Out of Time (Fall of the Morelli Crime Family #3)

19. Chapter 19

nineteen

Mark

L ucas and I tried to prep her as much as possible, but not being in control of the situation was terrifying. If something went wrong, if the wrong person bumped into her the wrong way and noticed the wire…

Would I make it to her in time to save her? Listening in without being right beside her was terrifying.

We’d pulled blueprints of the property, and I knew how to get in and out as easily as if I’d lived there myself. I knew the big corner house with the imposing wall wasn’t impenetrable. I knew we were parked five meters from a door in the garden’s side wall. I even had a copy of the key that would unlock it. From there I knew it was about thirty yards of lawn until I reached the sliding glass door leading into the kitchen, and to go left from the doorway to get into the dining room where Bee was eating with her family.

It would take me less than a minute to get to her if shit went sideways.

Thankfully, she didn’t seem to need my help. She was making conversation, listening to everyone’s cues, and dropping the subject when needed so it wouldn’t look like she was trying too hard. Bee was doing good, but that did nothing to lessen my anxiety.

I sat up straighter and adjusted my headphones when they left the table, heading back into Carlo’s study. Lucas copied my actions, listening hard. I adjusted the trajectory in my head now that I knew they were moving around in the house. Instead of exiting the kitchen from the left, I would take the right doorway and head down the hall to the second door on the right. It would take me roughly five more seconds to get to her if she needed me.

But Bee was holding up alright. She was answering their questions, asking her own. Nothing very incriminating yet, but they’d just started. She was laying the foundation.

But she still slipped up. She should have just let them believe she’d go out and meet her betrothed, should have played along.

When I heard Bee’s sudden gasp and the sound of a possible struggle, I was on my feet in half a millisecond.

“Hold on,” Lucas said, grabbing my arm to stop me. “She knows you can hear her. She would say the safe word if she needed help.” Or she would just scream.

“What if she can’t speak?” I asked, half listening to Lucas, but mostly focusing on what I was hearing through my headphones.

“You can hear her. Just listen.”

I cranked the volume knob up, and he was right. I could hear her breathing: irregular, heavy, but unrestricted. She was clearly in distress—I didn’t know what kind, but she could speak the safe word “scarlet” if she felt threatened.

I could hear a grunt and more muffled sounds. Was that a whimper?

The way Lucas met my eyes told me he inferred the same thing from the sound. Bee was not okay, maybe even forgot about the safe word. Lucas let go of my arm, but Angelo was speaking again, almost conversationally, before I could rip the headphones off. Bee couldn’t be in too bad a shape if her uncle was conversing so kindly with her father, could he?

But then Carlo said it: “If there was anything in there it’ll find its way out soon enough.”

Were they beating her? Under the assumption she might be pregnant, they were trying to beat it out of her? Fuck the op. We had enough.

I threw the back door of the van open, the key to the gate already in my fingers before I reached it. The damn key stuck, making me fear every other worst-case scenario I could think of.

“Slow down, Mark. She’s on the move,” Lucas said behind me. I appreciated he wasn’t trying to stop me, just keep me updated. I spared him a glance, seeing him with a hand against one ear, focusing on what he was hearing.

I slowed down, shaking out my hands to calm the tremors, and only then could I get the damn gate open. I sprinted across the yard, pausing before I got to the kitchen door when I saw Bee through the dining room window. Her shoulders were hunched, her hair in her face, but she was standing and moving, making her way to the kitchen. She was coming to me.

I took a step back, letting the shadow of a tree hide me while she made her way through the room. Why was she moving so slowly?

I saw the women at the table acknowledge her one by one as she passed them. An older woman—her aunt I’d assume based on Bee’s background info she gave up to prepare for the op—shook her head, a clear tsk coming from her lips. A young woman—her teenage cousin, Frannie?—gasped, a hand shooting up to her face. The aunt grabbed Frannie’s arm when she tried to stand and forced her back down into her chair.

Bee’s mother looked at her, only giving a slight nod. Like Bee got what she deserved. Her own mother. I’d never wanted to hit a woman as much as I wanted to hit Elena Morelli.

But I couldn’t do it. Something was very wrong with the way Bee was walking, and since she was moving toward me, it was more dangerous to burst into a mafia house than it was to wait another half a minute for Bee to enter the kitchen and come out to me.

She seemed to be thinking the same thing, because I could see the determination in the set of her mouth as she crossed the dining room until she was out of sight, trudging steadily toward the kitchen. I darted out from behind my tree, making my way to the sliding glass door in the kitchen just as Bee appeared on the other side.

I could tell the second she saw and recognized me by the way her body seemed to drop in relief. I slid the door open quietly, stepping into the enemy’s house to catch her as she collapsed fully. What the hell happened?

“Bee? Bianca!” I whispered urgently, shaking her lightly.

“I’m okay,” she murmured, her head lolling back so I could finally see her face. Her eyes were red and swollen, a monster gash across her forehead, bleeding profusely.

“Why didn’t you say the safe word or just scream for help?” I asked, lifting the corner of my shirt to press into her forehead, trying to staunch the bleeding.

“I didn’t want you to rush in and get roughed up when I could take the kicks.”

Kicks. The asshole kicked her when she was down.

Bee was the opposite of every other woman I’d dated. They left me because they didn’t love me enough. Bee risked her life because she loved me too much and couldn’t stomach me getting a little roughed up. She almost lost her life to spare me more pain.

“I’m fine. I just need help getting back to the van. Do you think it’ll ruin things if I leave my car here?”

Why did she care about that? I sure as hell didn’t.

I ignored her words and slipped an arm around her back and used the other to sweep her legs up, stepping sideways out of the door and striding quickly across the lawn. I didn’t bother closing the door behind me. It didn’t matter.

All that mattered was Bee.

“No, I don’t need to go to the hospital!”

“Ignore her. Head to the hospital,” I told Lucas, gently pressing her shoulder so she stayed lying down. Lucas burned rubber down the side street, getting us the hell away from the Morelli house.

“I’m fine, really.” She tried to force herself upright again, but stopped with a sharp gasp of pain, hands going to her side.

“Liar. They tried to—” I stopped myself. I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. Even if there was nothing to lose, even if they didn’t succeed, they tried to do the unthinkable.

“I’ll be fine. It’s just bruised ribs.”

“You need stitches.”

“I just need to apply pressure for a few minutes. It’s fine.”

“Fuck that. No matter how many ways you try to say it, you’re not fine,” I spat, looking over at Lucas. “Take us to a fucking hospital, Luke.”

It was happening. I was going to lose Bee. It was Dani Meedes all over again. Sierra all over again. Natalie.

No.

My life with Bee would not be cut short. This time was going to be different. Bee was going to get the medical attention she needed. The doctors would take care of her, and then I’d spend the rest of my life making up for letting her get hurt in the first place.

I couldn’t lose Bee. I’d never live through it.

“We have to go to the apartment first,” she insisted, oblivious to the near-panic attack forming in me. “I have to ditch the wire. No one can know I was wearing one.”

I reached up the hem of her dress, removing the tape on her thigh as gently as I was capable of at the moment to free the transmitter and receiver, pocketing both. Then I pulled at the wire, loosening the tape along her ribs and the underside of her breast, pulling the microphone out. There. Problem solved.

“I can’t show up like this in public. I’m a mess!”

“Kinda the point, sweetheart.”

“They’re going to ask questions. They can’t know the answers to those questions.”

I turned to look at Lucas. Shit. That was a good point. Her own uncle beat her because of the possibility she might be pregnant by someone they didn’t approve of. What would happen if word got back to them that a surveillance van with a cop and an FBI agent dropped her off at the hospital?

So much for the worst she had to fear was being disowned.

Lucas put on his blinker, turning toward the freeway. Yeah, no hospital for us until we could figure shit out. “I’m calling Athena,” he said, tapping buttons on the phone he kept mounted on the dash. Rule-following Lucas Blake would never disobey traffic laws to make a phone call without using hands-free features. Even now.

I heard the phone ring twice through the van’s speaker system before she picked up. I didn’t bother looking, just cradled Bee’s head in my lap and applied pressure to the wound on her forehead.

“Hello, baby!” I heard Athena’s cheerful voice.

“Babe, you’re still at the apartment?” Lucas confirmed. We asked her to stay behind and keep watch to make sure no one tried to break in again. If they did, she’d give them a big fucking surprise because that woman was deadly when it came to self-defense.

“Yup. Everything’s been quiet.”

“I know, but we’re on our way. Fast. Call Dr. Alex to meet us there.”

Dr. Alex? Who was that?

“On it,” Athena said, voice solemn. “I’ll tell her to bring her kit.” She could tell that shit hit the fan. She didn’t even say goodbye before hanging up.

“Alex is an ER doc that we met recently when she testified in one of the cases Athena is prosecuting,” Lucas said. Thank god he explained, because I couldn’t focus enough to ask. “They hit it off. Alex will take care of Bianca.”

I nodded, though that didn’t stop me from worrying. Bee was breathing evenly, but she kept her eyes closed, wincing with each bump in the road.

It took another ten minutes before Lucas swerved to a stop in front of my building. He hopped out, going around the van to open up the door for me while I gently helped Bee out of the car, half-carrying her to the entrance.

“I’ll wait here for Alex so I can direct her upstairs,” he volunteered. I nodded, focusing on getting Bee up to the apartment.

But at least one thing was going our way tonight, and the “OUT OF ORDER” sign on the elevator was finally gone. About damn time. Bee was already flinching with each step we took. I’d hate to think how much it would hurt to have me haul her up four flights of stairs.

I pressed the button to call the elevator, a wave of relief hitting me when Bianca stroked my cheek. She was okay. She was going to be okay.

“I’m fine, Mark. Just a killer headache,” she said as I helped her hobble inside the elevator car.

She wasn’t, really, but she would be. Dr. Alex would patch her up, and I’d spoil her until she was healed, giving her sponge baths and foot rubs and everything she asked for until the only pain in her body was me being an annoying pain in the ass.

Everything was going to be alright, I told myself as we ascended. Bee was standing, breathing, talking. We had a doctor coming to look after her. We were all going to be fine.

I watched the numbers on the display panel tell me we were on the second floor, the third, fourth. Once the bright red five was illuminated, I let out a breath of relief. We were almost home.

The elevator shuddered to a stop, but the doors didn’t open right away.

I rolled my eyes, barely able to register confusion before the floor gave out underneath us, the elevator plummeting toward the ground.