Читать книгу Whispering Bones - Rita Vetere - Страница 8

Chapter 3

Toronto, Canada

Present Day

Anna woke up with a start and sat up in bed. She’d had the dream again. It always reared its head when she became stressed or anxious. Her pillow was wet, and she knew she’d been crying in her sleep. Anna waited until the nightmare and the unsettled feeling it always left behind dissipated.

The last time she’d been plagued by the dream was about a year ago, and she felt sure her visit to the cemetery earlier that day had triggered it. The dream was always the same. In it, she stood alone in a forest late at night. In the sky above her, a pale full moon shone blue-white light. The sound of a crying infant reached her and she turned to see a wooden cradle sitting on the forest floor, inside it a wailing baby. She moved toward the infant to comfort it, but her movements were sluggish, like walking under water. Before she reached it, something winged and sinister swooped down from out of the darkness, snatching the crying infant from its cradle and carrying it away into the black night.

In her apartment high atop the glass tower she called home, Anna turned and gazed out the wall of windows at the glowing orb of a moon in the velvety sky, unformed worry nagging at her. Just a case of nerves, she told herself. That’s why the dream had returned. Tomorrow evening she’d be on a plane bound for Venice, ready to start the most important project of her career.

She threw back the covers and padded to the adjoining bathroom, retrieved a sleeping pill from the medicine cabinet and downed it. Anna studied her reflection in the mirror over the sink, relieved to see the dark blue eyes staring back at her did not reflect the tiredness she felt. Her skin, although a bit pale, remained unlined and the chestnut-colored curls falling past her shoulders showed no hint of grey. High cheekbones, an aquiline nose and generous lips lent her a decidedly Renaissance appearance. She could easily be mistaken for someone ten years younger. Thankfully, she had inherited her grandmother’s good genes. She would look presentable enough tomorrow, she decided.

Back in her bedroom, Anna paused at the window before returning to bed. In the distance, the water of Lake Ontario sparkled in the moonlight. Directly below her, a well-preserved collection of Victorian industrial architecture sprawled along cobblestone streets. She never tired of the view, even after five years of living here. The contemporary tower housing Anna’s condominium overlooked the carefully restored buildings of the old distillery, which had once produced some of the finest whiskey in the country. It was this blending of past and present which had attracted Anna to the prestigious address, and she’d never regretted it, even though the place had come with a price tag of close to a million dollars. She could afford it. She’d done well for herself over the past fifteen years at Linley.

A huge international architectural firm, Linley boasted design studios in London, Paris, Dubai, Rome, New York, Los Angeles and Toronto. Anna had jumped at the chance when she’d been offered a job at the Toronto location when it first opened. Since then, she’d worked her way up to becoming a Canadian leader in the architectural design field. Even so, it had come as a complete surprise to her when, after the company had been awarded the Venetian hotel contract, Anna had been requested by the CEO in London, England, to travel there for a meeting. Then, earlier this week, he’d informed her of his decision. She’d been chosen to head the design team for the project and was to fly to Venice to meet with Paolo Falcone, the head of the Italian firm financing the construction of the hotel.

Anna talked herself into returning to bed. If she didn’t get some sleep, she’d be a jet-lagged mess tomorrow, and she wanted to put her best foot forward when she met with Falcone. She closed her eyes and allowed the little white pill to do its job.

* * * *

The next morning, Anna woke to a dull throbbing at her temples, an after-effect of the sleeping pill, and the shadowy remnants of the dream. She got up to make coffee, determined to throw off the oppressive feeling hanging like a cloud over her head. No dark thoughts would be allowed to enter her mind on this day, she decided. Nor would she allow her grandmother’s anger the previous day, or the damned dream, to interfere with her enthusiasm for the new project.

After a quick shower, Anna dressed, then spent the next two hours packing for her overseas trip, making sure to include the Italian designer dresses she had acquired, as well as jeans and casual wear for site inspection. As an afterthought, she threw in a pair of sturdy boots, in case the ground conditions at the proposed site called for them.

At one o’clock, she locked up the condo and dragged her luggage to the elevator. Once downstairs, she informed the concierge she’d be gone for a couple of weeks, then continued on to the underground garage, placed her bags in the trunk of her car and headed to the office to put in some work before leaving for the airport.

Several hours later, finishing the last of the paperwork on her desk, she glanced up to see Ed Gromley standing in the doorway of her office.

“All set?”

“Pretty much. Just getting ready to leave.”

He smiled at her. “I’m very proud of you. I know you’re going to do a fantastic job.”

Ed was a kind man, probably the reason she had indulged in a brief affair with him last year—one which had proven disastrous. He’d wanted more from her and she’d not been able to give it. A year later, she still felt awkward around him.

“Thanks, Ed,” she said without meeting his eyes.

When she returned her attention to him, he was staring at her with a look of regret that had become all too familiar. But all he said was, “Knock ’em dead,” before he disappeared down the hall.

At six o’clock that evening, seated in an uncomfortable plastic chair at the boarding gate at Pearson International Airport waiting for her flight to be called, she took out her cellphone to call her grandmother to say goodbye. A nurse answered, telling Anna her grandmother had already been taken to the dining room for the evening meal.

“No. No message,” she said when the woman asked. “Just remind her that I’ll see her as soon as I’m back in town.”

Twenty minutes later, Anna took her window seat on the Air Canada flight to Rome. From there, she was booked on a connecting Alitalia flight to Marco Polo airport in Venice. As the plane taxied down the runway, she replayed her grandmother’s conversation of the previous day. Why hadn’t she wanted her to make the trip? If something happened to Nonna while she was gone, she would feel terrible. The idea made her uneasy all over again.