Page 26 of Roguefinder

I took his arm. “I know a better place. And we need to get out of this crowd.”

He darted a look around. “Is something wrong?”

“No, but you’re very American.”

“So are you.”

I pitched my voice low as I steered him past a rental car desk. “I’ve had a century to work on it.”

Outside, I found a cab and gave the driver an address in Trieste-Salario in my passable Italian. Caleb and I settled into the backseat, and he sat with his elbow on the door and his chin in his hand, his eyes on the city through the rain-spotted window. Sleep still clung to him, and he rocked gently with the car’s movement as the driver weaved in and out of commuter traffic. The Autostrada gave way to surface streets in stages—concrete barriers first, then billboards, then apartment blocks stacked close enough to block the sky. Moments later, the tangle of Rome pressed us from every side.

Caleb roused quickly when the first ruins came into view.

Trieste-Salario was a quieter residential neighborhood northeast of the most touristy parts of the city. The streets were wide enough to let the buildings breathe, and a mix of bakeries and wine bars elbowed space between apartment blocks with laundry on the balconies. But we were still in Rome, and the ancient world marched alongside the modern.

The cab passed marble blocks and white columns chewed by time. The remains of a Roman bath nestled next to a shop with a sign that advertised pizza by the slice.

A section of the Aurelian Wall bordered the road, its weathered brick the color of rust. Umbrella pines stood behind it, flat canopies spread wide against the overcast sky like hands surrendering to the wind. Vines threaded through the mortar. Patches of newer brick marked where successive centuries had made their repairs, each generation’s work a slightly different shade so that the whole thing read like a geological cross-section of time.

Caleb sat up straight. “What is that?”

I couldn’t hold back my smile. “Part of the Aurelian Wall. Emperor Aurelian ordered its construction in the third century. In its original form, it ran about twelve miles around the city.”

The driver slowed for a light, and we idled alongside a section where the wall was a layer cake of medieval and Renaissance stone.

Caleb pressed closer to the glass. “It’s just sitting there, stuck between apartments and…” He squinted. “Is that a tattoo shop?”

I nodded even though he wasn’t looking at me. “The city does that. You turn a corner and stumble over fifteen hundred years of history. People like to say Rome fell, but it never really did. It just changed, expanding and contracting from one empire to another.”

He turned to me, the sleep in his eyes replaced with something boyish and unguarded. “Can we go see all this? For real, I mean. Not just drive past it.”

My heart flipped over. We’d done a little exploring in London, but not as much as I would have liked. And our time in France had been all about hiding. He’d never had a chance to sightsee like a proper tourist, his face sunburnt and his backpack loaded with kitschy souvenirs and crumpled maps.

He’d never wandered the Pantheon with a melting cup of gelato in his hand. Never gotten lost in Prati on a Sunday morning with the sound of church bells echoing off the buildings’ pale facades. Never seen the Tiber at dusk when the sky turned gold and made the city look like a painting.

“Of course,” I said, my voice gone soft.

Caleb smiled. He turned back to the window, and my heart did another flip as he pressed his fingertips to the glass.

The cab driver dropped us a half mile from the rental.

Caleb stood next to our bags and looked around, taking in the quiet street. It was still too early for lunch, although plenty of humans moved about. A woman arranged flowers in the doorway of a florist’s shop. Two elderly men played chess in front of a tabacchi, their game punctuated by a good-natured argument in rapid-fire Italian. A third man swept the steps and periodically paused his broom to offer commentary.

A crow dropped from the gray sky and landed on the terracotta ridge of a rooftop ahead of us. It settled and cocked its head, one eye trained on the departing cab. After a second, it shifted its beady black stare to us.

“We’re walking the rest of the way?” Caleb asked.

I looked at him. “Yes. I don’t want anyone connecting us to the house. And I like⁠—”

“To check for ambushes,” he finished with a wink. “I remember, Jesse.” He pulled out his phone and swiped his thumb over the screen.

My name on his lips did its usual thing. Across the street, the men continued arguing. The rhythmic sweep of the broom scraped the steps. When I turned back to the crow, it was gone.

Caleb made a disgusted sound, drawing my attention again. “The weather is supposed to be shit the rest of the week.” He tilted the screen toward me, where tiny thunderbolts pierced a parade of clouds.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. With a look at the chess players, I motioned for Caleb to follow me. We moved down the street, our suitcases clattering over the cobblestones, and I pressed the phone to my ear.

“Van der Meer.” Not that the caller needed identification. Only one person knew of the phone’s existence.