“You think either one of them will show?” Harley sipped.
“Yeah, I do.” He smiled, lifted his mug. “If for no other reason than to keep me out of Roxi’s.”
When the bell rang again they both looked up, and Dante lifted his hand in a greeting. They watched Chablis take a tiny, waif-like brunette by the hand and lead her over to their table.
As usual, Chablis flashed Dante a sultry grin and ignored Harley completely. She slid into the chair next to Dante, gestured for the brunette - Sophie, Harley assumed - to sit by Harley.
“Thanks for coming.” Dante spoke softly, smiled. “I’m Enzo’s brother.”
“I know.” The girl’s smile wobbled a little, her dark, luminous eyes filling with tears. “I’ve seen pictures. Enzo talks about you all the time.”
Harley saw the guilt in Dante’s eyes, felt an unwelcome twinge of sympathy. She didn’t want to feel sorry for him, didn’t want to feel anything for him, but she did. Not reaching to take his hand took every ounce of self control she could muster.
“How is he?” Sophie whispered. “I’ve called, but nobody will tell me anything.” She lifted her shoulders. “Not a family member, you know?”
Dante attempted a smile. “He’s...getting there. They’re waiting for him to get a little stronger before they do surgery to remove the bullet,” he touched the spot on his own skull where the bullet had entered, “here. He’s still in ICU, but he’s stabilized.” He didn’t mention the episode with Enzo’s heart, and Harley didn’t bring it up either.
“Can I see him?” She looked sweet and hopeful, and very, very young.
“They’re still saying no visitors, but I’ll let you know as soon as that changes.” When she nodded, he asked, “Did you two meet at Roxi’s?”
“No.” Sophie flashed a watery smile. “We met at the Aquarium.” The waitress brought two more mugs, filled them. “In front of the penguin tank.” Sophie took a drink. “He didn’t start coming into Roxi’s until we’d been dating a couple months.”
“And you don’t think Richie knows?”
“No, God no.” Sophie’s eyes were wide. “We were always careful. I know Roxi’s is a pit, but it’s good money. I’ll have my degree in another six months, until then I need this job.”
“What are you studying?” Harley asked.
“Elementary Education.” Sophie fiddled with her mug. “Enzo always sat at one of my tables, but he was quiet. Kept to himself, mostly.” She was trying not to cry, but Harley knew it was just a matter of time. “He just worried, ya know? About me being down here so late. He didn’t think it was safe.”
“Sounds like him.” Dante sighed, propped his elbows on the table. “Why was he down there, Sophie? What was he doing in Xavier Heights?”
“I don’t know.” Sophie shook her head. “One minute he’s with me at Roxi's, waiting for my shift to end, the next he’s out the back door. He said he had to meet somebody, and he’d be back by four to pick me up. But he never showed.” She started crying in earnest now, and Harley peeled a napkin out of the dispenser, handed it to her. Sophie blew her nose noisily before she said, “I must have called his cell a dozen times, but he never answered. So I took a cab home and waited.” She twisted and pulled at the soggy napkin. “Then I heard about the shooting on the news the next morning and I knew. I just knew it was him.”
“Did you call anybody? Enzo’s partner? Leo, maybe? You’ve met Leo, right?”
“I’ve heard Enzo talk about Leo, but I’ve never met him.” She wiped her red eyes with what was left of the napkin. “And he didn’t trust Bobby Vega any farther than he could throw him.”
Dante glanced at Harley before he reached out to take Sophie’s hands across the table. “Why, Sophie? Why didn’t he trust him?”
Sophie closed her eyes and shook her head again, lifted her shoulders. “I don’t-”
He gave her hands an impatient shake, his voice somehow soft and insistent all at the same time. This was how he would have been on the job, Harley sensed. Demanding, but fair, and doggedly determined. Bull-headed, if you will. “It’s important, Sophie,” he whispered.
Sophie looked up at him, chewing on her lower lip for a second before she let out a shaky breath. “Enzo used to say Bobby was sneaky, secretive. He just kind of had a...” she wrinkled her nose, “smarmy, used-car-salesman vibe about him, ya know? But last week something changed.”
“What?” Dante pushed, even as he let go of Sophie’s hands. “What changed?”
“He didn't tell me, wouldn't tell me, even when I asked.” She took a deep breath. “He knows how much I worry about him being on the job, so I think he tries to... maybe downplay some of the details? He doesn’t lie. He wouldn’t, that’s just not him.” Sophie hesitated. “But I know he doesn’t always tell the whole story. At least not to me.”
“Hector’s bust.” Dante looked at Harley again, mumbled. “It had to be.”
“Who’s Hector?” Confused, Sophie frowned.
Dante waved his hand. “Doesn’t matter.” He leaned forward, propped his elbows on the table. “But I have to ask you a question, Sophie, and I need you to tell me the truth. Not what you think I want to hear, but the truth.”
“Okay.” Sophie leaned back in her seat, as if she was bracing herself for something unpleasant.
“I need to know if Enzo was - if Enzo is - involved with drugs.”
“No.” Adamant, Sophie shook her head. “God, no. He would never...” She pressed her fingers to the base of her throat.
“Sophie, it’s okay. I’m not gonna be mad, I just need to know if-”
“Dante, I swear to you, Lorenzo is not involved with drugs. He loves being a cop, he would never jeopardize that by doing something illegal.”
“Okay.” Dante closed his eyes for a moment. God, it was such a relief to hear somebody else say out loud what he’d been thinking. What he’d known, all along. His brother Lorenzo wasn’t using drugs. And he wasn’t involved in anything illegal. But somebody sure as hell was trying to make it look like he was, and he fully intended to find out who.
“You believe me?” Sophie whispered, her eyes bright with fresh tears.
“I do.” Dante rubbed a hand over his jaw, nodded. “I really do.” He stood up and pulled some cash from his pocket, laid it on the table. “Harley, you ready?”
“Yeah. Where are we going?”
“Looks like we’re gonna need to have another chat with Bobby Vega.”
Chapter 18
“What did you find out?” Harley met Dante at the door, too impatient to wait until he was inside her apartment to start barraging him with questions. “Did you see him? What’d he say?” She wasn’t jumping up and down or hopping from one foot to the other, but her hand was on his arm and she was definitely wired.
“Breathe, Princess.” He lifted his eyebrows. “You gotta breathe.”
“Sorry,” she said softly, but she so obviously wasn’t. What she was, was excited, animated. Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes sparkled; the corners of her lush, full mouth tilted up in a smile so bright it was almost painful. The fact that it was the story that had her so lit up, and not him, didn’t make it any less appealing. “I was starting to think you’d forgotten about me,” she admitted.
“Just took me awhile to run Leo down.” Dante followed her through the apartment, dropped down onto the sofa. Braving a quick look at her legs before he asked, “You miss me?”
“Hardly.” She folded her arms over her chest, scowled.
“Whatever you say.” Dante plopped his feet on the table, folded his hands behind his head.
Harley sat down next to him, cautiously, warily. She smoothed her skirt down over her thighs, more out of habit than necessity, he suspected. It wasn’t short, but those long, bare legs were beyond distracting. He’d noticed. Then she’d noticed him noticing. Thus the skirt smoothing, not to mention the pretty little blush. It was sweet.
“So what’s next?” she asked, trying to pretend the
whole skirt thing never happened.
“Well, I’ve got Vega’s address.”
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go.” Harley moved to get up, but Dante reached out a hand to stop her.
“Hold up,” he said. “I want to talk to you first.”
Harley leaned back away from him, an obvious attempt to distance herself. “About what?”
“About last night.”
She pressed her lips together in a tight, harsh line; lowered her eyelids like shades on a window. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Last night in that alley-”
Harley pulled her arm from Dante’s grasp, stood up. “I’ll save you the trouble, okay?” She turned to face him, her demeanor stiff, wooden. “Last night was a mistake, a colossal mistake. Some might go as far as to call it a disaster.” She glanced away, hiding her eyes for a second, then back at him. Did that about cover it? “Epic disaster, even. Right up there with hurricanes and tsunamis and blizzards. Have I left anything out?” She wrinkled her nose, tilted her head. “Maybe just the part about how only a fool repeats that kind of mistake, but that ought to go without saying.” She flung her hand in a classic this way gesture towards the door. “Now can we go already?”
Dante’s first instinct was to say no, we can’t go. Actually, it was more like Hell, no, we can’t go, not until I apologize for behaving like a horny, rutting neanderthal. But seriously, what was the point? In her eyes he was an F-5 tornado. There was no coming back from that.
So Dante kept his apology to himself, said, “After you.”
* * * *
Dante and Harley stared up at Bobby Vega’s building from inside Lorenzo’s car. “Is it just me,” Harley wondered out loud, pointing up the two-story red brick structure, “or is that an actual house?”
“No, it’s definitely a house,” Dante agreed absently. “Probably about a million worth, maybe more.”
Harley turned slightly in the passenger seat to face him, frowned. “Kind of a nice place on a cop’s salary, isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
Harley waited a moment, hoping for a more detailed response, then rolled her eyes. “So... what? We gonna sit here all night? Or do we just walk up and knock on the front door?”
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Don’t suppose I could convince you to wait in the car?”
“Nice try.” Harley patted him on the shoulder, climbed out of the car.
Because he knew she wouldn’t wait, he scrambled out after her. His long legs getting him to the front door just seconds before her. “Fine,” he conceded. “But you follow my lead. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
Harley stepped aside to let him knock, but before she could blink he’d shoved her back behind him. “What is it?” She twisted around him to try to see what was happening. “What’s wrong?”
“Door’s open.” He lifted his chin and slid the gun she hadn’t even realized he possessed from the waistband of his jeans, all business now. “Go back to the car, Harley, and I’ll check it out.”
“Are you crazy?” she snorted, her eyes widening at the gun in his hand. “And oh. My. God. What are you doing with that thing?”
“Saving our asses, if we’re lucky,” Dante informed her. The look he shot her was one of his classic any other dumb questions?
“Is it even legal for you to carry that thing?” she whispered, pointing at it. “You told me yourself you’re not a cop anymore.”
“I’m licensed to carry in Illinois, Harley,” he hissed back. “But by all means, feel free to wait in the car if it offends you.”
She hesitated for a second or two, then said, “Fine, keep your damn gun. But I’m going in with you.”
Dante tucked his chin in agreement, slowly, cautiously pushing the door open. They checked the living room, working from right to left, lowering his gun slightly when he found it clear. Moved through the rest of the house that way, too, from front to back, checking the rooms as they went.
Harley stayed right on Dante’s heels, her hands tightly gripping his T-shirt. So close that he could feel the warmth of her body along the length of his back. He, in turn, managed to keep her tucked safely behind him with his free arm. She couldn’t see much, if anything, but he suspected that might be the point.
“I have a really, really bad feeling about this,” Harley whispered, pressing her forehead between Dante’s shoulder blades for a second. And despite the circumstances, despite Harley’s harsh words and the ugly scene back at her apartment, he recognized the little ripple of heat the casual contact sent dancing along his spine for what it was. Lust.
Epic mistake, epic mistake... gonna have to keep that in mind.
“Fuck.” Entering the kitchen, Dante stopped cold, made a faint oomph sound when Harley plowed into his back.
“What?” He tried to block her view, but Harley wouldn’t be deterred. With her fingers still twisted in his shirt, she poked her head around him, frowned. “What is it?”
Dante tucked the gun into the back of his jeans, turned around to face her. He curled his hands around her arms, leaned down to look her in the eye. “We gotta go, Harley,” he said gently.
She blinked, still frowning and looking puzzled, glanced from Dante to the kitchen table, then back again. “He has a gun, too,” she said. And he did, held lightly in his hand. Which, along with what was left of his head, lay in a pool of bright red blood.
Harley gasped, but he would have known even without the sound effects the second she realized what it was she was seeing. All the color - and there wasn’t much there to begin with - leached out of her face. Her eyes went wide, glassy. “Oh my God, is he dead?” she asked, swaying on her feet. “Should we check?” She looked at the table again. “Maybe we should check.”
But there was no need to check. Dante could tell from across the room that Bobby Vega was dead. That much blood and brain matter didn’t lie.
The slightly green tinge to her chalk-white complexion was all the warning he needed. If he didn't get her out of there soon, he'd be carrying her out. “He's gone, Harley,” he said as gently as possible. “And we need to get out of here, too.”
“But... but we can't just leave him like that.” With her lower lip trembling and the tears welling up in her eyes, she damn near broke his heart. “Shhh.” Epic disaster or not, he took her face in his hands, pressed his lips to her forehead for a second or two. “Baby, there's nothing we can do for him now. Okay?”
When she nodded, he took her hand and led her back the way they’d come. He dug his cell phone out and flipped it open, dialed. Leo didn’t answer, but his voice mail picked up. “Leo,” Dante said, “better send a bus to Bobby Vega’s. He’s 10-7. Gunshot, possible suicide. Appreciate it if you’d leave my name out of it.”
Chapter 19
From somewhere in the back of Harley’s mind it registered that Dante’s arm around her waist was the only thing keeping her upright. It was her lifeline, he was her lifeline. And really, it was a short jump from there to tossing the last little bit of her shredded pride aside and leaning into him, breathing a sigh of relief. Pride was overrated anyway.
“Where are your keys?” When she didn’t - or couldn’t - answer he slid her bag off her shoulder, reached inside and dug around. “Almost there,” he said, letting go of her for a second to get the door unlocked. “You’re doing great, Harley,” he crooned, putting his arm around her again. “Just a little farther.”
Dante led her into her apartment, over to the sofa. Sat her down, smoothed a hand over her hair. “I'll be right back.”
“No!” She made a frantic grab for his arm, her eyes wide and desperate. “Don't go.”
“I'm not going anywhere, Harley,” he assured her, gently peeling her fingers back from his arm. “I just want to get you something to drink.” Preferably something with a little kick to it.
“Okay.” Harley let go of his arm, albeit reluctantly. With her heart still racing, she leaned back, toed
off her sandals, tucked her feet beneath her.
She watched him make his way to the kitchen from the sofa, his quick, but thorough search for a glass and - thank God - the half empty bottle of whiskey she kept in the back of the cabinet. A couple of ice cubes, a healthy splash of liquid courage. Just what the doctor ordered.
Harley closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them again he was standing in front of her, the glass in his outstretched hand. His fingers brushed hers when she took it, and just that little bit of contact was enough to make her head spin. “Drink this,” he ordered.
Her hands were shaky, but she took the glass, sipped. She made a face - why did she always forget how much she hated whiskey until she was drinking it? - and started to set the glass down on the table, but he lifted his chin in her direction. “All of it.”
The words were obviously more order than suggestion, and under normal circumstances she might have refused on general principle, but his voice was soft, almost gentle. And God knew these weren’t normal circumstances.
So she tossed back the glass’s contents, cringed. Felt it hit the back of her throat, the sudden, hot sting of tears. Whispered, “That is disgusting.”
“Want another?” Dante lifted the bottle, slowly moved it from side to side. “Might help.”
“God, no.” Harley shook her head, set the glass aside. She lay her head back for a moment, closed her eyes.
“You okay?” he asked when she opened them again, still standing in front of her, awkwardly shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
Harley’s lower lip wobbled and she slowly nodded, despite her tears. “Sure,” she lied.
Dante dragged a hand over his face, swore under his breath. Stood there for a moment - searching for an escape route, maybe? - before he sat down next to her. Close enough that she could lean into him again without being too obvious about it.
“Did he...” she paused, managed to swallow the golf ball-sized lump in the back of her throat. “Did he do that to himself? Did he commit suicide?”
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