Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ELVIS STARED AT THE front of the U.S. Marshals’ office, thinking they had definitely not made the building for comfort.
It was a thought he repeated once he was inside and saw how small and deliberately uninviting the interrogation offices were, with their institutional gray walls, the tables bolted to the floor, and the chairs that had been engineered by someone who understood that discomfort was a tool.
As soon as they had arrived, they divided the men up, placing each in a different room down the hall from each other.
Leon currently sat alone, his wrists cuffed to the ring at the center of the table as he slouched in his chair as much as he could.
His expression revealed it wasn’t his first time in a room like this and he appeared quite comfortable with the experience.
Still, none of the men were talking, just sitting there trying to look tough even though they had to know the cards were stacked against them.
The marshals had allowed them to sit in on the interrogation thanks to Donovan having filled them in before they set their plan in motion.
Elvis stood against the back wall, arms across his chest as he tried not to worry about Delaney not being in his sight.
If they could get to Matteo, she wouldn’t have to worry ever again about someone coming after her.
Dane sat in a chair across from Leon while Marshal Peter Cochran, a man who looked to be in his fifties with gray hair at the temples and a weathered patience that told Elvis he had conducted plenty of these conversations in his time, took up the other seat.
Blaze remained at the Whitmore house, still watching the cameras and listening for chatter to see if anyone had noticed Leon’s capture.
Elvis’s phone buzzed in his hand, and a quick glance showed a text from Gage: The marshal’s in surgery, and we’re with Delaney in the waiting room. Everything is quiet here.
He exhaled a slow breath through his nose as he glanced back at the interrogation going on in front of him.
“I’m giving you first shot here, Leon,” Cochran said, his coastal Southern drawl unhurried and without particular emphasis.
“Or you can keep sitting there pretending you’re some tough idiot while your men figure out that the first one to give me what I want gets the most comfortable spot for the next ten years. ”
Leon stared at him, his expression blank. “People can’t talk about what they don’t know. Now, get me my lawyer.”
Cochran nodded, his lips pressed together. “As I understand it, he’s on his way. Might take a while, though. Savannah traffic sucks around lunchtime.”
Leon shrugged as he dropped his gaze to his hands. “I got nothing but time.” He glanced over the men sitting across from him to Elvis. “The question is, do you?”
Cochran looked over at Dane, who glanced back at Elvis. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Elvis asked.
Something was off. Leon had to know he had no call to make here, but he acted as if he was the least of their issues.
They had scooped up three of his men in broad daylight, right off the street, the fourth man being shot at the scene, and they were all waiting in rooms just like him, all handcuffed to tables in a federal building.
By all rights, this was a terrible morning for the man.
And yet the specific anxiety that tended to appear in men who knew the weight of their situation just wasn’t showing on Leon’s face.
He wasn’t comfortable necessarily, but he wasn’t worried either. Why?
He knew something they didn’t, and it set the hairs on Elvis’s neck on end. It was like his instincts were trying to tell him something his brain hadn’t figured out yet.
He cocked his head to the side. “Your boss know you’re here? Matteo Serrano sending you a fancy lawyer? That why you’re just sitting there like you’re waiting for dessert or something?”
Leon just stared at him, saying nothing.
“Because here’s what I’m thinking,” Elvis continued, pushing himself off the wall and moving over to the table as he slipped his phone into his pocket.
He planted both hands on the surface as he leaned forward until he was eye level with the man who tried to take Delaney from him.
“A man like Matteo Serrano trusts nothing or anyone. Not something like this, something he’s been waiting fifteen years to finish.
He wouldn’t send you to meet us without contingencies if things went sour.
” He glanced over at Dane and then at Cochran.
“No, Matteo is probably a man who’s careful, likes to make plans behind plans behind plans, like having that extra man hiding in the van” He glanced back at Leon, his eyes narrowed.
“Which means you walking into that street this morning wasn’t the only plan in play. ”
Leon glanced at him, his expression carrying a flat, professional patience, like he had been trained to give nothing away. Elvis had seen men like him before. Hell, he was one of them.
“He’s not just waiting on a lawyer.” Elvis stood, hands on his hips. “He’s simply keeping us busy. There’s another plan in play. I’d wager good money on it. They’re still taking care of business.”
Cochran’s eyes sharpened as he leaned forward, clasping his hands together, and Dane went extremely still as he gave Elvis his full attention. “Keep going.”
Elvis gave a curt nod as he turned back to Leon. “Talk to me about the second team. You had a man hidden in case things went sideways, the one who tried to shoot Delaney. That tells me there’s another team ready in case you fucked it up. Where are they?”
Something moved over Leon’s face. It was small and only there for a moment, but Elvis saw it like he spotted tells at a poker table.
He felt his stomach drop, knowing he was right. “Shit. I hate when I’m right. There is a second team.” It wasn’t a question this time, and he was already reaching for his phone. “Where are they?” He kept his voice calm, knowing yelling would do him no good. “Where’s the second team?”
Leon stared at the table, staying quiet.
“That guy who shot Donovan was hiding, waiting,” Dane said. “It stands to reason someone else was also in the wings, which means they know Delaney got into that ambulance. They probably also know that Gage and Grim followed them.”
Elvis stood straighter and yanked his phone back out of his pocket, punching Gage’s name in his contacts as soon as he had it open. “They’re going after Delaney at the hospital.”
Cochran was already on his phone, calling for help, and Dane was calling for Blaze to scour hospital cameras.
The phone rang four times, and Elvis’s impatience went up a notch each time. Four times was three too goddamn many. The man would have been waiting for his call and answered immediately.
Finally, Gage answered.
Elvis turned away from the table, lowering his voice. “There’s a second team we didn’t account for, and I’m certain they’re there already. Tell me you have eyes on Delaney.”
He could hear the other man shuffling, a chair sliding against the floor. “I’m in the waiting room. They moved Donovan to recovery and would only allow one of us to go with her, so Grim went. She wanted to be with him before they took him to ICU.”
“Get to her,” Elvis snapped. “Call me when she’s in your sight again.”
He ended the call, standing in the interrogation room as he gripped his phone tight enough that it dug gouges into his palm.
Dane appeared at his side, hands on his hips. “Blaze is on it. Anything?”
Elvis shook his head, and Dane gave a curt nod as he turned back to Cochran, which made the man start speaking in rapid, clipped sentences into his phone.
Leon had stopped looking at the table and now watched Elvis with a smirk on his lips that Elvis wanted to punch right off.
His phone rang again.
“I tried calling Grim, but he’s not answering. I’m almost there. Recovery is on the third floor.”
Elvis closed his eyes, his heart pounding under his ribs. “Take the stairs; it’ll be faster.”
“Got it.”
He remained on the phone, and Elvis could hear the slamming of doors and the sound of Gage’s heavy boots pounding up the stairs.
Elvis slipped out the door of the interrogation room, standing in the corridor where he could think without Leon’s smirk tempting him to murder the man.
Spinning in a circle, he listened to Gage taking the stairwell, the echo of the door swinging open followed by Gage’s heavy boots pounding the concrete stairs.
Another door opened, and then he heard Gage moving through a hallway, asking people to move, apologizing for knocking someone over.
“Almost there,” Gage said.
Elvis nodded without thinking, his thoughts drifting to Delaney in some sterile waiting room, picturing her hands pressed against Donovan’s side on the sidewalk, about the way she had looked at the marshal before she got into the ambulance with him.
Her features had been a mixture of control and fear and entirely determined, all contradictory expressions, as if she couldn’t decide on how to feel.
He thought about Matteo Serrano, who wanted revenge for his father, who seemed careful and a man who planned for everything. He expected a trap and set one of his own while they were congratulating themselves on the hook being swallowed.
And then, out of nowhere, because that’s how things happened sometimes, unbidden and random as hell, he thought of a quote by the King: Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.
He heard his mother’s voice underneath it as the two of them sat on the sofa together watching an old screen in a small house in Mississippi while the world passed by outside.
“I’ve got Grim,” Gage’s voice cut through his memory.
Elvis blew out a breath as he ran his hand through his hair.
“Damn,” he heard Gage mutter. “Nurses are helping him sit on the bed. Looks like he’s been drugged. Spilled coffee cup on the floor at his feet. Elvis, Delaney isn’t with him.”
“Where is she?” Elvis demanded to know, clenching his hand into a tight fist at his side.
“Grim, where’s Delaney?” Gage asked. The words were distant, as if Gage had set the phone down. “Grim, look at me. Where’s Delaney?”
“Is he all right?” Elvis asked, glancing over as Dane and the marshal stepped into view. He put the phone on speaker and held it in front of him.
Then he heard Grim talking, his voice distant, his words slurred. Elvis couldn’t make out what he said, though, which drove him even crazier.
“Grim says she was standing at the door watching Donovan,” Gage said.
“As they were back there, a nurse offered him some coffee, and he thought nothing of it, just watching Delaney with the marshal. He didn’t intend to sip it, but…
habit, I guess.” He heard the man take a deep breath.
“The next thing he knew, nurses were helping him off the floor.”
Elvis moved to the wall and fell back on it, the phone now at his side. “They got her.” He looked up at Dane, his heart breaking. “They took her. That bastard took her.”
Dane crossed the corridor, placing his hand on Elvis’s shoulder.
“We’ll find her.” He squeezed Elvis’s shoulder, his voice the calm assurance he used with his team when things went off the rails.
There was no panic, no doubt in his tone.
Simply determination. “We’ll find her. We’ve got Leon and his men.
We have his phone, and Blaze can run through the contacts. We’ll get her back.”
Elvis looked at the interrogation room door where Leon sat on the other side, handcuffed to a table, looking as if nothing in the world would disrupt his life.
Elvis felt the growl rumble out of him. The man was wrong about that. He shoved himself off the wall, heading back inside the room.
“What are you doing?” the marshal asked, following his movements with his gaze.
Elvis didn’t even look at him. “Taking care of business.”
He walked back into the interrogation room, closing the door behind him, and yanked out the chair across from Leon and fell into it for the first time since they had arrived.
He placed his phone on the table between them and then folded his hands as he glanced across the table at the man with an expression that was far from professional.
Leon looked back at him, and whatever he saw in Elvis’s face made his eyes widen as he leaned back in his chair, sitting up straighter.
“Here’s what’s going to happen.” His voice was low, even, carrying a tone that meant he had arrived somewhere beyond anger to something like deadly calm.
“You’re going to tell me where Matteo is taking her, and I don’t care how I have to get the information out of you.
This is your only chance to spare yourself from something that won’t end well for you. ”
Leon merely stared at him.
“Elvis Presley used to say that image is one thing and the human being is another.” He made a slow bob of his head.
“He meant it as a warning about distancing yourself from two images of a person. That what you see isn’t really what’s there.
” He let his head tilt to the side as he stared at the man across from him.
“I’m telling you there’s no distance left between me and this situation.
What you’re seeing is what you’re about to get.
I’m not here to threaten you with empty words.
I’m here to get answers anyway way I have to.
So, if I were you, I’d think carefully about what your silence is worth to you right now and what it’ll cost you to keep it. ”
The room remained quiet as Leon dropped his gaze to the table.
Elvis stared at him, waiting. He was good at waiting, but right then, he had never found it harder to do.
And then he slid back in his chair as he rose to his feet, his eyes narrowing even further. “I told you this was your only chance. You really should have listened to me.”
And then he moved around the table.