24. Dante
24
DANTE
T he car. The car had been wiped clean of any trace it had been handled by anyone else. It was gone for two days. The car… it had to be the car. The Savages owned a string of service stations up and down the freeway – hell, we had even had occasion to use their services at times.
“I want you to take my car,” I say, removing the key from my pocket. “Take it to the empty storage unit.” Marco throws me a puzzled look. “Park it in the garage and check it for a tracking device. If you find one, leave it there. Bring the car back and park it out front where it is now. Take some men with you – I don’t want you at the facility on your own.”
“You think the car has been compromised.”
“I’m almost certain that’s what happened and how they found us. The question now is, why? What do they want?”
* * *
I know even before Marco returns that the car is what led the Savages to us. There is no other possibility. And the look on Marco’s face tells me everything he couldn’t say on the phone. The car has been tampered with, an external tracking device attached. Which means the car and the cabin are now compromised. I can no longer count on using either.
We make plans to move that night, and I thank the heavens for the foresight we’d had to park SUVs in the garage of the house we’d moved to after the raid. The men at the other house have already cleared out, each couple taking a car which they ditch in a random place along the way in case they are being followed, before climbing into new cars and moving on to their new destinations.
Marco drives us out of the garage at midnight, Kingsley sitting beside me, her wrist handcuffed to mine. No chance of escape should things go south, and I don’t want to risk her jumping out of the car when we’re parked at a set of lights.
“This is a little overkill, don’t you think?” she mutters, pulling at the handcuffs. I throw her a sideways glance but remain otherwise quiet. The girl has been nothing but trouble ever since I’ve met her, and I am determined to ditch her ass the first chance I get.
“Tell me what happened the night I ‘saved your life’…” I stress my point to remind her that I’d done her a favor and emphasize that I’d done myself a disservice, “and you took my car and left me stranded at the cabin.”
Moneybags shrinks back in her seat when she understands the murderous look on my face for what it is. She looks almost surprised that I am no longer being remotely civil to her. Almost losing some of your best men can do that to you. She has no idea how quickly I can turn from neutral to murderous; I had hoped she’d never have to see that side of me. I give her a short, angry nod, telling her to speak.
“I drove home.”
“And?”
She looks bewildered, turning in her seat to face me as she wonders what I’m getting at.
“And what? I went straight home.”
“No stops along the way?” Really, I was just prodding, and Moneybags isn’t a fount of information.
She shakes her head in response, her curious gaze trying to keep up with her galloping brain. She is dying to know why I’m asking such seemingly random, unimportant questions.
“What happened when you got home?”
“Tate ripped into me.”
“Why? Does he do that usually?”
“All the time,” she mutters, rolling her eyes and turning away. “Guy is like a poisonous thorn in my side.”
“That poisonous thorn has been your father’s right hand man since before you were born.”
“No matter,” she huffs. “My father’s gone now, there’s no use for him anymore.”
“Is that so?”
I look at her curiously. There is obviously no love lost between Moneybags and Tate. I wonder if he knows that she’s planning to cut him off.
After a long silence in which she looks out the window at the midnight landscape as we travel along dark roads, she turns to face me again, her dark eyes mesmerizing as she chooses her words carefully. Everything about Moneybags is measured. Her words. Her thoughts. Her actions. The way she conducts her life. Even the extent to which she would open that door and let you in to her world – she always holds something back.
“I don’t much care for him.”
“I don’t much care for him either,” I inform her. “That doesn’t mean I don’t respect the hell out of him for being able to keep your father safe for so many years, especially when your father had such a vivid target on his back.”
Moneybags visibly flinches at the reminder, then lifts her shoulders in a shrug and resumes her interest in the passing night beyond the window.
“So back to the night in question…” I pick up my line of questioning again, hoping she’ll comply with answering my questions long enough to give me an idea of what we’re facing. I am under no misguided delusions that Moneybags is the one that planted the tracking device in my car. She wouldn’t be so bothered. “Does Tate usually wait up for you on your night forays?”
I watch her carefully as she turns her head, frowns, then digs inside her brain for something that is obviously challenging her.
“Obviously, no. Or else he would have put a stop to it from day one.”
“So what was different about this particular night?”
“Why are you asking such ridiculous questions?”
“Answer the question.”
“And if I don’t?”
She is challenging me at every question. I lift my arm and indicate the chain binding us to each other before I bend my head close to hers, our faces almost touching. I turn so my lips nick her ear, like a lover about to share a secret, and breathe against her skin. I hear the shake of the thready breath she releases. I have her right where I want her.