Chapter 3
GIOVANNI
I knew there was a reason why I chose Demi to help get Meggie and Amber out of the city. It seems she wasn’t entirely honest when she joined the NYPD. She has connections that they would hold against her if they only knew, connections which she is prepared to use to help me track down The Fish.
Because her background might be murky, but her intentions are good, and she’s already invested in this scenario way more than she would have liked, and certainly too deep for her to walk away from without a satisfactory resolution.
Which puts us both on the same page.
She didn’t board the private jet in New York because she’d caught the Fish’s scent, and thought she’d help bag herself a prize that would keep the police commissioner in the lavish lifestyle to which he has become accustomed.
This is probably the reason why I lost him, but I won’t hold it against her.
Not after the information she has managed to get hold of.
Demi was armed with all the details of the plan. She knew that Meggie and Amber would end up at my mountain cabin in Stowe, so she rented a car using a fake driver’s license, and ID, and followed them there.
The first hint she got that something was amiss was when she saw Ric talking to a guy out of view of my security team shortly before they boarded the SkyRide. From her vantage point, she was able to take photos and run a search on them while my men rode the cable cars with Meggie and Amber.
She got the name Steve Barone, but little else.
Demi claims that she saw The Fish board the cable cars, but she didn’t see him get off. With alarm bells ringing inside her head, she trawled the entire area searching for him and drew nothing but a whole heap of blanks.
Later that same evening, when she saw some of my security team driving away from Stowe, she realized her rookie mistake. She’d been too distracted by the man who rode a mountain gondola and didn’t come back down again to trail the real problem which had been too close to Meggie and Amber all along.
By the time she reached the cabins, Nikki had already been shot, and the men who’d stayed behind to protect the love of my life and her little sister were already dead.
She remained hidden when Enzo arrived. She saw him enter the cabin and come back out armed, ducking into the shadows when he realized that he was close to walking into a showdown between Ric and The Fish. Then she lost him too until he almost got run over by the car Meggie was driving.
While the rest of us were several steps behind The Fish, Demi was the only one who managed to keep him in her sight when he drove up to the climbers’ hut. But that was as far as she got. His car collided with hers as he made his getaway.
But she managed to get a partial registration before she climbed out of the wreckage.
When Meggie overheard me talking to Demi and Enzo outside the hospital room, she’d come to tell me that a burnt-out vehicle had been located on the interstate heading north towards the Canadian border.
“I don’t buy it.” She no longer even remotely resembled Meggie.
She was taller somehow, stronger, her solid frame bulking out a plain black T-shirt and faded jeans as if the woman who’d traveled to the airport with me had been an illusion.
She’d been just what I wanted to see. And I understood that The Fish must’ve seen straight through our seemingly watertight plan.
“If a crime looks too convenient, it’s because it is too convenient.”
Enzo had been quiet while she did all the talking.
“If you want my opinion”—Demi hadn’t waited to find out if her opinion was of interest to me— “he’s still in the area. He isn’t going to get far with a frightened kid.”
When I told Meggie that I’d been waiting outside her hospital room the entire time, it wasn’t strictly true.
I’d switched places with Enzo for a while and driven back into Stowe with Demi and a security team recommended to me by Don Calderone.
We’d scoured every building in the town, run checks on all the residents and tourists, and tracked every vehicle.
We’d moved the corpses of my men who’d been killed in the cabins.
Then I’d sent Bruno and his men to find the others and secure them in the aircraft boneyard we’d originally planned to use as a rendezvous point. I’ll deal with them later.
Moving Meggie from the hospital is Demi’s idea.
“He tried to kill her, right?” She has this forthright way of speaking like she doesn’t care if anyone else agrees with her or not. “And she’s still alive, which equals one angry fucking fish in my book.”
Enzo smiles. I’m not accustomed to seeing him so reserved, but I could get used to it. Perhaps he is mellowing after all.
“How easy would it be for him to track her to this hospital?” Demi’s gaze takes in the armed bodyguards positioned at either end of the corridor.
Bruno’s family has connections here. Meggie’s room is the only one occupied on this ward, but patients’ names have been attached to the empty rooms to make it appear full if the records are checked.
Meggie has been checked in as Lissa Dickinson.
If The Fish does pull enough strings to trace her to the hospital, he’ll search the unallocated rooms in other wards first, which will at least buy us some time.
I hope it doesn’t come to that.
Enzo answers for me. “Given his track record, I’d say it’ll be pretty fucking easy.” He watches Demi closely, reminding me of when he was a kid, following our father around with his eyes and waiting for some praise to land his way.
Demi merely nods. “You guys ever seen The Godfather?” At our raised eyebrows, she adds, “Yeah, silly question. Okay, you remember the scene where the guys sneak into the hospital to kill Don Corleone, but his son has already moved him?”
“I’m not using Meggie as bait.” I barely wait for her to finish.
But she remains unfazed. “You won’t have to. That’s the whole point. We’ll move Meggie before we lay the trap.”
“Which is?” Enzo already seems invested, and I wonder how much of his enthusiasm stems from this being Demi’s idea.
“You and I are going on a date, kiddo.” She winks at him.
I must’ve missed the vital part of the plan. “Because…?”
“Because he looks like you, and even if our fish can tell the difference, he’ll put two and two together and figure out that there’s only one reason why a Sabatelli is here.”
It’s a flimsy plan at best, but every fisherman knows that to catch the biggest fish, you choose the appropriate bait.
“What have you got to lose?” She shrugs. “You’ve got enough foot soldiers in here to protect a small country. Besides, you and Meggie will be long gone before he makes his move.”
“I’m in,” Enzo says. “Where are we going for our date?”
“Wherever we’ll be seen.” She looks at him. “You do know it’s not a real date, right?”
Moving Meggie out of the hospital is the easy part.
The ward is graveyard-silent when we arrive via the private, morgue entrance.
Lights are on in the nurses’ office, and the computer screen is flickering on a timer to give the impression of life continuing as normal.
But, as planned, no one is about, apart from the bodyguards acting as patients in the rooms adjacent to Meggie’s.
Adrenaline fizzes through my veins. It feels good to be doing something proactive for Meggie rather than sitting around and waiting for news on The Fish’s whereabouts. Whether he shows or not, she’ll be safe.
The strong pain meds being administered to control the pain in her foot are keeping her drowsy, and I’m glad.
The pain in her eyes is almost too much to bear.
She knows firsthand what Amber’s father is capable of.
She has probably been living in flight-or-fight mode for the past five years, but she needs to heal, and this is the only way to ensure that she doesn’t discharge herself in the middle of the night and become the sacrificial lamb in return for her little sister.
She doesn’t even stir when Bruno and I arrive to wheel her out of her room.
The sun has already sunk behind the horizon.
Amber has been missing for twenty-four hours, and the ticking of my internal clock is adding to the guilt swilling around inside me.
If I could get inside The Fish’s head, maybe I could figure out where he might have taken her, but it’s impossible to relate to a sociopathic fucker who would threaten his own daughter.
Finding somewhere safe to keep Meggie hidden wasn’t so easy.
Until Nico mentioned his close links to a world-famous singer who just happens to own a sprawling estate in Vermont, and who is also happy to allow the mafia to occupy a remote huntsman’s lodge in the surrounding woods.
An ambulance is waiting for us at the blue-light entrance.
We’re almost there when I hear the first gunshot.
We maneuver Meggie’s bed easily into the waiting vehicle accompanied by two nurses who are in Bruno’s employ.
I climb in, take the seat at the head of the bed, and wrap her cold hand in mine.
I raise it to my lips and kiss her fingers as the vehicle pulls away, blue lights revolving, and the siren slicing through the night.
Demi and Enzo set off on their ‘date’ a couple of hours ago.
The ambulance has barely navigated the traffic heading towards the freeway before Demi’s voice crackles over the two-way radio. “We have a bite.”
Bruno’s men know what to do.
The fish turns out to be a guppy. A foot soldier sent to carry out The Fish’s orders while he lays low with his kidnapped daughter. But this is the closest we’ve gotten to him so far, and even though this guy was clearly expendable, I find that guppies are generally inclined to talk.
The secluded lodge is buried deep in the forest surrounding the singer’s estate, sheltered by ancient trees and dense foliage. The kind of place built with flying under the radar or Armageddon in mind.