“Jesus, Leon,” Ryan said. “You’re spilling all the MacCarrick beans. We only trust family.”
“I know.” I jerked a thumb at the door. “But she hasn’t tried to call the cops or run away. She hasn’t told Mum that she’s here against her will. She didn’t try anything last night, either, and she knows I was paid to kill her. But those Accardo goons who showed up this morning almost mowed her down.Someoneput a tracking device in her luggage with that damn mysterious USB drive. So now she doesn’t know who she can trust.”
“Stockholm Syndrome.” Ryan stroked his chin wisely—as if he had any idea what the fuck he was talking about. “Read about it once.”
“Ryan, shut the fuck up,” Declan cheerfully advised. Then he looked me in the eye again, his expression turning solemn. “Listen, I’ve got a place in Jersey. Out in the sticks. Frankford. It’s a little cabin in the woods. Take her there.”
“You bought a cabin in the woods and didn’t tell us?” Ryan sounded hurt.
Declan pulled out his key ring and took off a couple keys. He handed them to me before shooting a scathing glance at Ryan. “I didn’t want your playboy ass bringing a bunch of women up there. It’s supposed to be a safe house. You’ll turn it into your little love mansion that everybody and their cousin knows about.”
Ryan slowly nodded his head. “Yeah. I can see that.”
I laughed and put the keys on my key ring. God, I loved these two morons. “Thanks, man.”
“No worries. I’ll get you a couple new burner phones,” Declan continued. “The cell coverage is piss-poor, but they’ll work. I’ll put the address in one of the map programs. You can delete everything before you destroy the phone. There’s food there, too. No milk and eggs, but plenty of frozen shit. Even a generator. You can stash her there until we have a plan.”
“We?”
“Hell, yes,we,” Ryan said, throwing his arm around my shoulders. “Family takes care of family.”
What could I say? He was right.
“Tell you what,” Declan added. “I know a couple of guys in private security. I’ll have them watch Mom’s place. You’ll be gone to the cabin, but we’ll all sleep easier. I know you ditched all Sofia’s stuff, which means it should be impossible to track you here, but if someone managed to tag the Audi before it was hauled off…” He shrugged as if to say:why take a chance?
I agreed wholeheartedly. No one else knew about my mother’s home out here in Clark, New Jersey, of all places, but it would ease my mind to know Declan and Ryan were looking out for her while I dealt with this shit. I’d dragged Sofia here because I was desperate and needed Ryan and Declan’s help immediately. What we’d done today, switching the cars, getting together, couldn’t have been done at some coffee shop in New York. But now I couldn’t afford to put anyone else in the family at risk for any reason.
“I owe you both for this,” I said and meant every word.
“You sure do,” Ryan agreed. “I hope you at least get laid for all this trouble. I mean, that’s the next best revenge, right? You didn’t kill Giovanni Accardo’s daughter, but you nailed her anyway. Hell, give her a kid. That’ll really rub the salt in the wound.”
“Ryan,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m going to fucking murder you.”
Declan laughed, punching me on the shoulder. “Hey, hey. Coming from you, that’s a concerning thing to say.” His grin widened. “All right. Bring me this thumb drive. At least we can poke around at one mystery. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
SOFIA
“They’re all very close,” Mrs. MacCarrick said as I watched her cut up potatoes for a roast she was about to put in the oven. “I’m glad he brought you today. I don’t get to see the boys together often enough. And I don’t get enough guests.”
“I’m sorry we showed up unannounced,” I said for what felt like the thousandth time. She laughed and waved off my apology again. Strangely enough, I felt as if I were the one at fault for breaking some social norm, even though I’d been hauled here by Leon.
Or maybe I was trying to apologize for my family’s role in her losing a child. I held my breath, struggling to control my emotions, the heavy feeling of guilt, and the burn of tears behind my eyes.
I managed to keep myself under control, despite being an exhausted wreck. Leon and his two brothers were still out on the deck. Leon had growled at me that it was “family business.” Meaning that I wasn’t invited. Things were so fraught and tense between us that even my curiosity didn’t urge me to find out what they were talking about.
Me, most likely.
Before I’d wandered into the kitchen to keep his mom company, I’d changed the television to a news channel. There was nothing about a med school student whose family was rumored to be connected to the New York mafia missing her flight and vanishing from the Earth. It was a national news channel, so I guess that made sense. It was sobering to be reminded of where you stood in the world—below budget negotiations and the latest dumb thing some politician said out loud. The local news might have something on the shooting at the motel, even if no one had found the bodies in my penthouse yet.
Everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours had taken on the qualities of a nightmare in my memory. None of it felt completely real anymore, even though I’d lived through it.
“I’ve been chatting away without even asking you anything about yourself,” Mrs. MacCarrick said as she drained off water from the boiled potatoes and steam billowed up from the sink. “Forgive me for that. Are you working or in school?”
“Med school. NYU. I’m studying to be a general practitioner.”
“How exciting! I always wanted to have a child who went to med school. Things didn’t work out that way. Is it as stressful as they say it is?”
