Chapter 1 #2
“Grazie mille!” Mel said as her steaming cup of espresso arrived. “Do you think there’s some angle here between father and son? Some ‘Cat’s in the Cradle,’ perhaps?”
“Oh, I’m sure you will plumb the emotional depths of the story like you always do, but I am only interested in what Dr. Woodruff has to say about Meyer’s offer and their splendid insecticides.” Lance’s tone was just a bit too gleeful.
“And where is Dr. Woodruff this superb Saturday evening? Somewhere in Europe, I presume?” Mel pushed the origami figures off her closed laptop and grabbed the backpack from her chair.
“Closer than you think. He’s at an international conference in Bologna, sponsored by some alphabet soup group. Let’s see…CRA-API. It’s being held at the Hotel Aemilia. He’s giving a speech tomorrow morning, and he’s not scheduled to leave until Monday, so you should be able to catch him there.”
Mel relaxed. Bologna was only a couple of hours away.
“You can take that cool high-speed train they have.” Only someone who didn’t travel as much as Mel did would sound that jealous about a train ride.
“Or I can take this cool high-speed convertible I rented and enjoy the ride,” she responded, looking across the darkened street at her Mini. “It’s a beautiful spring evening, Lance. I think I’ll relax and enjoy my dessert, then head out early in the morning.”
“I want your job,” Lance said. “Trade?”
She sighed. “But if this is also a bust, please tell me you have something to make that interminable plane ride worthwhile.”
“Hey, you’re the journalist. I’m sure you can find something to write about,” Lance said, then relented. “I’ll look and see what else is hot over there. There’s probably another conference or an EU committee meeting or something brewing.”
“Thanks, Lance. Talk at you later.”
“Bye, short stuff.”
Mel made a face at the phone and slid it into her pocket. She waved to the waiter then picked up one of Dr. Ricci’s creations. The nervous scientist had made bees for her. Now she was off to interview a bee expert.
There was no such thing as coincidence, not in her experience anyway. A few origami bees might come in handy in a conversation with a beekeeper. As she slid them into her backpack, she planned to reverse engineer the design later and add it to her repertoire.
When the waiter arrived, she ordered panna cotta and handed him an origami flower, then leaned over to give one of the frogs to the admiring patron at the next table.
“Grazie!” came the laughing response from both.
“B itteschon,” Daniel said.
The German scientist was clearly amused. “Your accent is not so good, Dr. Woodruff, but your stories about your mountain and your opa are wunderbar. You do need to write the book, I think.”
“Maybe I will.” He had included some uplifting and funny stories about Pops and Woodruff Mountain in his speech because there was a distinct lack of encouraging news about their battle to save the honeybee.
The line after the lecture seemed to have transformed into a group of smiling and laughing people standing in the aisle.
He didn’t know why. He hadn’t been that entertaining.
Not after functioning without any decent sleep over the past few days.
He leaned his head to look down the line again.
He caught sight of someone in the middle of all the laughter—a girl with short blonde hair, wearing a colorful patchwork jacket.
An older woman stepped up to clasp his hand. “Oh, Daniel, you were magnifique,” she said in her pleasing French accent. “I adored your stories. Wenzel is right. You do need to publish the book.”
That was odd. Dr. Dubois had never called him by his first name before. “Merci beaucoup, Dr. Dubois,” he said. “But I need to learn how to write first.”
“It is a pity I am not younger. You are so amusing. I would go off to Firenze today avec tous les jeunes.” She surprised him with a quick air kiss on both cheeks and flounced off.
What had gotten into everyone?
“Yes, you must!” Francesca Sartori, a young Italian scientist who was part of the host committee, nearly bounced with excitement. “Vogliamo mostrarvi Firenze!”
They wanted him to see Florence with them.
Before he could stammer an excuse, Francesca took his hand. Between one breath and the next, everything went black.
Francesca—sitting in the middle of a chaos of flickering lights and loud noises—the sound of panic. Daniel was there, behind her eyes, as she sat in the passenger car of a train—hearing what she heard, feeling what she felt.
The train was moving under her, bouncing as she tried to cling to her seat.
I don’t want to see this.
Something hit the outside of the car, like huge hailstones pummeling tin. She looked toward the windows but there was nothing outside. Only blackness.
The man across from her dropped his newspaper.
All she could see—all Daniel could see—was that paper, crumpled on the floor.
Shut it off.
The car shuddered and began to tilt. Then there was nothing but screaming.
Shut it off! NOW!
Francesca must have let go of his hand, because he staggered back a step, trying not to react when he found himself back in the conference room with a torturous headache.
He shut his eyes against the light that stabbed into them.
His heart pounded in fear, her fear, made worse by the realization that he hadn’t been on that train with her and his stomach was revolting.
Up until now, his dreams, his visions, had always been his future, not someone else’s. This had never happened before. He had to have been on the train with her.
But no, this vision had felt different. It wasn’t his future. It was hers.
Could it be a side effect of his prescription? No. Wait a minute. It had happened once before—with Grace and Lily at Christmas.
“Dr. Woodruff? Are you all right?” Francesca’s voice came in that lyrical accent of hers.
“Yes,” he managed to say. “Scusi, Signorina Sartori. Bad headache. I… I skipped breakfast. Big mistake. You’re—you’re going to Florence? On the—”
“Frecciarossa! Yes. You will come with us?”
“Uh, no. I don’t think…” Damn. He couldn’t just tell her not to go—tell them all not to go.
There were other people on that train too, but which train?
“I—” His phone rang with the cheerful tones of “Flight of the Bumblebee,” interrupting them.
He shrugged apologetically at the laughing response the ringtone got from the group.
There were thank-yous in several languages, and the group started to move away from him, still chattering.
Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering if he could safely open his eyes. He breathed slowly, trying to push back the nausea, and reached for the table behind him, only to almost knock over someone standing there. He tried not to tread on any toes as a hand grabbed his arm to steady him.
“Scusi,” he said. That overwhelming sense of fear—Francesca’s fear—faded a bit. But he had to stop the group from getting on that train, or at least slow them down so they missed it, or stop the train somehow.
What could he do? The problem was, there was no way to know when what he had seen was going to happen. On the way to Florence? On the way back? On some other train? He let out a frustrated breath.
“Hello?” an amused voice said.
Daniel realized the person was still holding his wrist. He opened his eyes briefly, long enough to see someone short standing in front of him, wearing a lot of bright colors. Was it the girl in the patchwork jacket he had seen in the line earlier?
“Scusi.” He closed his eyes again and swallowed hard against the nausea, then opened his eyes again.
No, she wasn’t a girl at all. She was very much a woman—there was a very curvy figure beneath that vivid jacket and black slacks.
Everything about her was colorful—her eyes, her tousled pixie haircut, and her dazzling smile.
“Dr. Woodruff?” she said, releasing his arm. “You look like you need to sit down. Can I get you some coffee or water or something?”
“No. No. Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it.” He assumed she had come up to thank him for the speech.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
Daniel flinched as she reached out again. He rubbed at his temple and even that was painful.
“I promised myself I would not buy into the whole absentminded professor thing. I really did,” the woman said with a chuckle. “I’m Mel. Mel Noblett.”
He felt inclined to smile, but even that would hurt at this point. It must be her accent. It reminded him of home, but she wasn’t wearing a conference name tag. “You weren’t at the conference?”
“No, but I caught your closing speech, which was fascinating, by the way. I liked the story about the stock tips your grandpa got from your bees,” she said. “And the research you’re doing with the Meyer insecticide. Sustain, or whatever it’s called.”
She didn’t look or sound like one of Meyer’s corporate drones. They tended to show up in expensive suits with boardroom pallor and German accents. Maybe they’d gone full Bond villain and sent in a honeypot to seduce him. If so, he considered sending them a thank-you note. “And you are?”
The dazzling smile faded a bit. “Mel Noblett,” she pronounced carefully, as if he were slow on the uptake. Oh, right, she had said her name before. “I was passing by and heard all the laughter in here—”
“They weren’t laughing at the effects of Meyer’s insecticide,” he said.
He rubbed at his temple. This headache was taking longer to subside into the usual dull ache behind his eyes.
He squinted at her. She was probably one of those environmental journalists who had been hounding him, trying to get the dirt on Meyer.
No tourist would wander into a hotel conference room full of academics with all of Bologna beckoning outside.