“Like the musketeers,” Angelo said. “You guys like spaghetti? I can make us dinner in our dorm room tonight.” He’d been excited to find out their rooms had a small kitchenette and he planned to make the most of it.
“I can’t cook to save my life,” Jared laughed as he joined Angelo and Thad.
“Don’t worry, I can,” Angelo assured them. Just like that… he was home… or almost home.
His stomach twisted with nerves as he opened the door to his restaurant for the first time and thought of how proud his grandmother would be. He’d hugged his uncle Luigi, and they had polished off an entire bottle of wine after the closing of the restaurant’s opening night.
A blur of other memories all sped up quickly before they stopped at one memory. One face.
Her face… She was a flame flickering defiantly in the eye of a storm. Kara.
Her silken hair against his fingers, the pedals of her lips soft against his own, her blue eyes full of grief and yet when she smiled? It was rare and precious, and he managed to make her smile more and more… Shadows of them played like an old movie before him. They spun and danced, bodies touching, mouths whispering words that held the power to turn any dream into reality… sparkling glitter rained down around them… Kara in his arms, in his bed… in his heart.
“You are a giver, Angelo…” his Nonna’s voice drifted up to the fading memories… the last thing to reach him as darkness closed in.
“You are a giver… but even givers must fight.”
Pain shot through his chest like a bolt of lightning that seemed to have blasted down from the heavens themselves, striking his heart.
“Come on… breathe!” A harsh shout close by… Another blow of agony to his chest.
Agony… air… water…It all blurred together as Angelo jerked and suddenly he was rolled onto his side as water expelled itself from his lungs.
“About damn time…” someone growled. “I thought you given up.”
He knew that voice. How did he know it?
Asher.The name drifted across Angelo’s pain-fogged mind.
“Come on… let’s get you up.” Hands pulled Angelo to sit up, and his eyes opened. Fresh, stabbing in his hands made him flinch, and he realized he’d been laying on a bed of rocks on the bank.
“What… happened?” His voice was a choked rasp.
“You drowned for a minute,” Asher said. “I couldn’t find you right away. I dove down to the car but you weren’t inside. With the storm, the water visibility is shit.” Asher was sitting besidehim, wiping water off his face. Angelo was drenched, and his body shuddered with the cold as a stiff wind cut across his body.
He was alive. He’d made it out of the car. Kara and he could?—
Kara wasn’t there.
“Where’s Kara?” His voice was still hoarse as he glanced around the embankment. He spotted the lights of Asher’s SUV which was parked right on the edge ,and they cut across the night sky. Surely she was in Asher’s vehicle warming up. But he didn’t see any movement inside.
“Gone.” Asher coughed, got to his feet and held out a hand to Angelo who took it and let Asher pull them up.
“Gone? What the fuck do you mean ‘gone’?” Angelo choked on his own words, and started coughing again.
“Gone, but not lost.” The personal protection specialist said as he whipped out his phone and turned on an app showing Angelo the screen. “She made it out of the water just as I got here. She told me you were still underwater. When I got you out of the lake, I realized she was gone. I was tracking the both of you. Just like we planned. And I’m still tracking her now.” He pointed to a red dot labeled ‘Kara’ that was swiftly moving.
“We’ve got to go.”
Asher turned to climb the rocks back up the road, and Angelo followed him. They had agreed that if Kara decided to run, Angelo would go with her. Asher was supposed to track them and watch for Cormac to make his movie. They both knew Cormac would strike at some point and they would finally have their showdown as Asher had called it; but the plan hadn’t worked exactly like they’d hoped.
Kara was gone.
“What do you think happened?” Angelo asked.
“I think they grabbed her while I was in the lake with you. We aren’t far behind based on the tracking signal. We just need to get the car and catch up.”
Angelo felt so damned weak but he moved on pure adrenaline as he reached the top of the bank and saw Asher’s SUV.
