“I told you I don’t know where the fuck she is,” Knockletter replied in a harsh voice. “Trust me, I want to know.”
Tina’s eyes flickered to the two bent fingers on his right hand when he held it up in front of him. She couldn’t keep the smile of satisfaction from tugging at her lips. Unfortunately, Knockletter saw it too. The narrowing of his eyes and the anger on his face made the greasy, unattractive man appear even more sinister.
“I think you do,” Tina replied in a quiet voice. “I want to know why she broke your fingers. She wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t tried something.”
Knockletter’s mouth twisted into a grimace as he sat down in the chair behind his desk. He leaned back in it and folded his arms across his chest as he placed the heels of his feet on the edge of the dull wooden surface, crossing them at the ankles.
“There is an arrest warrant out for the bitch,” Knockletter stated coldly. “She busted two of my fingers and almost emasculated me with her knee.”
“There was nothing said about an arrest warrant,” Tina replied in a calm voice. “The detective handling her case in never mentioned it.”
Knockletter grinned as he reached down and rubbed his crotch. “I guess I should have said, there is going to be a warrant for her arrest, unless…,” he said, letting his voice fade as he looked her up and down again.
I am so going to need a hot, bubble bath when I get home to wash the nastiness of his eyes off of me, Tina thought silently as another wave of distaste washed over her.
“Unless…,” she asked through gritted teeth.
Knockletter let his feet fall to the floor of the office and he stood up surprisingly fast. Tina jerked backwards several steps, her fingers automatically wrapping around the roll of quarters in her left hand. She stumbled back several more steps when he walked back around the desk. This time, he didn’t stop, though.
“Unless, my pretty little sister of the devil herself, you give me a reason not to,” Knockletter whispered, stopping when he had her trapped between his body and the back wall of the office. “A very, very good reason,” he breathed in, leaning forward to sniff at her hair.
“Who are you laundering money for?” Tina nervously blurted out. “Who is Javier Cuello?”
A gasp escaped Tina when Knockletter’s thin, crooked fingers suddenly wrapped around her throat. Terror washed through her when she saw the savage look in his eyes and the vicious twist of his lips that exposed his teeth. Gone was any semblance of civility.
“Who do you work for?” He demanded. “Who else knows about this?”
“No… No one,” Tina choked. “I… I just want to… to find my sister.”
“So do I, bitch,” Knockletter replied, raising his other hand to wrap it around her throat as well. “And when I do, I’ll make sure she meets you in hell.”
Realizing that she might have found the answers she was looking for, Tina reacted without thinking. She winced as her knee connected with the soft tissue of Knockletter’s groin. The move had the desired effect, his hands slipped from where they had been wrapped around her throat to grab at his crotch as he stumbled backwards with a stunned, pain filled expression on his face.
Tina didn’t wait, she swung her left arm out, catching him in the jaw with the roll of quarters. As if in slow motion, she watched his head snap to the side and backwards. A splash of red spurted from his mouth along with a small pearly white tooth. She watched in shock as he continued around in a semi-circle before he collapsed unconscious to the floor.
Fear and exhilaration poured through her. She had knocked the bastard out! Riley was still alive… Well, at least her boss hadn’t killed her… yet. Hurrying over to the desk, Tina yanked the desk drawers open. In the small, left hand side was a handgun of some type and a pair of handcuffs. Her eyes flew back to where Knockletter lay motionless. She grabbed the handcuffs and hurried back to where he lay. Pulling on his right arm, she dragged him closer to the old-fashion radiator. Bending, she quickly clicked one side of the handcuff around his wrist and the other side to the metal leg. Since it was bolted to the wall and floor, she knew he wouldn’t be able to pull loose from it.
Breathing a sigh of relief that at least she knew he was contained for a while, she returned to the desk. She opened the thin, front drawer. Inside were several manila folders. She flicked open the cover and glanced down over the page. Columns of neatly typed spreadsheets filled with numbers were inside. She was about to replace it when she saw the familiar last digits of one of the bogus accounts she had discovered.
Deciding she needed more time to look over the numbers, she pulled the sheets out of the folder and replaced it with some blank paper sitting next to the printer. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be in a hurry to look inside the folder when he woke up. Shutting the drawer, Tina shoved the papers into her messenger bag before turning and hurrying back the way she had entered. She paused, backing up when she saw the Sheriff’s car pull up in front of the building.
Biting her bottom lip, she scooted into the corner near the cracked front window. Luckily, between the blinds, stencil of the name of the bond’s company, and the dirt on the window, it was almost impossible to see inside.
“Sheriff Knockletter,” a voice called out as the man stepped out of his patrol car and reached for his hat. “Sheriff Knockletter.”
Tina watched as the sheriff who she vaguely remembered Riley referring to as Daddy Dumbest turned to respond to the old man hurrying toward him. She forced herself to freeze when he glanced impatiently toward the door she had been about to exit. This time not even the dry heat could keep the sweat from popping out on her brow.
“What is it, Burt?” The sheriff asked in an impatient tone.
“I need to report an accident,” the man exclaimed in irritation. “Damn kid wasn’t watching where he was going and hit me as I was backing up in the Save-a-Lot.”
Tina released a silent sigh of relief when the sheriff grunted out an answer and turned back to his car. She leaned back against the wall and drew in a shaky breath before forcing herself to calmly walk to the front door of the building again. Her fingers deftly twisted the lock on the handle as she opened it and stepped out. Pulling the door shut behind her, she glanced at her cell phone. She had fifteen minutes to get to the Greyhound Bus station.
Glancing both ways, a smile curved her lips when she saw the sheriff would be busy for a little while if the old man’s yelling and the smoke coming from the front of the little blue Civic were any indication. Crossing the street, Tina hurried down the sidewalk. Soon, she would be on the road again, heading back to familiar territory, namely The White Pearl.
She smiled as she crossed the street to the Greyhound bus station. She glanced impatiently down the road, willing the bus to appear out of the mirage of heat waves that made the road look like it was covered in water. The minutes ticked by in painfully slow clicks before she saw the top of the shiny bus in the distance.
The sense of being watched made the skin at the back of her neck crawl. Pulling the messenger bag draped across her chest in front of her and adjusting her knapsack on her left shoulder, she carefully slid her right hand into the bag. This time, instead of quarters, she felt the familiar comfort sweep through her as her fingers wrapped around the metal knuckles she carried in it.
A deep sigh of relief nearly made her reach out for the wooden post holding up the sagging metal roof that offered a scant bit of relief from the fierce sun. Her eyes scan the dilapidated buildings across from the sad, deserted bus stop.
Tina froze when the figure of a man stepped out of the shadows between two of the buildings. Her eyes narrowed as they locked with the man. Blood coated his chin, but it was the fury and hatred that blazed in his eyes that made Tina jerk her chin up in defiance. Her lip curled in contempt as she glared back at the scrawny, little bastard. She should have checked his pockets for a key to the handcuffs, but she had been reluctant to touch him.
Raising her other hand, Tina slowly gav
e Douglas Knockletter a one finger salute right before the bus pulled up and blocked her view of him. Dust filled the air as the bus slowly came to a stop. Tina climbed the short set of steps as soon as the door opened and gave the driver a somber smile as she handed him her ticket. Murmuring her thanks, she moved to the seat behind him and slid next to the window.
Shrugging off the knapsack, she dropped it into the seat next to her before she turned to study Knockletter as he stared at the bus through the darkly tinted glass. The bastard might not be lying when he said he didn’t know what happened to Riley, but something had happened to drive her sister into the desert and Tina was determined to discover what it was. She didn’t take her eyes off of him until the bus pulled away in a cloud of dust and hot air.
Only when the bus crossed the state line did she pulled her knapsack closer to her and released the snap on the plastic clasp. Pulling the paperwork out she had brought with her, she stared at it blindly for several long second as tears blurred her vision.
“I won’t lose you, Riley. I won’t lose you, not like we lost mom,” Tina whispered, opening the file folder containing all the information she had to date. She stared down at the smiling face of her big sister. The wild, blonde curls framed Riley’s face, her infectious smile pulled at Tina’s lips, and her bright blue eyes shone with intelligence and a hint of challenge, making anyone with half a brain know they should tread cautiously. “I’ll find you, Riley. If that bastard or any of his friends did anything to you, I’ll hunt them down and shoot their asses. I promise. No one messes with us St. Claire women and gets away with it… no one!”
Tina brushed the tear that escaped away and began going over the information she had discovered shortly before she left San Diego. The detective helping them in San Diego had told her that Riley’s car had broken down not far from the county line. The car had been locked, her purse and suitcase were missing, and there was no evidence of a struggle.
It would appear that Riley had started walking toward the next town. An anonymous caller admitted to picking Riley up, but said that she had gotten out of his truck a few miles outside of the next town. The man’s story had checked out and the detective said, unless some new information came in, there was nothing else he could do. The case would remain open and Riley would be classified as a missing person.
“Missing person, my ass,” Tina muttered, turning the paper and staring down at the image of Douglas Knockletter. “You are hiding something. You know what happened, at least some of it. I just know it.”
She had used her connections to do an internal audit of the bastard’s business a little over a month ago. Toni Di Stefano, her best friend and a fellow accountant, worked for the Internal Revenue Service as a Business Forensic Field Audit Specialist. No one seeing Toni would know that she was a walking calculator on steroids with a mixture of Bloodhound and a trace of mountain lion running through her veins.
Toni looked more like one of those bad-ass street gang members that could whoop your ass before you knew what happened instead of the daughter from a powerful and very wealthy Italian family. They never would have met if it hadn’t been for an incident during Tina’s final year of high school. Tina had called to ask a huge favor from Toni for Knockletter’s tax returns for the past seven years.
“Why?” Toni had asked bluntly. “Do you want me to go through them for you? Do you think he has something to do with Riley’s disappearance? I can order an audit if you want.”
“No,” Tina had hastily replied. “I don’t want to take a chance on him knowing that he is being investigated and I don’t want you to get into any more trouble than you already will if anyone finds out that you accessed the records.”
“Shit,” Toni chuckled. “No one gives a fuck what I do as long as I get my work done. That means there is less for them to do. Besides, they are too afraid of my family name to do anything. I’ll send you the files. It is the least I can do for you, Riley, and Pearl.”
“Thank you, Toni. This means a lot to me,” Tina replied in a soft voice. “You know, it was you who saved my life, don’t you?”
Toni’s soft sigh came clearly through the cellphone. “Just as you saved mine, sorellina minore. If you need help finding Riley, say the word. I still have some contacts.”
A shiver ran through Tina as she remembered Toni’s grim offer. Her friend had contacts that always came with strings. In this case, she would be opening herself up to her family again. A family that she had turned her back on when she was seventeen and never looked back at, no matter the pressure to do so. An Italian family had strong ties. Toni’s family ties came with thick chains, concrete shoes, and a signature written in blood by the devil himself.
“Just the tax information,” Tina assured her. “People never seem to understand their financial footprints tell more about them than anything else.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Toni replied with a sardonic chuckle. “My father learned that lesson the hard way.”
A small piece of Tina’s heart broke for her friend. Toni’s father was serving ten years in prison for tax evasion. According to Toni, he should be spending the rest of his life buried under the prison for the other things he had done. She knew deep down that her friend was right. The Di Stefano family controlled close to three-quarters of Little Italy in the Los Angeles area. At the moment, Toni’s mother and brothers were running it under the directions of her father.
“When does he get out?” Tina asked in a hesitant voice.
“Four months,” Toni replied with a dry snort. “They are letting him out for good behavior and the fact that he paid up what they think he owes the government. If I had done the audit, he’d never been seen the outside of a prison cell again. He is lucky I am family and that I have a sense of survival.”
“What are you going to do? Does he still want to marry you off to Rosso? Do you think he’ll come after you when he gets out?” Tina asked in dismay.
The silence spoke more than any words. There was no place to hide. Antonio Di Stefano knew it was his youngest daughter that had turned him in. What he didn’t understand was she did it to save his life.
Rosso wanted control. To get it, he planned to marry into the family. Once he did, he would eliminate Toni’s father and her two younger brothers. Toni had discovered the devious plan several weeks before her father planned to seal the agreement. Antonio Di Stefano refused to believe her, thinking she was just trying to wiggle her way out of the marriage. Hell, at seventeen, Tina would have done the same! Toni, in a desperate bid to save her family, delivered documentation to the District Attorney of Los Angeles and the Internal Revenue about her father’s illegal business and his history of tax evasion.
As bad as her father was, as much as he had done cruel and hurtful things, Toni still loved her father in her own way and would do anything to save him and her family. Her hope that her two younger brothers would not follow in her father’s footsteps had proven fruitless. Her mother ruled the family with as much of an iron fist as her father. Toni, realizing her mother planned to carry out the agreed marriage, had escaped into the night.
She turned up at The White Pearl, tired and desperate, looking for the girl that had saved her just a few months before. Pearl had immediately taken Toni in, and a strong friendship had blossomed between Tina and Toni. They had eventually discovered they both shared a love for numbers and enrolled together at the local college to get their accounting degrees.
“Call me if you need anything, Tina,” Toni said instead. “You know I will be there for you and your family.”
“I know,” Tina replied with a sigh. “Thank you. I’ll let you know what I find out.”
“Good. By the way, I have an audit to do in San Diego in a couple of weeks. Tell Pearl to load up on the whiskey, Toni is coming to challenge her ass,” Toni chuckled. “Love you, sorellina minore. See you soon.”
“Love you, too, Toni,” Tina replied before disconnecting the call.
*.*.*
Now, she sat staring blindly out of the dirty window of the bus. She had found something during her forensic audit that she wanted to share with Toni, but now she was having second thoughts. The last thing she wanted to do was take a chance of endangering her friend.
A frown creased her brow as she thought about what happened. When she had asked Douglas Knockletter about Javier Cuello his face had changed. Tina knew enough from growing up in some of the neighborhoods she had lived in to know it was time to leave while she still could. There was no doubt in her mind that he was about to kill her.
Her fingers instinctively moved to her throat. She was going to have bruises on the pale column. There was no way she would be able to hide it from Pearl unless she wore a scarf or turtle neck.
She decided she would turn the information she had over to the agent in charge of her sister’s case back home. Staring down at the image of her sister one more time before she closed the folder, she couldn’t keep the desperate plea from escaping her.
“Riley, please, please, help me,” she whispered. “Pearl and I need you.”
Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back against the seat. She had barely slept in the past six months since Riley’s disappearance. Between working at the bar and doing her research, she was lucky to get four hours a night. The stress of the last few days was finally catching up with her. Wrapping her arms protectively around the manila folder, she cradled it to her chest as the minutes turned to hours as she made her way back home to San Diego.
Chapter 2
Viper d’Rojah ignored his older brother who was leaning back against the wall, watching him through narrowed eyes. A snarl slipped past his lips when a pair of pale, slender hands suddenly reached out and grabbed the shirt he had attempted to throw into the black bag he was packing, pulling it away from him before he could stuff it into the case. He had missed the bag, not that it mattered if he had made it, his brother's mate, Riley St. Claire, was pulling everything that he had tried to throw into it out, refolding each piece before placing it neatly into the soft, dark leather bag.