32
K
ev hit the floor. He saw Petrie lunge across Zia Rosa’s lap. The picture window was shattered, glass everywhere. Coffee table, too.
Kev looked around for Sean across the carpet strewn with demitasse cups, spattered co
ffee, broken cookies, shattered glass.
And blood. Costantina sprawled next to the upended metal frame of the coffee table, mouth gaping. Her throat was a raw, bloody mess. Blood pooled behind her head. Her tangle of knotted gold jewelry was like a red wet noose around her neck.
Sean poked his head around the couch. Their eyes met. Zia was yelling. Kev could barely hear it. Deafened by gunfire. The yelling was a good sign. At least she was alive. Petrie still lay across her lap, hand pressed to his side. His hand was red. Ah,
shit.
Not a good sign.
Kev pointed to himself, gestured toward the foyer. Pointed to Sean, then toward the shattered picture window. Sean nodded.
Kev writhed on his belly over the rug. Don Gaetano lay on his side, each breath a labored whimper. Flecks of blood spattered his lips and chin. He clutched his gut, his hand dripping. Shot in the belly, and it looked like he’d taken one in the thigh, too. Kev was sorry, but he kept on crawling into the foyer. Couldn’t see out the windows this low, couldn’t tell how many assailants there were, where they were shooting from. He slithered up the stairs to the first landing, peeked between the banister slats, through the high, towering windows.
He saw nobody on the lawn. He kept looking, waiting . . .
There! A spot of green, shifting and moving against the rosebushes in the fountain. Darting behind the door and coming this way. Kev clambered up onto the banister, poised himself. Leaped into empty space. He caught the huge wrought iron
candeliera,
hung on like a monkey. It swung through the air like a pendulum, creaking madly, the bolts sunk into the wall straining. He willed m to hold.
He careened in wide, lazy arcs, trying to drag himself up into a ball. In the other room, he could just barely see Sean crouched near the picture window. His brother peered past the drapes swaying in gusts of wind. He looked up, shook his head. Kev jerked his chin at the door.
Sean positioned himself, drew his weapon. The
candeliera
’s swinging was slowing, but it creaked and cast a moving shadow. Slower . . . slower. Swaying. Kev held his breath. The handle turned.
The barrel of an assault rifle preceded the guy into the room—no. Not a guy. They were slender, brown female hands that held the M4. An emaciated woman in combat gear, a drab green cap on her head.
She looked up to see what the shadow was.
Bam,
Sean squeezed off a shot
.
She stumbled back, and
rat-tat-tat-tat-tat
, pumped more rounds into the living room. Kev prayed she hadn’t hit Sean, Zia, or Petrie, but he was airborne now, heading for the killer like a sack of cement—
Thud,
he hit her. They slammed to the ground together.
Kev had his Beretta 8000 under the woman’s jaw before she could recover. She was dazed and unresisting. Sean scrambled in on his belly.
“That’s the one who came at us at the cabin,” he said, yanking plastic ratcheted cuffs out of his pack. “I saw her through the scope. Are there more?”
“Don’t know yet. Didn’t see any.”
Sean fastened the woman’s hands behind her back. Then her feet.
“One more look,” Kev said. “I take the door, you the window?”
Sean nodded. He crawled on his belly back to the living room while Kev edged closer to the gaping door. On his feet. Back to the wall.
He spun, Beretta at the ready . . .
No one there, just the wind, sighing, whipping the trees. He took a step out onto the porch. A nondescript white Volvo sedan idled on the street. No backup. She’d come alone? What the fuck?
Sean had come to the same conclusion in the living room. They met at the couch. Michael Ranieri was stretched out behind the couch, a hole in his forehead, blood fanned on the wall behind him. Don Gaetano was dead, too. His eyes stared up, blank.
They eased Petrie off of Zia Rosa, brushing the shards of glass off the white leather so they could slide the wounded man to lie full length on the couch cushions. Zia looked fine, underneath him. Wild-eyed, gulping for breath, but not hit. Petrie had taken the bullet for her. Amazingly, it hadn’t gone right through him and into Zia. Maybe it had bounced off one of his ribs.
Kev ripped open Petrie’s shirt and hissed with dismay. Big hole, leaking fast. Sucking sound at each labored breath. The bullet had punctured his lung. He was conscious, eyes open, teeth gritted. Sean was digging into his kit, yanking things out.
“I told you that habit of yours was dangerous,” Kev said. “The curiosity thing.”
Petrie flashed him an eloquent look.
“Zia, call the ambulance for him,” he told her.
Zia grabbed her purse, smeared with Petrie’s blood, and dug for her phone. She gabbled into it, giving shrill orders to the emergency dispatcher. He left her to it, and he and Sean worked over Petrie together.
The first flush of adrenaline was easing down, and under it was grief, fury, frustration. The only people whonown the name and location of the fucker who held Bruno were all dead.
“Goddamnit,” he exploded. “Just a name, before that bitch started shooting. Just a goddamn name, that was all I asked!”
“Calm down,” Sean said quietly, his hands busy.
“Why? How can I? That’s it!” he snarled. “The last thread I had to grab on to. I have no other trace! None! What the fuck do I do now?”
“You’ve got her,” Sean said, jerking his chin over his shoulder, toward the bound woman lying in the foyer.
“The bitch is useless, Sean! These fucking nutcases self-destruct! She’ll rip her own tongue out or explode in my face if I start to lean on her!”
“Having hysterics will not help,” Sean said, taping the bandage into place. “We have her. We’ll use her. We’ll think of something, we’ll improvise. Christ, I hope that ambulance hurries up. I’ve done everything that I can.” He looked around. “Say, where’s your crazy Zia?”
“Oh, fuck. No.” Kev looked around the ravaged room. No Zia. “I’ll go track her down.”
He sprinted through the first floor. Formal dining room, enormous kitchen, breakfast nook. Teak-paneled personal office. Huge game room, with pool and Ping-Pong tables. Swimming pool behind the house. No Zia Rosa.
Back through the foyer. He leaped over the bound female shooter, who panted motionless on the floor, and sped up the curving staircase.
He found Zia in the master bedroom, which was white and gold and pink, full of baroque swirling like the frosting on a cake. A room fit for a Hollywood diva of the thirties. Zia sat on the end of the pillow-strewn white satin bed, clutching an inlaid jewelry box on her lap. She stared up at Kev, eyes wide and stricken behind her glasses. Tears streamed down, mixing with the blood spattered on her face.
Terrified hope jolted through him. “Oh, God, Zia. You found it?”
Zia Rosa looked lost. “We played together with this jewelry box when we were little, Tittina and me.” Her voice was almost childlike. “We played with it. With our dolls.”
Kev sank to his knees in front of her. He took the jewelry box from her and opened it. It was heaped with gold chains, rings, brooches.
He dumped them out onto the bed in a tangled, glittering pile, and shook the empty box. Something shifted inside. His heart thudded.
“There’s something in here.” He felt for the sliding panel. Sure enough, it slid open. But Bruno had the key.
“Nonna taught us to sew together,” Zia went on. “How to make the blessed animal cookies, for
Natale
. We were best friends back then, Tittina and me. And now . . .
Dio. Poverina.
”
He grabbed her hands. “I’m sorry. But we just can’t do this now.”
Zia Rosa ignored him. “That picture of Magda that I have in my wallet? Just like Tittina, when she was little. Just like the little girl at the baby store. The one with that bitch nurse.”
“Zia, we have to hurry—”
“I shoulda known about those two, but they were so nice, you know? Her husband, too! He even come running back to give me my phone after it fell in the baby’s stroller! Aw, so sweet of him, I thought, to go to all that trouble, eh? Who’d have thought they was both killers? With those beautiful
bimbi?
Nobody woulda thought that!”
Kev went rd as the picture shifted in his mind. New shapes, new possibilities, new scenarios. “Wait. Zia, those people at the baby store . . . they handled your phone? When you weren’t watching?”
She blinked as she tried to remember. “I suppose they did. It dropped in the stroller. He found it and ran it back to me in the parking lot. Ouch! Kev! Don’t squeeze so hard!”
He let go of her hands, his heart thudding. “Sorry, Zia. Where’s your phone right now?”
“Downstairs, in my purse, on the couch,” she said. “Why? You need to call somebody? What’s wrong with yours?”
“They loaded software on your phone, Zia. Or a tracking device, or God knows what.” His voice shook with excitement. “That’s how they’ve been following us, catching us. With your phone!”
She sucked in air. “
O Dio!
I’ll flush the thing down the toilet!”
“No, no, no! It’s all we’ve got to link us to Bruno! We’ll use it!”
“How?” She flapped her hands. Her voice cracked. “How?”
“Who the fuck knows? I’ll come up with something. Just listen to me. We’re going downstairs. I’ll take the jewelry box. I’m going to say, loudly, near your purse, that my phone’s out of juice, and I’m going to borrow yours. You can call us using Petrie’s phone.”
“Where you going?” she demanded. “What will you do?”
“I don’t know yet, but we’re hauling ass out of here with the shooter, and you’re staying with Petrie while he goes to the hospital.”
She inhaled to argue. Kev clapped his hand over her mouth. “No, Zia,” he said, his voice steely. “Not this time. Petrie took a bullet for you. You will hold his hand in the ambulance. It’s the least you can do.”
She stared at him. Gave him a nod. He could hardly believe he’d managed to convince her so easily.
A siren sounded, far away in the distance. Good, for Petrie’s sake. No time to smash the box open here.
“That’s our cue,” he said. “Come on. Move.”
“Where is she?” King demanded. “What’s taking so long?”
Hobart tapped the keyboard. “Just waiting for the database to—”
Whack!
King slammed the side of the computer desk, making them all jump. “Do it faster!”
Hobart flubbed the string of characters he was entering. He blocked, deleted, entered it again. “Yes, sir.”
King hung over the man’s shoulder. Melanie and Julian stood by, eyes downcast, shutting down external signals, hoping not to be noticed. He swung around upon Melanie. “Have they said anything?”
Melanie’s hands lifted to the earbuds in her ears. “Nothing new. No conversation. The McCloud who got wounded is just groaning.”
“Good.” King was glad the son of a bitch had taken a bullet. Let him ache and throb and bleed until he died. King wished him a nasty strain of antibiotic-resistant staph to gnaw at his suppurating wound for a few agonizing days before that happy event.
“I have it!” Hobart’s voice was tight with excitement. “They’re in a self-storage facility outside Newark!”
King peered down at the screen at the satellite shot of the McCloud brothers’ vehicle. As he watched, the door opened and a man in a lack knit cap got out. He went to the back of the SUV, opened it. Then opened the door of the unit. He returned to the car, seized a long, limp bundle. It did not move.
“Is she alive?” he demanded.
“Vitals all strong,” Hobart said.
The man dragged Zoe into the unit and came back out, locking it. He got back into the vehicle. Melanie’s hands flashed to the earbuds.
“Put the sound on the external speakers!” King snapped.
Hobart pushed buttons. Sound blared out, fuzzy and distorted. “. . . to the emergency room before I bleed to death, goddamnit!”
“Yeah, we’ll go, OK? We had to stash her first. She’d be hard to explain parked outside the Urgent Care if she started to squeak. And I want a crack at her before we deliver her to the cops, so you can—”
“What the fuck do I care? I want to plug this hole!”
“Calm down. I’ll take you to the Urgent Care, and then I’ll come back and have a chat with monster chick. We’re gonna get friendly.”
“Tell me about it after,” the wounded McCloud snarled. “I’m hemorrhaging!”