Page 54 of Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

“It’s a fictional murder, for Christ’s sake. In the next book. I was going to tell you.”

His eyes narrow. “You were going to tell me you’re cutting me out of the series I helped launch? How kind of you.”

“I wrote the books, and you’ve benefitted handsomely. But it’s time, Connor. It’s time for them to end.”

“Time for me to end, you mean.”

“For the last time, no one’s trying to kill you.”

“Is that so?” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. “How do you explain this, then?”

I take the phone. It’s a news article in Italian. “Pedone ucciso in incidente stradale,” it says. But I don’t read Italian, even though I’d promised myself I’d learn before I came on this trip.68

“What does this mean?”

He takes the phone back and scrolls down until he gets to a photograph of a man in his mid-thirties. “This is the guy who pulled me out of the way of the bus outside the Vatican.”

“And?”

“He’s dead.”

“What?” Oliver says.

A door opens down the hall, and Shek pokes his head out. “Will you all keep your voices down? Some of us are trying to sleep.”

“I’ll speak as loud as I damn well please.”

Another door opens—Emily’s this time. She’s wearing a long blue silk robe, tied elegantly at the waist. “What the hell is going on? Do you know what time I have to get up in the morning?”

“The same time as everyone, young lady,” Shek says.

“Because it takes you an hour to put those three wisps of hair into place.”

“I’ll have you know—”

Guy emerges from his room with a drink in his hand, in his undershirt and boxers. “Shall I get my gun to tame you beasts?”

“You have a gun?” Allison says, poking her head out of her room. “Why?”

“I need the protection.”

“How did you get it into the country?”

“I have my ways.”

“I wouldn’t believe him,” Connor says. “He likes to be dramatic for effect.”

“You both do that,” Allison says.

Guy rattles the ice in his drink. “Don’t tempt me, Connor.”

Connor scoffs. “Oh, please, just do it already, then. Enough with the cat and mouse.”

“What are you talking about?” Shek asks.

“He thinks someone’s trying to kill him,” I say to the potential suspects.

“Someone is.”