33. Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Three
Lorenzo
Donna crashes against me as the rear of the SUV swings around, tires tearing through wet gravel and mud before we hit something solid enough to stop us with a jolt that snaps my head forward.
For half a second, there is only the sound of rain striking the roof and the sharp ringing in my ears.
Then gunfire erupts somewhere behind us.
Donna is already moving.
Whatever sleep had been pulling her under thirty seconds ago is gone. She yanks her seat belt free while reaching beneath her coat, and by the time I have my own belt off, she has her gun in her hand.
Mocha is wedged low between the seats, tense and alert, his ears forward as he tracks the noise outside.
More shots crack through the night.
Our security is being engaged somewhere behind us, close enough that I can hear the exchange through the closed vehicle but far enough that I cannot see what is happening.
“Stay down,” I tell Donna.
She gives me a look that would be almost insulting under any other circumstances.
“Until we know where the fire is coming from.”
“That’s better.”
I draw my gun and lean forward enough to look through the windshield.
The SUV is angled partly off the road, the front end shoved into a shallow ditch. A headlight throws a crooked beam across wet pavement and the side of a low industrial building farther ahead.
Rinaldi’s seat is empty.
The driver’s door hangs open.
My stomach drops.
“Rinaldi.”
Donna follows my line of sight. “He must have been thrown out.”
There is no blood visible from here, although that tells me very little.
If I were alone, I would already be outside looking for him.
But I am not alone.
Donna is beside me, and someone has just forced our vehicle off the road, and I have a very good feeling I know who it was.
Protecting her comes first.
I hate the choice even as I make it.
“We need out of the vehicle,” I say. “We are trapped in here if they surround us.”
Donna nods once.
I glance toward Mocha.
He is focused on the rear passenger door now, body tight, a low growl building in his chest.
Donna sees it too.
“Mocha. Watch.”
His attention sharpens immediately.
I shift toward the door, keeping low, already calculating how fast I can get Donna behind the engine block or around the far side of the SUV.
We never get the chance.
The rear door jerks open.
Cold air and rain rush into the vehicle as a man appears in the opening with a gun leveled directly at us.
The moment I see it's not Rinaldi or one of my other men, I fire without hesitation.
The shot explodes through the SUV, deafening in the enclosed space, and the man at the door drops out of sight before he can bark out whatever order was on his lips.
Donna does not waste so much as a second reacting to it.
“Go.”
But I am already moving.
I shove through the open door and hit the wet gravel hard, bringing my gun up as I clear the side of the vehicle. The man I shot lies beside the SUV, while another figure farther back freezes just long enough to reveal that he was not expecting us to come out armed and fighting.
That hesitation costs him.
I fire at him, and he goes down next to another vehicle sitting crookedly across the road.
Donna comes out directly behind me with Mocha at her side, exactly where I expected her to be and exactly where I do not want her to be.
“Donna—”
“I’m here.”
Rain is already darkening Mocha’s coat as he lands beside her, and another burst of gunfire breaks out behind us near the second SUV. I hear someone shouting, but the distance, rain, and echo from the surrounding buildings make it impossible to tell who it is.
Movement in the corner of my eye catches my attention.
A man rushes around the rear of our vehicle, clearly focused on Donna. He reaches for her before he seems to register the gun in her hand, and the realization comes too late.
Donna pivots and fires.
He goes down several feet from her.
For the briefest second, I look at her.
She looks back at me with the expression of someone who has no idea why I am surprised.
“What?”
Under different circumstances, I might have acknowledged that I owe her several apologies for every time I questioned whether she could protect herself.
This is not the time.
“Mocha. Guard.”
The command changes him instantly. He steps behind her, practically between her legs, keeping watching from the back.
He keeps perfectly in step with her as we round the car.
We reach the driver's side door. Rinaldi is nowhere in sight.
Every instinct I have demands that I go looking for him.
He has been with me too long for anything else to feel acceptable. If I were alone, I would already be moving toward that second SUV, searching the ditch, the road, anywhere he could have gone after getting out of the vehicle.
But I am not alone.
Donna shifts closer to me as another shot cracks through the night, and the choice becomes brutally simple.
Whoever planned this wanted us exposed and separated from our security. Maybe the primary target is me. Maybe it is Donna. Given everything Marcello has already done, I have no reason to assume he would object to taking both of us.
If I leave Donna here while I search for Rinaldi, I give them exactly the opening they tried to create.
“Lorenzo.”
“I know.”
We can't stay beside the car. Our SUV is finished. The front end sits crookedly in the ditch, and one wheel is twisted at an angle that tells me we are not going anywhere in it even if the engine still runs.
The road gives us almost no cover.
I sweep my gaze across the surrounding area, taking in what little the darkness and scattered lighting reveal. We are on a narrow stretch of wet road bordered by closed shops and parking lots.
It's not a particularly bad area of town, considering it's between my house and Mario's, but it is completely empty.
A few of the storefronts sit close enough together to give us options, but one catches my attention first. The windows are dark, the sign above the door unlit, and the narrow awning stretches far enough over the sidewalk to give us some cover from both the rain and the road.
I point toward it. “There.”
Donna follows my line of sight. “You think we can get inside?”
“I think standing here is worse.”
Her eyes move over the building, then back to the road behind us. “Unless that’s where they want us.”
“What if that is where they want us?”
I have already considered it.
For one unpleasant second, I imagine the entire ambush being designed to force us toward that building, where more men might be waiting.
Then I dismiss it.
If kidnapping us is the goal, keeping us at the exact location where we disappeared longer than necessary would be absurdly foolish.
Mario knows the route we took from his house, and we’re not too far out.
Our vehicles are tracked. The security detail behind us knows precisely where the attack happened, assuming enough of them are still able to report it.
Even if whoever planned this managed to disrupt communications, my brothers will realize almost immediately that something has gone wrong.
The first place they will search is here.
Anyone competent enough to organize this attack would want us moved away from the scene as quickly as possible, not hidden fifty yards from the wrecked SUV.
“They wouldn’t keep us here,” I tell her. “This is the first place everyone will come looking. If they intended to take us, they’d move us somewhere else as quickly as possible.”
Donna nods once, accepting the logic.
Mocha’s deep bark gets Donna’s attention.
“Mocha, attack!” she says.
Mocha launches himself without thought.
He hits the man coming at us from behind with enough force to knock him sideways, and both of them go down hard on the wet pavement. The man shouts and tries to wrench himself free while Mocha locks onto his arm and holds like a vice.
Donna keeps her weapon trained on him.
“Out!”
Mocha releases immediately and backs toward her, still positioned between Donna and the man as he curls around his injured arm.
I don't give him time to recover. One shot is all I need.
Another exchange of gunfire erupts behind us, and I turn toward the sound briefly.
The second SUV has stopped at an angle farther back with one door hanging open, and I can make out one of my people firing from behind the vehicle, but the others are obscured by darkness, rain, and the position of the cars.
“Let’s go,” I tell her.
She nods. “Mocha, watch!” He takes his place and again walks backward in line with her, keeping watch behind us.
Together, we move toward the building.
We move quickly across the parking lot, keeping low and using the parked cars wherever we can rather than crossing the entire open stretch in a straight line.
The rain makes the pavement slick beneath my shoes, but Donna stays beside me without slowing, one hand steady on her gun while Mocha continues moving backward at her command, watching the road behind us.
Another burst of gunfire sounds near the SUVs.
I force myself not to turn around again.
Every second we spend exposed is another chance for someone to come at us from a direction we have not seen yet, and there is nothing I can do for anyone else until I know Donna is somewhere defensible.
We reach the sidewalk beneath the awning, and I immediately move toward the recessed entrance.
“Even if I did have my lockpick set,” Donna says. “Not really sure this is the time.”
“No.” I step back and fire once into the lock. I shoulder the door open, and it swings inward with a scrape of broken metal.
I enter first with my weapon raised.
The interior is dark except for the weak light spilling through the front windows, enough to reveal rows of shelving and a long counter farther inside. I cannot tell what the place sells and do not care. What matters is that there are no immediate signs of movement.
Donna comes in behind me.
“Mocha. Search.”
The dog moves forward at once, nose working as he checks the nearest aisle and then disappears briefly around the end of a shelving unit.
I shove the door closed and push a shelf in front of it. It won't keep out anyone who's very determined, but it'll warn us if anyone tries to get in.
Mocha returns less than a minute later and looks to her.
“Clear?” I ask.
“He would tell me if it wasn’t.”
I glance at her. “I knew he was good, but this is a particularly memorable demonstration.”
She lifts a brow. “I think he deserves all the treats in the world after this, don't you?”
“Yes, I do. But right now, we need to keep away from the glass.”
We move deeper into the store until the front of the building is mostly obscured by shelves and walls. There is a narrow hallway near the back, but I stop before taking us farther.
Too enclosed.
If someone comes through the front, I want enough room to move. If there is another entrance somewhere behind us, I do not want to trap ourselves between the two.
I point toward a position behind the counter where we can see part of the front entrance without standing directly in its line.
“There.”
Donna settles beside me, breathing harder now that we have stopped moving, although her hands remain steady.
Mocha stays close to her leg.
For several seconds, neither of us speaks.
I listen.
Rain against the windows.
Distant gunfire.
An engine somewhere outside.
Then nothing.
The silence is worse.
“My phone flew out of my hand in the car. Do you have yours?”
She nods as she pulls it out of her pocket.
“Nothing.”
“They may be jamming the area.”
“Great,” she says. “So what's the plan?”
“In light of Greco, our security has been checking in with each other.”
I look toward the front of the store again, trying to calculate how long it will take Mario to realize something has gone wrong. He will know we left his house, and how long it should take us to get to my house.
“So when your security doesn't check in with Mario…” she says.
“He will come.”
That certainty is the only thing keeping me from going back outside immediately.
Donna shifts closer to the shelving and looks at me. “You’re thinking about Rinaldi.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes stay on mine. “We can go back.”
“No.”
She exhales and glances away for a second. “Lorenzo, I can't sit here and wait any more than you can. I'm not built like that.”
“I know,” I say. “But going back out there while they’re still exchanging fire helps no one.”
Donna looks toward the darkened front of the store. “Then we find another way to get eyes on the road.”
I follow her gaze and understand what she means.
“Without putting ourselves back in the open.”
“Exactly.”
She turns toward the rear of the store. “There has to be another exit, a loading door, something. If we can get to the other side of the building, we might be able to see what’s happening without walking straight back into the ambush.”
That is considerably better than waiting here and considerably less reckless than the alternative currently occupying my thoughts.
“Let’s find it.”
But before we can make a move, a car door slams.
Donna lowers herself slightly behind the counter and raises her weapon. Mocha’s ears snap forward, and a growl starts low in his throat. I move beside her, keeping my gun trained toward the entrance.
Voices carry faintly through the rain. Too far away to recognize.
Donna leans closer and whispers, “Friends?”
“I don’t know yet.”
A shadow crosses the window. I bring my gun higher.
Whoever they are, they know we’re in here.