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“I am.”
“Take us there.
Gia pulls the keys to the armored Explorer from the hallway closet.
I raise an eyebrow. “What are you expecting?”
“Hell,” she says clearly.
My heart sinks.
Silently, we walk to the garage and get into the vehicle. She turns it on and into the drive, and in the darkness, we begin.
“Gia. How do you know where she is?” I whisper when we’re in the car.
She glances back at Sal and Nico. Sal inclines his head slightly, then turns to Nico, pointing something out on his holster.
I get the impression that Sal is trying to distract my left-hand man, and I frown.
Why would that be necessary?
“She was in a closet,” Gia says in Italian, clearly trying to keep this between us, as Nico does not speak Italian. “She saw hunting clothes and boots with mud on them. The mud was fresh enough that it was someone who walked in them recently, which tracks with the MacAntyre stalking through the woods to get her. She described a marsh violet stuck to the boot.”
“It’s too early for flowers,” I murmur back in Italian.
“Not in a specific lake’s microclimate.”
I still. “What?”
“Notoriously, Early Bird Lake has the very first blooms of spring. Marsh violets have been known to appear there nearly a month before anywhere else in the state.”
“So, the house is at Early Bird Lake?” The lake is a mere thirty-minute drive from my home. That bastard was under my nose this whole time.
And I suspected nothing.
She nods. “There’s only one registered hunter in the neighborhood around Early Bird Lake.”
“Why would he be registered?”
She glares at me. “Do you think anyone would be stupid enough to be brought in for illegal hunting if they’re the leader of a gang?”
“How did you know they’d be the actual owner of the house?”
She shrugs. “That was a guess.”
“Gia!”
“There was a registered hunter on the lake. It’s a guess. But it’s a damn good one.”
I send up a prayer.Please, Mary mother of God, let Gia be right.
“She’s right,” Sal says in Italian from behind us.
I can sense Nico bristling, but I answer in Italian as well. “How do you know?”
“Gia has never been wrong.”
I don’t disagree with that.
