of the Grand Canal.

“That’s impossible,” I explain. “She was with me the entire time.”

“Let me ask you another question then,” she goes on. “Who, prior to yourself, was the last man to touch the ring?”

I shift my eyes from the gondola slowly fading into the distance to Giovanni who is standing on the edge of the canal bank, lighting a cigarette.

“I’ll call you back in a few minutes,” I say, cutting the connection.