ROCKY MOUNTAIN RESCUE

by Cindi Myers

  “Any other women?” Thompson asked.

  Why did Thompson care about the women? “There was the cook, Angie. A woman named Veronica.” No point explaining her role as Sam’s latest mistress. “My sister-in-law, Elizabeth Giardino.” Elizabeth had been a big surprise, showing up for lunch today as if her father had never threatened to murder her.

  “That’s all?”

  She looked up at him through the fringe of her lashes. “All the women.”

  “And the men?”

  She looked around the room, at the masculine furniture and big-screen television, at the black-clad men who dusted for fingerprints and took photographs from every angle. “There were a lot of men here. There always are.” The women were merely ornaments. Accessories. Necessary for carrying on the family name, but otherwise in the way. They were kept in the background as much as possible.

  “Was there anyone here who wasn’t a member of the family?”

  “You mean besides all the bodyguards?”

  “Besides them, yes. Any visitors?”

  “Elizabeth was a visitor. She doesn’t live here.”

  “Anyone else?”

  She shook her head. “But I don’t keep track of everyone who comes and goes.”

  “Because you’re not interested?”

  “That, and because I don’t want to know about the Giardino business.”

  “Sir, the M.E. says he’s finished in the library,” one of the black-clad officers addressed Thompson.

  Thompson nodded. “All right. Then you can seal off the room.”

  “Where is everyone?” Stacy asked. The first shock of the invasion had worn off and uneasiness stole over her like a virus, making her feel sick and a little dizzy. “The other women and the rest of the family.”

  “They’re being taken care of. You were the only one unaccounted for. Where were you when the shooting started?”

  “In the bathroom, if that really makes any difference.”

  The double doors leading into the hall opened and a man in black backed into the room, wheeling a gurney. Stacy stared at the figure on the gurney, covered by a white sheet. A bone-deep chill swept through her. “Who is that?” she asked, forcing the words out.

  “Mrs. Giardino—” Thompson put out his arm to stop her, but she threw off his grasp and ran to the gurney.

  The men wheeling it past stopped and looked at Thompson. “Sir?”

  “It’s all right.” Thompson glanced at Carlo, who had crawled under the coffee table and was absorbed in orchestrating elaborate car crashes. “Let her look.”

  She hesitated, staring at the outline of a face under the white sheet, afraid of what she’d see there, yet knowing she had to look.

  The man at the head of the gurney leaned over and flipped back the sheet.

  Stacy gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. Thompson’s hand rested heavy on her shoulder. “Can you identify this man for me, please?” he asked.

  “That’s my husband,” she whispered. In death, he looked older than she remembered, his skin waxy and slack, the cruelty gone from his expression. “That’s Sammy,” she breathed, and staggered back into the marshal’s arms.

  Chapter Two

  Marshal Patrick Thompson considered himself a good judge of character, but he wasn’t sure what to make of Stacy Franklin Giardino. When he’d stepped into the basement of that backcountry mansion, the last person he’d expected to encounter was this woman who looked like a college girl or a rock star, not a mobster’s wife. She was all of five foot two and probably weighed ninety pounds soaking wet. She had fine, sharp features and huge gray eyes, and her short, platinum blond hair only made her look more elfin and vulnerable.

  Dressed in leggings, an oversize sweater and short leather boots, she looked more like the little boy’s big sister or babysitter than his mother, but a double-check of the background files on the Giardino family confirmed she was indeed the wife—or make that, the widow—of the late Sam Giardino Junior, and the boy, Carlo, was the heir apparent of the Giardino mob family.

  Patrick stood in a darkened office at the police station the feds were using as their temporary base in Telluride and studied Stacy and her son through a one-way mirror. The boy was eating cookies, painstakingly separating each cookie into two halves, licking all the filling out and then nibbling away the cookie portions. Stacy watched her son, scarcely moving except to occasionally cross and uncross her legs.

  Nice legs, he thought, though he told himself he wasn’t supposed to notice them. He wasn’t supposed to think of the women he was assigned to protect that way. They were victims or suspects or witnesses. But he was a healthy, single man and sometimes...

  “What do you think?”

  Patrick flinched, and looked over his shoulder at the man who spoke, FBI special agent Tim Sullivan. Though his first impulse was to say that Stacy was a very appealing woman, he knew that wasn’t what Sullivan wanted to know. “She says she doesn’t know anything about the Giardinos’ crimes—that the women were kept in the dark.”

  “Do you think she’s telling the truth?”

  “Maybe.” Patrick turned to look at Stacy again. Beneath the carefully applied makeup he detected dark circles of fatigue beneath her eyes. Earlier, she’d been so fierce, like a mother bear protecting her cub. Now she looked more vulnerable. “What makes a woman align herself with a criminal like Sammy Giardino?” he asked.

  Sullivan moved to stand beside him. “Maybe she didn’t know he was a crook until it was too late.”

  “Then why not leave? Why stay in a marriage with a man like that?”

  “That answer’s easy. You don’t divorce a mobster. You know enough about them to be dangerous, and as long as you’re married, you can’t be compelled to testify against them.”

  Had Stacy been trapped like that? The thought made his stomach twist. “She had to have known what he was like before they married,” he said. “The background report on her says her father is a shipping merchant who’s suspected of having some shady dealings with the Giardino family.”

  As if sensing someone watching, she turned and looked directly into the mirror. Her eyes were hard and cold. So much for thinking she was vulnerable. He’d seen women like her before. They were hostile to law enforcement, uncooperative and difficult. But it was his job to protect her, so he would.

  “You want me to talk to her?” Sullivan asked.

  “No, I’ll do it.” Patrick picked up a file folder from the corner of the desk and stepped out into the hall.

  Stacy looked up when he entered the room. Carlo had finished his cookies and lay stretched across two chairs, his head in his mother’s lap. “When can we go?” she asked, her voice just above a whisper. “It’s going to be Carlo’s bedtime soon.”

  “I’ll drive you to your hotel soon.” He sat, one hip on the table beside her, a casual pose that was supposed to help her relax, but there was nothing at ease about the rigid set of her shoulders. With one hand she smoothed her son’s hair, over and over. “We’ll provide protection for you until we’re sure you and your son are safe. If we decide to press charges against anyone else, you may be asked to testify, and in that case you’ll be under our protection until the trial. After that, you’ll have the option of going into Witness Security and assuming a new identity.”

  “No.” The hand that had been stroking her son stilled. “I won’t do that.”

  Not an unusual reaction to the idea of starting life over as someone else. It took time for most people to come around. “You and your son could be in danger,” he said.

  “I can take care of my son.”

  “We can talk about this more later. For now, you’ll be assigned an agent for protection.”

  If looks really could kill, the hate-filled stare she directed at him would have fel
led him like a shot. He pretended not to notice. “Do you have family you want us to notify—parents, siblings?” he asked.

  “I’m an only child.”

  “Your parents, then.” He consulted the notes in the file. “Your mother and father, Debby and George Franklin, live in Queens?”

  “I don’t want to see them.”

  “Why not?” Had there been a rift when she married Giardino?

  “That’s none of your business.”

  He conceded the point and let his gaze drift to the boy. The key with a hostile witness was to find some point of connection. “How is your son?”

  “He’s tired and confused. He wants to go home.” Her expression softened and she stroked the boy’s hair again—a honey color several shades darker than her own. “I haven’t told him about his father yet. I’m not sure he’d understand.”

  “And how are you doing?”

  The hardness returned. “If you’re worried I’m all torn up because my husband’s dead, don’t be.”

  “So you’re not upset?”

  “I’m not. I hated him.”

  “Then why did you marry him?”

  She shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  She pressed her lips together in a thin line. He thought she wasn’t going to say anything, but he waited anyway. Had she really hated her husband, or was this a ploy to distance herself further from the Giardinos and their crimes? “My father and his father arranged for us to get married,” she said. “I scarcely even knew him.”

  “Come on. This is the twenty-first century. And it’s America, not the old country.”

  Her expression clouded. “I told you you wouldn’t understand.”

  He let the words hang between them, hoping she’d elaborate, but she did not. She didn’t look away from him either, but kept her gaze steady and challenging, unflinching.

  He shifted, and his leg brushed against her arm. She flinched and he moved away. This wasn’t right, him looming over her this way. He pulled up a chair and sat beside her, turned to face her. “I wanted to ask you a few more questions about today,” he said.

  “I can’t tell you anything about the Giardinos.”

  “You were married to Sam Giardino’s son for four years. You lived in the Giardino family home during all that time. I believe you know more than you think you know. Did people often come to the house to discuss business?”

  She remained silent.

  He removed a photograph from the folder—an eight-by-ten glossy used by Senator Greg Nordley in his campaign. “Have you seen this man before? At the house or with Sam or Sammy somewhere else?”

  She scarcely glanced at the photo. “Where are the other women—Victoria and Elizabeth? Have you asked them these questions?”

  The women were at this moment in other interrogation rooms, being questioned by other officers. “They’re safe. And yes, we’re talking to them.”

  “They’ll tell you the same thing I will—we don’t know anything. We weren’t allowed to know anything. Women in the Giardino household were like furniture or children—to be seen and not heard.”

  “I’m surprised you put up with that kind of treatment.”

  Anger flared, putting color in her cheeks and life in her eyes. She looked more striking than ever. “You think I had a choice?”

  “You strike me as an outspoken, independent young woman. Not someone who’d let herself be bullied.” When she’d stepped out into the basement, the boy in her arms, she’d looked ready to take him on, despite the fact that she was unarmed.

  She looked away, but not before he caught a glimpse of sadness—or was it despair?—in her eyes. “If you lived in a household with men who thought nothing of cutting a man’s face off if he said something they didn’t like, would you be so eager to speak up?”

  “Are you saying the Giardinos threatened you?”

  “They didn’t think of them as threats. Call them promises.”

  “Did they physically abuse you?” His anger was a sharp, heavy blade at the back of his throat, surprising in its intensity.

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He shifted, wanting to put some distance between himself and this woman who unsettled him so. She was alternately cold and vulnerable, in turns innocent and calculating. He pretended to consult the file folder, though the words blurred before an image of Stacy, cowering before a faceless thug with a gun.

  “Does the name Senator Nordley mean anything to you?” he asked, forcing the disturbing image away.

  “He’s a senator from New York. What is this, a civics test?”

  “We believe the senator was at the house shortly before we broke in this afternoon.”

  “I didn’t see him.”

  “Did you see Sam Giardino with anyone in the past few days who was not a regular part of the household?”

  “No. I stayed as far away from Sam as I could.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He and my husband were fighting. I didn’t want to get caught in the cross fire. Literally.”

  “What were they fighting about?”

  “Control of the family. Sammy wanted his father to give him more say in day-to-day operations, but Sam refused.”

  “But Sam was the natural successor to his father, wasn’t he?”

  “Supposedly. But Sam used to taunt him. He’d threaten to pass over Sam and hand the reins over to his brother, Sammy’s Uncle Abel.”

  Patrick leafed through the folder. He found no mention of anyone named Abel. “Who was Uncle Abel?”

  “Sam’s younger brother. He was the black sheep no one ever talked about—because he wouldn’t go into the family business.”

  “But Sam threatened to turn things over to him instead of to Sammy?”

  “It was just his way of getting back at Sammy. Abel had nothing to do with the business and hadn’t for years.”

  “Where is Abel now?”

  “He and Sam’s mother—Sammy’s grandmother—live on a ranch somewhere in Colorado.”

  The hairs on the back of Patrick’s neck stood up. There was something to this Abel Giardino. Maybe the Colorado connection they’d been looking for. “Did you ever meet Abel?”

  “He and the grandmother came to our wedding. He looked like some old cowboy.”

  “And the mother?”

  “The mother was scarier than either of her sons. She didn’t approve of me and threatened to give me the evil eye if I wasn’t good to her only grandson.” Stacy shuddered, and rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “After meeting her, I know why Sam was so mean.”

  “All the more reason for us to offer you protection.”

  “I told you, I don’t want your protection!”

  At the sound of her raised voice, Carlo stirred and whimpered. She bent over him and made soothing noises. In that instance she transformed from cold and angry to warm and tender. The contrast struck him, made him feel sympathy for her, though he didn’t want to. She was a member of a crime family, probably a criminal herself. She didn’t deserve his sympathy.

  When the boy had settled back to sleep, she looked at Patrick again. “Please, just let us leave,” she said.

  He stood. “I’ll have someone take you to your hotel.”

  He left the room, shutting the door softly behind him. He found Sullivan in his office down the hall. “Have you heard of Abel Giardino?” Patrick asked.

  Sullivan shook his head. “Who is he?”

  “Sam’s brother. He supposedly was never involved in the family’s crimes. He lives with his mother somewhere in Colorado.”

  “Could he be the reason Sam was in the state?”

  “It would be worth checking out. Stacy says Sam tal
ked about choosing his brother to succeed him as head of the family, instead of Sam Junior.”

  Sullivan made a note. “Did you get anything else out of her?”

  “Only that she apparently hated her husband’s guts. And she doesn’t appear to have fond feelings for any of the rest of the family.”

  “No confirmation on the senator?”

  “She said she hadn’t seen him around.”

  “Do you think she’s telling the truth?”

  “Hard to say. She’s not one to give anything away. I’ll ask Sergeant Robinson to take her and the boy to the hotel for the night and we’ll try again in the morning.”

  He called the sergeant’s extension and gave the officer his orders: take Mrs. Giardino and her son to the hotel they’d selected and stay on guard until someone else came to relieve him.

  He returned to his office and sat back in his desk chair. He liked to review a witness’s answers while they were fresh in his mind. He looked for patterns and inconsistencies, for vulnerabilities he could exploit or new information he needed to explore further. Certainly, he wanted to know more about Abel. But he wanted to know more about Stacy, too, and how she fit into this sordid picture of a family of criminals.

  Instead of thinking about what Stacy had said, his thoughts turned to everything she hadn’t said. Why had her father and Sam arranged for her to marry Sammy—if that had indeed happened? What had the Giardinos done to make her so afraid? Was she really as ignorant of their dealings as she claimed?

  And why did she get to him, making him forget himself and want to comfort her? Protect her? Was she just a good actress, accomplished at manipulating men, or was something else going on here? He needed to understand so he could avoid making a wrong move in the future.

  A sharp knock sounded on the door. “Come in.”

  Sergeant Robinson, a thin, balding officer, leaned in. “Sir?”

  “What is it, Sergeant? Why aren’t you with Mrs. Giardino?”

  The sergeant’s gaze darted around the office, as if he expected to find Stacy Giardino standing in the corner. “She’s not with you?”