Chapter 7
Nick lay awake for a long time, despite his feeling of having been wrung out like a wet rag. He watched Toni, certain she'd get up and walk out before long. She wouldn’t get far if she did. The door was unlocked, yes, but if he thought she had a chance in hell of making it off the grounds without his knowledge, he wouldn't have had Carl leave it that way. If she got away, she'd end up dead. He wasn't sure why he'd blurted the warning he had, about taking his gun and leaving the country. He supposed it was because he'd lost so much blood and wasn't thinking too clearly. Or maybe because he had to admit there was a slim chance she could escape. She was resourceful. And gutsy.
He never for a minute thought he'd take a turn for the worse and need help. Leaving the door unlocked was completely unnecessary, the way he saw it. Part of him, though, needed to see her leave. He wasn't even sure why, but he needed to see her do it. He needed to be reminded, in no uncertain terms, that people couldn't be trusted. They left you the minute your defenses were down.
She didn't leave, though. He watched her small form silhouetted in the half light for as long as he could stay awake, and she never left. After a while her head fell to one side. Her breathing grew deeper and took on the rhythm of sleep. He couldn't believe it, wouldn't have, if the proof hadn't been right there in front of him. When he fell asleep, it was in a state of confusion. She hadn't left. But she still might. Maybe she hadn't got from him all that she wanted just yet. Maybe she'd wait until morning.
For a time his mind relaxed in blissful darkness, but then something changed. The lights came up slowly, and the stage was set. Danny lay on the rotted wood floor, pale and blue lipped. Nick shook him, but he barely had strength enough to do so. He felt incredibly weak and clumsy and colder than he could remember being in his life. Still, he recited the lines he knew by heart. “Don't die on me. Hold on, Danny, hold on. Don't die...don't leave me, damn you.”
The young Nick in the dream thought he must have caught his leg on a nail on the way into this dump. His thigh was screaming. It felt hot and it throbbed like a toothache. He didn't care—he didn't care if the damn thing fell off, not when Danny's life hung in the balance. “You're all I got, man. Don't do this—Danny? Danny!”
The scene faded, but he knew it was there, just out of sight. Something cold and wet lay across his forehead. Another cold thing pressed to that spot on his thigh. God, it felt good. His head was pulled upward, small things between his lips...pills, then the lip of a glass and icy cold water.
“Drink, Nick. Swallow. You have a fever.”
He followed the instructions of that musical voice. The glass moved away, and he muttered something. He wasn't sure what. But it came back. He drank and drank. He couldn't remember being this thirsty. When the water was gone, his body moved until his head was cradled in a pillow of warm flesh, familiar scent. He knew that scent. “Toni,” he muttered.
“I'm right here.” Cool hands stroked his cheeks and his hair in soothing, slow movements. The cloth left his forehead, and he heard water trickling. It came back colder.
“You...didn't leave?”
“I told you I wouldn't.”
He hovered between the reality of the woman who held him and the memory of the dream. “Danny—”
“I know.” Her cool hands stilled on his face. “It was a long time ago, Nick. Danny is gone. He’s at peace. I'm here with you now, though, and I won't leave.”
“You will.” Nick let his mind drift back into the comforting blackness. The pain from his thigh had lessened. It no longer burned. “They all do.”
Nick woke with his head in Toni's lap. Her palm rested motionless on his cheek, and he realized with a start that she'd been in that same position for several hours, stroking his head and his face as he drifted in and out of sleep. A glance at the clock's luminous dial told him there was still over an hour before dawn.
She sat with her back against the headboard, her legs curled beneath her. Nick's head lay on her uppermost thigh. Her chin touched her chest, and a frown had etched itself between her brows, even in sleep. Without moving, Nick shifted his gaze. On the nightstand a basin of water sat beside an opened bottle of pain reliever, an empty glass and two soaking-wet cloths. He tried to remember what had happened during the night to get Toni from her chair beside the bed to where she now slept. Only fragments came to him. He remembered pain and pills being pushed between his lips and the welcome coldness of the water. He remembered her voice—her touch.
My God, she's still here.
He studied her face as she slept and realized fully what she'd done. She'd held him all night and she'd done her damnedest to keep the pain at bay. She'd spoken softly to him, words of comfort. His own mother had never treated him with the tenderness Toni had. And she'd promised not to leave.
He was still staring at her face when her heavy lashes lifted, revealing to him yet again those glistening, fathomless dark eyes. He saw them narrow at once, felt the hand on his face tense and move to his forehead as it had done many times during the night. Finding no more than a normal amount of heat emanating from his skin, she smiled.
“How do you feel now?”
He shrugged. “All right, I guess.” The silken warmth of her bare thigh under his cheek was distracting. He lifted his head so she could slip out from under him. She moved slightly to the side, stretched her legs out fully beside him, hooked one hand at the back of her neck and rubbed. “What happened last night?” he asked.
“Your temperature spiked. I'm afraid you have a nasty infection trying to set in.” She met his gaze. “You don't remember?”
“Bits and pieces.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “I'm not surprised. You were quite...disoriented.” She swung her feet to the floor. “I ought to change that bandage, see how bad it is.”
“Not yet.” Nick sat up, and she turned to face him. “What do you mean by 'disoriented'?” He hadn't liked the emphasis she put on the word.
She tilted her head to one side. “You did a lot of talking. Do you want some of that whiskey before I unwrap—''
“What did I say?”
She looked away from his eyes. “You told me everything. I know you're a cop. Don't worry, your secret is safe. I just don't know why you didn't tell me in the first place. This whole ordeal would've been so much easier if you'd just...”
Nick felt the blood drain from his face as she rambled on. He couldn't believe he'd been that feverish...that he'd blurt something like that and not even remember. He caught himself then, watched her as she spoke. She was talking too fast and she never met his gaze.
“What kind of cop?”
She broke off at his interruption, looked at him slowly, her face blank. “Well— I—um—I guess you didn't say.”
He smiled and shook his head in silent admiration of her brass. “Nice try, Toni. I didn't say anything like that. I know, because it's bull. A figment of your creative imagination.”
To his surprise she smiled, too, like a cat leaving a pet store with feathers in its whiskers. “I don't think so. You believed me for just a second. You wouldn't have if there wasn't some slight chance you might've said what I just told you you did.” The smile died slowly. She held his gaze, her own eyes going softer. “It was a mean trick to play on a guy as sick as you were last night. I'm sorry. It was either that or go on questioning my sanity—not a healthy alternative.”
“Your sanity isn't an issue here. It left the day you started with this imaginary secret identity of mine.”
She shrugged, stood up and carefully peeled away the tape that held the bandages. “You are one stubborn SOB, Nick Manelli.”
He didn't answer her. He couldn't just then. The concern that clouded her face as she unwound the bandage and gently peeled away the gauze pads was too convincing. Maybe even real. She cleaned the wound once more, applied an abundance of ointment and re-wrapped it, taking great care not to hurt him. “Tell you what,” she said as she worked. “Since you’re in a weakened state
, I’ll drop this subject—for now—if you'll do something for me.”
“To drop this, lady, you could damn near name your price.”
Her dark brows shot up. “Well, now, that will require some thought. Normally, when I'm told I can have anything I want, I demand chocolate, but—”
“Chocolate? Chocolate what?”
“Oh, anything. I'm a confirmed chocoholic.” She taped the gauze down and looked at him seriously. “But in this case, I'd prefer conversation.” Nick's wariness returned in force, but she hurried on. “Not about what you're not telling me or what I'm not telling you. I want you to tell me about you. The way I told you about me last night. About my dad, and—”
“What do you want to know?” He still wasn't sure this was anything but another attempt to get the truth from him.
She turned from his thigh, pulling herself fully onto the bed and facing him. “You did talk last night, when the fever shot up. You talked about Danny.” Nick felt the old pain twist within him but concealed it. “Your brother, right?”
Nick nodded. “My brother's death is not my favorite topic of conversation.”
“Of course it isn't. I heard enough about that last night.” Compassion made her voice thick. “It must have been awful for you.” He said nothing. “But what was it like before all that?” He frowned at her. “I never had an older brother—not that I know of anyway—but I always wanted one.”
What was she doing? Why did she want to stir up his most painful memory? Didn't she realize that he couldn't think of Danny without thinking of that horrible night in the condemned building? He hadn't—not from that day to this. His only memory of his brother was of those last few minutes in the filthy building with the sirens and flashing lights outside. Of his pasty skin and lifeless eyes. It wasn't possible to remember anything else.
“I always wanted siblings. Had an imaginary sister when I was very small, you know. She walked me to school that first day. When I was afraid of the dark, she was always in my bedroom with me. Sometimes we'd talk all night long—or it seemed that way.”
“Danny was the one who brought home all the jigsaw puzzles.” Nick hadn't intended to say the words. They slipped out, from some unseen crack into his subconscious. “There was never a lot of money—puzzles were cheap. Some nights we'd sit up until two in the morning trying to finish a new one.” He felt something tugging the corners of his lips upward, suddenly recalling the two of them sitting on the bedroom floor trying to do a puzzle by flashlight and fighting off attacks of laughter that were sure to wake their mother.
“He was a year older, but way smaller,” he went on. “He had the greenest eyes, and Fiona's red hair. If you'd seen the two of us together, you wouldn't believe we were related.”
He shook his head slowly, in awe. But Toni didn't give him time to think about what had just happened to him. “That’s like my sister Joey and me. We look so different.”
“No, not around the eyes,” he said, looking at her pretty eyes, getting kind of lost in the light that was waiting there.
“I got one of those circular jigsaws for my birthday one year,” she said. “Remember those? They were really tough.”
Nick's mind returned him to that bedroom floor, with a circular jigsaw in front of him depicting Superman in flight, an adoring Lois Lane in his arms. And Danny, wondering aloud why one of Superman's hands wasn't visible in the picture and whether or not it was inside Lois's skirt. They'd laughed so loudly over that one, they were sure they'd be caught. And every time one of them managed to stop laughing, the other one would start again and in seconds they'd both be rolling on the floor, red faced and breathless.
He didn't even realize he was telling her about it as he remembered, and a minute later Toni was laughing. Nick was laughing. He was laughing. And when he stopped, he looked at her and shook his head. “How did you do that?”
She smiled at him and parted her lips to speak, then stopped. The smile died and her gaze focused beyond him, through the doorway into the living room. “Nick, the light—the little red light on the panel—''
He looked that way too. “Someone's at the front gate.” He glanced again at the clock and could think of only one person who'd show up at this hour. “You'd better grab me some clothes.”
She nodded and hurried to the closet, taking down a starched white shirt and a pair of the trousers.
Nick swung his legs over the side of the bed and felt the instant return of the pain in his thigh. Toni knelt and slipped the pants over his feet and up his legs. She made him lean on her when he stood to pull them up. She held the shirt for him to slip his arms into its sleeves.
He thought of the monitor as he buttoned the shirt, but before he'd decided whether it would be safe to share that secret with her, she was running into the living room, moving a kitchen chair to the bookshelf, and climbing up onto it to grab the remote. She pointed it at the big screen and turned it on. Nick limped into the room to glance at the screen and then, incredulously, at Toni. “When did you—”
“Within the first twenty-four hours. It's Taranto, isn't it?”
Nick looked at the gray Mercedes at the gate, its wipers beating uselessly against the slashing rain, its headlights pale in the storm's darkness. He nodded. He wanted nothing more right now than to sit Toni down and make her tell him how she knew about high-tech surveillance devices, but he had to deal with Lou first. “I'll have to go down and talk to him.” He took the remote from her.
He started for the door, but her hand gripped his shoulder with surprising force. “You can't go down all those stairs on that leg.”
“It's either that or invite him up here.” He saw the worry in her dark eyes and knew it was genuine and for him. He reached down and touched her face, trailing the backs of his fingers from her delicate, high cheekbone to her impertinent chin. She'd given him a precious thing in the hours before this dawn: the knowledge that he could remember Danny as he'd been before—when they'd been brothers in every sense of the word. When they'd been happy. How could he tell her what that meant?
His fingertips in the hollow under her chin, he tilted her head up and lowered his own. His lips brushed over hers. She didn't pull away. He kissed her again, pressing his lips fully to hers, parting them with the tip of his tongue. He still held only his fingertips to her chin. He wanted to sweep her into his arms—to pick up where they'd left off last night before he'd said the things he had.
She stepped away, avoiding his eyes. “Taranto,” she reminded him.
He nodded and went to the door. She didn't even try to see the numbers he punched, but when he pulled the door open, she was at his side again, her hand on the knob. “Be careful on the stairs,” she warned. “Don't put too much weight on the leg.”
He closed the door with her still muttering that he at least ought to have a cane of some sort. And she was right. The stairs were torture, but he made his way down both flights and let Lou Taranto in the front door a few seconds later.
Lou burst in, hugged Nick like a long-lost son and urged him down onto the leather sofa. He moved behind the bar as if he owned it, poured two shots and waved a fleshy hand toward the mousy man who scurried in his wake. “My personal physician, Nicky. Also my nephew. I put him through med school. He returns the favor when I need him.” He slammed a shot glass into Nick's hand. “Jake and Sly, filled me in. Down it, Nicky. Then drop the pants. David! Get over here and take a look.”
Nick glanced at the guy who jumped when Lou bellowed his name. He was pale, thin, and the round wire rims perched on his nose made him look ten years older than he probably was. His hair was rumpled, as if he'd been yanked out of bed for the occasion. He stepped up to Nick, black bag in hand. Nick swallowed the whiskey, stood up and dropped his pants. You didn't argue when Lou Taranto offered to do you a favor. He sat down again, ignoring the small man who began to unwrap the wound.
“The boys say you saved their asses last night.”
Nick affected a derisive snort. “A lot
of good it did. We lost the shipment. And Rosco.”
Lou swallowed half his whiskey and shrugged. “Too bad about Rosco. But I prefer dead to jailed. He went out with honor—not like Vinnie, eh?” He laughed, a low rumble that seemed to gain momentum as it moved through him. “As for the shipment, what the hell? Easy come, easy go, right, Nicky?”
Nick frowned, an uneasy suspicion settling in the pit of his stomach. “You don't care about the shipment?”
“It's gone. Whining about it won't bring it back. I can afford the loss.”
Nick studied his face and realized Fat Lou couldn't care less about the heroin that had been confiscated. “How much did we lose?”
Lou pursed his lips. “What difference does it make?''
He was wondering about all Nick's questions. Nick shrugged quickly. “Not a damn bit to me. How many cops did we take out, anyway?”
Lou drained his glass and slammed it on the polished surface. “Not a damn one.”
“Good.”
Lou's head snapped around. Even David stopped what he was doing and looked up quickly. “What the hell do you mean, 'good'?”
“Think about it, Lou. This way the cops think they've won one. They grabbed a major haul without losing a single man—didn't they?” Lou frowned and didn't answer, so Nick rushed on. “They took out one of Lou Taranto's men to boot. They'll be so busy patting themselves on the back, making speeches and taking interviews, they won't have time to bother us for a while. On the other hand, if we'd shot a cop or two—”
“They'd be out for blood,” Lou finished. “You're a sharp one, Nicky. I'm glad you're not working for the enemy.”
For once Nick's smile wasn't forced. David was already rewrapping the leg and not doing half the job Toni had, Nick thought. He was glad when the man finished and rose.
“I don't know who tended this for you,” he commented, “but they did a nice job. Slight infection trying to take hold. I'll leave something for it.” He rummaged in his bag as Nick stood and righted his trousers.
“Who fixed you up last night, Nicky? You holdin' out on me? Got a woman stashed around here?”
The question startled him. He hadn't anticipated it and he should have. Any hesitation would arouse Lou's suspicion, and his answer might well be checked out. “The new guy—what’s his name?”
“Carl?” Lou's brows lifted, two silvery arches above a bulbous, slightly red nose.
“That’s it. Hell of a man,” Nick told him. “Drove like a pro, dropped the kids where it was safe, lost the cops. Then he stuck around long enough to patch me up. I would've bled to death if he hadn't.”
Lou puckered in thought. “I'll see he gets a bonus, then.” He looked down at David, who was bent nearly double, squinting at the label of a small brown bottle. “You about done?”
David jumped as if someone had pinched him. “Uh, yes. Here.” He set the bottle on the coffee table. It tipped over. “Antibiotics. Directions are on the label.” He pulled a tube of ointment from his bag, set it beside the toppled plastic bottle, snapped the bag shut and hurried to the door. He couldn't seem to get out of there fast enough.
Nick glanced at Lou. “You scared him.”
Lou shook his head. “So does his shadow. I wanted to talk to you alone.”
“About?”
“The girl. I know who she was.”
“The girl?” Nick feigned ignorance.
“The one that you popped. She's trouble.”
“You still on that, Lou? She's dead. How's she trouble?”
“You're sure?”
Nick released a deliberate bark of laughter. “Damn, don't you think I can tell a dead woman from a live one?”
Lou smiled at that. “Sure I do, Nicky. I just wish you'd have asked her name first.”
“Like I told you before, she saw the hit, she had to go. Who she was was irrelevant.”
“Yeah, well, maybe not so irrelevant as we thought. Viper thought he'd seen her somewhere before. When they flashed her picture on the local news, he realized where. She'd been hanging around the club the past few weeks.” Lou blew air through puckered lips and shook his head. “Big headline, you know. Missing, Antonia del Rio. Only they aren't saying who she really is. Not yet anyway. I wondered—checked with my informant inside NYPD.”
Nick shook his head, not following at all. What would Toni have been doing at the Century?
Lou reached inside his voluminous coat and pulled out a hardcover book. On the front of the glossy black jacket was a lamppost with a shadowy figure leaning against it, feminine calves outlined beneath a trench coat, ending in stiletto heels. Huge red letters marched across the top: Poison Profits. Across the bottom was written in equally large letters, Toni Rio.
The truth slammed into Nick like a freight train. He came to his feet so fast it jarred his thigh. “You've got to be kidding me.”
Lou tossed the book down as if it were dirty. “No joke. Bitch wrote this last year. Raised so much hell I lost my blow supplier. Took me six months to set up a new partnership. She knew stuff about the business I didn't even know. She was good.”
Nick didn't need Lou to tell him about the elusive Toni Rio. The bureau had a file on the woman that read like War and Peace. Her works were fiction, but the stuff she used to sweeten those plots was real and the whole world knew it. The lady sleuth she'd created—Katrina Chekov—waltzed from one taboo subject to another, shattering myths along the way and always putting the bad guys on ice.
That was no more than every Fed knew. If he'd actually read that file of hers, he might have known before now that her full name was Antonia Veronica Rosa del Rio—and that she looked like a small Mayan princess. Rumor had it she was working on a new fictionalized exposé, one that would blow the lid off the Taranto crime family. Lou had to know that.
Nick cleared his throat. “Dead is dead, Lou. Even if she was some kind of celeb—”
“Don't you follow, Nicky? She was writing a book about me! She wasn't in that alley by accident. And if she knew enough to be there, she knew way too much. Who the hell knows what she has down on paper, just waiting for some nosy damn Fed to find—''
“It's fiction, for God's sake!”
“The book, maybe. But what about the notes—the research, or whatever the hell she'd call it? Man, to know about the hit, she had to be into us deep.” Lou shook his head. “I'm sending some guys to her place tonight—tellin' 'em to tear it apart. And if they don't find everything she had on us there, I'll have 'em lean on her family. She must'a had a family. In fact, I got a line on a half sister up Syracuse way.”
“Wait just a damn minute,” Nick barked. There was no more time to feel his way. He had to take the offensive here and now or lose the chance. “This was my mess. I should've wrung the truth out of her before I took her out. For once in his worthless life, Viper was right. I loused this up. I oughtta fix it.”
“Like how?” Lou was listening. Nick knew he'd better make it good, or the game was over.
“I can get in and out of her place without anyone knowing I was there. If there's anything to find, I'll find it. Hell, I'll bring it to you. I'll personally light the match for you, and we'll watch it burn over drinks at the commission meeting. Be the highlight of the night.”
Lou nodded once, then pinned Nick to the spot with an intense glint in his eyes. “And if you don't find anything? You got the stomach to rough up the sister?”
Nick smiled slowly. “I got ways of getting information that Viper doesn't even have nightmares about. Let me handle it, Lou. I'll let you watch when things get nasty.”
Lou's grin split his face. Nick knew the man's perverse appetite for watching people suffer. He was a sadist once removed—too soft to inflict the pain himself.
“All right, Nicky. All right. But I gotta have results by the meeting. I can't let it go beyond that. The other bosses are nervous as hell. If you can't get what I need, I'll send in someone who can.”
Nick nodded. “I'll get it, Lou. It'll be
the finishing touch for my initiation, don't you think?”
When Nick had left the room, taking the remote with him, Toni had followed, shouting warnings as a distraction and holding the doorknob in her hand as he pulled it shut. She hadn't let it close all the way, so the lock did not engage. As soon as Nick's footsteps had faded, she opened the bookcase door and silently followed. She would not sit still while he went down there, wounded and alone, to face Lou Taranto and whoever was with him. She didn't like the odds. Besides, she had to hear this conversation. She'd convinced herself again that Nick couldn't possibly be in Taranto's employ. The man he was when he was alone with her was not that kind. Granted, he was entirely different when he was with Taranto. She had to know, once and for all, which Nick was the real one.
She sat just out of sight and well within earshot at the top of the curving stairway. All the air left her lungs in a rush when she heard Nick make the offer he just had. Her throat tightened until she couldn't swallow, and her eyes were scalding. He'd sounded ruthless, vicious.
Not the Nick I know, she told herself as she struggled to contain the panic she felt spreading like ice water through her veins. He wouldn't hurt my sister—he promised. This is just an act.
Maybe, she thought. And maybe not. She wanted to trust Nick. More than anything, she wanted to believe her instinct that he wasn't capable of such cruelty, that he truly was the gentle, caring man she'd come to know. She felt it so strongly she would have trusted him with her life.
But can I trust him with my sister's? And if there's even a one-in-a-million chance I'm wrong....
She shook herself. She couldn't think objectively about Nick. Her attraction to him always got in the way. And her sister was obviously in jeopardy now, if not from Nick then from Taranto himself. She had to get out of there, get to Joey, warn her.
Nearly frantic as she fought with images of what the filthy Viper might do to her sister, Toni jumped when Nick stood to walk Lou to the front door. Then she saw her opportunity. She raced down both flights of stairs as soon as they were out of sight and ducked into a small room off the opposite end of the living room. She had only one thought in mind. She had to protect her sister. She'd failed her father; let him leave when her instincts had told her to stop him. She wouldn't repeat the mistake.
She held her breath and waited, giving Taranto ample time to drive away and Nick time to remount the stairs and, she hoped, reach the third floor. It would take him longer than usual, due to the bullet wound. She tried to be patient, knowing he'd try to stop her, no matter which side he was truly on. She couldn't let that happen.
When she thought enough time had passed, she moved to the nearest window. It faced the rear of the house, and beyond it she could see only darkness and slashing rain. It was locked, naturally. She was out of patience with Nick and his locks. She picked up the first thing she saw, a marble sculpture of a rearing stallion, and hurled it right through the glass. If only Nick had been honest with her, none of this would be necessary. A tiny voice of doubt whispered in the back of her mind that it might be more necessary than ever, but she refused to listen.
She climbed through the window, her only thought that she had to save her sister. She had no plan of action, no thought of getting past the gate or of how to reach Joey in time to protect her. With her knack for knowing things before they happened, maybe Joey would know, and take precautions, but Toni couldn’t depend on that. She had no qualms about running into the fury of a summer storm dressed in nothing but an oversize shirt and her underwear. She didn't feel the jagged shard that raked across her upper arm. She didn't flinch from the bits of glass that jabbed into the bottoms of her bare feet as she made her way over the wet ground and away from the hulking gray stone mansion.