22. Regan
Regan
The plan worked, just as I had thought it would.
We’ve always shared everything—Grant, Abe and me—so why not Maria? Why couldn’t we share her? It wouldn’t even be the first time we’d shared a woman, though admittedly the other times had strictly been a bit of fun… nothing any of us had taken remotely seriously.
Sure… Maria is different. Very different.
Maria is important. To all of us. I can see that.
But heck… what’s more important than giving up your own life in order to save your buddy’s lives?
And we’d all made that decision, all three of us, in Iraq.
More than once. As chance played out it hadn’t happened, and we’d all lived.
But that’s just how the random roll of the dice fell.
We’d all made the commitment, that’s the point.
And with Abe it had been a very near thing. Hence the medals.
And now, after the military. Now we’re in business together. Three partners, with Grant as Senior Partner because he put up most of the money. So again, we’re sharing everything, just in the field of commerce instead of on the battlefield.
So yes… why not Maria?
And the only answer I could think of is if that’s not what Maria wants. That would be perfectly understandable. I mean, living with three burly ex special forces guys halfway up a mountain in a car tow and repair garage wouldn’t be every lady’s dream come true.
Seems Maria is happy with the arrangement. From what she says, anyway. If anything, she seems to think that we’re the ones doing her and Sandro a favor, which is ridiculous. Laughable, even.
Before they came, we’d had a pretty good thing going.
The work was steadily growing, and it was reasonably enjoyable.
Weekends could get a little dull sometimes, especially in the winter when the nights close in early and it’s too damned cold to want to face the journey into Coyote Creek Falls, and too dangerous to attempt to drive back in anything but a state of stone-cold sobriety, and where’s the fun in that?
But good as it was, there’d been something missing.
I hadn’t known what it was. Not until they arrived.
Not until old Sandro got Abe outside digging furrows for planting potatoes, or proudly showed me how he’d fixed up and repainted the old furniture in the cabin, so it looked good as new.
Better, even. Not until Maria got us all around the table for breakfast each morning.
Drinking coffee, eating bacon and eggs, chatting about the day ahead.
Or baked her famous cupcakes for us. Or when we all had sat around the kitchen table playing games, joking, and laughing together.
That was when I’d realized exactly what it is we’d been missing. What we had now that is so precious that it would worth going to the very end of the world and back to secure.
Family.
Just the simple, unaffected love of father and daughter, that had touched all three of us supposedly big, strong men so profoundly. Hooked us, one by one, and reeled us in.
Yes, family. And with family comes…
…a sense of belonging. Beyond need. Beyond love, even, perhaps. Just… acceptance. Things are how they are. No need to be something. No need to try. Just a calm voice inside, that says ‘you are you, and I am I… how could anything be any different?’
Today’s a Wednesday, so it’s one of Maria’s days to head off into town for her bookkeeping with Shane.
Sandro says he wants to work on the vegetable garden, so Grant, Abe and I decide to take advantage of a slow day in the garage to drive the truck back up to Silverlode Pass, pack up Abe’s stuff, and bring it back down again.
He literally left everything up there the other day.
Guns, clothes, food—everything. Even his phone’s still there, which he said he’d left propped on a shelf.
He doesn’t even seem all that bothered about it, either, but that’s Abe for you.
He’s not exactly Mr. Sociable. I doubt he’s missed it at all.
I’m driving—it is my jeep after all—Grant’s riding shotgun, and Abe’s sprawled across the rear seat, trying but failing to look like a normal human being instead of the outsize gorilla he actually is.
For once though I keep my mouth shut. No need to stir the pot.
Poor Abe’s been through enough bullshit of late to last the guy a lifetime.
And on top of that, perhaps—just perhaps—some of Maria and Sandro’s ancient Italian wisdom and gentle consideration for others is rubbing off on me.
I quite enjoy the ride. It’s not quite fully ‘off road’, but it’s narrow, winding, and filled with potholes, rocks, even the occasional fallen tree, since no one comes up here anymore to keep the track clear.
When Abe had come up here the other day, he’d simply used his weight and strength to shift stuff like that just enough out the way to squeeze past in the truck.
Today, with more time, we’ve brought a couple of chainsaws with us, and in the middle part of the track especially, before the trees begin to thin out a little, we are almost constantly stopping to remove limbs or even whole trees that have fallen onto the path.
The work is hard, as at this time of day the sun is high in the sky.
Of course, the higher we get, the less atmosphere there is to prevent sunburn, so Grant insists the three of us apply sunscreen and wear a hat with a brim.
Pretty soon we’re all of us shirtless, working hard, our tanned skin flexing and expanding as we saw, hack, push, pull and otherwise manhandle the fallen timber out of our way.
What would have been an hour and a half’s journey, door-to-door, soon becomes two-and-a-half, then three-and-a-half, eventually four hours before we arrive at the cabin. It’s about six p.m. now—about the time that Maria leaves Shane’s place in town. Aside from anything else, I’m getting hungry.
“Let’s grab the stuff and go,” I suggest, downing a pint of water before tipping a second one over my head to cool myself down. “I dunno about you guys, but I’m starving.”
“Hey, watch out!” I’d accidentally caught one of Grant’s sleeves with the water.
“You’ll get over it.”
“Fuck you too, Regan.” He pats his shirt around the shoulder area like it’s on fire or something. “But yeah,” he concedes. “It’s getting late. We did good work with the track. Let’s collect the stuff, load the truck and head back down the hill.”
Abe grunts his agreement and Grant gives us our orders. I’m boxing up kitchen and bathroom, Abe is doing bedroom and living room, Grant does outdoor equipment and survival stuff.
We set to, and we’ve only separated for about twenty minutes when I hear a beeping sound from Abe’s phone in the living room.
“Strange” I hear him say, and then I hear his footsteps crossing the room. Then a few minutes of silence. Then all hell lets loose… “Guys, guys, come here now. We’ve got a situation on our hands, and it ain’t a good one.”
“What the fuck?” I ask, poking my head around the kitchen door as Grant comes clattering in from the outhouse.
“What is it, Abe? What’s the emergency?”
“It’s Sandro.”
“What about Sandro?”
“He’s just been taken.”
“Taken?” Regan and I glance up at each other, then back at Abe as he holds his phone out.
“Yeah. Just now. Professionals too. Look.” And he presses ‘Play’ on the phone.
The three of us gather around the little screen. It’s small, a little fuzzy, not desperately bright and colorful, but not so bad that we cannot make out what we’re looking at.
“That’s our yard, from the track,” says Grant. “You can see the house in front, workshop over to the right, and there’s our tow truck parked by that tree. How come there’s a camera watching the yard?”
“Keep watching,” says Grant. So we do.
A moment later an all-black-painted and brand-new looking Cadillac Escalade turns into the yard.
It creeps slowly across the frame, turns, then parks facing towards the exit.
Three men get out, all dressed in black, two of them are carrying small but deadly looking 9mm sub machine guns, the third has a handgun and a large, black, cloth bag.
“Fuck. They look like CZ Scorpion Evo 3s,” I say, transfixed. Grant nods.
We keep watching as the three men make their way stealthily across the yard towards the area Abe and Sandro have earmarked for vegetable gardening. After a couple of seconds they are out of sight of the camera, and now all we can see is the big SUV, it’s doors left open as if for a speedy getaway.
“Is this real time?” I turn to Abe, who shakes his head to indicate ‘no’.
“Time stamps says this was about an hour and a half ago. It has to get loaded up onto the server, and anyway, I only just saw it. There’s more.”
The image blinks off now that motion is no longer being detected, then a moment later it blinks back on again.
This time, the two men with the subs are leading the way back to the Escalade and the third man is half-leading, half pushing a fourth man, who has the hood the third man had been carrying earlier slung over his head and shoulders, so he cannot see where he is going.
It's Sandro, that much is obvious, even from this angle and from this tiny, imperfect image. I’d recognize those trousers and boots anywhere.
The three black-clad men bundle Sandro into their car, jump in beside him, and pull away. The car heads back towards the yard entrance and turns onto the highway, vanishing from view.
For a moment the three of us just stand there, motionless, staring at each either in complete bemusement and consternation. Then I break the silence.
“Guys, I have no idea what happened, but whatever it was, those men were very cool, very precise, very… professional. Who the fuck were they?”
“Yeah, and again… why is there a camera pointed at our property like that?” asks Grant, staring pointedly at Abe. “Seems to me you were expecting this. Got something to share with us?”
As rapidly as he can, Abe fills Grant and me in.
He tells us about his trip up to see Pat Heneghan to collect the timber for Abe and Sandro’s raised beds, and the discussion that he’d had with Pat about Pat’s previous conversation with Theo’s son, Randy.
How some sharp-dressed, Italian-accented guy had been asking questions about an attractive brunette and an older guy, and whether or not Randy knew of a man called Grant Naylor.
At this last part, Grant gives a start. “Shit!” he says.
“Yeah,” say Abe. “Somehow—I don’t know how—they—whoever they are—have managed to connect Maria and Sandro with us… or with you, anyway.”
“Shit,” says Grant again.
“So, I thought I’d take precautions, hence the cameras—there’s another one as well, facing the house—and then I was going to brief the two of you when…
well… you know what happened.” He looks down at the ground, shuffles his feet, then looks back up again.
“Anyhow, that’s in the past,” he says. “What’s important is what we do about it now. ”
“I agree.” I say. “Far as I’m concerned, Sandro and Maria are family now. I say we go get him back.”
“Yeah…” Grant’s eyes are looking away into the distance, his brain turning the problem over.
“Yeah.” He absentmindedly removes his baseball cap, scratches his head, and puts the cap back on, his thoughts elsewhere.
Abe and I stay silent, giving Grant time to think.
Grant’s our strategist. If anyone can think of a plan, it will be him.
He does look worried though, and Grant looking worried makes me worried.
Finally he sighs, flexes his arms in a shoulder stretch, looks back at the two of us as we wait for his verdict.
“Alright,” he says. “Here’s how I see it.” We nod, both of us showing we’re listening, giving him our permission to take control.
“First off,” he ticks a finger off on his hand. “It ain’t no good ignoring this, even if we wanted to.”
“Yeah but we don’t—” I start in, but he holds up his hand.
“Wait,” he says. “Let me finish.”
“Sorry, Boss. Go ahead.”
“Like I said, ignoring this is not an option. If we ignore it, the problem won’t go away. It’ll just get worse.”
“How come?”
“Because they’ve not got what they came for.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were there,” Grant says. “You heard Sandro and Maria’s story.
About Salvatore Moretti, and his son Tony Moretti.
About the whole Venetian royalty thing, and the Moretti’s crazy plan to merge their mafia family with Sandro and Maria’s Contarini family bloodline, by having Tony and Maria marry and produce a child. Remember?”
“Yeah, I see what you mean. You mean they want Maria, not Sandro.”
Grant nods.
“Exactly. They wanted to take Maria, but she wasn’t there. She would have been at work. And lucky for us, we weren’t there either.”
“Don’t you mean luck for them, Boss?”
Grant looks at me like I’m an idiot.
“Oh yes? And what would you have done? Three of us armed with a wheel brace, a three-quarter inch socket wrench, and a pin hammer? Against two fully automatic sub machine guns and a handgun?”
I pause. He’s right, of course. My shoulders slump. I nod my head.
“Right. So in fact, bad though this is, it’s just about as good as it could possibly have been.”
“How come?”
“Well… the way I see things, we still have a chance. Maria ain’t taken.
So, they’ll have to try again. Or bargain for her using Sandro, which is my guess as to what they’re gonna do next.
And the three of us ain’t dead, which means we’re still alive, which in turn means we can still act.
Still do things. Only next time…” He smiles, but not an attractive smile. Not a smile that includes his eyes.
“Next time… we’ll be ready.”