Ring of Fire by Pierdomenico Baccalario

nut.”
    “You think he was crazy, huh? Remember: somebody killed him.”
    “And they didn’t just shoot him … I mean … you know.” Sheng slides a hand across his throat.
    “A secret … that you can’t let others discover.”
    “Do you think he knew the secret?”
    “Sorry, but what secret are we talking about, anyway?”
    “ ‘Every hundred years’ …,” Elettra quotes, rereading the note.
    “It’s time to contemplate the stars …,” adds Mistral, passing her finger over the ones engraved in the wood.
    “It says that whoever discovers the secret needs to keep others from doing the same.”
    “Them!” cries out Sheng. “I get it!”
    “Give me a break!” Harvey moans. “What could you possiblyget? We barely know anything. We don’t even know the crazy guy’s name or who … who the ‘others,’ or whatever you want to call them, are.”
    “All we know is that they’re really dangerous.”
    “And that the man on the bridge wanted to protect these things,” adds Elettra. “As though they were really important.”
    “A mystery,” pronounces Mistral, standing up to stretch her legs. “A big, giant mystery.”
    “Well, I think it’s cool,” says Sheng. “I mean, this is all really strange stuff.”
    “‘Such a great secret is not to be reached by a single path,’ ” Elettra says, rereading the note. “Maybe there really is a great secret to discover. And maybe the man was scared because he’d discovered it.”
    “And let’s not forget the ‘twenty-nine,’ ” Mistral reminds them.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean it isn’t exactly normal for a guy who’s running for his life to keep on repeating ‘twenty-nine, twenty-nine’ unless he thinks it’s important.”
    “That is, if you’re assuming the guy was really thinking. Instead of just being completely off his rocker,” remarks Harvey.
    “Yesterday was December twenty-ninth,” Sheng reminds them for the hundredth time. “And he was convinced something had begun.”
    “But what?”
    “Who knows? But whatever it was, it began on the twenty-ninth of December. That’s why he kept repeating ‘twenty-nine.’”
    “So you guys are convinced that his saying ‘twenty-nine’ had nothing to do with our birthday?” Elettra asks.
    “What do you think?” Harvey blurts out.
    “Of course!” answers Sheng. “Yesterday was our night. The Night of the Super Twenty-nine …”
    “And the blackout …”
    “You think it’s all connected?” Mistral asks in a hushed voice.
    “But what if what happened to us last night,” Elettra says, cutting them all off, “just happened so we’d go out and end up on Ponte Quattro Capi …?”
    Harvey shakes his head. “Oh, come on! We aren’t puppets. We did what we did because we decided to do it. And we wouldn’t be here talking about this stuff if one of the four of us, who was a little too … curious … hadn’t agreed to take a briefcase full of junk from an old crazy guy who can’t come get it back anymore.”
    “Four of us. Ponte Quattro Capi. Four toy tops,” Sheng remarks. “Maybe the number four has something to do with this, too.”
    Elettra runs her hands through her hair. “None of this makes any sense! I … I don’t know why I took the briefcase. I felt like I had to. And now that I know what’s inside it, I’m even more curious to figure all of this out.” She grabs the black-and-white checkered umbrella. “I’m going to try,” she says, showing the others the brass tag, “by going to the Antico Caffè Greco.”
    “Which would be …?” Harvey asks inquisitively.
    “An old café in the center of Rome.”
    “Good idea,” agrees Mistral. “The umbrella might be a lead that could point us in the right direction.”
    Sheng grins. “Why not? After all, what does the note say? ‘Such a great secret … is not to be reached by a single path,’ right?”
    Harvey’s the only one who doesn’t seem at all enthusiastic about the idea. “I say