“There is one thing I’d like your advice on.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m worried about Matt and CJ. What happens if someone goes back there looking for me? I couldn’t stand it if anyone hurt them or their kids.”
“Don’t worry about them. They’re going to stay away from the house for a couple of weeks. One of CJ’s old friends from when she was in witness protection, a US Marshall, is going to stay there to make sure there aren’t any problems.”
“Thanks.” Carina breathed a sigh of relief. “That makes me feel so much better.”
“Don’t worry,” Amy assured her. “We’ve got your back.”
33
“You sent someone after my nieces. After my own flesh and blood.” Marciano Perelli’s voice simmered with violence.
“Carina knows who I am,” Alex stated simply. “And Giovanni broke our agreement. He sent something to her, something that might help her understand what she knows.”
“You broke the agreement first.” Marciano shook his head. “He never would have tried to contact her if you hadn’t tried to kill him. Isn’t it enough that he’s in prison for a crime you committed? That he watched you kill his wife?”
Alex didn’t address Donna Perelli’s murder; instead, he casually leaned back in his chair. “I heard Giovanni had a bout with food poisoning, but that didn’t have anything to do with me.”
“We both know it wasn’t food poisoning, just like we both know it wasn’t your first attempt. You didn’t really think we wouldn’t find out about it, did you?”
“I’d be careful about throwing those kinds of accusations around.” His voice turned cold, and he leaned forward on his desk. “Don’t forget who’s running this organization. I would hate for you to find yourself in less-than-favorable circumstances—to have to learn a hard lesson like your brother did.”
“My father would never have approved of how you are running this business.”
“Our father,” Alex corrected. “And let’s not forget that if anything happens to me, you’re going to have a war on your hands. My son has just as much right to succeed me as you do.”
“You may be the oldest, but my father was a fool to ever trust the son he walked away from so many years ago,” Marciano said sharply. “He should have turned his back on you just like he did your mother.”
Alex’s dark eyes flashed with a barely leashed fury. “My mother isn’t any of your concern.”
“No, but you are. And so is my brother. My real brother.”
* * *
Pete took a moment to look around the parking garage before unlocking the door to Carina’s car. He had taken three buses and then jogged two miles to get back to where he and Jay had left it, but at least he was sure he hadn’t been followed. The man who had come by looking for Jay had driven by twice after talking to him the day before, but since then, he seemed to have given up on staking out his house.
After talking to Jay, Pete had agreed to come search the car. Then he was going to drive it over and leave it in the Whitmores’ garage. CJ’s friend from the US Marshalls, Tara Baldino, had agreed to stay and watch the place for a few weeks to make sure it was safe before the family returned. She hadn’t seemed to mind the additional request of using Carina’s car while she was there.
If someone was tracking the car, Tara would find out soon enough. Assuming there weren’t any problems, Carina could make arrangements to get the car to wherever she ended up. But first, Pete was going to check the car out. He opened up the passenger door and sat down before opening the glove compartment.
He started pulling out the contents—an envelope with the insurance and registration information inside, a box of tissues, a pair of scissors, two small notepads, and an array of pens and pencils. Finally, he found what he was looking for. Pete picked up the maintenance log, a simple black book with a rubber band around it. He slipped the rubber band off and opened it up.
His eyes narrowed. Taped to the inside front cover was a key. From the shape and size, he guessed it was a house key. He flipped through the pages of the maintenance log and read the dates of the car’s oil changes marked neatly inside.
Not sure what to think of his discovery, Pete put everything back into the glove compartment, except for the maintenance log. After circling around to the driver’s side, he drove straight to the hardware store. Copying the key only took a few minutes, and he immediately put one of the two copies he had made onto his key ring.
Then he started toward the Whitmores’, where he would leave the car and find a way to get the log and original key into Jay’s hands.
* * *
Seth cradled the cell phone between his shoulder and his ear while he dried off his hands from the dishwater and then moved outside onto the porch to ensure some privacy. “Why did Jay’s dad call you?” Seth asked with concern. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” Kel assured him. “He knew not to try to contact any of you directly since someone’s been watching him, but he wanted you guys to know that he searched Carina’s car and found a key taped to the inside of the maintenance log.”
“Jay mentioned that Lou had made a specific mention of the maintenance log,” Seth said. “Any idea what the key goes to?”
“It looks like a house key.”
“You have it already? How?”
“Pete had it pouched up here to me on a military transport last night. He said he made a couple of copies. He has one, and the other he put into his safe deposit box.”
“It doesn’t matter how many copies he has. If we don’t know where the lock is, none of them is going to do us any good.”
“I know,” Kel agreed. “There’s one more thing I wanted to let you know about.”
“What’s that?”
“You know that FBI agent who came to visit you last week?”
“Yeah,” Seth nodded. “What about him?”
“He’s dead.”
“What? How?”
“Murdered,” Kel told him. “He was found this morning.”
“Any suspects?”
“Not yet. It looked like a meeting gone bad, but there’s one thing that’s troubling me,” Kel admitted.
“What’s that?”
“Another agent came and questioned me when he found some of Graham’s notes. I told him that he had taken the copies of some background checks you had run. When he called back a couple of hours later, he said that they didn’t find anything like that in his files.”
“You think someone killed him for the information?”
“I think someone killed him so he couldn’t talk about the information,” Kel said. “This looks to me like a mob hit.”
“Great,” Seth muttered. “What do you want me to tell Jay?”
“Tell him the truth,” Kel said simply. “And tell him to pray.”
* * *
“Good news,” Tristan Crowther’s western drawl came over Jay’s phone.
“I could use some of that,” Jay muttered, pushing aside the latest batch of background checks. He had just finished talking to Carina about the key his father had found in her car. Unfortunately, she was as confused by it as they were. His dad had sent the maintenance log and the key to Kel, but for now, Lou’s message to Carina remained a mystery.
“Quinn and I went out to Provo and did a surveillance run at the dorm like you wanted.”
“And?”
“No activity at all,” Tristan told him. “We didn’t see anything, and neither have the FBI guys who staked out the place.”
“I’m still worried that someone might show up. Before all of this happened, Carina said she and Gianna used to talk and text all the time.”
“That’s the other thing. We brought Gianna’s phone back with us to Virginia to see if anyone was following the signal,” Tristan continued. “Not only did we not see anyone following the phone, but when we tried tracking calls to and from the phone, we couldn’t.”
“Why coul
dn’t you? Gianna certainly wouldn’t have access to a secure phone.”
“No, but it was modified with a blocker. Amy did some digging into the technology for us and said the FBI confiscated some phones with similar modifications at a raid in Chicago a few years ago. The arrests were all mob related.”
“It must have been Lou. He must have fixed her phone to make sure no one could find her.”
“That would make sense,” Tristan agreed. “It looks like it worked. Best we can tell, no one knows where she is.”
“Thanks, Tristan. That is good news.” Jay hung up the phone as Carina walked into the room carrying two plates laden with chicken salad sandwiches.
“What’s good news?” she asked, sliding one of the plates in front of him.
“It looks like Gianna’s apartment is safe.”
“Really?” Carina asked with a mixture of hope and skepticism.
Jay considered the information about Gianna’s phone. “Where did you and your sisters get your cell phones?”
“I’m not sure.” Carina shrugged. “Lou bought them for us.”
“That’s what I thought you were going to say.” Jay reached for his sandwich and took a bite.
“Why?”
“Gianna’s phone had been modified so that no one can track the GPS signal on it. Apparently, the technology also interferes with anyone being able to accurately pull a call log from the phone.” Jay took a sip of water and contemplated for a moment. “If that were the case, I don’t know how anyone was able to track Bianca to the Whitmores’ house. Logically, they would have tracked phone calls from one of your phones to CJ or Matt, but if Lou modified all of your phones, that shouldn’t have been possible.”
Carina thought for a minute, and Jay could see the moment when she figured out the missing piece of the puzzle. “Nick.”
“What about him?”
“He grabbed my phone from me when he showed up at the pool last week. He must have done something so he could track my calls.”
“That would make sense,” Jay said, feeling more confident about Tristan’s assessment that Gianna really hadn’t been found. “In that case, you might want to go call Gianna. Let her know that everything is safe and that she can go back home.”
Relief and gratitude shone in Carina’s eyes. “Thank you.” She leaned down and gave Jay a quick kiss. “I’m going to go call her right now.”
* * *
“You shouldn’t be calling me here,” Marciano said the moment he heard his brother’s voice on the phone. “I don’t know how you managed to get transferred to another prison, but I don’t want Alex to be able to find you through me.”
“He’s out of control,” Giovanni said, his voice raspy, like he was fighting a cold and couldn’t quite catch his breath.
Marciano heard the unspoken words hanging on the line, the line that was most surely being monitored. He’s out of control translated to stop him now.
“You need to tell the cops who really killed Donna,” Marciano insisted boldly. They both knew Alex could no longer be trusted. Giovanni had gone to prison to protect the rest of his family. Marciano had fallen in line in the family business for the same reason. Now Alex seemed determined to eliminate them—to eliminate his own family—to make sure that control remained unequivocally his. Now determined to fight the man who had set out to destroy them, Marciano dared to speak their older half-brother’s name out loud. “It’s time Raymond Alexander is the one behind bars, not you.”
“My day will come.”
“It needs to come now. Together we can put things back the way they used to be.”
“The girls come first,” Giovanni countered. “They’ll understand everything someday.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I do.”
34
Carina sat at the little table by the window, her sketch pad open in front of her. She tried to work on the design that had come to her earlier that morning but found her concentration was too scattered. So much had happened over the last few days, and she was still trying to make sense of it all.
Jay and Seth had shown her a photo of Frank Tesan, the FBI agent who had been killed at the Whitmores’ house, but she hadn’t recognized him. Even though everyone seemed determined to spend most of their time researching every angle possible, so far they hadn’t gotten any closer to figuring out what had renewed her family’s interest in her or why anyone would try to hurt her or her sisters.
Her father had been successfully transferred to another prison, and she had been told that he was apparently well on the road to recovering from whatever had caused his sickness. Amy’s brother, Charlie, had interviewed him personally in the hopes of uncovering the truth about her mother’s murder. Unfortunately, her dad still refused to talk about the events of that day.
Carina had to wonder if he would tell her the truth if she could meet with him face to face, but Jay was insistent that it would be too dangerous right now. Even though everyone seemed pretty confident that her father was safe now, Jay was proving to be quite protective of her. Many of their conversations over the past few days had revolved around what she should do next, where she would go when his leave ended in a few more days.
It scared her a little at how easily she had shifted from only considering her sisters in her future plans to including Jay as well. She also worried that the closer she felt to him, the more confused she became.
She watched Seth and Vanessa together, and her heart yearned for what they had, the same thing that was so evident in CJ and Matt Whitmore’s relationship: love and eternity. The more she felt like she was discovering love with Jay, the more it terrified her that she wouldn’t be able to have eternity.
Footsteps sounded behind her, followed by voices.
“I don’t care if my dad’s not here to see it; I am not taking you out for a hamburger and french fries.” Jay’s voice held both humor and conviction.
“Oh, come on, Jay. We swam like three miles this morning. In freezing water,” Bianca said. Carina recognized by her tone that she already knew she had lost the battle but was still holding out a seed of hope. “Besides, if we go out to eat, you won’t have to cook tonight.”
Carina turned and couldn’t help but smile when she saw the knowing look Jay gave Bianca. “You mean, you won’t have to do the dishes tonight.” Jay reached out and rubbed his hand teasingly over her head. “I’m on to you, kid.”
“I thought it was Carina’s turn to do the dishes,” Bianca countered mischievously.
“Nice try,” Carina said. “Besides, I think Jay was going to cook up that fish Seth caught this morning.”
Bianca turned toward her and wrinkled her nose. “Yet another good reason to go out to dinner tonight.”
“Tell you what,” Jay started. “If you help Vanessa with lunch today, I’ll take you with me into town afterward for some supplies.”
Bianca looked at him, surprised. “You’re really going to let me go into town with you? In public?”
“Weren’t you just bugging me about going out to a restaurant?” Jay asked. “That’s pretty public.”
“Yeah, but I knew you were going to say no,” Bianca admitted. Then she gave him a sheepish grin. “I was just hoping you would go out and bring me something back.” Her eyes lit with humor. “With paper plates.”
“Seth and I have checked out the village for the past few days. If someone knew where you were hiding, they would have shown up by now.” He turned toward Carina. “I actually thought that maybe I could take you out for ice cream or something after dinner tonight if you’re up for it.”
Carina smiled. “I’d like that.”
“Hey!” Bianca protested. “How come she gets ice cream?”
“She never swam for my dad,” Jay told her with a grin. Then he tugged on her ponytail. “If you’re nice to me, maybe we’ll bring you something back.”
* * *
Jay jogged along the beach with Seth by his side. Their r
outine had fallen into place easily enough, and he was a bit surprised at how well the five of them had come to coexist over the past six days.
Bianca had taken to swimming with him and Seth each morning. Jay suspected she went with them more to work out her stress than to train for any future competition. Creating new designs appeared to be Carina’s release, although she was always quick to make time for him when they could steal a few moments together.
Seth and Vanessa now included the rest of them in their nightly scripture reading and what they called “family prayer.” It was odd to think that he was finally reading the Book of Mormon, both with Seth and on his own. He supposed with all of the copies he had stacked up over the past year, he should have known it was inevitable.
The more he read, the more questions he seemed to have. Ironically, when he talked to Carina about the Church, he discovered that she freely admitted she didn’t know all of the answers. Oddly enough, he found comfort in the fact that Carina seemed to still have questions of her own.
He supposed he always thought his teammates had all achieved some spiritual pinnacle the moment they joined their church. Now he was beginning to understand that the Mormons seemed to think that everyone was always growing, always learning more about God and His plan for them.
Jay found he looked forward to the prayers they had together at each meal, still amazed after almost a year that Mormons talked to God like He was a personal friend who was really listening. He even found himself offering prayers of his own as he went to bed each night, always including a request for answers and surprisingly expecting to get some.
Those answers hadn’t been forthcoming nearly as quickly as any of them had hoped. They still didn’t have any idea who had killed Lou or the motivations of the two men who had shown up at the Whitmores’.
Little by little, Jay felt like he was beginning to understand Carina’s family and their business, but the pressure of time was starting to wear down on him now that his leave was coming to an end.
For the past few days, he had been trying to figure out some way to bring Carina with him to Virginia Beach. He had thought of having her and Bianca stay at his apartment or even seeing if she could stay with one of his teammates, but the risk was too great. He had already been linked to them, as had Seth. Maybe after some time had passed, Carina could come to Virginia, but for now, she needed to keep her distance from him until they were sure she and Bianca were safe.
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