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He tapped his cellphone against his knee.
He needed somebody who could bypass all the legitimate channels through which information flowed. Somebody who knew how to get information no one else could get…
“Caleb Wilde,” he said softly.
He had done background checks on all the Wildes.
Jake, the rancher, had been a fearless helicopter pilot who’d spit in the face of a cowardly superior officer, done what he knew was his duty and returned home a hero in the eyes of everyone but himself.
Travis, the financial genius, had been a hotshot who’d flown jets and had never met a situation he couldn’t control until he fell in love with a dying woman.
Caleb, the lawyer, had originally been recruited into a government agency so secret that only a handful of people high in the D.C. power structure knew of its existence, let alone its alphabet soup name.
Over breakfast, he’d overheard Matteo and Travis swapping quick stories about their siblings.
One of Travis’s stories had involved Jennie, the wife he obviously adored, and the miracles his brothers had done for him and for her.
Jennie had been sick, he’d said. Dying. But she’d lived, and it was because of them.
Jake’s connections with other wounded warriors had led them to a cure.
“But that was useless, unless we found Jennie. She’d run away, see, and…” Travis had cleared his throat. “Caleb found her. Nobody else could have done it so fast, but Caleb had all the right contacts and he located her in less time that it takes to tell the story.”
Luca narrowed his eyes.
Caleb was the man he needed.
But to ask a favor of his half-brother, of a man he still could not think of without a quick rush of anger…
Besides, this wasn’t a life or death situation.
This was simply a situation in which a woman dressed for a glittery party rather than the sometimes mean streets of the city was almost certainly out there on her own, heading in any one of a hundred different directions, and all because he’d been so fixated on getting even with her for what she’d done that morning that he’d behaved like a heartless fool.
Luca turned on his phone, brought up his contact list, found Caleb’s number and tapped it.
* * *
Caleb answered on the first ring.
Luca could hear a woman’s voice in the background, and the sound of a crying baby.
“Yes?” Caleb said, a little impatiently.
“Caleb. It’s Luca. Luca Bellini.”
“I know that. Your name came up on my screen. Listen, Bellini, if this is about your findings—”
“What findings?”
“The property you checked out for Travis. Sweetwater Ranch? You might want to talk with him. Or with the McKenna woman’s lawyer. See, I’m not her—”
“It isn’t about the ranch.”
The baby’s cries escalated.
“Bellini. Luca. Look, I’m kind of busy here…”
“It’s about the woman,” Luca said. “Cheyenne McKenna. I need her address.”
Silence. Even the baby’s screams stopped.
“I don’t understand.”
Luca could feel his face burning.
“I can’t explain. I mean, I could, but…” He took a deep breath. Exhaled slowly. “We had a, uh, a falling out. She, uh, she walked away. It’s late and it’s not safe for her to be alone.”
“A falling out? At Sweetwater? You’re still there?”
Cristo, why had he thought this was a good idea?
“Bellini? Where are you?”
“In Manhattan. So is she.”
The baby’s cries began again. “Shh, sweetheart,” Luca could hear a woman say. “I know teething hurts, but—”
“What I mean,” Luca continued, “is that we bumped into each other. At a party. We quarreled… Look, I don’t have time to go into details. We had an argument, okay? I told my driver to take her home, but that didn’t happen and now I’m concerned because she’s out there, alone at this hour and—and—and—” Hell. Another breath. Another expulsion of air. “If I give you her phone number,” he said grimly, “would you be able to get her address for me? Would you be willing to do that?”
This time, the silence was absolute.
At first, he wondered if Caleb had heard him. Then, he wondered if he’d heard him and hung up.
“Never mind,” he said, just in case Caleb was still on the line. “I never should have—”
“What’s the number?”
Luca shut his eyes with relief and rattled it off.
“I’ll get back to you in ten minutes.”
In the end, it took five. Caleb phoned, gave him the address, wished him luck…and, mercifully, asked no other questions.
“I owe you,” Luca said stiffly.
If they’d had a video connection, he’d have seen Caleb grinning.
“Yeah, dude, you do. Someday, I’ll want the whole story.”
Upset as he was, Luca barked a laugh.
“Don’t hold your breath,” he said, and after quickly running Cheyenne’s address through his head and becoming even more concerned when he realized how far downtown she lived, he instructed Aldo to head south. “Slowly,” he added, and hoped against hope that she had, by some miracle, found a way to get home without making the journey on foot.
* * *
He had almost despaired of finding her when, suddenly, he spotted her just passing under a street lamp.
“There she is,” he said sharply. “Pull over.”
Aldo turned the wheel hard toward the curb.
She’d gotten much further than he’d anticipated. He supposed, from her point of view, that was the good news.
The bad was that she’d left the glitzy upper realm of the east side behind and she was now walking through what he suspected a realtor would call a transitional commercial area.
Her pace was steady and brisk, head high, arms swinging as if there were nothing unusual in a woman wearing what was probably a five thousand dollar evening gown going for a solitary nighttime stroll.
That she’d made good time was at least partly because she’d taken off the lethal stilettos. They dangled by their straps from her left hand.
The street was not crowded.
There were only a few pedestrians, and none gave her more than a curious glance. Only tourists were ever naïve enough to stare. New Yorkers wouldn’t have made eye contact with Saint Peter and a choir of angels on a Manhattan street.
Evidently, there were only New Yorkers walking here tonight.
Cheyenne was fine.
Angry—Luca could tell that from the imperious angle of her chin. Determined—her stride assured
him of that. But untouched, as far as he could see. No bruises. No signs that she’d had to struggle with predators.
Even as the thought went through his mind, a posse of men materialized from a dark doorway a few yards ahead.
Cheyenne saw them; Luca could tell because her steps faltered, but only for a second. Then she quickened her pace.
Aldo was maneuvering the Mercedes into a tight parking space. Luca was not about to wait. He flung his door open.
“Cheyenne!”
Either she didn’t hear him or she’d decided to ignore him. He shouted her name again, hurried out of the car and onto the sidewalk.
The men spread themselves in a lazy line ahead of her. There were eight of them. Cristo, eight!
Cheyenne kept moving.
“Hey, baby,” one of them said. Another made a smacking sound with his lips.
Cheyenne showed uncertainty for the very first time. Her steps slowed; her spine stiffened. Her gaze raked the line and Luca knew she was searching for a way around or through it.
He also knew that there was none.
“Cheyenne,” he said quietly.
“Cheyenne,” one man said. “What kind of fuckin’ name is that?”
The others laughed.
Luca did a quick assessment. They were in their early twenties, and they were big. They were also drunk. Or high. Maybe both. Even at a distance, he could smell beer and weed.
“Cheyenne,” he repeated. “Come to me.”
“Ooh, Cheyenne,” another man said in a mincing voice, “ooh, baby! Come to me.”
They laughed again, and closed into a loose semi-circle around her.
Luca could feel his adrenaline pumping. He moved toward her.
“Get behind me,” he said in a low voice.
She flashed him a look that suggested he was crazy even to suggest it.
“Dammit, woman, get behind me!”
Cheyenne switched one of the stilettos to her right hand. She held it with the long, sharp heel extended, brandishing it the way Luca had seen men in Sicily hold knives when they were ready to fight.
“One of you fuckers takes another step,” she said, “you’ll wish you were never born.”
“Oooh,” the men said, in mock terror.
“The lady’s gonna kill us.”
“Yeah. With her shoe.”
The comments drew snickers of laughter.
