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“It’s gonna be alright,” I promised. “I just have to check it out.”
I crawled across the floor into the den and immediately saw what I was looking for.
A pane in one of the windows had been shot out. Broken glass littered the floor.
Idiot, I thought.
Whoever the shooter was, he’d given away the element of surprise.
It didn’t even seem like he’d been aiming at us when he fired.
For a second, I was worried that they would pitch a Molotov cocktail through the broken pane and try to burn us out –
But they didn’t need to break a window to do that. The entire fucking house was made of wood. All they had to do was throw the firebomb on the roof and let nature take its course.
My hunting rifle was propped up in the corner. I crawled over to it, grabbed it, and then checked to make sure the magazine had five bullets inside. I clacked the first round into the chamber, then held up the gun by the wooden stock and used the sight on the end of the barrel to turn off the switch on the wall.
The lights went off, and we were plunged into complete darkness – which was good. Now the shooter couldn’t see us.
Outside, it was extremely dark because the rain clouds were blocking out most of the moonlight. The shadows between the trees were black as India ink.
I was trying to determine my next move when a voice called out from the woods.
“Herr Rosolini! Can you hear me?”
I froze.
What the hell?
It was a man’s voice – not deep, but not too high.
The Herr part – pronounced like ‘hair’ in English – was German for ‘Mister,’ and the Italian words had a distinct German accent.
Maybe he was Swiss. Switzerland bordered Italy to the northwest, about 300 miles away from Padola. And Switzerland had four official languages – two of which were Italian and German.
But the really odd thing was that the speaker sounded… pleasant.
Chipper, even.
I looked over at Lucia lying in the doorway. Her bewildered expression mirrored my own thoughts:
What the fuck kind of assassin lets you know he’s THERE, then calls out like a friendly neighbor?!
Maybe not an assassin…
But a bounty hunter.
A very strange one.
“Herr Rosolini, I won’t hurt you or the Fräulein, I give you my word – but we really should speak,” the voice called out cheerfully. “Ja?”
Frow-line. German for a young unmarried woman.
Yah – German for ‘yes.’
“The fuck?!” Lucia whispered. “He sounds like Hans Landa!”
“Who?” I whispered back.
