by Freya Barker
“No need to explain,” I assure her immediately, giving her waist a squeeze and dropping my face in her hair.
“For the record,” Cruz comments, and I lift my head to look at him, my hand sliding down to Ollie’s hip as she turns as well. “I don’t think your brother is a bad guy. Sounds to me he’s just a guy who made some bad choices when he was young and ended up having to eat the consequences of those decisions ever since.”
“Right,” she mumbles and I give her hip a little squeeze.
“Coffee?” I ask, and she answers with a smile. One I return before letting her go to see about getting her some, while I explain, “Cruz is here with an update, also wanted to check in on you, and after that I’m following him to the FBI office. He’s taking Trivisonno back to San Antonio today.”
I told her Trivisonno is the name of the man who allegedly shot her brother and killed the secretary. The same man who tried killing her just two days ago. I’d filled her in on what went down in the interview yesterday afternoon, and how the guy had been spilling the beans on Guisseppe Montenegro’s shady dealings.
“So what’s the scoop?” She takes the mug I hand her and takes a good swig, closing her eyes briefly before fixing them on Cruz.
I slip behind her so my ass hits the edge of the sink, slide my arm around her belly, and tug her close so her back leans into my chest. I notice Cruz is watching this with an amused look on his face.
“He talked. He gave a lot of information, all of it helpful in the sense it ties up a lot of loose ends in our investigation of Montenegro’s business dealings. It’s giving us enough to tighten up our racketeering case against him, even without your brother’s testimony. He confirmed the hits on your brother and Cindy Warner were ordered by Montenegro himself, which means we can add a capital murder and an attempted murder charge to the list of offenses.” Cruz’s eyes flit up to me, even though they’d been on Ollie most of the time. “However, he was much less clear on why he was here in Durango. He seemed surprised when I brought up the Molotov cocktail in your driveway, and was outright evasive when it came to his attack on you.”
“Evasive, how?” I jump in, alerted by his pointed look at me.
“He never really came out and confirmed he received orders. Claims he put two and two together himself when he saw her daughter’s name on Rizzoli’s computer, the similarities of the last names too much of a coincidence for him to ignore. He says he was thinking maybe a relative, someone Christian might try to approach, and that was why he was trying to get information from Trinny—but there are too many holes in that story. Holes he wasn’t able to fill with his statement. Like why it would go from a quest to find Rizzoli to suddenly include an attempt on Ollie’s life.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I point out. “Why would he willingly confess to a murder and an attempted murder, including who ordered them, but become tight-lipped about the rest? Not like he wasn’t caught red-handed.”
“Right,” Cruz confirms, getting up from his stool. “Which is why I want to take him back. Something, by the way, he’s not very pleased about—returning to San Antonio. I’m guessing he feels he’ll be too close to the fire, right in Montenegro’s backyard. I like it. He clearly feels exposed there. I plan to lean on him a little harder, remind him of his boss’s influence in the city, and maybe it’ll motivate him to come all the way clean.”
I can see how that might work. If I were him; I wouldn’t want to go back to San Antonio either. That’s where the man he’s ratting on has his fingers in all the pies. I’d feel mighty vulnerable too.
“So does this mean I’m safe?” Ollie wants to know. “I mean, can I go about my business? Go back home?”
At that last comment my arm tightens around her middle. “No,” I blurt out immediately and she tilts her head back to find me staring down at her.
“Not necessarily,” Cruz confirms, but he does so dropping his eyes to his boots, grinning. “We’ll work on Trivisonno some more over the weekend. We have enough for a warrant for Montenegro’s arrest, but we need more to bring his empire down. We need simultaneous warrants to search his offices, his homes, seize his assets, and pick up his lieutenants. It’ll take some coordination but we’ll be doing it as fast as humanly possible. Montenegro will discover soon enough his go-to hit man is missing from the scene. We leaked your brother is dead, so once we bring him in, he’ll know it’s Trivisonno who talked, with no blowback on you.”
I’m not so sure about that yet, not until it’s clear what the hit man was doing with Ollie in the first place, but I keep my thoughts to myself.
“We should get going.” Cruz walks up and I reluctantly drop my arm from around Ollie’s waist, so they can say goodbye, while I tag my keys and my phone. When I turn back, Livingston has his arm slung over Ollie’s shoulder and hers is tucked around his lower back, as he leads her to the door, telling her, “Last stretch. It’ll be over soon.”
If I didn’t know the man had a wife waiting at home, one he really hated leaving in the first place, I’d have seen red. Still, the sight of Ollie lifting her face up to him, a warm smile on hers, has me move quickly to intervene. I walk up, slide my arm around her and firmly turn her away from him and into me. The fucker grins big, knowing exactly where I’m coming from.
“Gimme a minute.”
He doesn’t hesitate and grabs for the door. “I’ll be in touch,” he promises Ollie before turning to me. “Be outside.”
The moment he slips through the door my mouth is already on hers. With a gratified growl I feel her instant response, her tongue touching mine, arms sliding up around my neck, and her fingers moving into my hair.
Reluctantly I pull back and mumble against her lips.
“Close and lock behind me, just in case. And, Sweets? Hold that thought. We’ll finish this tonight.”
Ollie
A little shiver ripples along my shoulders at his promise, as I watch him walk down the path to his SUV.
I like soft-spoken and even-keeled Joe. A lot. I love grumbling and possessive Joe even more.
After Joe’s freeze-out, my subsequent blowup, and his resulting confession, I feel I’m getting a better picture of him. He’s not that different from me, in that he reflexively pushes away whatever might rock the stable status quo he’s found with his boys.
I do it too. Have been focused on creating as stable an environment for Trinny as I can. Mainly by avoiding putting myself out there, whether it be by dating or forging friendships. I’ve worked to minimize the risk for any upheavals in my girl’s life and that’s meant denying myself.
Not anymore.
Don’t know whether it’s that my life is FUBAR right now anyway, or Trinny’s upcoming eighteenth birthday, or maybe just because it’s Joe, but I’m grabbing hold and riding it all the way. After clearing the air, and evidenced by the way Joe’s been the past twenty-four hours, he’s on the same ride.
That’s why, when I close and lock the front door behind him, I do it with a smile on my face.
With a fresh pot of coffee brewing and a sketch pad in front of me, I start drawing a layout of Joe’s garden. When all this is behind us, I plan to thank him by turning his ho-hum backyard into something stunning. Deserving of the great deck, fabulous pool, and awesome view.
Time flies as I work. Around two o’clock my stomach’s done being ignored, and I realize I didn’t even eat breakfast. I take a last look at the layout plans—little scribbled notes identifying the different shrubs and perennials I envision planted in the beds, and the shaded flagstone seating area I penciled in under the trees along the river—and close my sketchbook.
I have my head in the fridge; coming to the conclusion a trip to the grocery store is needed, when I hear the lock turn on the front door. I shoot up, peek over the fridge door, and watch a pretty gray-haired woman wearing a Pepto-Bismol pink velour tracksuit—complete with matching sun visor—walk in from the hallway. Behind her a tall, equally gray, and handsome older man follows her into
the living room.
“You must be Ollie!” the woman exclaims, trotting toward me.
In that moment, I realize what I probably should’ve found the time to mention to Joe sometime in the past forty-eight hours.
Before I have a chance to process and react, the fridge door is yanked from my hand, slammed shut, and I find myself enveloped in a pair of Pepto-Bismol pink arms, and all senses are suddenly plunged in a cloud of lavender.
“Rita! Let the woman breathe, for Christ’s sake. You’re scaring the bejesus out of her.”
I can finally take a proper breath when the arms banded around me like heavy-duty elastic are pried away. “Uhh…hi?” I mumble stupidly, more than a little overwhelmed with the two broadly grinning seniors facing me.
“That’s my wife, Rita,” the man says, cocking his thumb at her.
“And that’s Joey’s dad, Sal.” Rita nudges her head at him. “We were in the neighborhood.”
I feel like I’ve been dropped in the middle of a sitcom and any moment now the audience is going to burst out laughing.
Five minutes later, I’ve been relegated to the dining room table along with Sal, who first hauled in a truckload of groceries they came prepared with. Rita commandeered the kitchen, along with the conversation, and is chattering without any input from me, or her husband for that matter, while she is making us lunch.
“Are you sure I can’t help?”
Rita immediately waves it off, just like she waved it off when I confessed not having had an opportunity to tell him about her call. Apparently she loves a good surprise. Personally I’m not so sure how ‘good’ the surprise will be for Joe, especially given our current circumstances, but I barely have a chance to speak, let alone sneak up to the bedroom to give him a head’s up.
“I’ll make extra. The boys’ll want some when they come back from camp tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I echo alarmed, looking at Sal who notices. “They’re not back until next week.”
He narrows his eyes at his wife who seems unaffected. “Che cazzo, Rita? You said you checked the dates.”
“Doesn’t matter. So we’ll stay two weeks,” she says, shrugging her shoulders.
“We have reservations at the RV-park in Moab for the week after next.”
“So? We’ll change them. Not everything has to be done by the book, Salvatore. Be a little adventurous.”
The man’s eyes bug out at that. “Adventurous? Did I not sell my house—”
“Our house,” she interrupts pointedly.
“Our house,” he repeats, clearly impatient. “Did I not sell it? Pack my suitcase and follow you to the Bahamas, because you got a wild hair up your ass after reading about retiring there in some damn cooking magazine?” He barely takes a breath before he continues. Something I’m learning is smart, because otherwise he won’t get a word in edgewise with Rita. “And every vacation since, we’ve been back here driving around the US? What’s the point? We shoulda just stayed in Denver.”
I had to give it to him; he makes a decent point. On top of which—if I were living in the Bahamas—I don’t think I’d ever want to leave.
It’s clear Rita doesn’t share that opinion, since she’s waving the chef’s knife she’s using to cut a block of cheese in Sal’s—and therefore my—direction. “You wanna deny me my grandbabies? I see them twice a year, Christmas and summer vacation. You wanna take that away from me?”
I bite my lip, because Rita has just pulled out the big guns—guilty manipulation—and from the look on Sal’s face, he knows he’s just waded into a minefield and just the slightest misstep will leave him in tatters.
His eyes are slits as he and his wife engage in a stare-off that has me looking back and forth like I’m watching a ping-pong match.
Sal caves first. That doesn’t surprise me. Rita strikes me as a formidable woman, a little scary even. The man’s features soften and a corner of his mouth twitches.
“Va bene. We can change them.”
Totally caved, and I grin with some appreciation at Rita, whose face has softened as well.
“Grazie, amore mio,” she coos, before following it up with, “Now let’s eat.”
She slides a large wooden charcuterie board piled with cheeses, deli meats, olives, nuts, spreads, pâtés, and crackers on the table. Sal gets up to uncork the wine he brought in, and without asking, pours me a generous measure, ignoring my protest. When I look up at him with my eyebrows raised, he rolls his eyes at his wife before shooting me a grin and a wink.
Reading his message loud and clear, I raise my glass and toss half of it back, just in time to hear a key in the lock for the second time today, and Joe’s normally soft voice booming.
“What the ever-loving fuck?”
Chapter 25
Joe
After seeing Livingston and his prisoner off, I had to go into the office to deal with the administrative aftermath of last night. Not only what went down at my place, but also walking out in the middle of a hostage situation.
Word of both had reached City Hall, and within two seconds of walking through the station door, I was pulled into the conference room where Mayor Stan Woodard and a handful of council members were waiting to give me the third degree.
I did not appreciate having a bunch of civilians question my professional judgment around Powers leading up to the standoff last night. It also didn’t sit right having to explain why I walked away from the scene, after making sure the kids were safe, because another crisis—this one at my own house—demanded my attention. And I really didn’t fucking like them telling me engaging in a relationship with a woman with ties to the mafia does not look well on a chief of police.
Therefore it took me the better part of an hour, and an endless supply of patience, to straighten them out.
That’s also why, when I turned onto my street, saw an RV parked in my driveway, knowing what that meant, I had no patience left.
“Surprise!”
Ma, who has a habit of being purposely obtuse when it suits her, completely ignores my outburst and hurries to meet me at the door. Pops, as usual, shrugs. A man resigned to the fact his wife rolls through life like a bulldozer, and whether he likes it or not, he’s along for the ride.
As my mother slaps her hands on my cheeks like she did when I was little—something I always hated—my eyes drift to Ollie, who is sitting at the table with my dad, and has guilt written all over her face.
“Are you sleeping?” Ma likes to get her twice yearly dose of mothering in right off the bat, and I know from experience it’s better just to let her do her thing and get it over with. “You look tired. Have you been eating well? Maybe you’re coming down with something?”
“Ma—I’m fine. Can I please come into my own house now?”
She lets go of my face and steps back, but not without brushing some imaginary lint off my shoulder and straightening the collar of my shirt. “Come eat,” she orders, leading the way.
Pops gets up when I get to the table, pulls me in for a hug, and my eyes catch Ollie’s again. Mine are questioning; hers show longing.
“Sit, boy,” Pops rumbles. Already irritated at their unexpected invasion, it’s on my lips to remind him this is my house, and therefore don’t need an invitation, but I swallow that down along with everything else I’d like to say.
I walk up behind Ollie; tilt her chin back so I can drop a firm kiss on her mouth. “Everything okay?” I ask softly and watch as her eyes dart across the table and a blush stains her cheeks.
“Uhm…”
“Aside from my parents busting their way into my house,” I clarify with a pointed look in their direction before turning back to Ollie, “everything else all right?”
“It’s fine,” she says in a way I know means it’s not really. I sit down next to her and grab her knee under the table, giving it a squeeze.
“We didn’t bust in your house,” Ma slams a wine tumbler on the table and grabs for the bottle. “You gave us a key.”
“I’ll get you one,” Ollie says softly, getting up, but Ma—in her usual fashion—beats her to it.
“I’ve got it.”
I know her play. I know because it’s a play she made with every girl I brought home. All three of them. The last one had been Jenny and Ma used to do this shit in our house as well. Jenny didn’t mind, she just let Ma do what she wanted, but Ollie—I can tell—is feeling it.
I wait until Ma puts a glass and a bottle of beer on the table in front of me. “I gave you that key to get in and out while you were staying here at Christmas. Not to blow in whenever the mood strikes you. Love you, Ma, but last time I checked, I was forty-five years old and my name was on the deed for this house, not fifteen and living in your basement.”
“Hogwash,” she says, batting her hand. “Family is family.” Her favorite point to make to any disagreement, as if it absolves any inappropriate or bad behavior.
“Still. You coming in here uninvited, especially when I have company, is not cool, Ma.”
Her eyes dart from me to Ollie and back, and I can tell from the way they light up to brace for what’s coming. I’m not wrong. “She knew we were coming,” she says smugly. “Didn’t she tell you?”
I can tell from Ollie’s body going rigid beside me that she’s had enough, but instead of intervening I sit back, and watch her temper ignite.
“You said no such thing. You called, wanted to know who I was, and I barely got a word in edgewise. All you said was you were looking forward to meeting me and hung up.”
Ma’s eyes sharpen and she leans forward, planting her elbows on the table. “Seems clear enough to me.”
“Really?” Ollie spits, getting up and leaning her hands on the table. I look over at Pops and he seems as amused by the face-off as I am. “‘Cause nowhere in there did it say anything about walking in the door two days later.”
