“Yes. And I want you to get there now. If she’s alive, we’ve got to find her.”
Teddy frowned. “But why, Pop?Whyis still my question! I didn’t understand why you were still fooling with her two years ago, and I sure as hell don’t know why she’s still so important to you now. And to Sal too. Behind you he’s the most powerful boss in this entire world, but he’s out personally searching for Cleo? ForCleo? What’s this lady got on y’all?”
Mick gave him an icy look. “Fly your ass to Vegas and join the search. Take Marco with you if you want to, but you go now. Sal’s got a lot of back channels, but so do you. And my preference is that you find her.”
“I find her? Over Sal?”
Mick didn’t answer that.
And that angered Teddy. “Okay, Pop.” He sat upright and was moving around in his chair. “You wanna play hardball? How about this ball?” He pointed at his father. “I’m not going toVegas and I’m not finding shit until you tell me what’s going on.” He hit his open hand on the desk. “How’s that for balls?”
Mick stared at Teddy. He had guts alright. He and Duke were two of the gutsiest people he knew. But their guts were bullshit compared to Mick’s. Because unlike them, Mick had no limits. At least none he would ever reveal to anybody. “Get to Vegas now. And find her.”
Teddy sometimes hated that he loved his father so much. He still couldn’t understand it. He was a totally absent father who only came around to fuck his mother and to give her cash to support him. But spending time with him, or with any of his other siblings from his other baby mamas back then? Never.
But yet they all loved him anyway. But why was Teddy still trying to help and impress his old man? What did he see in this impossible, cruel, vicious man that kept him by his side? Did his ass have daddy issues too like his half-sister Gloria? Was he that far gone?
But it didn’t matter. Teddy learned long ago that defying his father was a fool’s errand. All their knock-down, drag-out fights proved that. He stood up. “Anything else?”
“Don’t try to bring her back here. If you find her in Vegas, safe house her in Vegas and call me. We don’t want another ambush.”
This was insanity to Teddy. But he knew his father. There was always a method to his madness. “Anything else?”
“Just one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
Mick looked his son dead in his eyes. “Don’t drop your guard around her. Stay heavily armed.”
Teddy didn’t expect to hear that. And he knew it wasn’t idle talk. Which made that shit suddenly real to him. His father was telling him that Cleo Burgess was dangerous. And he was determined to find out why. “I never drop my guard,” he said.
But then he placed his hands in his pockets. “But this thing about her being alive. It can’t be true, can it, Pop? We saw when they shot her. We even doubled back.”
“Know what we didn’t see?” Mick asked.
Teddy was curious. “What?”
“Blood. We didn’t see blood.”
And as soon as he said it, Teddy remembered. There was no blood at the scene. Was that why his old man had stood there staring at the spot where she dropped two years ago? “But damn, Pop. If she’s alive, where has she been for two years?”
“Find her,” Mick said.
Now Teddy was as determined as ever. “I’ll find her,” he said, and left the office
As soon as the door closed, Mick couldn’t hold in his emotions any longer. He leaned his head back as his heart hammered as if it was going to explode. He even pressed his fist against his chest to try to slow it down. Because he still couldn’t believe it.Cleo was alive? Two years ago she didn’t die? He felt at the time that she might have been involved in that whole scene. But after all those men he had searching for her, and they found no clues whatsoever that led them to her or to those gunmen, he marked her for dead. But she was alive all that time? And never once got in touch with him? Why? What happened to her?
But before he could even digest the news about Cleo, not an hour later he got a call from another woman that tried men’s souls: Bella Caine.
Somebody broke into her Philadelphia condo while she was asleep, she claimed. And they left her a note.
But the ominous note, she said, was addressed to Mick.
He already had a headache. He didn’t need another one. But she was afraid. And the note had his name on it. He grabbedhis suitcoat from the back of his chair, put it on, and headed to Bella’s place.
CHAPTER THREE
In her red silk bathrobe, Bella let him into her luxurious Philadelphia condo and pointed to her coffee table. “It’s over there,” she said as she sashayed her hips in front of Mick.
