“Of course,” I responded immediately.
“That you understand,” he commented. “Killing to keep her safe – you know just what to do with those instructions. But matters of the heart? You’re lacking there, son.”
My chest tightened up, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Cold sweat had formed on the back of my neck and trickled between my shoulder blades. The rest of my body tensed completely before I could stop it. I tasted sand in the back of my throat, but when I tried to swallow past the sensation, I couldn’t.
“You don’t even really understand what I mean, do you?” he asked. “You don’t let anyone in that head long enough for you to understand them or to let them understand you.”
“I have a shrink,” I heard myself say.
“I know,” Rinaldo replied. “I know everything, Evan. You don’t think I’d let your past not be of my utmost concern?”
“I…I never thought about it.” I hadn’t, either, and now the sleepy feeling waned as it was replaced by feelings of stupidity.
“You endured more than most men ever will,” Rinaldo said quietly. “You’ve had it worse than anyone you ever killed. They died quick and easy. You’ve been dying since they brought you home from that war.”
I forced myself to swallow hard and found I was having a hard time looking at his face.
“You are going to crack someday, aren’t you, Lieutenant?”
My eyes flashed to Rinaldo’s, and I couldn’t stop my hands from clenching into fists. The anger boiling inside of me had nowhere to go, and I was dangerously close to letting it loose on the one man whom I didn’t want to hurt.
Had Mario been in the room, he would have noticed. He would have seen how close I was, and he probably would have shot me. Rinaldo only nodded slowly and sat back again.
“If there comes a time I need to put you down, I will,” he said. “If there comes a time you want me to put you down, you let me know. You can go now, son.”
I stood up, trying not to let my knees wobble as I did. I turned and walked as quickly as I could out of the room, trying not to comprehend what Rinaldo Moretti had just said to me.
*****
I couldn’t think.
I could barely breathe.
Even though spring was in full force, the temperature had fallen and the wind was bone-chilling. I dropped down on the bench inside the dog run and unhooked Odin’s leash from his collar, so he could run around and sniff at the other neighborhood dogs. I needed to think – my head was just too jumbled up with all the recent information inside of it, but every time I tried to figure out what was happening to me, my head ached and reminded me how long it had been since I’d slept.
Well, kind of reminded me. I’d really lost track of how long it had been. I couldn’t focus anymore – that’s what I knew. I jumped at fucking everything, too, just like I had in the hospital after I had been brought back from the Middle East. It had been years since I felt that kind of paranoia, and I wasn’t even sure how to begin to cope with it.
Where did things start going wrong?
Without warning, Lia’s face came back into my head, and for once I just let it happen.
I closed my eyes and leaned back against the bench as the whole time she was with me raced through my brain. I remembered seeing her out there on the dry, dusty road walking aimlessly towards my cabin, and I remembered thinking I might just have to shoot her.
I didn’t do it – I made her dinner instead. Once night fell, she crawled into the little twin bed and I ended up inside of her minutes later – really inside of her. I didn’t push for a blowjob or anal – we just had straight sex. No condom, no barriers, no pretenses. I came in her over and over again, and I couldn’t get enough.
Even though I had told her I’d be there when she got back, I knew it wasn’t something I could ever have. I didn’t get the kind of promises she could offer. I didn’t deserve them. According to Rinaldo, I didn’t even understand that sort of shit.
I did, though. I knew exactly what I was missing.
Why did I keep thinking about her? I didn’t want to think about her. I’d been spending all my time since I left the cabin in Arizona doing things to stop myself from thinking about her, and it still wasn’t working. Whether I was sweating at the gym, researching the next target, or firing at the shooting range, she was always in my head.
Silk-soft hair running down her back, easy smile that made my heart beat faster for no reason at all, and that shy, quick blush that had my cock ready to go again at a moment’s notice.
From right behind me, the obnoxious sound of the parking garage door warning system went off and brought me out of the memory. I scowled over my shoulder at the car that moved out of the garage and around the loop North Field Boulevard made as it circled the park. The garage door went back down again.
What was I going to do about Bridgett? Did she really hear things I said in my sleep and tell Greco’s men about them? Who did she even know in his organization? I couldn’t quite fathom how she could have hidden such things from me, but then again, I was usually completely exhausted by the time I went to pick her up.
I remembered how quickly she talked about going to work over by the warehouses and considered maybe she had been working for them the whole time. Maybe her connection had always been there. Maybe she contacted Terry.
I wasn’t sure. They had both completely disappeared.
That didn’t make sense, though. What would she have been doing on Melvin’s corner, then? Not waiting for me – I had never even picked up a girl at that location before. I had always gone further south and used one of the hotels you could pay for by the hour.
She was chosen because I was in a hurry, wanted to fuck her at my apartment, and because she had the roundest ass of the group. There was no way that was a plant. Someone had to have gotten to her after they realized I was fucking her regularly.
I was back to the list of those who knew about her and frustrated that I had been so stupid as to take her out in public where we could have been seen by anyone. It made the list insane.
Top possibilities, then.
Melvin.
Jonathan.
Terry.
Mario.
One of the other hookers – Candy, maybe. What did I know about her?
Michele with one “L” at the bar.
There were too many and very little else to go on. Maybe I needed to figure out just which one of Greco’s boys was getting the information and see if that led me in the right direction. Something had to show itself, but it wasn’t going to happen out here in the park. The parking garage door was going to drive me over the edge before I came to any reasonable conclusions. I grabbed Odin and headed back upstairs, knowing there was one name that came up more than anyone else’s.
Only name that really made any sense.
Terry Kramer. His phone logs were far more interesting than Jonathan’s with several to a prepaid phone that seemed to find itself in the vicinity of my apartment pretty frequently, especially at night when a certain hooker should have been asleep in my bed. I dug back to earlier in the year and found two calls to Bridgett’s number from the last surviving payphone in Chicago, as far as I knew, which happened to be near Terry’s place.
There was no doubt that Terry would look for an excuse to get me run out of Moretti’s organization – I was his superior in skill and position, and he knew it. As long as I was around and the favorite, he couldn’t move up from where he was – nothing more than a two-bit thug.
Was Terry stupid enough to be working for the competition or just trying to get me out of the way?
My hands were jittery, and I was starting to feel really nauseated. I lay myself down to try to get some sleep, but it didn’t come easily. When it finally arrived, it brought forth some of the worst of the nightmares, and I woke sweating with a scream in my throat.
I took the dog out for a midnight walk to clear my head. It wasn’t particularly successful, but it w
as probably better than nothing. My cell phone began to ring just as Odin and I returned to the apartment.
I didn’t recognize the number, but I answered it.
“Evan?”
I froze just inside the doorway, paused for a moment and then reached down to unhook Odin’s leash. I wanted to yell and scream, but I knew I had to at least appear calm.
“Bridgett. You’ve been a little out of touch.” My voice was cold.
“I need to see you,” she said quietly. “I need to talk to you.”
“Where are you?”
“Would you meet me somewhere?”
She didn’t want to come here or have me pick her up. She wanted to meet somewhere – somewhere else, somewhere not alone.
Could she be any more suspicious?
“Where?”
“What about that place you took me on Michigan Avenue? The bar with the martinis and the waffles?”
“676,” I said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I knew what she was doing – trying to get me to meet her in a public place because she had something to say she knew I wasn’t going to like hearing and she was afraid of my reaction. The fact that she had stooped to such a level didn’t give me any kind of calming feeling. I was as tense as I could be.
“What did she fucking do?”
I took the Audi, drove up to the valet in front of the Omni, gave the guy a fifty to just hold my car there for a minute, and headed into the lobby. When I turned the corner to head upstairs, I saw Bridgett right by the elevator, waiting for it to arrive and carry her upstairs.
Not going to happen.
I walked over swiftly, took her by the elbow, and began to lead her back to the front of the building. As I had hoped, she was taken off guard enough that she didn’t have time to scream or consider what was happening until I had her outside the building.
“Evan–” she started, but I shushed her.
“Not a fucking word,” I growled. “Don’t you say anything; don’t you do anything. Just get in the fucking car.”
I escorted her around to where the valet was holding open the door, seated her with a smile, and then quickly climbed into my side. I drove off before anyone had a chance to even consider what had just happened.
“Evan,” Bridgett whispered from the other side of the car.
I glanced sideways at her, my jaw tight.
“Tell me,” I snapped. “Tell me everything. Tell me how you know Greco, and tell me what your relationship with him is. Tell me what the fuck you think you are doing!”
The precious little grasp I had over my emotions was waning, and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do to stop it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she cried.
As I looked ahead into traffic, I could still see her press herself against the car door like she might jump out and make a run for it. It wouldn’t work, though. I wouldn’t let that happen.
“I came back; you were gone.” I turned around the block and started heading down Grand, over the bridge, and towards the boss’s office. “You want to start by explaining that?”
“I-I-I went outside,” she said. “I just wanted to get some air, but he was there. He said I had to go with him, and we went to an office building – he had a room there in the basement.”
“What office?”
“Just a small one,” she said quietly. “It was brick and didn’t have any windows at all.”
Could he really have been hiding out in the basement of the boss’s main office building? Had he been there, right under my feet the whole time I was looking for him? Was it even who I suspected?
“Who?” I demanded. “What’s his name?”
She didn’t answer.
“Who did you go with?” I snarled through clenched teeth. I already knew the answer. The little fucker had been trolling around my apartment, and he had sucked Bridgett into whatever his sick little game was to take my position in Moretti’s organization.
“Take my position in his life.”
“What?” Bridgett whispered.
“Tell me his name!”
“His name is Terry! I didn’t know him. He just found me!”
“And you told him what?”
“I didn’t want to tell him anything,” she said. “I stopped talking to him a long time ago.”
The cold feeling I always associate with what it must feel like to drown coated me from my head to my feet. My knuckles went white as my hands gripped the steering wheel, and I made a quick turn towards the boss’s office building.
“A long time ago?” I repeated.
“Yes,” she whispered back. “He used to…to ask me about you all the time.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked in a low voice.
“Nothing,” she replied.
I didn’t believe a word of it.
We were nearing Moretti’s primary office building, and the parking lot behind it was devoid of any cars this late at night. I pulled up to the side of the building near the door and then thought better of it.
“What are you doing?”
Ignoring Bridgett’s question, I maneuvered the car back behind the row of dumpsters on the far side of the lot instead. I got the car mostly out of sight before turning it off.
“You have to explain,” I informed her. “It doesn’t make any fucking sense, and you have to explain it!”
“Please, Evan, you’re scaring me!”
I looked over to my passenger and smiled.
“Maybe you ought to be scared,” I suggested. “Get out.”
“How did you know this was the place?” she asked.
“Just get out of the car.”
Moving swiftly around the Audi, I made it to the other side before she was completely out the door. I took her elbow again and led her across the lot and down the back stairs to the basement. There weren’t many rooms down there, and Bridgett showed me which one she had been staying in.
I’d been in it before once or twice, though it didn’t serve any specific purpose. There was a time I recalled some goods being stored there very briefly before they were moved over to the docks by the river for shipment, but that was it.
Now there was a twin sized bed in the room, a small table, and a suitcase with women’s clothes in it. The whole scene reminded me of Arizona, which made my already pissed-off self angrier.
There was no one there.
“Damnit.” I turned back to Bridgett.
“How do you know him?” I interrogated.
“Who?”
My hand reached back into my jeans and wrapped around the handle of my Beretta. I pulled my arm back around and pushed it against her shoulder as her face twisted into terror.
“Do not,” I said, “play any fucking games with me. Tell me how you know Terry Kramer before I put a hole in your head.”
“I didn’t know what he wanted!” she said. “He kept following me and telling me he needed to talk to me. He said I couldn’t tell you about it, or we’d both end up dead. He said if I just told him what you told me, then…then…”
“Then what?” I snarled. “Did he pay you?”
“No!”
“Did you fuck him?” The very idea that Terry, the motherfucking piss-ant wannabe, had his cock in her made me livid.
She didn’t answer, which was answer enough. I leaned forward and slammed my hand against the wall right next to her head.
“Tell me why you did it!” I screamed. “What did you tell him, and why did you do it?”
“He said…he said he’d kill you if I didn’t cooperate!” she finally cried.
“You…you thought he was a threat to me?” What had been a cold snarl escalated into a scream. “That little fuck was somehow a danger to me? Me?”
“He…he….he said–” Her words were too choked to be understandable. “I-I-I thought–”
“I don’t give a fuck what he said!” I screamed back in her face. “There is nothing – nothing – he could hav
e said that would ever, ever make you…make you…”
I couldn’t even say the words.
Like some kind of primordial ooze making its way out of the ocean, Terry chose that moment to walk into the dimly lit room. There was no consideration to my actions. No thought behind them – just movement and quick, practiced muscle memory.
My arm rose.
My gun aimed at his face.
I pulled the trigger.
Bridgett stifled her scream as Terry’s face exploded in blood and his body hit the floor.
“You see how big a fucking threat he is?” I growled as I turned back to her.
My head was spinning. The pit of my stomach felt heavy, and the back of my throat tasted sour. I felt like I was trapped in some never-ending fog, and I couldn’t see in which direction I should go. There was no end or beginning in sight and no answers in any direction.
“You never really said anything to me.” Bridgett’s voice was barely audible. “I didn’t think…I didn’t think what I said to him was a big deal, and he always seemed happy enough with what I had to leave you alone…leave us alone.”
The drowning feeling came over me again, and my eyes burned as I pointed the business end of the Beretta towards Bridgett.
“You fucking betrayed me,” I said.
“No, no!” she cried as she shook her head violently. “Evan – no! I didn’t; I swear! I never meant it like that!”
“But that’s what it was,” I said. “You were right there in my bed listening to shit I said when I was asleep. Then you took what you thought he’d find interesting, and you told him about it.”
“I didn’t think any of it was important,” she whispered through her tears. “I thought if he kept hearing all this stuff that didn’t matter, he’d leave me alone – leave us alone!”
“Us?” I laughed, but there was nothing friendly or amusing about the sound. I tilted my arm up and tapped the side of my head with the barrel of the weapon. “You were delusional from the beginning, weren’t you? Was this your way of getting closer, huh? Be a part of the business, but on the wrong side?”
“No…Evan, I swear!”
“Yeah, your promises aren’t holding any weight at the moment.” My head throbbed along with my heart, and nausea crept up from my stomach to the back of my throat. “What kind of stuff did I say?”