“She’s missing,” Mick said. “She’s gone. And I’ve searched high and low for her. My men are still searching.”
Charles’s face was frowned with worry. “But what happened?” he asked. “How could she just vanish?”
“All I have are bits and pieces.”
“Tell me what you know.”
“I know she was at that warehouse she used to operate out of. That Valtone Distributors warehouse.”
“What was she doing there? She got out of the drug business.”
“That’s what she swore to me, too. She was out. But that’s not what I’m hearing. I’m hearing she stayed in. And she stayed in with Hammer’s blessing.”
“Hammer Reese?” Jenay asked. “I don’t believe that!”
“Neither do I,” said Charles, as he pulled out his phone and began calling Amelia’s number. “What’s Hammer saying about all of this? Does he have any idea where she might be?”
“He’s not saying shit about shit. I can’t locate him. Which means he doesn’t want to be located.”
“Why wouldn’t he want to be located?” Jenay asked.
Mick shook his head, and then wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know shit, either, and it’s driving me nuts!”
“You tried phoning him?” Charles asked when his phone call to Amelia went to voice mail.
“I’ve tried everything,” Mick said. “As soon as one of my men got word of a problem, I called Hammer. Nothing. So I took off looking for her myself. I went over to Valtone Distributors and searched that entire area. It had been scrubbed clean. Inside and out. I went to her house. To her friends. I went everywhere. I’ve been searching for her all day and half the night. There’s no trace of her.”
Charles got no response from a second phone call he placed to Amelia’s phone, as it went to voice mail too. His heart was beginning to beat in that erratic, pulse-pounding way it did whenever something terrible was happening.
“What about JoJo?” Jenay asked. “And his nanny? What about their child?”
“Yeah,” Charles said, looking at Mick. “What about the kid?”
“He and his nanny are both with Trevor and Carly. They have JoJo.”
“Was it a preplanned visit?” Charles asked. “Or something sudden?”
“Preplanned,” Mick replied.
“And they haven’t heard from Amelia either?”
“Amelia nor Hammer. Hammer hasn’t answered any of Trevor’s phone calls either. Trevor wanted to get in on the search.”
“I know he did!”
“But I told him to stay put and watch out for Carly and the baby. Hammer would want him to watch out for his child, rather than go searching for him. We don’t know what’s happening, anyway, and he’ll just be tripping over my men. He agreed to stay put. But you know Trevor. He’ll stay put for now.”
“But where the fuck is Hammer?” Charles asked. All he could think about was his sister. “Why hasn’t he contacted us? Why isn’t he out here leading the charge?”
“I’ve been calling him,” Mick said. “But there’s been no response. I’m on my way to Canada now. To Charlemagne. To find his ass myself.”
But Tony frowned. “Charlemagne? What’s Charlemagne? Because I know you aren’t talking about the Roman emperor in history books.”
“Charlemagne is the name of Hammer’s estate,” said Mick. “It’s the name he gave that mountain he lives on in Montreal. I’m going up there.”
Charles stood up, and everybody else stood too. “You know I’m going with you,” he said.
Mick nodded. “That’s why I’m here. I’ve got a crew coming to watch out for your family. The men already here are going to stay out of sight, but they’ll be the backup.”
“I’ll round everybody up,” Tony said, as he and Jenay stood too. “If you think that’s necessary, Uncle Mick.”
Mick nodded. “It might be,” he said.
“Which means it is,” Charles said. “Round them up. Everybody stays here until we find Amelia. You’re in charge until Brent comes. If Brent resists, let me know. I’ll notify him and make sure he gets his ass and his family over here too.”
“And what about Ma?” Tony asked. “Usually you put her in charge even above Brent.” Tony smiled. “Is she going to take direction from me?”
“No,” Jenay said, “because I’m going with Charles.”
Tony looked at his father. No way was he going to allow that! But then again, Tony thought, their relationship had been changing lately. They’d been practically inseparable.
And in what Tony considered to be proof-positive of that very point, his father was nodding. “That’s right,” he said. “She’ll be with me.”
Mick would usually have the final word in a can a spouse go situation, and that word, at least where it concerned Mick’s wife, was usually going to be no. But Charles was always in charge when the two brothers were together. “My plane is at the airstrip ready for takeoff,” Mick said. “All we have to do is get to it.”
“Let me give some instructions to the children,” Jenay said as she and Tony began heading out of the family room, “and then I’ll be ready too.”
When they left, Charles lifted his suitcoat and placed his hands in his pants pockets. Mick could tell his big brother’s big brain was working overtime, considering every possibility. His handsome face had a fixed frown on it.
“I still don’t understand why Hammer hasn’t tried to get in touch with either of us,” he said to Mick. “He knows how close we are to Millie. I don’t understand that!”
“Neither do I,” Mick agreed. “But I haven’t heard a word from him.”
“He may be in trouble himself,” Charles said.
“May be,” Mick responded. “But that’s not what I’m hearing.”
Charles looked at his brother. He obviously saved this last bit of information for Charles’s ears only. “What have you heard?” he asked him.
“I’ve heard, not that he might be in trouble too, but that he might be the one causing the trouble.”
Charles couldn’t believe it. “Causing it? What are you saying? You think Hammer could be behind her disappearance?”
“I don’t know. I’m just hearing shit. But I haven’t heard anything to debunk it either.”
“But nothing’s certain?”
“Nothing,” Mick agreed.
“I don’t like this, Michello,” Charles said, shaking his head. “I don’t like this at all.”
Mick nodded. It wasn’t his idea of a good time either.
“What about Hammer’s body man?” Charles asked. “Have you tracked him down? I can’t remember his name.”
“Ozzie Jones,” Mick said. “I talked to him. He doesn’t know where Hammer is either. He’s out searching for him too.”
“And what about Scotty Rollins?” Scotty was Amelia’s right-hand man.
“I spoke with Scotty also,” Mick said. “He hasn’t heard from Amelia. He’s the first one I called.”
Charles exhaled and shook his head again. “There’s some crazy shit going on,” he said. “Where the hell can she be? And why wasn’t that operation shut down like she said it was? And if Hammer is behind her disappearance? Forget about it! That means government. That means that shit can stretch all the way to the White House!”
“That’s what I’m thinking too,” Mick agreed. “That’s why I figured I’d better loop you in. Nobody has instincts better than you.”
“Don’t you think we need to loop in more than just me?” Charles asked.
“Like?” Mick asked.
“The Gabrinis,” replied Charles. “Who the fuck else?”
But Mick was shaking his head. “What are they going to help us do? We don’t know shit ourselves yet. We haven’t even talked to Hammer.”
Charles exhaled. “I know. I just want every big gun out there looking for Millie.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I told them, correction, I ordered t
hem to get their men asking questions,” Mick said. “They have their men in on the search too, from their end. And I also ordered them to be on standby should we need them.”
“And if it comes to that and we do need them?” Charles asked. “How will we use them?”
“Tommy’s out of the country at the moment but, if it gets necessary, I’ll probably send Reno to Philly, to help Teddy oversee my family’s security. And I’ll send Sal here, to oversee yours.”
Reno Gabrini had some serious mob ties himself: his father had been the head of a major crime family before he died. But Sal Gabrini didn’t just have mob ties. Like Mick himself, Sal Luca was an active, card-carrying member of the mob from way back, although he’d declare up and down and around and around that he was not a mob boss and had never been one. And if he was the one Mick would send to Jericho, what did that say about the concern level Mick had for Jericho?
Charles decided to ask it. “You would send Sal here because why, Mick? You think my family is in more danger than yours?”
It was an uncomfortable truth for Mick too. But he was not a man who beat around the bush. “Yes,” he said. “I thought so even before you told me what that guy said about the Feds. For some reason your family, not mine, has been targeted.”
Charles ran his hand through his hair. Another problem to worry about. And Amelia’s missing?
“But we’ll handle it,” Mick said reassuringly. “The Gabrinis shouldn’t be necessary at all. We’ll find Amelia.”
But it didn’t feel as if it was going to be that easy to Charles. Because he knew Amelia better than anybody in the family. And he knew she always returned his calls right away. She never left him hanging. She would return his calls if she didn’t return anybody’s.
Unless she couldn’t.
He called her phone once again. And once again it rang, and then went to voice mail. “This is Charles,” her brother said into the phone, leaving a message this time. “Call me now gotdammit. Call me!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
By the time the private plane touched down at Trudeau International, Mick had suited up: black trousers, black turtleneck, and a long, flowing white coat specially designed for a man at war. Jenay and Charles both knew Mick meant business whenever he was decked down that way. Which sobered them up too. They weren’t just going to find out what Hammer Reese knew. They were going to find Hammer Reese. Things could go all kinds of ways wrong. They had to be mentally prepared as well.
Once off the plane, all three hopped a rental car and made their way to Charlemagne.
Jenay sat in the backseat as Charles drove the car around winding roads carved out of cliffs as if he’d traveled those roads many times before. Which surprised her. “You drive like you’ve been this way before, Charles,” she said as he drove.
“Do I?” he asked.
“Yes, you do. Have you?”
Mick, who sat on the front passenger seat, exchanged a glance with his brother. Then Charles glanced through the rearview. “Have I what?” he asked.
“Been this way before? You know what I’m asking!”
Charles gave an exhale, which also surprised Jenay. “Yes,” he admitted. “I’ve traveled these roads before.”
She waited for him to explain, but he didn’t. He continued to round curve after curve in silence. Jenay didn’t push it. Not yet. Amelia was the focus and rightly so. But she would push it when the time was right.
Charlemagne was a monumental estate in Montreal, along the southern tip of Quebec, in the Laurentian mountains. Charles drove up the steep incline swiftly. But as they approached the massive security gate, his speed slowed.
“This place is beautiful,” Jenay said, “but so isolated too. It looks like it could be a monastery.” Then she smiled. “A chic one, but still,” she added.
“No security guards,” Charles said. “That unusual?” he asked Mick.
Mick shook his head. “No,” he said.
And when the gate opened to let them in, that wasn’t unusual either, according to Mick. “Hammer’s got cameras to watch his cameras,” he said.
“I’ll bet the farm he’s expecting our asses,” Charles said, and drove through the gate.
When he drove up to the main house entrance, he stopped the car. He and Mick both pulled out their hardware. Charles turned around and looked at his wife. But she already knew the drill: don’t get out until he made sure there were no surprises.
“And pull it out,” he said to her.
Jenay, understanding exactly what that meant too, pulled out her own hardware: a loaded gun. Charles gave her another look. He wanted her with him, that was why she was with him, and although he knew she could hold her own, it was still risky. And that bothered him.
Then he and Mick got out of the car and made their way up to the front door. Charles halfway expected it to automatically open too. But it didn’t. They had to knock on the oversized knockers. And then ring a bell. But nothing.
Charles walked over to the massive front window, but the curtains were drawn. He could see nothing.
“Let’s see what’s around back,” he said to Mick, and he and Mick began to walk along the porch that led around to the backside of the estate. But as soon as they made it near the end of the front edge, a man suddenly jumped out from the side of the house and fired at them.
But Charles saw him first, or rather his gun first, and pushed Mick down and shot the man dead.
But Mick, understanding sneak attacks better than anyone, immediately turned onto his back and aimed his gun at the opposite side of the porch. And he was right to do so as two additional men jumped from the opposite side of the house and fired their weapons at him and Charles. He shot both of them before Charles could turn in that direction.
As soon as the gunfire first began, Jenay crawled quickly from the backseat to behind the wheel of the car. But even as she placed the car in drive, more gunfire erupted. This time from the second floor inside the house. And Mick and Charles knew they couldn’t fight an enemy they couldn’t see. They knew they had to make a hasty retreat.
Jenay knew it too. She drove the car closer to the steps as Charles and Mick jumped off of the porch, dodging bullets, and jumped into the car.
“Floor it!” Charles yelled, as he and Mick were in the backseat firing back at the house, and Jenay hit the gas and sped off.
Charles looked in front of them and realized what was happening. “They’re closing the gate,” he said. “Go faster, babe! Go faster!”
Jenay drove as fast as that car would take them as they approached the slowly closing gate. Mick looked back too, between shots, as he knew no car was going to knock that kind of gate down if it closed on them. They would be at the mercy of those gunmen if that gate closed!
But Charles knew Jenay. She was more than capable. And she drove that car so fast it was swerving nearly out of control as she drove. And that gate was closing in on them, with what seemed to the men to be not enough room to clear it. But Jenay cleared it. She zoomed that car through with so little room to spare that the gate dinged the back bumper as it made its way out.
But driving down that mountain was another story. It required the kind of skill Jenay had never acquired.
“Stop the car,” Charles ordered, and Jenay obeyed that order with a sudden stop.
Then she hurried to the passenger seat, Charles crawled up to the driver seat. And he took over.
He sped down that mountain like the Maine man he was, and soon they were away from Charlemagne and back to normal civilization.
But there was nothing normal about what was happening to them at that point in time.
Jenay looked at Charles. “Could that have been Hammer shooting at us?” she asked.
Charles was still amped up and angry. And he was remembering the chatter Mick had heard about Hammer’s involvement with Amelia’s disappearance. “It was at his house,” he said. “On his mountain. Who the hell else could it be?”
Then Charles looke
d through the rearview at Mick. And even Mick was nodding his head. “Damn right,” he said.
“What are we going to do?” Jenay asked him. “What if Amelia’s in that house?” She looked at Charles first, and then turned and looked at Mick in the backseat.
Mick was staring at Charles. “Jenay might be right,” he said. “Amelia might be in that house. We aren’t leaving Canada without her.”
Charles nodded. “I agree. We need to regroup.”
“But where?” Jenay asked.
Mick looked at Charles again. “Kattia,” he said. “She has an arsenal. I should know, I sold it to her brother. That’s what we need, Charles. We need more than what I have, and we can’t wait for backup.”
Charles hated to hear that name again, especially with Jenay in the car, but he knew Mick was right. Kattia’s brother was an arms dealer who was once in need of a supplier. Since she lived in Portland, Maine at the time, and knew of the Sinatra family, Kattia’s brother wanted her to seduce Charles into hooking him up with Mick. But Charles turned her down cold. He hadn’t seen Mick in years at that time, and he had no clue what illegal shit he was involved with. She had the wrong one, he told her.
But Charles was so damn sexy to Kattia, and he had such a fine body, and he had that sensual look of a man who knew how to please a woman bed, that she seduced him anyway.
But her brother eventually did hook up with Mick’s import/export business, and that same brother was known to keep a lot of his weapons at Kattia’s house as his just-in-case. Short of flying back to Maine or Philly to bulk up weapon-wise, or wait on backup to arrive, she was their best option. Mick was right.
They just never dreamed they’d need that option in Canada. Not on the turf of the man who purported to love Amelia. But after that hostile reception they received at Charlemagne, they knew they needed it. There was no way around it. And they also knew they had to strike quickly, before whomever was in that house shooting at them had a chance to take Amelia to a different location. And that was only if she was even at that location!
But Jenay, Charles thought.
Then he caught himself. Amelia might be in danger, right in this very town, and he was worrying about some past indiscretion? Was he insane?
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