I glanced at her, feeling alternately hot and cold. “What do you mean?”
“I knew the guy who shot at us. Not the driver. The other one. His name is Dominic…something. Dominic DeMeo. He’s been at a few of the big parties my father sometimes throws. Ones for only people we know. Important people.”
“Connected people?”
She nodded slowly. Her eyes held no lie in them, only shock.
I leaned my head back against the headrest, my mind racing. “But you didn’t recognize the driver?”
“I don’t know. You shot him in the head. The broken glass…” She shook her head.
Yeah, it would’ve been difficult to see anything through a windshield with two bullet holes and all those cracks. Neither of those two thugs had been people I recognized, but that didn’t mean much. The five families of New York were huge, and there were associates and hangers-on and people they would hire for shit like this. Guys like me.
But if Sofia recognized the guy who’d shot at us, then the driver had to be connected to the Accardos too. So were they sent to rescue her?
If so, they’d done one hell of a bad job of it. Their plan had been amateur at best. They’d been afraid of getting too far away from their car and their means of a quick escape. It was the sign of someone who wasn’t a professional. They’d intended to wait until I opened the trunk or the car doors and then rush up to block my car in. They would open fire at can’t-miss-range before dragging Sofia into their car, swinging around and racing onto the street again, leaving me bleeding on the asphalt. Maybe they even believed they’d have a better chance of not hitting Sofia while doing it that way—instead of trying to kick down a motel room door, the only entrance inside.
But it had really put a crimp in their plans when I made them right away. The shady car with two guys in it, both of them looking my way the moment I stepped out of the room, stood out like an exploding firecracker in the middle of Mass. All the same, I’d barely survived because I’d been lucky. A professional would never have let me pull a gun.
It all came back tohowmembers of the Accardo Family had hunted me down at a random motel in Jersey. Did I trust Sofia when she said she hadn’t called anyone?
No. I didn’t trust her. But my instincts told me she wasn’t lying. Either that or she was really good at it.
I climbed out of the car, then bent down to look at her. “Stay here.”
She didn’t reply. I took that as the best I was going to get and reached in to grab her carry-on suitcase and drag it out of the car. She’d taken it with her instead of abandoning it when we were being shot at, but I’d seen people do far stranger things under extreme stress.
“Hey!” she said, becoming animated for the first time as I unzipped her suitcase and upended it onto the hood.
She packed pretty damn efficiently. I’d sorted through the carry-on once already, during a quick search for weapons or hidden phones and devices, but after upending it, I was taken aback by the amount of clothes and crap that ended up on the hood or slid off the car onto the frozen dirt.
Sofia got out of the car and ran around to me. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Looking for something.” I dug through the clothes, unfolding them, tossing them. And I tossed all the cosmetics and female crap they hauled around to make themselves beautiful. She had a lot of it, but she definitely didn’t need it.
“You’re making a mess! Those are my clothes!”
She reached for the pile, but I caught her wrist. My grip was firm but not painful. I looked into her angry eyes.
“All this stuff can be replaced,” I said. “But I need to know how your father’s half-assed triggermen found us. Unless you contacted them somehow?”
“I told you, I didn’t.”
“Good. Trust but verify.”
“Fine. Put your filthy hands all over my stuff.” She bared her teeth at me, reminding me of a ferocious wolverine. Her eyes flashed as she pointed at one part of the pile. “There. Those are my panties. I’m sure you’re eager to inspect them. I probably stashed a satellite phone in them. Right, you crazy bastard?”
I gave her a slow grin. “I like panties as much as the next guy, but only when they’re on a woman.”
She only glared. Still, I could see the wheels spinning in her head. She desperately wanted to think up a comeback that would devastate me, but bright as she was, she was too angry and too rattled to pull it off.
No sense in provoking her just because her ire slid off my ego like water off a tarp. I returned to my search. With the suitcase empty, I began to thoroughly search the carry-on pockets. I turned out even more of her stuff. Lip balm. Breath mints. Hair ties. Then, in one of the right-hand side pockets, I found a small, black thumb drive.
“What’s this?” I demanded, holding the USB drive up so she could see.
That first instant was the best time to catch someone in a lie. That unguarded moment before their brain shunted them into lying or acting mode. I watched her dark eyes for whatever they would tell me—either backing up the instincts telling me that she wasn’t lying or undermining them for good.
The only thing I saw in her eyes was mild confusion. Her brow furrowed. Her perfect lips turned down in a frown. She gave a quick shake of her head, fast enough to miss if I’d been looking away.
