Chapter 34
RAFFAELE
I know before I cut the engine.
The gate’s open, pulled half off its hinge, the iron twisted where someone backed a truck through it. The wrought-iron rose at the top of the right pillar is snapped clean off, lying in the grass twenty feet down the drive.
The house is dark.
No porch light. No motion sensors triggering. No movement at any of the windows I can see.
I’m out of the car before Lorenzo has the brake on.
“Boss—”
I don’t stick around to chat.
I cross the gravel at a hard walk because running is the wrong thing for what’s ahead of me—running puts you in front of a weapon you didn’t see—and I’ve got the gun up in front of my chest, and I’m scanning the lawn as I move.
First body, at the corner of the garage.
It’s Tomas. That’s whom I stationed days ago to keep an eye on her. He’s been here long enough that the spread under him has gone flat and matte against the stones.
Second body, ten feet past him, on the lawn.
I don’t know this one. He’s one of Victor’s, by the cut of the coat. Two holes through the chest, tight grouping.
Third body, by the front steps.
One of mine.
The front door is open. I go through it low.
The foyer.
Two more bodies. One of mine slumped against the console table. One of theirs in the middle of the marble. Shell casings on the floor. Nine millimeter. A lot of them. Somebody had been carrying a long magazine.
Two of mine I know. The other two I don’t.
That stops me.
The men I recognize were stationed a few miles out tonight. The gunfire from here would have carried. They heard. They came running.
And Victor’s men, who had her, didn’t run. They stayed long enough to put them down too. That isn’t a kidnap crew leaving with a package. That’s a crew waiting for whoever shows up next.
He wanted me to walk in and find this.
Fucking hell.
“Bea!”
The house swallows her name. I keep moving.
I’m not searching anymore. I know I’m not searching. There is no version of this house that has her in it tonight. But my mouth keeps making the shape of her name, and my feet keep going room to room.
“Bea!”
Kitchen.
The island is the way she left it. There’s a cup of tea on the counter at the corner closest to the window. She didn’t drink it. I pick it up. The side of the cup’s at room temperature. She’s been gone for hours.
I go to put it down before throwing it at the wall.
“Fuck!”
I turn.
The whole bank of dishes she left out from this morning is on the counter behind me—two bowls, the small plate she ate toast off of, the little dish for the lemon.
I sweep the lot of them off the counter with my forearm. They shatter on the tiles. I yell out over the crashing mess.
“Bea!”
Silence answers back.
I stand in the middle of the wreckage, my throat raw. Then I keep going.
“Bea—”
I check the bathroom. I check the closet. I check the second bedroom and the hall closet and the laundry and the small linen cupboard by the back stair. I check rooms it isn’t possible for her to be in. I do it anyway, because the alternative is stopping, and I’m not allowed to stop.
She isn’t here.
I go to the bedroom.
I stand in the middle of it with the gun still in my hand, and I look at the bed. The sheets are still rumpled, and I can smell her on them.
Lorenzo arrives at the doorway.
He stops there. He doesn’t come in.
“Boss.”
I don’t turn.
“She’s gone.”
“I know.”
“Victor has her.”
“I fucking know.”
He comes in.
There’s a clean square of gauze taped to his side now, just above the belt line, the white of it bright against the dark of his jacket. He sees me clock it.
“Found a medical kit in one of the bathrooms,” he says. “Good kit. I’m fine, boss. Tonight I’m in the flow state. I’m gonna kick every one of these sons of bitches in the ass before sunrise. Don’t worry about me.”
Then he gets to the actual report.
“Eight bodies on the property. Four are ours. Really ours. The other four were dressed in our colors but they were—” He pauses. “They were the ones who flipped. Two of them were at the gate. The other two were inside.”
“They turned on ours.”
“They turned on ours. Ours figured it out and put up a fight. Took down the four bought ones before Victor’s outside crew got through the door.”
I don’t say anything.
The four real ones did everything right. They put up the fight they were paid to put up. It wasn’t enough.
I look around the room until my eyes land on the bed. Bea’s indentation still ghosts her pillow.
“He’s not going to kill her,” I growl.
“That’s—good?”
“No.”
I make myself say the rest. “He needs her alive. He needs her as a piece on a board. He took her instead of waiting for me to come home and putting one in my head, which means she’s worth more to him alive than I am dead. Which means he has a use for her.”
I don’t say what use.
Lorenzo’s face goes hard.
“Sick fuck.”
“We need to find her tonight. We don’t sleep until we find her.”
“Boss. We’ve got nothing. Half our guys are dead. Half of what’s left we don’t trust. We’ve got no address. No intel. Victor could have moved her into any of fifty properties in two states by now.”
“Then we call the ones we still trust. We make the list. We start cutting through it.”
“Alright. I’m with you. I’ll kick ass till I drop tonight, you know that,” Lorenzo promises.
“But the logistics, boss. The logistics are fucked. We don’t know who’s with us anymore.
The son of a bitch has got us looking sideways at every guy we’ve ever put on a payroll.
He’s done something to my whole fucking head about who I can trust. I don’t know how he pulled it off, but he did.
We’re paranoid by design. That’s the trap inside the trap. ”
“He overplanned this shit.”
“Right down to the gauze on my side. He probably thinks we’re both dead, by the way. The whole point of the warehouse was that nobody walks out of it. He’s sitting in a chair somewhere right now waiting for the call that says the D’Amico problem is handled.”
Something clicks.
I give Lorenzo a quick glance. “He thinks we’re dead.”
“I just said that, yeah.”
“Lorenzo.”
“What?”
“Anybody you’ve got left that you trust completely. Right now. The shortest list.”
“Three guys. Maybe four if I’m being generous about Tommy’s cousin.”
“Send them to the warehouse. Now. Burn it. Burn the whole fucking building down. Bodies, vehicles, everything. I don’t want a single recognizable face left on that floor.”
He stares at me.
Then he gets it.
“He’s going to send someone?”
“He’s going to send someone to confirm. He has to.
He doesn’t move on whatever he’s planning with her until he knows we’re in the ground.
When his confirmer pulls up to the warehouse, there’s going to be a fire with no faces in it.
Maybe he reads it the way I want him to read it.
Maybe he doesn’t. But for a few hours—maybe a day—we have the only advantage he didn’t pay for. ”
“That we’re alive.”
“And he won’t know it.”
Lorenzo’s already pulling his phone out.
“On it.” He’s dialing. He stops at the doorway. “So, what’s the play, boss. After the warehouse?”
I shake my head. “He overplanned everything,” I say again, still half in disbelief.
“He bought half my people. He set up the meet, the address, the road crew, the timing, the inside crew here. He thought of all of it.” I glance back at the bed one more time.
“What he didn’t plan for was two ghosts coming for him. ”
“Two ghosts?”
“That’s us.”
He almost smiles. “That’ll do, boss.”
He turns, goes to make his calls.
I follow him out.