“Ryan already brought me new wheels and took care of the old. But I need you to look into this for me.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the thumb drive.
“Your porn collection?” Ryan asked.
Declan continued to ignore him. “Is it encrypted?”
“Don’t know,” I replied. “I haven’t messed with it.”
“Wise. All right. I have a laptop in the car. I can poke around, see what I can find. If the digital security’s above my level, I’ll have to bring in the real talent. Where’d you get it?”
“It was in Sofia’s carry-on luggage.” I filled him in on everything that had happened since speaking to him last night. His expression steadily darkened as I mentioned the shootout and the tracking device in her suitcase.
“This is not good,” he said once I finished.
Ryan chuckled. “You can always count on Declan for an understatement.”
“I don’t like someone gunning for you,” Declan went on. “I don’t like how little of this makes any sense. There’s too much we don’t know.”
“I’m going to run down my old friend Freddy Russo and have a chat with him,” I said. “He’s the guy who hired me to kill everyone in the penthouse.”
“And you thought it was going to be all connected guys, right? Not civilians.”
I nodded. “Never had a problem like this before. Freddy knows I keep to the code.”
“Maybe he thought you’d be happy to kill her because of our history with the Accardos.” Ryan shrugged. “You talked to this guy yet? Did you tell him you killed her?”
“Yeah. I told him that I did the job. I don’t trust him as far as I could kick him.”
“Then you aren’t the stupidest MacCarrick in the family,” Declan added with a pointed look at Ryan. “But when this Russo guy finds out she isn’t dead, people will be pissed. Especially if this came down from Don Sartini.”
“I know. Freddy wants to meet to pay me the rest of my money.”
Both my brothers stiffened, glancing at me in alarm. They spoke at almost the exact same time.
“You aren’t going—?”
“That fucker’s setting you up—”
I held up a hand to get them to quiet down. “It’s a trap. No shit. The things I know would start a war between the Accardos and the Sartinis. He needs to silence me.”
My brothers wore identical expressions of relief that I hadn’t been dumb, greedy, or desperate enough to fall into a clear trap. It was pretty damn funny, actually, how they both believed there was a risk I’d do something so reckless and stupid.
“Are you staying here with Sofia tonight?” Declan asked me.
“Just for dinner. Then I’ll probably take her to another motel.”
“Sooner or later, you’re going to have to hand her over to someone. Either her family or the cops.”
Ryan got that disagreeable look that had pissed me off since we were young. “Why is she playing along at all? I mean, right now, she could use Mom’s phone to call the cops. Or she could run off down the street screaming that she’s been kidnapped by a psycho. I mean, who could blame her?”
“She’s a smart girl,” I said. “She has a good head on her shoulders. But this shit has shaken her up. She watched me shoot a guy in the parking lot. She saw a couple of dead bodies in her kitchen. I think she’s afraid. She doesn’t know who to trust.”
Declan frowned, eyeing me speculatively. “But she trusts you? Even after all that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but she’s hard to read.”
“She must trust you a little bit,” Declan mused. “You didn’t shoot her. You brought her home to Mom. Not typical assassin behavior.”
I grunted. “I told her about Cal. How her father had him killed. She didn’t know, but she didn’t seem surprised either.”
