Breaking Bones (Mariani Crime Family Series Book 2) (26 page)

“A P?” Markie asked. She thumbed a few keys on her phone and started reading names. “Paige, Pamela, Pandora, Patricia, Phoebe, Piper, Portia—”

“Piper. It was Piper.”

Angel was already at the table with his laptop open. “Great. I’ll hack their payroll system and find a last name and an address. Call Tech and have him pull up the building’s security footage and see if Ari was picked up in front. Maybe he can get us a make, model, and license plate.”

Tech could hijack any of the cameras in Vegas, but since the Mariani family owned the building we lived in, he would have easy access to the footage from last night.

“I’ll call the restaurant and see if they’ve heard from Ari or Piper,” Markie said, dialing.

Since Angel and I were no longer officially in the family business, I didn’t know how Tech would respond to my request, but either nobody told him not to help us anymore, or he was bored, because he promised to get right on it. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat at the table beside Angel, wondering what else to do. It felt like I was missing something… some giant clue that would tie this all together. Maybe that was it. Maybe this Piper chick was somehow connected to Joey Durante. Only Piper couldn’t have been the long-haired, curvy beauty who contacted Matt. Nothing up.

Still, I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing, so I did the one thing I could think of. I called Ariana’s phone. It rang once, twice, three times, and then the phone clicked. Expecting her voicemail message to start, I was about to hang up when a woman answered. “Franco, thought you’d never call.”

Only Ma called me Franco, and this definitely wasn’t her, nor was it Ariana. Didn’t sound like that Piper girl either. Gesturing at Angel and Markie I put the phone on speaker and set it on the table. Markie and I crowded the phone as Angel’s fingers flew over his keyboard, setting up the trace.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“Firstly, rude. You should at least start with hello. And secondly, I’m a little disappointed you haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Please, enlighten me.”

“Well since you asked nicely, my name’s Natalia. My dad named me after his mom.”

Not random information, it was a clue. Not a clue, a confirmation, but I refused to say anything which would draw Angel into this mess. “Is Ariana there?”

“Wow.”

“Please, I need to know she’s okay.” I sounded desperate, but Natalia already had Ariana, so she had to know how I felt about her. Pretending not to care wouldn’t change the situation at all.

“Now you’re just being offensive. I haven’t heard from you in… well, I’ve never heard from you, and all you want to do is talk to this little skank? She was leaving you, Franco. I did you a solid by picking her ass up.”

Markie started to reply, but I gave her a look and she clamped her mouth shut.

“Is she okay?” I repeated.

Natalia sighed. “Still worried about the girl. How goddamn romantic. Makes me want to barf all over her. Yes, she’s okay. And as long as you do what I tell you, she’ll stay that way.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth? That you really have her and she’s alive?”

I heard another sigh, followed by rustling noises.

“Say something. Tell him you’re alive.”

There was silence and then a slap, followed by more rustling. Then Ariana cried out, “Ow, ow, ow, get your hands off me, bitch!”

Markie turned into Angel, burying her head in his chest. He held her and whispered something in her ear.

Natalia came back on the phone. “She’s fine. And so classy.”

And Natalia was doing god-knows-what to her. The thought of it turned my blood to ice. “You have her, you want me. Where and when do you want to do the swap?”

She clicked her tongue. “You have no talent for small talk, you know that?”

“Where and when?”

Angel signaled me. Tech had tracked the call and we had a location. He grabbed our coats and tossed me mine.

“I’m still really disappointed in you. Be a doll and figure this one out on your own.”

“But—”

“Chill out, Bones. I’ll even leave you a note. Prove you’re competent and find it, will ya?”

The line went dead.

Angel tossed me his shoes and started putting on his own.

“You can’t come, Angel,” I said, steeling myself for a fight.

“Like hell I can’t.”

“This doesn’t concern you. It’s my fight. I can’t bring you into it. Carlo said—”

Angel wriggled his foot into his sneaker. “I don’t care. I’m coming.”

“Me too,” Markie said, putting her jacket on.

I stared at Angel. “You’re gonna get me killed. You know that, right?”

He frowned. “We’ll take separate cars. You tried to stop me. I followed.”

“You think he’ll care? He told me to keep you out of this, and you’ve already pulled Tech in. This could all be a test, you know? You leave this condo, you’re signing my death warrant.”

Angel ran his hand through his hair. “So I’m just supposed to sit here and let you walk into this alone?”

He had to. They both did. “I’ll get her out of there, Angel.” But I had no idea what would happen to me.

“What’s going on?” Markie asked. “Why aren’t we out the door looking for my sister?”

Angel swore and kicked the chair into the table. Markie jumped.

“I’ll let you know where to pick her up.” I hugged him, then Markie.

“What? Why are we hugging?” Markie asked. She tried to follow me, but Angel grabbed her hand. “No. Bones, no. Why are we letting him go by himself?”

I grabbed my keys and ran out the door.

The trace on Natalia’s phone led me to a gas station parking lot on South Wynn Road. As I parked my Jeep in front of the air and water pump, Tech called. He’d pulled the condo’s security footage and saw Ariana leaving in a beat-up Subaru. He’d even gotten a license plate number, but the plates had been lifted off a totaled vehicle owned by an insurance company. He promised to keep an eye out for the vehicle and let me know if and when he got a visual.

I got out of the Jeep and scanned the area. The gas station and mini-mart took up a corner lot with a used-car lot to the north, and across the street to the east and south were mixed-use buildings. Natalia said she’d leave me a note, but I searched the ground by the pumps and the parking lot and came up empty-handed so I headed into the mini-mart.

The slender man behind the counter stood about five-foot-nine and was balding. I grabbed a stick of jerky and waited in line between two people paying for gas. When it was my turn, I leaned across the counter and introduced myself.

“Uh, hello.” He pointed to his name badge. “Tom.”

“Nobody gave you anything to give to me?” I asked.

He shook his head, looking at me like I was a lunatic.

“It would have been a note or a letter. A brunette would have left it for me.”

He shook his head and rang up the jerky. I paid him and headed back outside, wondering what the hell to do.

I had to be missing something, but what? Natalia wanted me here. She’d stayed on the phone long enough to make sure I’d get her location, so there had to be something here.

“Chill out, Bones. I’ll leave you a note.
”

Was that a clue? I glanced back at the mini-mart and got an idea. Starting with the drink coolers, I searched every refrigerated unit I could find—nothing. Unwilling to give up, I asked the sales clerk if there were any other cool places I could look, but he shook his head before giving it so much as a moment of thought. “Not that I can think of, sorry.”

I was about to head back outside when a little kid yelled, “Someone dropped a phone in the ice cream!” He stood in front of the small freezer wedged between two shelves of snacks. I’d missed it completely. I thanked him for finding my phone and powered it on.

There was a note app open that read,
Come alone and relax at the old cozy hub. We’ll pick you up at noon in the docking bay and leave your little skank behind. Your friends can pick her up at twelve fifteen. Don’t show, she dies. If I see them before twelve fifteen, she dies. Don’t be stupid.

Noon. According to my watch, I had a whopping twenty minutes to figure out where the old cozy hub was and get there.

The old cozy hub
.

It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

“You ever hear of the old cozy hub?” I asked the clerk.

He rubbed the whiskers on his cheek. “Sure. Years ago there was a jingle on the radio… How’d that go, again? Come on down to the old cozy hub, the coziest seats around,” he sang. “Damn thing’ll be stuck in my head all day now.”

Hub Furniture. Of course. “Where is Hub Furniture?”

“Gone,” the clerk replied. “Been closed down for years. They used to have a warehouse not far from here, though. On South Highland Drive. Just north of that barbeque place.”

I thanked him and ran for the Jeep. As soon as I was on my way I called Angel and told him where and when to pick up Ariana. I hoped this wouldn’t count as involving him, but chances are it wouldn’t matter anyway. I didn’t know what Natalia had planned for me, but she’d gone through a lot of trouble to catch me. She probably wasn’t planning to let me go.

I screeched to a stop behind the warehouse, parked, and climbed up on the loading dock with three minutes to spare.

Before I’d fully regained my breath, a nondescript white van came around the corner. It stopped in front of the dock, and the side door slid open enough to reveal a big man holding a semi-automatic.

I held my hands up, trying to look as harmless as possible.

“Get in,” he said, gesturing with the rifle.

“Where’s Ariana?” I asked.

A muffled cry drew my attention. The rifle-wielder opened the door enough to show Ariana sitting in the far back. There was a gag in her mouth and her hands and feet were zip-tied. Her eyes were wide and she looked like she’d been roughed up a bit, but she was breathing.

“You okay?” I asked.

She tried to say something around the duct tape, but I couldn’t make out what it was.

“They’ll be here to pick you up in fifteen minutes.”

“Enough talking.” The guy waved his rifle around. “Get in or I’ll shoot.”

I moved slowly into the vehicle and waited as he patted me down and zip-tied me. He picked Ariana up and tossed her onto the loading dock. With her hands and feet zip-tied, she had no way of catching herself when she landed. Her body slammed into the concrete as the door slid shut.

“Hey, you bastard!” I stood, trying to get free.

I barely registered the back of the semi-automatic connecting with the base of my skull before darkness took over.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Ariana

T
HE VAN SMELLED of old pizza and stale beer, making my stomach clench. I hadn’t eaten since last night. Was my birthday dinner last night? It felt like an eternity had passed since I’d been on the stage singing for the crowd. No, singing for Bones. The lyrics of my favorite song had been so perfect, I’d belted it out at him, telling him he was the only one I wanted. Had he even noticed? Even cared?

It seemed like a stupid thing to be worried about while my hands were zip-tied in my lap and the business end of a semi-automatic followed my every move. I’d probably be freaking out about it if I wasn’t still so groggy from whatever I’d been drugged with. Between that and the alcohol from my birthday, my mouth tasted like the inside of a communal barf bag on an international flight. Not like I’d ever flown internationally—or licked the inside of a barf bag for that matter—but I was pretty sure my mouth would pass for one in its current state.