CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lydia had taken off from that seedy hotel, but Reno had his tracking device on her. And that was what led him to the top floor of that abandoned warehouse across the street from that abandoned junkyard.
But Reno was as perplexed as he was exhausted as he sat at that window, with his rifle at his side, waiting for her to show her beautiful face.
This was all-consuming for him now. If Moose knew about that other thing, there was only one answer for it. Reno had to end it. He had to put an end to the Vatellis in his life if it was the last thing he did. And then, if the truth came out, he had to run and never look back.
He still remembered the way Jimmy and Dommi and Sophia and even Carmine looked at him when he said he wanted to divorce their mother. And the way Trina looked when he said that D word. Just her look alone broke his heart.
But when she found out the truth, she was going to be all for the D word and anything else that would destroy Reno forever.
Getting rid of the Vatellis and everybody associated with them was the only chance he had.
He had to take care of the Vatellis if he had any chance of getting his family back.
And them leaving his family alone. They had to go.
And now the daughter, Moose Vatelli’s reason for living, was holed up in a shed in the middle of a junkyard.
He didn’t follow her to her location. She would have easily scoped out a tail.
He let the tracking device he had planted on her do that for him.
Then he made his way to the location and set up across the street in another abandoned building.
Waiting for her to show her face.
And that was when he saw it.
“Movement,” he said excitedly as he jumped to his feet and looked out of his rifle scope. He didn’t know who all was in that shed with Lydia. He arrived after his tracker said she had arrived. But he was certain she wasn’t alone.
And she wasn’t. A group of what he counted were twelve armed men came out of the shed and began to split up.
One group of six hurried toward the right side of the shed and hurried into the woods, while another group of six hurried toward the left side of the shed and hid in the woods.
But as they were running into the woods, he saw one of them, the one he pegged to be the leader, look toward the long driveway that led to the junkyard.
Reno didn’t know what he was looking at, but he knew something was happening.
That was why he grabbed his binoculars and ran to the back side window of the room he was perched in.
And that was when he saw two SUVs heading toward that long driveway that led to that shed.
When he zoomed in and saw Robby Yale riding shotgun on the front seat of the first SUV, his heart dropped.
You saw Robby you usually was going to see Sal.
And that was when he zoomed in even further and saw, to his horror, Sal and Tommy on the middle row of that first SUV. It was his family coming to the scene. It was his family coming to be ambushed!
He quickly pulled out his phone and tried to call Sal. As suspected, it went straight to Voice Mail. He tried to call Tommy and then Robby, but both of their phones went to Voice Mail too.
“Gotdammit!” he yelled out as he angrily tossed his phone, quickly set on timer the rifle he had on its perch at the back window, and then he grabbed his backup rifle and ran out of the room and down the five flights of stairs.
He was running so fast he nearly tripped and fell.
He was running so fast he felt as if his heart was still upstairs while the rest of him was already downstairs.
When he was near the ground floor, he jumped down the remaining three stairs and took off running toward the exit.
He went to the downstairs window where he could see that the twelve men were still hidden in the woods as the two SUVs were driving up.
As soon as the SUVs drove up, and before Sal and Tommy and the rest of their men in the first and second SUVs could get out, the twelve men ran out of those woods ready to attack.
Their job seemed to be to keep the Gabrini outfit as far away from that shed as they possibly could.
But as soon as they ran out of those woods, that was when Reno pressed the remote that controlled his rifle upstairs and the rifle’s timer went off, causing the rifle to begin shooting in rapid succession.
When the twelve men heard that gunfire from upstairs across the street, they began firing toward what was firing at them. The rifle took out some of the men, but Reno began firing from upstairs, taking out several of the men.
Although the drivers of the SUVs began backing out, Sal and Tommy and their men were firing at the gunmen that were running toward their SUVs. Who Reno didn’t take out, they took out. But the rest of the men began to run back toward the shed.
That was when Sal yelled for the driver of the first SUV to stop and then they all jumped out and chased the men who were running for cover.
Reno ran from across the street toward his cousins. When they saw him, they were relieved to know whoever was shooting from across the street was indeed friendly fire.
And Reno, Sal, Tommy, and Robby Yale, along with their other men, ran toward that shed blasting away. None of the men made it inside. They were able to gun them all down.
“Lydia’s inside,” Reno said.
“Then let’s go get that bitch,” said Sal.
But Reno stopped him. Because he knew that bitch. It wasn’t going to be that easy.
And that was when Reno saw Lydia running out of the back of the shed. “There’s Lydia,” he yelled. “She’s getting away!”
All of them began running toward the back. But before they could get back there, the shed suddenly exploded into shards of metal and the power of the explosion alone knocked all of them off of their feet. The force of that explosion flew them backwards, with their rifles flying from their hands.
When they landed, they were nearly fifty feet away from that now decimated shed.
Reno was the first to get up, grab his rifle, and began running toward the back in search of Lydia. Her ass wasn’t getting away. Did she get knocked down too?
But when he and the others following him ran back there, they could only see a big black Jeep at the far back end of that property backing up and speeding away.
But Reno would not be deterred. No way was he losing her!
He ran after that Jeep with a speed none of them could match. And as soon as he could aim, he stopped running, pointed his rifle, and took his shot.
Lydia, driving that Jeep, jerked forward, as if it was a clean shot through the back of the head. And then the Jeep, as if on autopilot, began to move toward the side of the road. Until it came to a stop in a ditch. The undercarriage immediately caught fire.
Reno, Sal and Tommy led the chase to get to the Jeep before it exploded. They wanted to drag her ass out of there because they needed more answers. They needed to torture her. They needed to get her under serious duress. Answers under those conditions were the only reliable answers.
But they couldn’t get there in time. The fire beneath the SUV consumed the cabin of the Jeep, causing it to buckle and exploded too. They abruptly stopped their progression.
By the time they made it up to the vehicle, it was engulfed with flames. And the figure inside was already burned to a crisp. It was a ghastly scene.
Reno knelt down in sheer exhaustion. “Damn, damn, damn!” he yelled out as Tommy and Sal stood there exhausted too.
“It would have been so much easier to present that bitch as our hostage,” Reno said. “That would have made it that much easier to force Moose Vatelli out of that gotdamn sewer he’s hiding in.”
But Tommy looked at him. “We still can do it, Reno.”
Reno frowned. “What are you talking? She’s dead!”
“We know that,” Tommy said. “But look where we are. In some fucking deserted junkyard in the fucking boonies. Moose don’t know what happened. All his men are deceased. Who’s gonna tell him? You? Only we know what happened out here.”
Reno realized what Tommy was saying and stood back up.
“As far as he knows, she is our hostage,” Tommy continued. “We can still force him out.”
“Gotdamn, Tommy, you’re right,” said a grinning Sal. “You’re right!”
Reno was still exhausted, but he knew it too.
“Now will your ass go back home?” Tommy asked him. “It’s cold out here.”
But that faraway look of dread appeared in Reno’s eyes. Because he knew forcing Moose out was just the half of it. Trina finding out why he had to force him out, and what that meant for their marriage, was the other half.
Going home wasn’t the great solution Tommy was making it out to be.
Going home was even riskier than staying in the cold.