Otherwise Unharmed

“You’re being very vague.”

  “Yep.”

  “Evan!” She took a step back from me and placed her hands on her hips.

  “Lia,” I mocked back. I smiled warmly to try to break the building tension. “I can explain more later. Right now, I just need to get back to my apartment and assess the damage.”

  With minimal additional protest, we collected Odin and his stuff, and I called a taxi from Lia’s phone.

  “That’s going to be expensive,” Lia remarked.

  “No one’s going to let him on a bus,” I said, nodding toward the dog. “A big tip goes a long way with a taxi driver.”

  “I don’t have that much cash.”

  “We’ll take care of it when we get back to my place.”

  When we did get there, the apartment was a disaster.

  The scene was almost enough to remind me of a warzone, but not quite. There was still crime tape up on the door, but I tore it away and shoved the door open to reveal most everything I owned spewed out all over the floor.

  Papers, boxes, even dishes and shit from the cabinets in the kitchen were lying all over the floor, the counters, and the dining room table. My desk drawers were all pulled out, and papers were everywhere. All the cords and shit for my laptop were there in a heap, but the machine itself was gone.

  “Wow.” Lia breathed out the word with a huff of air. “This is a mess.”

  “I’m going to guess the housekeeper hasn’t been by recently,” I joked. Nothing about it was funny to me, but I didn’t want her to see just how irate I was. I was pretty particular about my place and my things. Seeing them just…everywhere was increasing my blood pressure by the minute. I wondered what was missing besides the laptop.

  The back of the closet in my bedroom, which should have contained my firearms and a couple duffel bags filled with around eighty grand in cash was empty.

  “Fuckers,” I mumbled as I moved over to my dresser. All the drawers had been pulled out and dumped, but no one noticed the envelope secured to the underside of the dresser’s top. I pulled a few bills out of it, ran down to pay off the cab driver, and then returned to check out the rest of the mess.

  Odin was standing by the sliding glass door to the balcony, staring at his upturned dog bed. I used my boot to shove the crap on the floor to the side, righted the bed, and put it back in its usual spot. He sniffed at it, climbed inside, and spun around a few times before curling up and placing his head on his paws to watch us.

  I went around to all the places where I had cash and weapons hidden. Most had been found and presumably taken as evidence, but I did come up with a few thousand in cash—no weapons, though, which pissed me off. My phone was also missing.

  “I need to make a side trip.”

  My Mazda was gone from the garage, presumably impounded pending my trial. With my CTA pass in hand and Lia staying at my apartment to start cleaning up, I headed over to Moretti’s office. I watched all around me as I approached, but I didn’t see any familiar cars in the parking lot and no one visible walking around. I made my way to my Audi—still hidden behind the dumpster from the night I’d killed Terry and Bridgett. Under the driver’s seat was a Beretta PX4 Storm .40—my backup handgun. In the trunk, hidden under the spare tire, there was another, larger envelope of cash.

  I shoved the piece down my pants and felt myself relax at the familiar feeling of the barrel against my back. There was also a shoulder holster for it, but I didn’t want to take the time to put it on in the parking lot. I looked around quickly, then got in the car and headed to the nearest place where I could get a phone set up without a contract or anything like that. I kept looking over my shoulder, but no one appeared to have noticed me, and no one seemed to be following me. Still, I took a random route back to my apartment building.

  All was quiet in the parking garage, so I made my way upstairs and back to my unit.

  Lia was inside, folding clothing that had been dumped all over the place and neatly stacking it in piles on the bed.

  “I wasn’t sure which drawers you used for what.”

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I said. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt a little weird and maybe embarrassed to have her doing something like that for me. It seemed very…intimate. I didn’t think anyone other than I had handled my laundry since I was a kid.

  I grabbed the dresser drawers off the floor and inserted them into their slots, then picked up a couple stacks of shirts and laid them down in their rightful drawer. It didn’t take too long before we had at least managed to straighten out the bedroom to where it didn’t look like a recent tornado had been hanging out there.

  The rest of the apartment was a much bigger disaster, and it took us most of the day to get it cleaned up. About the time we were done, when Lia had gone to take some spoiled food to the dumpsters outside, Odin started to growl.

  I looked up at the door.

  “Having fun?” Trent asked as he leaned against the wall.

  Nothing could have pissed me off more than seeing him at my door.

  Chapter 8—Unveiled Threats

  I resisted the urge to pull out the Beretta and shove it in his face.

  “I assume I have you to thank for all of this,” I muttered back. “What the fuck do you want?”

  “Just wanted to make sure you weren’t packing up to leave town or anything stupid like that,” Trent replied. “I also wanted to make sure you realize I know exactly where you are and what you’re doing—at all times.”

  I watched him closely. He crossed his arms as he leaned casually against the door—too casually. He was making a point of looking nonchalant, which meant he didn’t completely feel that way. My eyes searched for other clues about him, but he was practiced in the art of being a complete and total asshole, which was throwing me off my game.

  In an attempt to gain some ground, I snapped my fingers and pointed to Odin’s bed. He quickly moved from my side and went to his place but continued to growl low at the federal agent.

  “I told you I would take care of it all,” I reminded him. “Fuck off and let me do it.”

  “You’re quite the conversationalist,” he said with a snide laugh.

  “I don’t converse with feds,” I snapped back. I was immediately pissed off at myself for letting him get to me.

  “Just don’t forget to take your dick out of your slut long enough to get your job done.”

  I clenched my teeth and glared, trying to keep myself from just walking over and beating the living shit out of him. I had no doubt that Johnson was nearby, and assaulting a fed in my apartment while I was out on bail wasn’t the very best idea.

  “Are you going to spend a lot of time keeping me from getting shit done?” I asked through my teeth.

  “I’m going to spend a lot of time making sure you are getting shit done,” Trent retorted. “If I feel like you’re stalling, I’m going to take it out on her. What do you think of that?”

  “I think that’s an invitation to an underground party.”

  We locked stares for a long moment. Trent eventually cracked half of an insincere smile and then nodded.

  “I’ll be seeing you around.” He turned and walked out the door.

  I dropped my ass on the couch and rubbed my temples. Odin assumed he was free to leave his bed because he came up and leaned his fuzzy mug on my knee. I rubbed at his head and tried to calm myself down a bit.

  None of this was going to work.

  Despite promises to Trent, I had no idea how I was going to get into Greco’s confidence—none whatsoever. Even if I did have a plan, it certainly wasn’t going to be easy, and part of my strategy was going to have to include figuring out a way for Moretti to believe I was still working for him.

  I was, really.

  He just wasn’t going to know it.

  But I had to make him think he knew it.

  Fuck, none of the shit even made sense to me, so how was I going to pull it all off?

  Lia came back just a few minutes la
ter.

  “That was odd,” she said as she walked in.

  “What was?”

  “There was a guy downstairs near the dumpsters,” she told me. “He started asking me a lot of weird questions. I guess maybe he was the building super or something.”

  My stomach churned.

  “What did he look like?”

  “A little older,” she said. “Maybe as old as fifty. He was wearing a suit and tie. His hair was getting pretty gray, and he had a beard.”

  Agent Johnson.

  “What did he want to know?”

  “He asked if I lived here,” she told me. “I guess he wanted to make sure I wasn’t just dumping my trash in his dumpsters.”

  Fucking bastards, tag-teaming me like that, one of them delaying Lia so the other could harass me. My skin felt hot at the thought. I took a couple of steps toward her and grabbed her arms.

  “What did you tell him?” I demanded.

  “Evan!” Lia yelled as she pulled from me. “What the hell?”

  Her eyes blazed, and I realized how it must have seemed.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “I’m a bit on edge. I don’t want people bothering you.”

  “He didn’t bother me; he was just asking weird questions.”

  “Like what?” I tried to calm myself and released her arms. The whole “hiding my identity” bullshit was seriously frustrating.

  Maybe it would be easier to just come clean.

  Nah.

  “He asked what apartment I lived in, and he asked if I had a dog. Isn’t that weird?”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I said I was just visiting a friend. He wanted to know who, and I said I had to go and came back inside.”

  I reached behind my back to make sure my Beretta was still in place before I stood up from the couch and went over to her.

  “If you see him again, come right back up here,” I told her. “Don’t talk to him. Don’t even make eye contact with him. I don’t care what he says.”

  “Who is he?” she asked.

  “No one.”

  “Could you provide slightly less useful information?” she quipped. “I mean, there could be a Guinness record for it.”

  “Nice,” I replied. Normally I would have been pissed off by the sarcasm, but for some reason, hearing it from Lia just made my cock jump. I took a deep breath and let it out. “I know who he is, and he really just wants to harass me. I don’t want him annoying you as well.”

  “Who is he?” she asked again.

  “Never mind. Just tell me if you see him again.”

  “Jesus, you are frustrating!”

  I shrugged. I couldn’t argue with the sentiment, and it didn’t matter if I was frustrating her or not. It wasn’t going to change the answer at this point. It wasn’t that I wanted to piss her off, it was just the way it was. I couldn’t exactly come out and tell her the dude was a federal agent, monitoring me because I was supposed to infiltrate and bring down a rival mob organization.

  Yeah, that would go over well.

  So I was stuck with her being upset because I wouldn’t answer her. I wondered how many times we were going to end up playing the same game and wondered how others dealt with this kind of shit. Rinaldo was married, but his wife worked at one of his clubs, so she knew what the deal was before they were involved. Mario was also married, but I didn’t have any idea where his wife came from. She only spoke Italian, and I only understood her about a third of the time because she talked so damn fast.

  How many times would Lia put up with my evasiveness?

  I ran my hand over my face and growled under my breath. It wasn’t that I was angry—not with her, anyway—but the whole situation had me as tense as I could be. Johnson talking to her was crossing a line as far as I was concerned, and it reminded me that I should really just get her the fuck out of town.

  “I also wanted to make sure you realize I know exactly where you are and what you’re doing—at all times.”

  If Trent wasn’t full of shit, and I doubted he was, he would know if I were to take her out of the danger zone. If that were the case, and he decided to go after her once I’d returned, I would have no way of keeping her safe. I had to make sure she was safe.

  Where was the safest place for her?

  With me.

  It was also probably the most dangerous, but a lot of that was because she had no idea what she was dealing with, and I wasn’t going to tell her. Telling her could result in anything, up to and including her taking off. If she took off, he might decide to follow her. If she was on her own, I still wouldn’t be able to protect her.

  Another option was to forget about the whole deal with the feds, take Lia, and leave town. I would probably be able to manage getting us both away without being followed, though it would take some effort. At least then I wasn’t going to have to balance keeping Rinaldo off my trail and Greco convinced I was on his side.

  It was the best option.

  “We’re going to leave,” I said definitively.

  *****

  Lia was pissed.

  I couldn’t really blame her. I’d told her basically nothing but demanded she put a few days’ worth of clothes in a bag and just follow me. I didn’t want Odin left on his own—the woman who usually took care of him when I was out of town worked for Moretti, and I didn’t want to risk anything coming out while we were gone, so I tossed him on top of a towel in the back of the car and took him to a dog-boarding kennel. I’d come back for him later.

  I drove my Audi up to the north side of the city and parked it outside a nightclub. Grabbing our bags out of the back of the car, I led a protesting Lia through the front entrance of the club, through the throbbing techno music, and then out the back door. Once out back, we made our way down a graffiti-covered alley between the buildings, across the street, and over to a small conference center where I called a cab to take us back south.

  I gave the driver an address, and he turned around to look at me.

  “That ain’t no place to be,” he said.

  “Look,” I replied, “I don’t have a shitload of patience right now, so here’s how this shit works. You drive me where I say, and I give you cash. Capisce?”

  He narrowed his eyes, said he was charging me double, and then made me pay up front before he’d drive us there. Under other circumstances, I would have put a gun to his head and told him to be happy if he got paid at all, but I had Lia with me, and I was doing my best not to scare her.

  A pissed-off Lia was definitely preferable to a scared one. As it was, she had completely stopped speaking to me about halfway to where I ditched the car, and she continued to sit next to me, looking out the window with her arms crossed over her chest and her lips smashed tightly together.

  I took a long breath and leaned back in the seat to relax a few minutes. I was rushing all of this, and I knew I hadn’t thought through everything. Not telling Lia why we were leaving was part of the problem as she was fighting me the whole way, but there was a lot more to it.

  I knew deep down that Trent wasn’t going to just let this shit go. He wouldn’t just come after me; it would end up being a countrywide manhunt. Any chance of having the charges against me dropped would disappear completely, and he’d probably come up with a few others to tack on. At best, we would have to live on the run, leave the country, and change our names.

  No doubt about it—I wasn’t thinking straight.

  Why?

  Because Lia was with me, and I didn’t want her scared or hurt.

  Rinaldo had been right—having a chick in your life complicated everything. It wasn’t worth it—not for me or for her. What I really needed to do was just take her to the airport so I could buy her a plane ticket back to her mom’s.

  The very thought brought the taste of bile to the back of my throat. If I wasn’t doing my very best thinking now, how much more rattled would I be if I hadn’t slept last night?

  Fuck the sleep.

  Waking up
with her—that had been worth the world to me.

  My eyes squeezed shut, and I shook my head sharply. I couldn’t cope with all this shit. I couldn’t even have named all the conflicting thoughts and emotions going on inside my head, let alone make sense of them. It was too complicated. It was too dangerous for both of us. I should definitely tell the cab driver to head west and buy her a plane ticket.

  I didn’t say a word but stared out the opposite window and hoped I’d be able to come up with some way of explaining all of this that didn’t end up with her leaving me.

  Chicago has some really beautiful areas to live in. Auburn Gresham isn’t one of them. Though it was one of the roughest places in a city littered with crime, it was exactly what I needed for the moment. Not only would it be difficult for the Feds to follow me around the area, but they'd also have to watch their own backs at the same time.

  The cab driver took his own sweet time getting there, and by the time we’d arrived near the address I’d given him, the sky was darkening. He dumped us on the corner, refusing to actually go up the block at night. I was tired of listening to the guy bitch, so I just got out where we were, Lia still in tow.

  “Are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on?” Lia asked as the cab sped away.

  “Not out here on the street,” I replied.

  We only had about two blocks to walk, but that’s all it took.

  Two dudes with hooded sweatshirts pulled down their foreheads and pants shagged down to show their striped boxers came at us from across the street. I felt Lia tense beside me, but I was nothing but annoyed.

  “I got me a damn fine idea,” the guy on the left said as he walked up and blocked our path. I reached out and pushed Lia slightly behind my back. “You give me all yo shit, and maybe my frien’ don’t cut yo bitch.”

  He reached down to yank up his pants and glanced over at his younger buddy. The other guy brandished a switchblade, which might have been scary to someone who hadn’t been around much larger knives. The knife-wielder moved his head back and forth like he was listening to some kind of phantom dance music. Other days I might have laughed, but I wasn’t in the mood for stupid gang shit. Moretti and Greco’s outfits had put them in their place plenty of times, and I was happy to do it again.