Zoey shivered and wrapped her arms around her waist. “I don’t see anyone.”
“That’s because we’re early.” Dante unbuckled his seat belt. “Stay here.”
He got out of the car, scanning the area. There were a couple of parked cars, old snow drifted over their tops. Long, dirty icicles hung from the edges of the concrete. They trembled as the traffic roared by on the highway overhead. As far as he could see, they were the only people in the parking lot.
The passenger door to the BMW opened, and Dante turned unsurprised to see Zoey get out of the car.
He reached under his overcoat to unholster the Glock. “Stick close to me.”
For once she didn’t argue. He walked across the garage, checking under and around cars, the progress slow. He could feel Zoey at his back, trailing him and looking under cars when he did. A white van drove under the overpass, slowing on the turn. Dante pulled Zoey into a crouch next to him, partly shielded by a parked car.
The van sped by.
Dante released his breath and stood. He glanced at his wristwatch: 9:39. He had twenty minutes or so until the meet. The cars they’d searched were in a clump in the middle of the parking lot. There were still three or four that he hadn’t looked at, parked next to one of the giant concrete pillars. Dante started for them.
“What are we looking for, anyway?” Zoey asked.
“Surprises.”
“Great.”
He ignored her. The nearest car was an old Cadillac. He bent to peer under it and froze. There wasn’t anything under the car, but on the far side, lying on the ground, he could see a tennis shoe and part of a jeans-clad leg. He straightened.
“What are—” Zoey began.
He turned and pressed his fingers to her lips, watching as her eyes widened over his hand. He motioned her behind him and gripped the Glock in both fists. Leading with the gun, Dante whipped around the corner of the Caddy in a crouch.
Oh, shit.
For a timeless moment Dante merely stared. A young man lay on his back on the ground, his face turned slightly to the side, his half-opened eyes dull. A sudden gust of winter wind flattened the thin Dilbert T-shirt against his skinny frame. The Dogbert cartoon in the middle was nearly obscured by the large crusted bloodstain that covered his chest. He would’ve hated that—Dogbert was Kevin’s favorite.
“Oh, my God,” Zoey whispered, just as two black SUVs squealed into the parking lot.
Friday, 9:47 a.m.
Z
oey stood frozen as the black SUVs bore down on them from the far side of the parking lot.
“Run to the car!” Dante shoved his keys into Zoey’s hands.
Her hands shook and she nearly dropped them. The black SUVs were roaring nearer, and she couldn’t just leave Dante here. She couldn’t just—
“Go!” he shouted and raised his gun.
Zoey whirled and ran flat out across the parking lot. She was about twenty yards from the car. The ground was uneven, badly plowed, and crusted old snow clumped with chunks of crumbling concrete. Her body jolted with each hard footfall.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
The rapid gunshots echoed off the concrete overhead like claps of thunder. Zoey chanced a glance over her shoulder and caught an image of Dante that impressed itself on her retinas. Dante stood, legs apart, arms held straight in front of him in a shooter’s stance as he returned fire. His long black trench coat hung to his calves, and his face was no longer pretty. It was grim and hard, set in granite. He looked like something out of a western—the lone figure of justice defending an innocent town against evil.
But the two SUVs were almost on him now, and they looked like they were just going to run him down where he stood. A scream ripped from her throat. At the last possible moment, Dante dove behind the Cadillac he’d been standing next to. The lead SUV careened off the old car, smashing it into the Jeep behind it.
Oh, God, Dante must be crushed.
Zoey made the last couple of yards to the BMW and scrambled in. She fumbled with the keys, trying to insert them into the ignition, her eyes blurred with tears. Behind her, shots crunched against concrete, a whole series of them, making her ears ring. She got the key in and turned it. The BMW’s engine purred to life.
He might already be dead.
The treacherous thought popped into her brain. She wasn’t an FBI agent. She wasn’t trained for anything but ordering oat bran in bulk. He’d told her to run. Shouldn’t she do just that? But more shots rang out. They wouldn’t still be shooting if he were dead. And the point was moot, because Zoey had already gunned the BMW in the direction of the shooting.
The two SUVs were stopped now, all of the doors flung open. She could see movement behind one of them as a man with a blond crew cut leaned out and fired into the wreckage of the Cadillac and Jeep. The gunshots were immediately returned. Zoey’s heart leaped.
Thank God. Thank God Dante isn’t dead.
The Caddy and Jeep were piled together, but the giant concrete pillar behind them had stopped the momentum of the crash. There was a car-wide space between the pillar and the outer wall, and Zoey aimed the BMW at it.
More shots rang out. One of the bad guys turned as the BMW neared, and Zoey actually saw his eyes widen. He brought up his gun, but there was a sudden flurry of shots from behind the Caddy and he went down. Then she was pulling into the space by the pillar. She braked fast and watched as Dante rose up from the wreckage of the cars, firing straight-armed at the SUVs. He dove and rolled over the trunk of the BMW to get to the passenger-side door.
He flung himself into the car. “Go! Go! Go!”
Zoey floored the BMW, fishtailing out from behind the pillar. Something thumped against the rear panel, and then they were out of the parking lot and into the street.
“You okay?” Dante asked. He’d twisted to kneel in his seat and look behind them.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Zoey glanced in the rearview mirror. One black SUV roared on her tail like a demon from hell.
“Shit,” Dante muttered.
He ejected the clip from his gun, fumbled under his coat, and came up with another, sliding it into place in one motion. He rolled down the passenger-side window, leaned out, and fired. Zoey braked and jerked the wheel of the car, flying onto an east–west street.
Dante slid on the seat. He grabbed the back of the headrest to steady himself. “Careful.”
“Why is there only one?”
“What?” He had his arm out the window again, frigid air blasting in.
Zoey swerved to speed around a panel delivery truck. “The second SUV. Where is it?”
Dante fired his gun, making her flinch and cringe against the steering wheel. Tires screamed behind them, and Zoey heard a smashing roar.
“Serves you right, you son of a bitch.” Dante muttered. He grunted and withdrew his arm from the window. “Shot out the first SUV’s tires in the parking lot.”
She glanced in the rearview mirror. The second SUV was no longer following them. “What do we do now?”
She sped through a light just as it turned red. A car horn blasted behind her.
Dante turned around in the passenger seat. “Slow down, for one.”
“Okay.” Zoey could feel her face warming. “I’m not used to car chases, you know.”
“I know,” he said quietly. He’d buckled his seat belt, and now he rested his head against the seat. “You did a good job. A real good job.”
“Thanks.” She felt shaky, on edge like little prickly needles were riding her bloodstream. “Where should I go?”
Dante blinked. “Turn off here.”
Zoey turned the wheel, not quite braking enough. The car slid around the curve, and Dante grunted again.
“Sorry.” She grimaced and slowed, glancing at him. “I need to—”
But she didn’t finish the sentence, because her thoughts scattered. There was a smear of blood on the console.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “You’ve been shot.”
Friday, 10:03 a.m.
T
ony the Rose sat at a huge steel and glass desk in his mansion office in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Chicago. His office was a dark room because the black vertical blinds were pulled permanently over the windows. Tony didn’t like the thought of someone looking in the room from outside. Maybe taking a shot at him from the outside. Better to live in the half light than be highlighted on a stage. Besides, he wasn’t too interested in the view: trees with maybe a glimpse now and then of a Rottweiler patrolling the grounds.
On the wall opposite his desk was a fifty-seven-inch flat-screen TV with the sound off. It was tuned to the Weather Channel. A plate of Pepperidge Farm sugar cookies lay on the green ink blotter in front of him. Next to it, a Cuban cigar smoldered in a cut-glass ashtray. Tony sipped espresso from a tiny gold-rimmed glass cup and thought about what a pain in the ass his family was.
“That Fed double-crossed us,” Leo, his right-hand man, said. Leo was sitting on the other side of the desk in a red armchair, bony knees poking up. “’Course. Feds always double-cross or fuck things up, you don’t mind me saying so.”
Tony selected a perfectly round cookie and carefully bit off a quarter, savoring the taste of vanilla. What Leo was really saying was
I told you so,
only he couldn’t say that out loud, because Tony would then have to blow his brains out. Which didn’t mean that they didn’t both know what Leo really meant.
Tony swallowed his bite and said, “Sending Neil was a mistake.”
Leo made a big shrug, both hands palms up at shoulder height. “Don’t know that it was the Neilster’s fault this time, Tony. He said the place was already fucked when he got there. What could he do?”
“Not lose the kid, for one.” Tony shoved the rest of the cookie into his mouth and wiped his fingertips on a white paper napkin.
“True.”
“Make sure our feeb had Ricky killed, for another. That was the job I sent him to do in the first place. The feeb was supposed to have Ricky killed, Neil was supposed to verify the hit. Simple. Except no one does what they’re supposed to do anymore.”
“I dunno, Tony. I think the whole thing was a setup.”
Tony looked at Leo over the rim of his espresso cup. “Why?”
“The feeb knows we’re sending a guy, and when our guy gets there he finds a whole lot of dead Feds? I think the feeb wanted Neil to go down for his mess. Had nothing to do with popping Ricky.”
“So you’re saying the feeb never planned to have Ricky killed at all?”
“I think so, Tony. I think so.”
“Motherfucker,” Tony commented without any real heat. He’d been dealing with Feds for a long time, and like Leo said, they always double-crossed or fucked things up.
“So now we gotta worry about this trial,” Leo said, opening an unpleasant topic of conversation.
Tony had been on trial for the last couple of weeks on federal charges. He didn’t like to think about the trial too much when he wasn’t actually in the courtroom. It gave him heartburn. And he wasn’t due back in court until after lunch. He should’ve had the morning off. But that wasn’t going to happen.
Tony grunted and set down his espresso cup. “What about Ricky Spinoza? Can we get to him?”
Leo shook his head slowly, looking like a sad balding basset hound. His face was all vertical lines and drooping jowls, topped by the big dome of his bald head. Two patches of fuzz sat over both ears, making him look vaguely like a morose Bozo the Clown. “They’ve moved him again. Him and his girlfriend.”
“I am not going to be sent down by some two-bit hustler who thinks he can cross me and get away with it.”
“No, Tony.”
“I’m too old to go to the pen again. I’ve got gout in my knee.”
Leo looked surprised. “Gout? Had an uncle who had the gout. I didn’t know people got gout anymore.”
“Of course they do,” Tony replied. “It’s a buildup of uric-acid crystals in the joint. Happens all the time.”
“That so? You sure it’s your knee?”
“Yeah, it’s my knee.”
“’Cause my uncle, he had gout in his big toe.”
“It’s my knee.”
“I’m just sayin’ I never heard of gout in the knee. Toes, yes, knees, no.”
“Leo, would you kindly shut the fuck up about your uncle’s gouty toes?”
“Sure, Tony.” Leo held his hands wide and shrugged. “I’m sorry to hear you got gout.”
Tony nodded. “I want Ricky dead.”
“I hear you, but I don’t trust that feeb anymore and it’ll take too long to find Ricky. He’s due to testify in three days.”
“We ought to ice the feeb.”
“Yeah, Tony, yeah,” Leo said in an annoyingly soothing tone. “But maybe later, huh? We gotta keep Ricky from testifying.”
Tony drank the last of his espresso and patted his lips with the napkin. Then he sat back in his leather chair, making it squeak a little. “I need that kid. If we have the kid, Ricky doesn’t talk.”
“Neil said she was gone.”
“Neil is a jerkoff who I would never have sent for this job if it weren’t for my niece and her mother,” Tony growled. “I don’t even like Janet.”
This was the problem with family. They expected you to hire them just because of blood, never mind if they were screwups. What was worse, they expected you to hire their asshole husbands, too. And in the case of Neil, he had not only his niece, Ashley, hounding him, but her mother, Janet, as well. And though Tony would never say this to anyone, his younger sister kind of gave him the willies. Janet was a coldhearted bitch and a mean one, too.
No one knew how hard it was to be the boss. Tony allowed himself a small moment of self-pity.
Then he looked at Leo. “I’m bringing in Rutgar.”
Leo’s head jerked back like he’d been popped in the forehead. “Jesus, Tony. Rutgar? He ain’t exactly a precision worker.”
“He gets the job done. Every time.”
“Yeah, but the job’s usually a hit, pardon the expression.”
“So?”
“So, you want a baby hit?”
Tony shrugged. “I want Rutgar to bring the kid to me.”
Leo looked uneasy. “Yeah, but what I’m saying is that Rutgar gets kinda enthusiastic when he’s working. People get hurt, and sometimes they ain’t the ones supposed to be hurt.”