Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Virus had always been a man of few words, and when he did speak, he usually cut right to the heart of the matter.
Aleksei took Rosemary’s wide eyes, ghost-pale face, and rushed breath as hard proof that Virus’s approach wasn’t always best. If she didn’t slow her breathing, she was going to pass out, and he might just have to kick Virus’s ass.
He rested a hand on her shoulder, her weathered sweatshirt soft and fuzzy under his fingers.
He pressed firmly, hoping the weight of his palm would ground her.
He took a few slow, audible breaths. Thank God she latched onto their connection and matched her breathing to his.
Her shoulders slackened, and he imagined he could feel her heartbeat slow to beat in time with his.
She laid a pale hand over his. “I’m okay. Really. I’m just not used to people wanting me dead.”
He shot Virus a death glare, which resulted in a sheepish shrug and a mumbled apology. His sweet Rose brushed it off as unnecessary. In his view, it was most definitely necessary.
Satisfied with the pace of her breathing and the pink that had returned to her cheeks, he removed his hand from her shoulder and began walking the length of the room. The feel of the hard floor under his pacing feet organized his erratic thoughts.
“Tell me more about Dante,” he said.
“He is, or maybe was, the IT guy for Pannetone & Associates. Like I said, he’s Sal’s nephew.
He’s young, sweet, and a little quirky. I can’t imagine him hurting anyone.
” She waved toward the screen. “There’s a comment in the spreadsheet notes.
It says he wants me to give the laptop to his grandfather.
It’s so bizarre. He told me his grandfather lives in Italy.
I wouldn’t have a clue how to find him.”
“He’ll probably find you,” Virus commented. “Especially if his grandson died in that explosion.”
Aleksei shot him a second death glare, and Virus lifted both his hands in surrender. “Got it. No more keeping it real.”
“If the Morescos wanted to cut ties with Pannetone and destroy all the records at the office, I don’t understand why Dante wouldn’t transfer the records to his own laptop or back them up somewhere,” Rosemary said.
Virus inverted his lips.
“Spit it out.” Aleksei said. “Just no more murder and doom and gloom.”
“Grandpa’s paranoid about cybersecurity, so there’s no way Dante can email or do anything that might put the Moresco files in a hackable domain.
The Morescos are mafia, which means they have to assume they’re always being watched.
Maybe they thought it was safter to use you to get the records out of the office. No one is watching you.”
Except the CI who told Kemper he’d been hired by Moresco to follow Rosemary.
Aleksei kept pacing, unease inching up his spine with every step. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t make sense?” Rosemary asked.
“Legal or illegal, businesses need records, and the mafia is just like any other business. They need a firm grasp of income and expenses so they can track profit and make sure no one’s stealing from them. That’s why they use accountants. They always have and always will. They need those records.”
“So, it seems a little far-fetched that Moresco would destroy the server and leave the only copy of the records with me,” Rose said.
“Maybe Moresco was the one stealing,” Virus offered. “Doesn’t he have to report up to his dad? Maybe he wanted more than the percentage the old man was letting him keep?”
“Maybe,” he said, but it didn’t sit right. “What’s the total amount of the invoices on that spreadsheet?”
Rosemary looked down at the computer screen. He liked watching her work. Even in pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt, she looked intelligent and efficient.
“Almost fifteen million.”
“And what’s the date of the earliest invoice?”
“About five years ago.”
“That’s right around the time the bureau started focusing on the Morescos.
I wasn’t involved then. The surveillance and background team gathered intel for about eighteen months before Phillipe and I went under.
” Aleksei paused for a moment. It was still so fucking hard to say Phillipe’s name out loud.
“Sal’s grandfather, Lorenzo, moved to Italy about six months before that.
He stepped back so his son could take the reins.
Sal is the functioning head of the family.
I hate the guy, but I just don’t see him faking invoices.
Yeah, the honor payments to Lorenzo are a percentage of the profits, but the percentage is so small that faking invoices to inflate expenses so the profit looks lower and they pay less in honor payments seems like a lot of work for what’s probably a few hundred thousand dollars. ”
“It’s not worth it to risk betraying his father for that,” Virus said.
Aleksei agreed.
“Maybe Armando was embezzling money and the Morescos found out. And then they thought they had to get rid of the server and eliminate all the people who knew the details of their business, so Dante sent the laptop with me on vacation to preserve the records,” Rose suggested, and then scrunched her pretty pink lips and shook her head, rejecting her own theory.
“If the Morescos really do need their records, it’s too big of a risk to throw them on a laptop and assume they’d be safe with me.
I could’ve spilled coffee on the laptop or accidentally dropped it into the lake, or found the spreadsheet, gotten suspicious, and called the cops.
It would make more sense to leave the server alone and just address the Armando issue. ”
She’d just voiced the same theory he’d been tossing around in his own mind, and she rejected it for the same reasons he had.
“Like I said, it doesn’t make sense. Giving you that laptop doesn’t feel planned to me. I think it was a spontaneous decision.”
Weeeoooo. Weeeoooo. Weeeoooo.
A three-toned siren emanated from speakers in the ceiling. Virus stiffened and spun his head toward the wall of screens.
A black Ford Bronco was climbing the hill toward the same chain link fence Aleksei had used his fingerprint to open last night. Virus shifted from the table to the chair in front of the counter. His fingers flew over buttons on a keyboard, and one of the screens zoomed in on the driver’s face.
“Any idea who that is?” Virus asked.
Gary fucking Kemper.
He’d known Kemper would find him eventually.
But this was quicker than he expected. If Gary had found them so easily, Moresco might not be far behind, and if Gary had made the trip all the way out here, the pile of shit they were in had likely gotten a hell of a lot deeper.
He needed to know how Kemper had found them and what other fucknado had struck to bring him here.
“Let him in.”
* * *
Special Agent in Charge Gary Kemper seemed uncomfortable in the old armchair next to the wood-burning stove.
Rosemary had a hunch that Virus had intentionally placed him there and then turned up the heat.
Literally. She found Virus’s living area on the main floor cozy and inviting with its woven rugs, mismatched furniture, and curtains that featured moose and trees, but Agent Kemper was sweating.
Of course, the fact that Virus was sitting on the edge of a rocking chair, glowering while cleaning a wicked-looking rifle he’d set on a tray table in front of him, could also be the source of Agent Kemper’s perspiration.
The man looked stiff, hot, and itchy. She’d been there too many times to count.
Sympathy gnawed at her stomach, but neither Aleksei nor Virus appeared concerned.
Instead, they both seemed irritated by his presence.
She was the only one happy to see Agent Kemper.
Gary. He kept telling her to call him Gary.
She needed to remember that...and happy wasn’t really the right word for her current emotional state.
She was more relieved. Gary had brought news that Sal knew she had the laptop and wanted it back.
He hadn’t gotten into the details yet, but she considered it progress.
She hated the idea of sitting around waiting for something bad to happen.
“How did you find me?” Aleksei asked.
Snuggled next to each other on the couch, she and Aleksei fit together like a lock and key. Being tucked in tightly next to him with his arm heavy around her shoulders filled her with a soothing, slow warming, hot-tea-on-a-brisk-fall-morning feeling. She could stay here forever.
“It wasn’t hard,” Gary answered. “The field team finally got in touch with Rosemary’s sister.
She told them Rosemary was camping at Ricketts Glen State Park.
I figured that’s where you’d called me from, so I pulled up Google Maps, skimmed around, and saw Trout Run.
I remembered you and Phillipe talking about a hunting trip here to visit one of your buddies from the Marines.
I put some tech guys on finding the names of your unit members and cross-checking them with the real estate records in Trout Run. I had the address in an hour.”
Aleksei’s body tensed against her side, but his tone remained cool. “I’m surprised you didn’t come with a SWAT team. I thought I was the prime suspect.”
“That changed when Sage told the investigators Salvatore Moresco called her, demanding to know where Rosemary was and threatening bodily harm if Rosemary didn’t return the laptop to him at one of his warehouses by midnight tonight.
Sage said he was emphatic on the deadline and that Rosemary come alone. ”
Every bit of warmth leached from Rosemary’s body.
The quick summary Gary provided when he arrived was that Moresco wanted the laptop returned.
He hadn’t said anything about Sal calling her sister.
He hadn’t said anything about Sage being in danger.
She had to keep her sister safe. She wouldn’t survive if anything happened to Sage.
Especially if it was her fault. Sage had given everything to take care of her.
Everything. Sage had saved her life. Rosemary was not going to let anyone hurt her sister.
“You have to protect her.” Her voice was a croak, as if her vocal cords had fallen victim to the glacier slowly overtaking her body.
“She and her fiancé are already in protective custody,” Agent Kemper responded.
“And Christian?”
“He’s safe.”
“Can I talk to my sister?” The need to hear her sister’s voice, to have audible proof of her safety, was as primal as the need to breathe.
“I’m sorry,” Gary answered. “That would compromise their safety.”
Of course. That made sense.
“What about Davis?”
“There’s a team at your stepfather’s house. We won’t let anything happen to your family,” Gary assured her.
But something had already happened. Sage had been threatened, and her family had been forced into hiding.
They wouldn’t be safe unless Rosemary returned the laptop.
She would do it. In person. Alone. By the deadline.
Just like Moresco wanted. She didn’t care about the risks.
She would die protecting her family if she had to.
“What aren’t you telling us?” Aleksei asked.
How did Aleksei know there was more?
“He said they would know if the files had been accessed, transmitted, or copied.”
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Kemper nodded. “That about sums it up. The bureau sent me to get Rosemary and the laptop. The plan is to copy all the data and, hopefully, find something to base an arrest warrant on so they can send a SWAT team in to pick up Moresco before the deadline.”
Aleksei leapt up from the couch. “If they do that, Rose will never be safe.”
Goose bumps rose on every piece of skin where Aleksei’s body had touched hers. If she wouldn’t be safe, her family wouldn’t be safe either.
“I’m not giving my computer to the FBI. I’m not putting my family at risk,” she said.
Gary sighed and shifted his chair a few inches away from the stove. His features were handsome, but he looked weathered and beaten down, as if he’d carried too heavy a burden for far too long.
“I’m not asking you to. I’ve had a bad feeling about this from the get-go.
I had the same feeling with the first Moresco op, and one of my best men ended up dead.
The tech guys are good, but there’s no guarantee they’ll get into those files or that Moresco won’t know they accessed them.
I want to nail Moresco, but I’m not going to risk you or your family.
I already have too much blood on my hands.
” Gary mopped sweat from his brow with a tissue.
“I’m not asking you to give the computer to the FBI.
I want you to give it to me. I’ll take it to Moresco for you. ”
She rose from the couch, her limbs stiff and shaky.
Her family had sacrificed their entire lives for her.
Her mother had made her health the focus of her life—attending every appointment, holding her head while she’d vomited from chemo, scrubbing the house and wearing a mask, and staying in an unhappy marriage for financial support.
Sage had foregone dating. Sage skipped parties, dances, and weekend trips to stay home with her to watch movies and play board games.
Her sister had stripped to pay their bills after Davis abandoned them.
Sage had gotten her the experimental drug that had saved her life.
Now it was Rosemary’s chance to rescue her family. Her turn to be the strong one. Her turn to do what had to be done to protect her sister, no matter the cost. She wasn’t going to let anyone else suffer or take risks for her. Not Sage. Not Virus. Not Aleksei. Not Kemper.
This was something she had to do herself.
“I appreciate your offer, but I won’t risk you or anyone else getting hurt. I’m going to take the laptop to Moresco myself, and I’m going to do it alone.”