From now on.
She’s still in her clothes from yesterday. We came back to the hotel after the scene at the house and it was past midnight before she cried herself to sleep in my arms. With every other part of our lives so irreparably fractured, I can’t help thinking maybe this is something I can fix for her.
I pull myself out of the armchair and move to the desk. I stare at the pad and pen next to the phone, thinking about what I want to say. If I let everything I want her to know pour out of my head onto the paper, it’s going to be a long and sloppy soliloquy.
I opt for short and sweet.
I scratch down what I need to, then go to the bed and stare down at her a moment longer, wishing she never had to wake up to our harsh reality. If I could give her any wedding gift at all, it would be peace.
“I love you,” I whisper as I lean down and press a kiss to her temple.
Downstairs, I stop into the restaurant and order Lee a big breakfast, with instructions not to deliver it before ten. The valet brings my car and I spend the drive back to Port St. Mary sorting out my argument.
It’s not even nine when I roll up the driveway. Not surprisingly, the house is quiet. Both Lee’s and Rob’s cars are in the drive and I pull up next to them. I stride up the porch stairs and bang on the front door. Instantly, dogs are barking upstairs.
I step back from the door and wait.
The curtain in the rectangular window that takes up most of the top half of the door pulls back and a bleary-eyed Ulie appears there. Her eyes instantly go wide when she sees me.
She drops the curtain and yanks open the door. “What’s happened? Is Lee okay?”
“She’s fine. Sleeping last I saw. I need to talk to Rob.”
He appears over Ulie’s shoulder in black athletic shorts and bare feet. He’s taller than my six two by about three inches, and he’s broader than me, likely outweighing me by at least thirty pounds. But I’m quicker than he is. In school, I found out I’m quicker than most everyone, and even the bigger guys never beat me in a fair fight. Rob Delgado has never intimidated me, so I’m not going to let his glare make me second-guess my decision to come here.
“Abandoning your bride so soon, Savoca?” His voice is a low, threatening rumble.
“You need to reconsider your decision.”
He brings his expression to a deliberate neutral. “It wasn’t my decision. It was Lee’s.”
Ulie spins on him. “Rob! You should—”
“Go back to bed, Ulie,” Rob says, cutting off her argument.
She steps in front of him. “Just listen to what he has to say!”
Rob lifts her by the arms and sets her down inside, then slams the door. She pulls back the curtain and glares at him through the window, giving the inside of the door a solid pound of her fist.
“I’ve considered everything there is to consider,” he says, tromping down the stairs to the sandy driveway.
I follow him as he takes off jogging toward the bluff. “Throwing your sister out like that was an asshole move, even for you.”
“You left me no choice.”
I get in front of him and slam a palm into his chest to slow him down. “Stop being a dick.”
He glares a dagger at my hand. “I suggest you remove that before I take it off at the wrist.”
I lower my hand, resisting the overwhelming temptation to shove him. This visit is all about diplomacy. For Lee. “All I’m asking is that you don’t cut your sister out of your lives. It would kill her.”
“You are the one killing her, Savoca!” he shouts, no longer able to contain his rage. He shoves me back. “If what you say is true—if you’ve flipped on your father—you’ve got a bigger target on your back than we do.”
“That’s why the Feds built my cover. I’m dead, as far as anyone knows.”
“Until you show up in Chicago to testify. Then what? They kill you again? That only works once.” He punctuates the word by stabbing his beefy finger into my chest. “They’re going to hunt you down and slaughter you, and if Lee’s with your sorry ass, they’ll take her down too. Maybe rape her first and make you watch. How does that sound?”
My blood runs cold at the image and a shiver fingers up my spine. There’s no denying it. He’s right. “We’ll stay ahead of them.” But my voice loses conviction as I struggle to dissipate the image Rob put in my head.
“You hope,” he snarls, his feet moving again.
I force my legs to move, jogging at his side to the bluff. “That’s all any of us can hope, Delgado. Once you’re on the outside, it’s all about staying alive.”
He gives his head a crisp shake, then starts down a path that leads to the beach. “I’m trying to do more than stay alive. I’m trying to make a life for my family. I thought that included Lee, but she’s made her choice.”
“You didn’t give her any options,” I say, following him down.
He stops dead in his tracks and spins on me, his jaw flexing and his hands fisted at his sides. “I gave her the only options there were. I laid awake all fucking night last night trying to figure out what happens next. You might actually believe you love Lee for now, but what happens in a week, or a month, or a year when things go bad—when one of you realizes it’s all a sham? I can’t trust you won’t sell us to the highest bidder. We can’t stay here. And if Lee’s with you, she can’t come with us.” He starts down the path again. “That would defeat the purpose of moving.”
“So what happens now?”
“Now,” he says, his feet sinking into the powder sand at the bottom of the path, “I figure out how to say good-bye to the woman I love and you try to figure out how to keep my sister alive.”
He takes off running.
I lunge for him and grab his arm, spinning him to face me. “It doesn’t have to—”
But before I can get the rest of the sentence out, his fist is cracking off my face. On pure reflex, I take an uppercut and connect with his jaw. He swings again, and my eye explodes in my head. I stagger back and drop to a knee. I force myself to stay here, resisting the overpowering drive to get up and finish him. Sinking to his level isn’t helping my cause.
“I am giving up more than you know,” he grinds out, wiping the blood off his lower lip with the back of his hand. “If there was another way, don’t you think I’d take it?”
He turns and runs down the beach. I watch him go, then climb the path. I drop into my car, and as I’m backing out, I glance up and see Ulie in the family room window, watching me. She lifts a hand in a wave, then wipes it under her eyes.
I negotiate the narrow streets with Rob’s words cycling through my mind on a loop. Everything he said about the mob hunting me is true. Once the ruse is exposed, I’ll have a neon target on my back. I was only half joking with Lee when I toasted going down in a blaze of glory. My chances of surviving another five years are fifty-fifty at best. What makes me so sure I can keep Lee safe? Am I being supremely selfish?
I cross the bridge to the mainland, and when I reach the highway, I pull to the side of the road, my hand fisted on the steering wheel and my mind racing. I have a decision to make. North to the airport, or south to Lee.
In my heart, I already know the right decision, and it’s going to kill me.
But the wrong one might kill us both.
I hit the accelerator and fishtail onto the northbound ramp.
Chapter 24
Lee
I tuck a leg under me in the desk chair and thumb the diamond on my finger as I read Oliver’s note for the thousandth time, trying to dig beneath the words for the meaning.
I’ll be back.
That’s it. One line scrawled in his block print on the hotel notepad.
I’ll be back. Like the Terminator.
I’d just gotten out of the shower at a little after ten when there was a knock on the door. Room service brought me one of pretty much everything on the breakfast menu. I’m assuming that was Oliver. I also assumed, because there was so much food,
that when he said he’d be back, he meant any minute to eat it with me.
That was five hours ago.
Now I’m starting to think he ordered so much food so I wouldn’t starve waiting for him.
What if he’s not coming back?
I push the notion out of my head with thoughts of Friday. In forty-four hours, we’ll be married.
The marriage license is spread on the desk, next to Oliver’s note. I smooth a finger down the edge of the paper. The sting of a paper cut assures me it’s real.
“Lee Silva,” I say, trying it out and liking the ring, the cadence.
I pull the pad with Oliver’s note closer and tear his sheet off the top. First, I print Lee Silva, then underneath, in my big, loopy scrawl, I write it again.
I lean back and look at my phone sitting next to the marriage license. I picked it up to call him when he still wasn’t back at noon before realizing I never got Oliver Silva’s number. I’d bet my bottom dollar that Oliver Savoca’s number, which I know by heart, is disconnected. I don’t dare try it to find out.
I’d go out looking for him except for three things. One: I’ve got nothing to wear but the tank top and skirt I left the house in two days ago, or the hotel bathrobe. I’m currently in the robe, waiting for my underwear to dry after washing them in the sink. If my head had been on straight when I left the house after fighting with Rob yesterday, I would have gone to my room and packed some of my things, including my phone charger. Two: I’ve got no car. We came here in Oliver’s. Mine’s still at the house. Three: Even if I had dry clothes and a car, I have no idea where to look.
At first I thought maybe he’d gone out shopping for something to get married in. By noon, I was certain he must be having car trouble, or maybe he’d gotten into an accident. But as the day’s worn on, Rob’s words keep creeping through my brain.
You just painted a huge target on your forehead.
His family is going to hunt him down like a rabid dog. What if he wasn’t as careful as he thought? What if they’ve already found him? Killed him? The first time I thought he was dead, it nearly destroyed me. This time, I know it would.
But that can’t be it. He was routed through Safesite: new identity, new everything. There’s no way anyone could have found him this fast.
In the still silence of the room, my phone vibrating on the desk feels like an earthquake. I snatch it up. The battery’s nearly dead, but I haven’t dared turn it off in case Oliver tries to reach me. Though, in my rational brain, I know he doesn’t have this cell number any more than I have his. My rational brain also knows that he’s aware of which room in which hotel he left me sleeping and could call through the hotel landline if he wanted to reach me.
Which is why I know something is horribly wrong.
He’s hurt. Or dead. There’s no other reasonable explanation. He would have contacted me otherwise.
When I see it’s a call from Adri, my heart sinks and I almost don’t answer, afraid of using the last bit of battery. But just before it goes to voice mail, I press Connect.
“Hey, Adri,” I say, trying to come off like everything’s great. “My battery’s almost dead so I have to make this quick.”
“I need to know what’s going on,” she says, her voice thick, as if she’s been crying. “Rob was here … said you were all leaving, but he wouldn’t tell me why.”
My breath catches in my constricting throat. “He’s going through with it,” I say more to myself than her.
“Going through with what? What’s this all about?”
My heart breaks, knowing Rob’s giving up the one thing that’s made him human again. Because I’ve found my soul mate, he’s losing his. “It’s a long story, but the upshot is, it’s my fault.”
She sniffles. “I don’t understand.”
“Someone from Chicago found us … or me, really. I tried to convince Rob that he wouldn’t betray us to the mob, but Rob doesn’t believe it. He thinks he needs to run to protect the family.”
“Why? Who is this person?”
I take a deep breath and hold it. “He’s the man that we’ve all along believed contracted the hit on our family.”
She gasps. “Oh my God! Is everyone okay?”
“Everyone’s fine, Adri. I know he’s not the one trying to kill us.”
“Then why did he hunt you down?” she asks warily, and I realize as much as she’s rubbed off on Rob, his caution is rubbing off on her.
“It’s complicated, but we …” I swallow the lump forming in my throat. “We had a relationship in Chicago before I left.”
“You had a relationship with the man who tried to have you killed?” she asks, her voice racing a pitch.
“It wasn’t him. He came here to find me.” I rub my swollen eyes. “We’re in love, Lee. We’re getting married.”
My heart is so heavy as I say it that it drags on my chest like an anchor and I can’t get a full breath. I have to believe that Oliver’s okay. He’s got to come back.
“That’s … Wow …” She breathes into the phone. “But if you’re marrying him, I’m not following why Rob thinks you need to run.”
“Because we’re not running. They are. Away from us. We’re not going with them.”
“Oh my God,” she whispers, then louder, “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.” And it feels as though I might be having one. “Rob will never trust Oliver. There was nothing I could say to change his mind.”
“Rob had been fighting with someone,” she says. “His lower lip was cracked and swollen when he was here. Was that your Oliver?”
I sit up straighter. “When was that, Adri?”
“He just left. He was only here for a few minutes, and like I said, he wouldn’t really tell me anything. I needed to know what he’s thinking, so I called you.”
“Adri, I’m really sorry. I wish I could make Rob see things differently,” I say, my heart thudding in my chest.
She sighs. “That’s your brother. No one’s got a thicker head. Be safe, Lee.”
I disconnect and dial Rob.
It goes to voice mail.
Next, I try Ulie.
She connects almost instantly. “Lee! Is everything okay?”
“Was Oliver there?”
“This morning,” she answers. “He and Rob went down to the beach and they both came back up bloody.”
My epic sigh blusters through the phone. “What time?”
“Early,” she says. “Oliver woke us up, so maybe around nine.”
“When did he leave?”
“Probably twenty minutes later.”
The sense of dread that’s been gnawing at my insides becomes voracious, ripping big chunks out of my stomach and robbing me of my breath. “Did he say anything? Maybe where he was headed when he left?”
I can almost hear her head shake. “He didn’t say anything. Just got in his car and drove off.”
“Okay, Ulie. Thanks.”
“Buchanan is coming for us in, like, an hour, Lee.” There’s a pause, and when she’s back her voice is thick, as if she’s swallowing tears. “Please come h—”
My battery picks that instant to crap out.
My heart still drags like that thousand-pound anchor as I stand and pace to the window. I brace my hands on the warm glass and breathe. In. Out. In. Out. When I’ve coaxed my body off the edge of hyperventilation, I go to the bathroom and pull on my still-damp underwear. I get dressed and go back to the window, staring out into oblivion.
Because there’s another possibility. One that I haven’t let fully form in my mind. It’s been there, buzzing at the periphery of my thoughts all day long, but I’ve squashed it like a typhoid-carrying mosquito. I wouldn’t let the notion poison my conviction that I’d chosen the right side of Rob’s ultimatum when I chose Oliver.
But whether it was to protect me or expose me really doesn’t matter. I can no longer deny it’s the most likely scenario.
How do I find out if Oliver Anthony Si
lva purchased a plane ticket back to Nebraska? Or, worse, Chicago?
Chapter 25
Oliver
Omaha isn’t exactly an air travel mecca, and everything getting there seems to connect through O’Hare. It’s bad enough that the Feds relocated me only five hundred miles from Chicago. I’m not flying through the death zone to get back there. It took three airline counters and five cranky ticket agents before someone finally found a way to get me to Nebraska that didn’t involve my impending death. I connect through Minneapolis on a flight that leaves at five thirty tonight. Consequently, I’ve had plenty of time to people watch.
And think.
I have to say, in the end, it’s the old couple that got me.
There was also the twenty-year-old guy in full army camo that sort of choked me up when he saw the cute blonde in the purple blouse waiting near my seat and knocked three people over getting to her. He dumped his army-issued backpack on the floor five feet from where she stood and lifted her right off the ground, swinging her in a lopsided circle and kissing her full on the mouth. There was some applause from standers-by, and when they came up for air, they grinned at each other like love sick fools. It was sweet in a sort of Hallmark-y way.
But it’s really that old couple near the baggage carrousel who flipped the switch in my head. They’re quieter and less demonstrative in their reunion, but there’s no doubt from the combination of euphoric serenity in the old woman’s eyes when she hugs the man who’s been waiting patiently for her outside security that she’s truly home. And they haven’t even left the airport.
I’m not a moron. I know that’s a long shot for me and Lee. The reason I’m sitting in this airport is because I’m fully cognizant of the facts. I probably won’t live long enough for us to become that wrinkled old couple who are so married they can’t remember a time they weren’t. But as I shove up out of my seat, instead of heading through security to my flight, I go to where the husband is struggling to haul his wife’s enormous orange rollaway suitcase with a green ribbon tied around the handle off the belt.
Over the Line: On the Run Novel Page 22
