Outside the Lines (24 page)

Rob

When I step off the elevator into the lobby, there is a pair of guys that I don't like the looks of with their heads together near the front doors. As I slip back into the elevator, I think again that choosing the hotel my family owns wasn't the best strategy. There are eyes everywhere.

But this is where is started when they killed my mother, so it feels right that this is where it should end.

I take the elevator down one level to the parking garage, then skirt back around to street level at the back of the hotel, where I wave down a taxi. But my head still isn't in the game when the cab rolls up to my apartment building in Lincoln Park. All I can think about is Adri, back at the hotel. I scan the grounds warily, knowing there's every likelihood the Savocas have had guys here since the botched hit. I'm certain they're watching the house, which is why I couldn't go there for my Maserati. If I'm alive at the end of this, the Ducati will provide a cleaner getaway anyway.

There's low cloud cover tonight. The streetlight in front of the building is out, so once the cab pulls away, I'm plunged into darkness. I case my windows on the eighth floor and find them dark. That doesn't mean it's safe. I haven't lived in this apartment full-time since everything went down with Pop's arrest two years ago, but I kept it. I guess I hoped when the smoke cleared, I'd be able to have my privacy again. I never did business here to keep it off the radar, but I never did anything to hide it either. It wouldn't have been too hard for Savoca to track it down.

As I reach the glass doors, the doorman is holding one open for a couple, arm-in-arm on their way out. The man is laughing at something his woman said. I ignore the burn in my chest when Adri's face flashes into my head, but the prickle under my skin confirms everything I'm trying to deny. I love her. If anything happens to her, they might as well kill me too.

“Mr. Delgado,” the doorman says once the couple has passed. “It's good to have you back.”

“Thank you, William.” I draw a breath, move past him into the lobby, my hand wrapped around the butt of the Glock under my jacket. I step into the elevator. When it stops on the eighth floor, I wait before stepping out. When there's no barrage of gunfire, I move quickly up the hall to my apartment. I give one last look around, turn the key, slip through the door.

I take a quick inventory of the room. Everything is just where I left it. It doesn't look like the FBI or anyone else has tossed it. The shades are drawn over the two large windows that look toward the lake. To the left, the kitchen is stainless steel and black granite. The counters are bare except for a roll of paper towels next to the sink and a knife block by the stove in the island. On the wall over the stone fireplace is an enormous flat-screen TV. A brown leather sofa sits in the middle of the room, facing it.

I stride to the office, open the safe, pull out a stack of cash and the Italian passport that will get my alter ego, Roberto Scarpelli, on a flight out of Chicago if necessary.

As I yank open my desk drawer to grab the keys to my bike, my eyes flick over the newspaper I left on my desk months ago, the day we all moved back to Pop's during the trial. It's a
Chicago Tribune
folded back to the page with an article about the governor's literacy ball. I glance over the picture of Sophie and me standing next to the governor and his wife, then toss it in the trash. That was a lifetime ago. Everything has changed.

I pocket the key and head for the door. Stupidly, I don't look through the peephole before I rip it open. If I did, I would have seen my welcome party.

His hands are in the air and my Glock is trained on his face in a heartbeat.

“I'm unarmed, Rob,” Oliver says, holding his ground.

My finger tightens on the trigger as I press the muzzle against his forehead. “That was poor planning on your part, then.”

He takes a deep breath, seemingly more perturbed than afraid. “Can I come in?”

His hair is longer than it was last time I saw him, dark waves down the sides of his square face. Impeccably groomed, as usual, he's in a dark gray suit and slate blue button-down with the collar open, looking every inch the refined businessman.

“Everyone knows you don't have the stomach for your own dirty work, Savoca. You might be unarmed, but what about the army you have waiting on the street?”

He shakes his head and I push the muzzle tighter against his skin. “No army. Only me.”

I breathe out a sardonic laugh. “And you're also known for your honesty.”

“I'm telling you the truth.”

“Because you'd tell me if you were lying? Nice try. How did you know I was here?”

A smile ticks his mouth. “Your doorman's on my payroll. Has been for years.”

I shake my head at myself. I should have known.

“Let me in, Rob. We need to talk.”

“Talk,” I say, shoving the gun and forcing him back a step.

“We didn't contract the hit on your family.”

“Why should I believe that?”

“Because I know who did.”

Now he's got my attention. I back up, keeping my Glock trained on his face. He follows me through the door and closes it.

“Spill it,” I say, gesturing with the gun toward my sofa.

He sits. “First, I've got terms.”

“And I've got a gun. Who do you think wins?”

“Hear me out,” he says, leaning deeper into the cushions. His casual confidence tells me he's lying either about being unarmed or about the army outside, because the other alternative is he's a moron, and I know better.

Oliver is a strategist. If he's got a flaw, it's that he overthinks things. He's slippery and dangerous, and I'm not going to make the mistake of underestimating him.

But I need to know what he knows.

I settle into the armchair next to the sofa, keeping my gun trained on him. “Talk.”

“Our fathers are gone. This is our time, Rob,” he says with a wave of his manicured hand between us. “Our fathers' ways are antiquated. Crime is a business now, pure and simple. There's no need for all the bloodshed. It's time we stared acting like members of civilized society.”

I laugh again. “It's all about image to you.”

He gives a single nod. “As it is to you. Your family has used you to clean up their image. Now it's time to clean up the business too.”

“Really?” I say, lifting a brow at him. “How, exactly, is that going to work?”

“You and I declare a truce.”

I give him a disillusioned stare. “In case you haven't noticed, my family is being hunted like dogs by yours. That's hardly a truce.”

“I told you, it's not my family.”

“And I told you I don't believe you.”

A cocky smile tilts his mouth as he leans forward, elbows on knees. “If I wanted to take you down, I would have done it on the business end. Killing you is far less satisfying than destroying you and gloating as your empire burns to the ground all around you.”

“Lee always said you were a pompous ass.”

He tips his head. “And how is your lovely sister? I've missed her since Kellogg. Not too many people have the brains to give me a run for my money.”

I blow out a humorless laugh. “Is that why you want her dead? Because she showed you up in grad school?”

He rolls his eyes wearily. “I don't want her or any of the rest of you dead.”

“So what
do
you want? What's this little meeting really all about, Savoca? And don't tell me you want a truce.”

He gives me a disgusted look. “Your sister got all the brains, didn't she?”

He's stalling. I stand, press the gun to his temple. “Either tell me who contracted the hit, or I'll do what I came here to do and finish you right now.”

He holds up his hands. “It came from inside your organization.”

“Who? I need a name.”

He looks up at me. “And I need a truce.”

He's almost believable. “Why?”

“I've got my reasons.”

“Why?” I ask again, jamming the muzzle of my Glock into the groove above his collarbone.

His jaw tenses. “I've got my reasons,” he says more slowly, his eyes narrowing.

My finger tightens on the trigger. This is what I came for, to finish Oliver Savoca. I can end it right now.

Or start it.

If I do this, it will start a bloodbath. If the Delgados are still standing at the end, maybe my family can come home.

Unless what he's saying is true.

Pop told me to take Oliver out, implying he contracted the hit. Oliver says our men did. I've got nothing to back up either claim. I'm no closer to answers than when I got here.

“You do this,” he says, his voice low and steady, “you start a war that will end with all of us dead. It's your choice, Delgado. Make the right one.”

I flip the gun in my hand and slam the butt into the back of his head. He slumps into the sofa, slips out of consciousness for a moment, groans. I hold the gun on him with every intention of unloading a round into his brain. “If you're going to save your sorry ass, I need some proof what you're saying is true. Who contracted the hit?”

He lifts his hand to the back of his head, rubbing the welt rising there. “It came from high up in your organization, but I don't have a name.”

I press the muzzle to his forehead. “Too bad for you, then.”

“Have you ever been in love, Delgado?”

His question takes me by surprise and Adri's face flashes in my mind.

Love makes you vulnerable
.

“No.”

He shakes his head a little. “Too bad for
you
, then,” he echoes, lowering his head and waiting for the bullet. “Go ahead.”

He's not afraid. I've got to respect him for that.

And that alone gives his words some credence. Why would he come here, unarmed, a lamb to the slaughter? Even if the plan was for his goons outside to do the killing, they could have done that without him coming in here and sacrificing himself.

“Just get it over with,” he says.

My finger tightens on the trigger and I have every intention of pulling it. But now that Adri's face is in my mind, her voice is creeping in too. She called me the only man she's ever loved. She's waiting for me at the Bienville. Could I do this—kill someone in cold blood solely because of his last name—and ever look her in the eye again? She's changed me into something better than I am. Even if I can't have her, I'm not sure I'm willing to give that newfound part of myself up.

Blind vengeance isn't enough anymore. I've got to know for sure.

I flip the Glock in my hand and hit him harder this time. He grunts and flops sideways onto the cushions, unconscious. A trickle of blood seeps from his scalp onto the upholstery.

I grab the key to my bike and bolt for the elevator. I find the Ducati in the garage under the building, in the spot I left it. I rocket out of the garage into the streets of Chicago, the cool spring drizzle stinging my face. There are two guys out front at Savoca's car. One of them pulls his gun, fires off a few rounds as I pass. And there's my proof. Oliver never wanted a truce. He wanted me dead.

The sting near my shoulder blade and the unmistakable trickle of blood down my left side a few minutes later tells me his man didn't miss by much.

I had everything I risked coming back for right in my hands, and I let it slip through. One pull of the trigger. One round into Savoca's head. I could have started the war that would bring my family home. But I couldn't do it. I'm too soft for this job now.

I send a growl into the night, like a wolf separated from his pack. I have no idea what I'm doing anymore. No idea where I belong.

Except with Adri. Being with her is the only thing that's felt right in a very long time. If I'm honest, since Mom died.

And she's here. In danger. My heart pounds harder at the realization that if I lose her, I lose the best part of myself. I have to get back to her.

Despite my desperation to get to Adri, I take the indirect route back to the Bienville. If I'm followed, we're both dead. When I get there, I race through the lobby and up the elevator. At her room, I hesitate, trying to sort my thoughts before I knock.

When no answer comes right away, I know she's probably gone. I didn't expect the visit from Savoca and I'm late. It's been over an hour.

I fish her keycard out of my pocket, not sure why, except a little piece of me is desperate to catch any linger scent of her. But just as I scan it, the door swings open.

And what I see freezes my blood.

Rob

Adri's eyes are wide with terror. She's in sitting the middle of the room with her torso duct-taped to the back of the dining room chair, her wrists bound in her lap, ankles taped to the chair legs. Her cries are muffled by the man standing behind her, one hand over her mouth and the other holding a serrated hunting blade to her throat.

I recognize the knife. My uncle Dean gave me one just like it when I came of age. Said they're great for gutting things. Or people.

There's a gun pointed at my head, in the hand of a second guy who materializes from behind the door when it closes.

The guy next to me takes advantage of my momentary lapse as I stare at Adri. The sharp crack of the butt of his gun into the side of my head leaves me reeling. The Glock flies from my hand and skitters across the floor. Stars flash in my eyes as I drop to my knees. My vision blurs around the edges, but Adri's muffled scream pulls me off the edge of unconsciousness.

Love makes you vulnerable
.

I hear Pop's words as the room spins. He was right. In my single-minded need for Adri, I let down my guard and put both of us in danger.

“We'd been waiting in that goddamn lobby forever and you never came down,” the guy holding Adri says, “and then I stumble on your little friend here totally by dumb luck. We were just getting ready to persuade her to tell us where your family is, and lo and behold, here you are. Your timing is impeccable, Delgado.”

I look closer at him, force my eyes to focus. A dark buzz cut sits atop an enormous head. The rest of him is far less impressive. His cheap suit and scuffed black shoes give him away as some wiseguy wannabe. The problem is, I've never seen him before. I don't know which side he belongs to. “How did you know I was here?”

He scowls at me and barks, “None of your fucking business.”

“Does this mean we don't get to have our fun with her?” the guy next to me asks, and if I didn't think it'd get Adri killed, I'd rip his fucking tongue out.

“That all depends on Delgado,” the wannabe answers with a jut of his chin at me. “Get him up and let's see what he's willing to share to save her hide.”

My head's still ringing when the guy jerks me to my feet. I decide not to help. It takes him several tries to get me up. The wannabe holds the knife under Adri's chin as he pulls a chair around from the table to face hers. I'm dropped into it, and our knees bump.

I've known all along this might be a suicide mission. I'm prepared to die if that's what it takes. But I really don't want to do it in front of Adri. I also don't want to take her with me, so I won't make a move as long as the knife's at her throat.

She's so close I could touch her. Every instinct I have is screaming through my nerves to pull her close and protect her. But if I play it that way, she's dead.

“Who are you?” I ask, tossing a hand at her as the guy tries to tape my wrists together. He's having trouble negotiating both the gun and the roll of duct tape and swears under his breath when my movement causes him to drop the tape.

“The man you're about to make very rich,” Wannabe says. “There's a price on your head, in case you didn't know.”

At his words, everything inside me seizes. If what he's saying is true, the contract is now a bounty, which means every two-bit thug with a gun will be looking for us.

I cut him a glare. “I wasn't talking to you, fuckwad. I was talking to her,” I say, looking squarely at Adri. Her eyes flash confused, but I don't stop. “And why do you have her pretty little ass tied up in my hotel room?”

“Don't play stupid with me, Delgado. This is
her
hotel room,” he says. “She was flashing your picture around at the front desk, so I figured she was a friend of yours. Got a look at her room number and came up for a visit.”

“You figured wrong.” I look at Adri, harden my gaze, brush the guy's hands away as he tries again to get a loop of tape around my wrists. “I've never seen her in my life. Probably another lowlife wannabe hit man, just like you.”

The guy trying to bind my wrists pistol-whips me again. “Stop fucking moving!”

Stars flash in my eyes and I fight to hold on to consciousness.

“Don't knock him out, dumbass!” the other guy barks. “He can't talk if he's drooling on the carpet.”

As the guy next to me swears under his breath and tries again with the duct tape, the other runs the tip of the blade along Adri's cheek. “If you don't know her, you won't mind watching me kill her.”

I shrug just as the guy gets a loop of tape around my wrists. The tape pulls loose. “Just don't get any blood on the carpet. The cleaning fee for that is killer.”

“Hold the fuck still,” the guy hisses, putting his gun down and jerking my hands together.

Wannabe sets his knife on the table behind him and rests his hands on Adri's shoulders. “Maybe I'll just use my hands,” he says, sliding them together until his fingers are wrapped around her long, fair throat. “The ladies always say I'm good with my hands.”

I fight to keep the murder out of my eyes. “Whatever works.”

“Look at her. So young.” His hands glide down her neck, slip under the collar of her blouse. His eyes lift to mine and he grins. “Maybe I'll fuck her first. You want to watch before you die?”

I cuff out a laugh. “I'd rather fuck her myself, if it's all the same to you.”

“I'll tell you what, Delgado. You tell me where the rest of your family is, I might let you have that dying wish.” A depraved grin spread over his face as his hands slide deeper into her shirt. “After I'm done with her.”

“Me too,” the guy binding my wrists says. “I want a crack at her too.” He's nearly drooling. I'm getting that this guy's not the brains of the operation.

I glance again at Adri, trying to relay with my gaze that I won't let anything happen to her. But when my eyes connect with hers, I find her gaze just as determined. All the fear that was clouding it before is gone. A stone drops in my gut when I realize what she's thinking. I give her a small shake of my head, but it's too late.

She throws herself into the back of the chair. It topples over, knocks the guy behind her to the carpet. The guy in front of me looks up with a start. I lift a knee sharply, clocking him under the chin. He reels back. I stand. One good tug and I've torn the single layer of tape he's managed to get around my wrists.

The moron with the duct tape lunges for his gun.

I grab the bottle of Jameson off the bar next to me and swing it like a baseball bat square into the side of his head. It smashes against his skull, leaves a gash in his face when it shatters. He drops to the carpet, out cold.

“So much for blood on the carpet,” Wannabe says. I look up and he has his knife at Adri's neck, where she lays on her side on the floor, still taped to the chair. A bead of blood trickles across her throat and drips onto the carpet. “Doesn't look like a little more's going to be a problem.”

“Not for me,” I say, keeping my expression ice cold, even though my insides are boiling over. “But you seem to think she's leverage. If that's true and you kill her, what are you left with?”

He grins, lifting the knife so it's pointed at me. “You.”

“And I'll die before I'll tell you where the rest of my family is. Then you've got nothing.”

He thinks about that for a second. “Not nothing. Your dead body's worth a buck and a quarter to me.”

I whistle through my teeth. “Not bad. What's the price for all five of us?”

He shakes his head. “It's only on four of you. A hundred twenty-five thousand each for your bodies. But the real money's the five hundred grand for bringing the little one in alive.”

My eyes narrow. A thousand questions spin through my mind like a cyclone. But there's one I need the answer to in order to bring my family home. “Whose marker?”

He grins, but just as he opens his mouth to answer, his words are cut off by his scream as Adri swings her arms up, the neck of the broken Jameson bottle in her grasp. It stabs into his chest.

I pounce the second he's down. I hook my elbow around his neck, crank down as tight as I can as he struggles against me. “Whose marker?” I ask again.

“Stop, Rob!” Adri shouts.

“Who?” I say, but Wannabe's body goes limp.

I untangle myself from him, scramble for my Glock. My finger tightens on the trigger as I point it at his face.

“Rob!” Adri cries.

I look up at her, writhing on the floor, still bound to the chair and bleeding. I go to her, yank the tape off her wrists.

“Are you okay?” I ask, rub my thumbs over her bruised wrists, look at the wound on her neck.

“You can't kill them,” she gasps.

The cut's not deep, but acid rises in my throat as I watch blood ooze from her wound. For that alone, I'd kill them.

“Rob? Promise me.” Her pleading eyes make me forget anything else exists, until the one I hit with the bottle groans from the floor next to us. I'm not entirely sure I haven't already killed the other one.

I clock him with an elbow. He goes still. I grab Wannabe's knife and cut the duct tape binding Adri to the chair. “They hurt you. They would have killed you.” Acid rolls up my throat when I think about how close they came.

She sits and lifts my face so I have no choice but to look into those clear blue eyes. “I don't know who those men are or why they want to hurt you—”

“
Kill
me,” I interrupt. “And my entire family.”

Her eyes sweep over their unconscious forms. She's scared, but she's trying hard not to show it. “You can't just shoot them.”

I rub a hand down my face. “What do they know?”

She shakes her head. “I don't know.” She gestures to Wannabe. “He was at the front desk when I came in, asking sight-seeing questions. He seemed nice and all, but he saw your picture when I showed it to the desk clerk.”

“Did you say the name Davidson?”

She shakes her head again. “No.”

I glance at her bag on the floor. “Did they go through your things? See your ID?”

“No, Rob. They burst into the room and tied me up. The older one was asking me questions about you, but I didn't answer. The younger one had just opened my bag when you knocked.”

I have a hundred more questions. From the look on her face, so does she. But there's not time now. Chances are this is a pair of greedy independent contractors, working alone. But I don't know that. There could be a Savoca army storming the lobby as we sit here. We have to get out of here.

I look at the guys on the floor. The blood on the carpet.

This is Adri's suite. She registered under her real name. She can't be tied to this in any way, or someone will track her down in Port St. Mary.

I grab the tape, bind and gag Wannabe and his accomplice, and stuff their weapons into my waistband.

“See if there's an extra blanket in the closet,” I tell her.

She gives me a worried look, but then does as I say. When she comes back with one, I roll Wannabe in it, then look at the carpet. Adri didn't catch an artery, so there's not a lot of blood and most of it has stayed in his clothes. But there's a small stain, as well as a few drops of Adri's blood not far away. The puddle from the slice across the other guy's face has been doused with Jameson and is pale pink.

“Find some soap and a towel and work on those blood spots, but leave the booze.”

“What are you doing?” she asks, alarm in her gaze as she looks at the guy in the blanket.

“I'm not going to kill him,” I reassure her, “but there can't be anything tying you to this. My room is just down the hall.”

“Won't that tie them to
you
?”

I nod. “It will, but not to Rob Davidson. He's not here.”

She gives me a long look, then turns for the bathroom.

I open the door and peer into the hall. It's empty. I pick the guy up and carry him, bride-style, toward my room at the end of the hall. “This is why you shouldn't drink in the hot tub,” I say, in the unlikely event anyone's watching out their peephole.

I close the door, dump him on the carpet, and check to see if he's breathing. He is. So Adri gets her wish.

I spend the next five minutes packing my stuff, then wipe down anything I touched with a towel from the bathroom. I take the blanket from my closet and bring it with me when I head back to Adri's room.

She's managed to get the spots out to the point that someone would have to be looking for them to find anything. If I work this right, no one should suspect these goons were ever in her room, should they be discovered in mine before they wake and scamper off into the night.

The thug I left behind is starting to stir, soft groans coming through his gag.

Adri looks at him anxiously. “What now?”

I trade her the blanket for the facecloth she's using on the carpet and shove it in my pocket. “Put the blanket back in the same place you found yours, then straighten everything up so it's exactly how it looked when you arrived. Collect all the duct tape and save it for me.”

She takes the blanket and heads to the bedroom, throwing an anxious glance at me over her shoulder as I cut the tape on the goon's legs.

I haul him to his feet. “Let's go, buddy.”

I loop an arm around his waist, holding him tight to my side, and mostly drag him to the door. I check the hall again, and when I feel the goon haul a chestful of air, like he's getting ready to yell through his gag, I say low in his ear, “The lady doesn't want me to kill you, but if you make a fucking sound, when I get you to the end of the hall and she doesn't know any better, I will.
Capiche
?”

He nods vigorously, his eyes wide with terror, tears starting to leak over.