Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Rian
Ransom picks a decommissioned meatpacking facility two blocks from the Vitelli compound for the meet.
The crew owns it, along with the two lots on either side and the parking garage across the street.
The whole block belongs to a shell company owned by another shell company that eventually rolls up to us.
That's how Ransom has taught us all to do everything.
Layered, quiet, expensive and difficult to unravel.
It smells like rust and old blood, which suits me fine. It would have to be multitudes worse for me to complain.
Six soldiers arrive with Ransom, vetted well past the point of comfort. These are our best guys, all decked out in head-to-toe tactical gear. Hale comes in last, with a duffel over each shoulder, and lays his equipment out without greeting anyone.
"Two teams," Ransom says, once we’re in a group. "Hale's charges go on the secondary structure, the Gloss lab, once we've confirmed it's clear."
"Charges go where I say they go," Hale says.
"On the secondary structure."
"We'll see. I want to feel out the situation first."
Ransom pinches the bridge of his nose. He does that a lot around us. I'm fairly sure his nose is load-bearing for his whole face. "Rian, you've got the entry. Don't go off-book the second you see Andreas."
"Me? I would never."
"You did exactly that at the auction. You spent two million dollars."
I shrug. "It worked out."
"It cost me the mayor."
"You didn't even like the mayor," Hale says.
"That is not the point of having a mayor in your debt.
" Ransom pulls up the compound on his tablet.
Two buildings, a covered walkway between them.
"Eight perimeter guards minimum, probably doubled since the photos hit every news desk in the city this morning.
They're scared and short-handed. We confirmed with thermal an hour ago. "
Scared men, Beast says, with the satisfaction he gets when a hunt is close. Scared men can be dangerous. But not as dangerous as me.
Tonight, you get to come out, I tell him. We go find the man who tried to make her disappear.
He howls his agreement. I don't like handing him the wheel. When Beast drives, I go somewhere else, and I don't always know whose flesh I come back holding.
But he's an efficient fucker.
"Rian?" Ransom asks. "You with us?"
"I'm here."
"He's talking to his imaginary friend," Hale says. "I'm jealous, frankly. Tell him I said hi."
Beast laughs, which I take as friendly. "He says hi back."
Hale considers this with more gravity than it deserves. "Does he like me?"
He has good instincts, Beast says.
"He says you've got good instincts."
"Thank you for noticing. Somebody has to keep us all breathing."
"Both of you, shut up." Ransom walks through the entry points, the kill order, the fallback routes. I listen to none of it that matters, because the only part I want is the man who gave the order. Ransom knows. At the end he looks at me. "You go last."
"Counterpoint. I go first."
He holds my gaze a second. "Fine."
Then he signals two soldiers toward the south entrance. Hale shoulders a bag and heads for the side door without being told.
"Don't leave anything standing," I tell his back.
He lifts a hand to say he heard me and keeps walking. He doesn't need my notes.
We spread out.
The perimeter guards are doubled and jumpy, which works for me.
Jumpy men cluster up and watch the building at their backs instead of the dark in front of them.
I drop the first two with silenced rounds before they hear me coming.
By the time the third one works out what’s happened, I'm already through.
Beast is pleased. Yes, he growls each time I move. There. Now.
No corrections tonight. No hissed instructions. He's been waiting for this since I sat in Noemi's empty apartment and smelled the food rotting in her fridge and knew something had gone wrong.
So have I, come to think of it.
Ransom is at my shoulder as we enter the main house, his gun catching the moonlight. The interior men are better than those on the perimeter. Two on the ground floor, sharp enough to check their corners. Still afraid, though.
Fear costs a man half a second on every decision. Half a second is all I've ever needed.
The first one doesn't hear me until it's too late to matter. The second goes toward the sound of him dropping instead of away from it, which tells me he’s brave, not smart. Brave and not smart has a short shelf life.
Ransom waits behind a door and takes a third, with a shot to the back of the head the man never feels. It's the way I always figured I'd go.
But now I've got someone to get home to, so I move slower than I used to.
I find a back stairwell and take it up. The second floor is offices, mostly stripped.
Folding tables, cables along the baseboard, a whiteboard covered in numbers that won't matter to anyone by morning.
Ransom and Hale clear them before I have to think about it, which is good, because my head's already gone to the back of the house.
Where's Andreas?
At the back, Beast murmurs. The ones that think they’re worth dying for are always hiding behind their men.
He's right.
The corner office has a heavy door, the kind meant to tell you somebody important sits behind it. I try the handle. Locked, which means Andreas heard us and had time to turn the bolt.
I've never met a locked door worth the trouble of picking. I step back and kick, and this one folds like a pipe cleaner.
"There you are." I step through. "Come on out. Fight me like a man."
Andreas Vitelli is across the room behind a half-wall, a gun already up in a hand that won't hold still.
Short, plump, that dark ring of thinning hair.
He looks exactly like he did in Noemi's photos, except those didn't capture this part, the part where he's a terrified little man who hasn't worked out yet that he's already dead.
"Who are you?" he shouts.
"Don't worry about it. You won't have the time to do anything with the answer."
He fires. The shot goes wide because his hand's shaking and he's not really aiming. I let him have the one.
Then I'm on him before he can reset, and take the gun out of his grip like lifting keys off a drunk. "You won't need this."
I tuck it into my waistband. Behind me Hale's voice is dry. "You good?"
"Give us a few minutes."
"Right outside the door." He backs out.
Andreas is crawling now, which is undignified, and I let him, because I'm in no hurry. I take off my watch and set it on the desk so I don't ruin it. There's a clean version of this and a slow one. Ransom would prefer the clean one.
This isn't going to be the clean one.
"You," Andreas spits, getting his back to the desk. "You killed my brother. You killed Leo."
"Leo earned it the same way you did." I push my sleeves up. "You hurt my girl."
"What girl?" Smooth as anything. The man doesn't even blink.
"Noemi Caru—"
A secret panel swings open behind me.
I know before I turn. I know it in my spine, the way you know a step's missing in the dark the second before you start to fall. The air in the room changes. Andreas looks past me and he smiles.
I turn.
Kathleen has Noemi by the hair. A pistol sits under my girl's jaw, pressed into the soft place below her ear. There is a swipe of blood on her neck, enough to make Beast snarl with fury. But it's a fine spray pattern. I don’t think it’s hers.
“Look who I’ve brought!” Kathleen says in a singsong voice. When I move toward them, she tuts, “Ah ah ah. Not a step further.”
My eyes don’t leave the blood on Noemi’s neck.
I can’t get a full breath with her here.
Noemi wasn’t left with just anyone, so it would make a sick kind of sense that the only way Kathleen got her here was by going through them.
I think that blood might belong to one of the guards that were in the SUV with her.
The whole room stills. Every plan I made drops out of my head at once. Andreas is forgotten on the floor behind me. There's a gun on Noemi and I can't take a single step without ending her.
Noemi's eyes lock on mine. She looks more excited than apologetic, the crazy woman. She looks as though her mind is already working, the way she gets right before she does something I won't be able to stop.
Take the woman's arm off, Beast snarls. He throws himself at the door inside me hard enough to make my teeth ache. Do it now.
For once I shove back against him with everything I have. He won't be careful about the gun. He'd tear through Kathleen without a second thought. So I hold the door shut.
I've done it so far to keep him from ravishing Noemi. Now, it might be to keep a bullet out of her aunt.
"Who are you?" Kathleen's voice is warm. Bitter, like a too-sweet sugar substitute. "The shadow on the corner. Are you with the King crew?"
"Let her go." I tilt my head, trying to take her measure. "She’s not part of this.”
"There's no price left, sweetheart. Your people put my face on the news this morning." She smiles, tightening her grip on Noemi so that she squirms. "We're past selling now. We're settling up."
"I don’t understand." Noemi's voice comes out high, stressed. "What could you possibly be trying to get out of this, Kathleen? That man murdered Uncle Marc."
"Oh, honey. Surely you see by now." Kathleen plays with a lock of Noemi’s hair, then yanks it, grinning at her reaction. “Marc was just playing at power. Andreas has it already.”
Noemi's face changes, a sudden understanding blossoming on her face.
"The last time we ate at Nonna’s.” She laughs, shaking her head. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it. You never got over Grandma giving Mom the bookstore."
Kathleen's smile turns genuine. It's the ugliest thing I've seen all night.
"You always were quicker than your mother, Noemi. She never worked it out. Right up to the end."
Noemi goes pale as a ghost, staring at Kathleen with horror. “You… you murdered them, didn’t you? Mom, Dad. Maybe even Grandma.”