3. Franco
3
FRANCO
“ T here’s the van.” I pointed out the A&J vehicle on the side of the road. It wasn’t even off the road, like it broke down.
“We’ll go up there, then?” Liam furrowed his brow as he looked ahead to a dump of a motel. The long, lone strip of rooms didn’t look welcoming, but I supposed with the nonstop storms and rain last night, if this deli employee was seeking somewhere close to hide or stay, that dumpy lodging would be it.
“Yeah.” I got my gun out, more than ready to get some damn answers. Every time I neared the prospect of fighting, of venting through violence, I could appreciate the opportunity to not think. To act without conscious thought. Going after the Constella enemies and assholes who dared to attack us was my job. But it was also my pleasure. Because when I let my darkness overrule logic, when I gave in to the temptation to be a brutal fighting machine and killer, I didn’t have the energy to miss her. To think about her. To wallow in the pain of her rejection.
“Ready?” Liam asked as he parked my SUV further back, halfway between the motel and the A&J van. He grunted a laugh, noticing me prepared with my gun in hand. “Stupid question.”
“Look.” I pointed at the sturdy truck with tinted windows. It looked too nice and well-maintained to fit in at this motel. The only other vehicle parked in the lot was a station wagon from the seventies, with one wheel missing. It was propped up on a stack of bricks instead of a real jack, like it’d been left there to rust away forever.
“Yeah, that truck has got to be from the city,” Liam agreed as he shut off the SUV.
“I bet it’s the fuckers who shot up the deli and chased after the employee.” Sheldon provided surveillance footage of two trucks pursuing the A&J van. While I didn’t want to make assumptions, I was certain our attackers were here since the van was.
Before we exited the SUV, I took a picture of the truck in case it could be information to use later. The plates were smeared with mud and illegible, but Sheldon could try to run the vehicle registration and find an owner later.
“Let’s go,” I told Liam.
We reached for the door handles in sync, and like we’d been partners all our lives, we approached the rundown motel as two men in action who knew how to anticipate the other’s actions. He hung back, keeping a lookout for anything toward the east, while I walked ahead and scoped out the surroundings to the west. We’d parked from a distance so the scant tree line could serve as a block. This way, we didn’t have our backs completely exposed.
Two tall men stalked down the path. They rounded the corner of the long building, clearly looking for someone. Bulges at their ankles showed that they were packing. Both of them kept one hand beneath their jackets, indicating that they likely held on to a firearm. Between their hard scowls and tense expressions of being on the hunt, it was obvious we’d caught them actively on the hunt for this employee.
Why is it so important to eliminate the one witness to the shootout?
Are they trying to hide who ordered that attack?
It didn’t add up. Spending all this energy to track down one witness seemed excessive. If the goal was to attack and obliterate a Constella business, they’d achieved that. A&J Deli would no longer remain after the cleanup.
Liam nodded at me as we snuck up to the men. They moved from room number three to its neighbor, number four. Behind them, coming from the side, Liam and I moved stealthily.
We didn’t need to discuss a plan. It was a given that we’d split up, and in this even pairing, it’d be one of those fuckers for each of us to contain. Killing them was inevitable, but not until we got some answers.
“Open the door!” the shorter, bald one said.
“Someone has to be in there,” his taller friend said. “Two keys weren’t in the office and we’re down to the last two rooms.”
I tipped my chin at the taller one, indicating to Liam that I’d take him on. While we were too far to make out many details, I swore that tattoo up along his neck had to match the marking on one of the men we saw in the surveillance footage at A&J’s. The men who shot the place up wore masks, but I was confident it had to be one of the same men.
Liam nodded, holding his gun higher as we rushed at the men. At the last second, when the shorter, stockier guy kicked the flimsy door in, the taller man turned to glare at us. He likely heard our footsteps when we reached the cracked sidewalk of the path in front of the rooms. While we were quiet, we had to hurry before they busted into this room and removed the witness.
Between these two men or the surviving witness, we would have our answers.
“Fuck. Go!” The tall man shoved his partner into the room at the same time he aimed his gun at us. We fired at the same time, but in the process as the two men attempted to get into the room, Liam charged for the shorter guy and I targeted the other.
We split up, both ducking from fire. I tucked behind a column holding up the leaking and cracked roof that hung over this path. Waiting until he ceased firing, I glanced at the window of room four. The curtains remained shut, but if the employee was in there, Liam would get it under control.
Rapid footsteps led away from me, and I took that as my cue to chase down the tall man who’d shot at me. He abandoned his partner, and running toward the parking lot, he skidded and slipped on the still-slick surface from last night’s rains.
“Stop,” I ordered, sprinting full-speed after him. He wouldn’t get away, not with me hot on his heels and with the gun in my hand. Pumping my arms fast, I lacked a chance to aim at him, but once he shot shelter behind the beat-up station wagon, I lifted my firearm and pulled the trigger.
He wasn’t fast enough to duck. The first bullet from my gun shattered the only window blocking him. Then the second hit him in the side.
The loud curse proved I’d gotten him where it hurt, where it would count. I couldn’t kill him yet, but as I ran around the car and trained my gun on him, I saw that I’d wounded him to the point that he wouldn’t run.
Blood and body matter splattered the pavement. He fell from the hit that cut through him from the right. If I didn’t shatter his ribs, I would have damaged plenty of other organs and vital body parts.
Just in case he got any ideas, I shot both his legs too.
“Fuck!” he roared it to no one. Under this cold, gray sky, it was just me and him out here near the place I’d grown up. Beckson wasn’t well populated, and the first signs of civilization only showed up closer to Main Street in town. Where Chloe’s parents lived in a?—
Dammit. Not now. This was no time to let my thoughts wander to her.
Out here off the highway, it was uninhabited and barren, save for the piece-of-shit motel that I assumed would’ve been torn down years ago.
“Who do you work for?” I asked, holding my gun to aim at his head.
He spat at my feet, then resumed wincing and rolling to his back. Both of his hands were covered in blood, but no matter how hard he compressed the wounds, he wouldn’t live.
“Tell me who ordered you to shoot up that shop.”
He groaned, not answering.
“Tell me now.”
“Fuck you. I ain’t telling you shit.”
I narrowed my eyes at the slowly dying man. He’d bleed out soon enough, but he was with it enough to know what I was asking for. Intel. Information. Answers.
He intended to hold out on me and take those details to the grave. I wasn’t shocked. I’d encountered many people who preferred to die before giving away a single piece of information. It was just my luck that he had to be one of them.
As I watched him struggle to breathe, blood spilled out of his mouth. Time was running out for him. It was running out for me, too, to get any answers. Studying him was a form of getting information, though. He wasn’t as polished and cutthroat as the Giovanni soldiers. They were trained too well. They knew how this worked. If this man was someone Stefan Giovanni hired, he would’ve taken his gun and killed himself already. That was how Stefan expected his soldiers not to tell anyone a thing.
In the same manner, I didn’t think this guy was a survivor from the Domino outfit. All the Mafia Families looked the same and held themselves in the same manner. This man wasn’t from any crime family that I recognized.
His slurred speech and grungy appearance suggested he might be a member from the Devil’s Brothers, but I didn’t think that was correct either. He wasn’t wearing a cut and he seemed slightly different from the bikers who’d been making our lives hell lately.
“I ain’t telling you sh?—”
I shot him, not in the mood to wait him out. He’d made up his mind not to tell me anything, and I expedited that process. I didn’t have all day to wait around. Liam might have better luck in that room, and that was why I turned to rush back there and hopefully help interrogate that shorter man.
No one appeared as I sprinted back to the motel. Not a worker. No guests. Only the distant drone of vehicles speeding along the highway met my ears.
I slowed to a jog as I ran to the open door to room four.
“Dammit,” I announced as I walked in.
The short, bald man was dead, lying on the ground with a bullet hole between his eyes. Liam was an expert marksman.
“He wasn’t telling me anything,” he replied, uninjured near the bed. “I tried, but…” He sighed and shrugged.
“Yeah. The other one didn’t talk either.” I furrowed my brow, assuming not all was lost. Liam stayed crouched near the bed, hovering over another body. “Is that the employee?”
“It is.”
I walked closer. “Dead?”
“No. But he reached her and she knocked her head on the edge of the nightstand in the commotion before I could get him away from her.”
Her. A woman.
“Knocked out cold, but she’s got a steady pulse,” Liam replied as I approached the prone body of a slender blonde on the disgusting carpet.
He blocked her face, but that long, blonde hair was like a sucker punch to the gut. Soft and so golden, even in lousy lighting. Like Chloe .
Before I could scold myself for thinking of her again, I neared them and realized it would be impossible to talk myself out of letting her stay in my mind. I blinked once, not trusting my eyes. My vision was fine, though. I stood there, stunned speechless and unable to move, shocked down to the marrow of my bone and the bottom of my heart.
What the fuck?
Confusion battled with my shock.
Because the witness, the only surviving employee at A&J’s Deli, was none other than the ex I never got over.
Chloe.
It was her.