He struggled with the holster and leaned across her to put it on the nightstand.
He froze.
He felt the blood in his legs still, even as his heart sprinted and the roar of his pulse nearly drowned out her question.
“What is it, Zach?”
He stared at the flowers on the nightstand.
She followed his gaze.
“Oh, that’s pretty,” she said. “Mrs. Tobin must have put them there.”
“I don’t think so.”
The crystal vase was filled with a voluptuous arrangement of roses, tulips, daffodils, daisies and marigolds.
They had one thing in common: every bloom was yellow.
He snapped his holster back into place and, with the sharp speed of a predator, he reached out, crushing a yellow rose bloom in his hand.
“What are you doing!?”
“We’re getting out of here,” Zach ordered, yanking her to her feet. “A yellow flower, any kind of yellow flower, means betrayal.”
She tugged against him.
“All it means is that somebody put flowers in my room. Probably Mrs. Tobin.”
“No, it doesn’t mean that. It means you’ve been found out,” Zach corrected. He grabbed his gun. “You’re leaving. Now.”
In the hallway, down the bridal staircase, Angel protested that he was being ridiculous. “You were just looking for any excuse to get me to leave,” she said, outraged. “But I know what I have to do and I’m doing it. I’m staying. You can be the one to go. Stop ordering me around.”
His response was a tightening of his fingers around her wrist, his logic was a gun drawn against the possible danger, his intentions were confined to getting her out of town.
“Angel, for once do what I tell you to do and don’t put up a fight.”
He grabbed her arm and pulled her with him, this time not sacrificing force for gentlemanliness.
“Zach, you’re hurting my arm.”
“Let’s go,” he growled, not letting up.
Knowing her reasoning wasn’t getting very far against his brute strength, she stopped protesting and did as he ordered. He hustled her along the stairs, urging her faster. The door was scant inches away.
And then he heard the slight clearing of a throat.
Tony walked into the foyer.
He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, blocking the front door.
Chapter Ten
“Where the hell do you thinking you’re going?” he asked, his gentle tone belying a subtle hostility.
Zach pulled Angel behind him.
“We’re leaving,” he said evenly.
“I think not.”
It was then that Angel believed Zach, understood the tiny bruised petals that clung to his pant leg.
She looked for a way out, but Rocco and Salvatore stood on the staircase, reaching into their jackets for their guns.
Salvatore wouldn’t meet her eyes and she nearly felt the familiar surge of protectiveness. And then she remembered he had a gun pointed at her.
“She’s leaving,” Zach repeated.
“She can after we have a little talk,” Tony said. “But we’ll call her a cab when the time comes. You won’t be available to drive.”
Zach stiffened. “All right, what do you want, Tony? Lay it out. All of it.”
“Justice,” Tony said, his voice tremulous. “Someone in your family killed our parents and there’s really only one punishment we think is sufficient. And I’m not waiting for the courts to get around to it. Criminals get all kinds of appeals. Delaying justice. You would know all about that, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m not the enemy, Tony.”
“I differ with you on that. Put your gun down on the floor. Nice and easy.”
“Tony, wait!” Angel cried.
“I didn’t do it,” Zach said firmly, placing the gun down on the cool tile. “I didn’t have anything to do with your parents’ killing. And no one else in my family did, either.”
“Then you won’t mind going up to the study to hear a tape we have been sent.”
Tony walked past the couple, confident that they wouldn’t bolt. He paused once, pulling a slim tape recorder from the inside pocket of his suit.
“I think you forgot something,” he said, handing a thin cassette to Angel. He yanked the thin tape all the way out so that it looked like a plate of spaghetti on his hand.
She took the cassette.
“Damn you,” Tony said, without any emotion.
Zach jerked reflexively, ready to defend her name. But Angel held him back, reminding him with the pressure of her fingers on his chest that he had more to defend her from than bad words.
They followed Tony to the sumptuously furnished study, with its lingering scent of amaretto and cigars. Salvatore and Rocco took guard positions behind the armchairs that Angel and Zach were directed to. Tony sat on the chair behind his late father’s desk. He leaned back comfortably and put his tasseled loafers up.
The desk was clear of all paperwork and knick-knacks. Instead, a slim recorder was placed on the leather desk pad. He flipped it on.
“This is a man worth listening to,” he said.
“Tony, why do we have to do this?” Rocco asked.
“We have to do this,” Tony said.
In a dull monotone, as if reading from a prepared text, a man identifying himself as Marcus Jones claimed that a go-between to the Martin family had offered him fifty thousand dollars for the shooting death of the elder Sciopelli.
“The man paid me twenty-five thousand in wrapped tens and twenties on our handshake,” Marcus said. “And twenty-five thousand dollars was made available to me when the job was done.”
Tony flipped off the recorder.
“So let’s talk to this guy,” Zach challenged. “Face-to-face.”
“Can’t. He’s already gotten his…” Tony held a finger to his forehead and mimicked a trigger pull. “His justice. When I got the information about the killer, I didn’t wait for the criminal justice system. There’s too many lawyers like you to protect him.”
Angel shivered at the horror of it.
“Who shot him?”
“Marcus?” Tony asked. He glanced up at Rocco. “That’s not a nice question, Angel.”
“A better question is why,” Zach said. “Why would any of us kill your parents?”
“Business, jealousy, issues of the heart, who knows the heart of a stone cold killer?” Tony mused, pulling open the middle desk drawer. “Now enough talk. Angel, here’s a plane ticket to Des Moines. And cab money to get you to Davenport. That is where you live, isn’t it?”
Angel gasped.
“How did you…?”
“I will always know where you live,” Tony said firmly. “And I have father’s files. Congratulations on graduating from college by the way. Being class valedictorian while working nights at the diner was a real accomplishment.”
Angel ignored the compliment. “I’m not leaving Zach. And I don’t believe he did it or even knew that it was going to be done. He’s too honorable a man.”
“He left you stranded in Vegas ten years ago. I wouldn’t call that honorable.”
“I’ve forgiven him.”
“Can you forgive him killing our parents?”
“I don’t have to because he didn’t do it.”
“You think Anna managed this one?”
“No, of course not.”
“Mrs. Martin, or perhaps Mr. Martin weaned himself off of oxygen and painkillers long enough to think this one through?”
“No, of course not.”
“And Guy?”
Angel glanced at Zach. She felt like a traitor thinking that his brother could have done it. But he could have, couldn’t he?
“He could have done it,” Angel said. “So why don’t you leave Zach out of this?”
“No, Angel, don’t,” Zach said. “This is not the way to get me out of trouble.”
“Ah, always ready to come to his brothe
r’s defense,” Tony said. “Admirable, really. So which Martin brother did it or did they both?”
“I don’t believe any of this,” Angel said. “I don’t believe either of them did this.”
“Let’s agree to disagree,” Tony said, leaning forward to hand Angel her plane ticket. “Can you love a man who ordered your parents killed or whose brother, father, mother or even sister ordered your parents to be shot like dogs in the street?”
She opened her mouth, ready to defend Zach. But then her mouth closed. She didn’t know what to say.
“Goodbye, Angel.”
“I’m not going,” she rallied.
“Really?” Tony looked at Zach.
And it took just an instant of eye contact for the message to be communicated to Zach.
“Go, Angel,” Zach said. “Just go. I’m telling you to go.”
“I’ll make a decision when I—”
“Stop it!” Zach cried out, the blue veins on his forehead throbbing. “Angel, you’ll do as I say. Get out of town. Leave this one to me.”
“Having trouble keeping your woman in line?” Tony asked blandly.
Angel threw him her haughtiest look. “What’s going to happen to Zach?”
“I don’t know,” Tony said. “I haven’t decided. Zach, kiss my sister goodbye and if she won’t do what you tell her to do simply because you tell her to do it, tell her there’s one reason she’s going to get on the plane and never look back, never talk to anyone, never show her pretty face in this town again.”
“What is that?” Zach asked.
Tony rose to his feet and buttoned his suit jacket.
“Anna,” he said.
“Anna?” Rocco said. “I thought your sister was not playing with a full deck.”
“I thought she was going away,” Salvatore said. “To an institution.”
“No,” Tony corrected. “She’s very much at home, at least as long as the Martin family has the resources. But she is very much in need of a guardian angel. And Zach has always been the very definition of those words.”
“Tony, I want to talk to you,” Zach said from beneath heavily hooded eyes. “Alone. Man to man.”
Tony stared long and hard at Zach.
“You have woman problems,” he said. “I know a little about that.”
Rocco bristled and Salvatore looked away, embarrassed.
“But Maria and I got past it,” Tony explained. “We had to come to an understanding about who was the boss. Sounds like you need to do the same thing.”
“We’re having that same problem here,” Zach conceded, smiling in the face of Angel’s outrage. “But I think I can solve this with a little help from you, Tony.”
“All right, get her out of here,” Tony directed Rocco and Salvatore. “Put her in the guest room and make sure she doesn’t try something foolish.”
“Zach, this isn’t some little domestic dispute,” Angel cried.
He shrugged negligently. “Just go, Angel, and stop whining.”
Rocco picked Angel up by her elbows and hustled her out of the room. All down the hall, Angel tried to persuade her two brothers to let her go, to let Zach go—but her words were met with sullen grunts.
“So what did you want to talk about?” Tony asked, closing the door.
“I didn’t kill your parents.”
Tony reached back and picked up a decanter from a tray on the bookshelf behind his desk. He poured a sherry glass full for himself, then offered one to Zach and raised an eyebrow when his guest declined. He took his glass to his desk.
“I’m not stupid enough to believe you did,” Tony said. “You’ve always had more than your share of scruples. But that leaves your brother and I’m not at all surprised that he’d do it.”
“He didn’t.”
Tony drained his glass. “You’re suggesting your dad, who can barely heave his body from one end of the room to another? Or maybe your mother, the former Miss Bridgeport of 1960, who probably takes ninety minutes to get herself made up for breakfast? Or perhaps your sister who is the mental age of an eight-year-old?”
“None of the above.”
“I go with your brother.”
“I don’t think it’s any of our family and I’m beginning to wonder if maybe you didn’t have a hand in it. You had the most to gain, didn’t you, Tony?”
“Did I really?” Tony asked, as if it were a philosophic matter. He stared at his glass, seemingly considering another. “I lost my father, my mother, my business mentor, my dearest defender, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known—Maria will forgive me for saying that. I lost a lot.”
“But look what you got in return.”
“A lot of responsibilities. A business that’s a pain in the…”
“I’ve heard it’s got some profit to it.”
“I would have those profits even were my father to have lived. I don’t think I gained anything at all. I stand by my conviction that your brother double-crossed us. Murdered our parents in cold blood and now is too scared to face the consequences. Or perhaps he’s planning a new round. This is war, Zach. War. He promised it to us, you heard him.”
“Guy’s not like that. He drinks and then he talks big.”
“Here we part ways, Zach. He’s just stupid enough and sure of himself that he’d think he’d get away with it. Question is—do I give in to my desire for revenge,” he queried, pausing to consider the cigars in his desktop humidor, “or do I wait for the criminal justice system to take care of him?”
“Don’t do anything to him.”
“Zach, you’re my closest friend outside of the family but you’re asking a lot from me,” Tony said. “You want me to ensure the safety of your sister, to forgive my own sister of being a spy in my house after I offered her my hospitality, and take a pass on your brother who has made me an orphan.”
“It’s a lot to ask,” Zach conceded, leaning forward to snag a cigar from the humidor. He accepted a light from Tony. “But I want even more.”
Tony puffed at his cigar and looked up, a glint of curiosity lighting up his otherwise coal dark eyes.
“How much more?”
“A favor.”
“How much?”
“It’s not like that. I want you to play a little game of make-believe. Kid stuff.”
Tony chuckled.
“Kid stuff? I could use a little kid stuff in my life.”
Chapter Eleven
Angel sat on the bed next to her duffel. She had tested every means of escape. The windows wouldn’t budge, and Rocco scowled at her from the hallway when she inched open the door.
She raised her chin high as she heard noises approach in the hallway. Salvatore threw open the door and her heart soared as she saw Zach.
She nearly flew into his safe, strong arms. But Tony and Salvatore crowded into the door behind him. She satisfied herself with standing at Zach’s side, breathing in his confident scent. Surely he could get them out of this mess, because she didn’t have any ideas how to do it.
“Zach, what’s going on?”
“We’ve agreed that we both find the murder of your parents repugnant,” Zach said.
Angel opened her mouth and then closed it and then opened it again. She knew she probably looked like a surprised fish, and she was surprised, even if she wasn’t a fish.
“Okay,” Angel said cautiously. “‘The murder of our parents is repugnant I can agree to that.”
She looked at him for a clue as to how she was supposed to react. This had to be part of some plan he had. Zach never ran out of ideas, and she just had to figure out what he had in mind and play along.
But his impassive face gave her no clues and his gray eyes dared her to ask aloud the many questions she held inside.
“I think it’s very bad that our parents were killed,” she said, knowing her words sounded idiotic, though true. But she didn’t know where Zach was headed with this. They weren’t working as a team.
“We’re going to leave open th
e question of who is responsible,” Tony said, giving no indication of noticing his sister’s persistent questioning glances at Zach. “But we can’t jeopardize the completion of our Winnetka Shopping Mall while we determine the killer’s identity. And we have other business interests to take care of.”
“Legitimate ones?”
“Oh, Angel, don’t be judgmental,” Zach said.
Angel winced, but assumed he was playing some role that would eventually result in their escape.
“Sorry, Zach,” she said, hoping that was the right response.
“Tony and I have come to an agreement,” Zach continued brusquely, ignoring her apology. “An agreement about your future…and ours. I asked him for a tremendous favor and he agreed.”
Ah, here it was, Angel thought—the escape hatch.
“It was easy to grant this favor because I trust Zach,” Tony said. “He’s an honest man, does what he says he’s going to do, and I didn’t need anything more than a handshake from him.”
Angel stared openmouthed as Zach explained the terms of the new business partnership. Sciopelli would continue to do construction and sales of new projects, Martin would do materials and trucking.
Tony draped his arm around Zach’s shoulder.
The two men talked easily, finishing each other’s sentences. They had a camaraderie that extended to Salvatore and Rocco, who greeted the news of a partnership with backslapping and high fives.
Was that a smile on Zach’s lips? This didn’t sound like any kind of plan to her.
“I don’t understand,” she said flatly. “I thought you told me two minutes ago that he could be a murderer.”
“He has finally broken his bad habit of defending Guy, Jr., when he shouldn’t be defended,” Tony said. “Zach knows Guy did it. And we’ll turn him over to O’Malley. Satisfied?”
“I guess.”
“Good. Now you’ve abused my hospitality long enough,” Tony said, flashing his brilliant white teeth in a smile that would scare the devil. “Get out of here and don’t come back.”
“Tony, she’s in shock,” Rocco said. “She’s not getting it.”
His Betrothed Page 9
