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“Speaking of Alfaro, what was the hocus pocus stuff all about?”
Harley picked up the fork and dug into the egg omelet. She offered him a forkful first before speaking. Dante opened his mouth. His taste buds burst with the delicious flavors.
“What hocus pocus?”
“The disappearing smoke your friend had in her balloons. I haven’t seen it since,” he paused pushing his food around in his mouth.
Harley’s shoulders perked up, “Since when?”
“Since I visited the magic show when I was a kid.”
For a second Dante thought he saw a flash of disappointment across her face. Harley’s shoulders deflated. He reached out to caress one and the false smile she offered did not reach her eyes. “Something wrong?”
“No, not at all,” she dipped her fork for a bite for herself.
They ate the rest of their breakfast in silence. Dante noted that Harley liked the bacon the best, a girl after his own heart. With docking coming up, they both agreed they needed to at least shower. Harley offered him to go first. He reluctantly went without her. Under the spray of the water, he recalled his night with Harley. This would technically be his second night with her and he still hadn’t tired of her.
What did it mean? He could hear his supervisor’s, Cole Wentworth’s, wife. Rosalind Wentworth was a romantic at heart. She’d try to convince Dante he was in love. Would being in love with Harley be so bad? It had been policy to not share what one did for a living under the Special Tasks Bureau. He witnessed firsthand how it destroyed Cole and Rosalind’s marriage. In the end, the truth brought them together. Dante did not want to wait for ten years to pass to be sure. He had a hunch and he planned on sticking with it. He liked Harley. She certainly kept him on his toes. Dante lathered and rinsed the shampoo out of his hair. Washing the soap off his bearded face he scrubbed the hard hairs and wondered if Harley preferred the smooth look or the wolf look, as Jane would call it.
After washing himself clean, he pulled the curtain back and fought against the urge to run out and see her again. That would be dorky, right? The water in the tub finished draining with a glug, leaving the sound of the television on in the bedroom. Did she like to watch the news while drinking her morning coffee like he did?
“I left you some,” he stopped his announcement on the hot water the minute he opened the door to the bathroom he realized it had happened again. She’d left him. “Damn.”
Chapter 8
This time Harley did not leave Dante in the dark on purpose. They’d spent the morning and afternoon wrapped in their sheets enjoying each other’s bodies, giving in only when they took a break for a shower. Harley suggested Dante take one first, to give herself some time to recuperate, and while he sang a few bars of Paradise City, Tai ran into the room and pulled her out, no questions asked.
Hannah Tomasello used the opportunity of her distracted aunt to slip off in one of the emergency boats—something Tai would have discovered had
her alarm system not been hijacked. Being so close to shore Tai did not want to wait for Dante to finish showering. Hannah had a half a day on them. Harley understood and took a quick whore’s bath and changed into a pair of black Capri pants and a black and white tank top.
“Is she so stupid she thought we wouldn’t catch her?” Harley asked, propping her foot on the dashboard of Tai’s jeep to tie her black low top shoes.
On a cloudless day like today, the vacationers were out in full force. The docks were loaded with boaters and beaches filled with tanners. Tai docked her small emergency lifeboat on the import side in the Gustavo Marina. Tai always kept a cheap vehicle in various cities where she docked and spent time. They sped through the cobblestone streets, to get to the causeway that would take them to where the Tomasello beach home stood. Colorful buildings passed by in a blur. The city reflected the homeland of the island of Puerto Rico. Many of its residents were first or sixth generations. Harley’s mother had loved coming to Villa San Juan when she couldn’t get the chance to go back home.
Harley counted the new hotels since she’d last been here. Old and new and most importantly, all filled. The city boomed, not just during the summer, but the rest of the year as well. Many people made the northwest island their home. Children attended Villa San Juan school system from kindergarten to twelfth grade. “Stupid is someone disabling an alarm system,” Tai said drolly in the driver’s seat of the broken down green jeep. Silver electrical tape held together the stuffing of the padded weather-worn seats. An old Big Punisher cassette tape fell to the sandy floor mat as she maneuvered a sharp corner.
“Are you blaming me?”
“This is your little husband’s fault. He cut my alarm wires.”
Harley grinned sheepishly and looked out at the view of the blue green water. The causeway curved out over the water. One direction brought folks to the beach, and the other back home. Local boats lined up under the bridge to enter the harbor to begin their summer vacations. It had been ages since she’d been on the bridge doing the same thing with her family. As a child she counted down her school days until her parents vacationed here. She hated the long trek over the bridge but her frugal parents refused to buy a boat. They saw no purpose in investing in a boat and paying rent for a marina slip when they could easily make the drive. If they had a boat, Harley imagined all the things she and Dante would do on it and not have to worry about noise level. The ache in her body brought a smile to her lips.
“He’s not little.”
“Ugh,” Tai’s upper lip curled, “I suppose not. The oaf owes me a new system.”
“I’m sure STB can pay for it,” Harley hummed.
“Speaking of, I heard from Makana,” Tai sped past the connection to the Héctor Lavoe Bridge, the bridge linking island town to the state of Florida. “She would not mind us picking up Leonardo Marchette ourselves.”
Harley raised a brow. Makana never suggested a capture. She gave orders off of her given orders. Harley wondered if the coincidence had anything to do with the team she worked with before. Her mind scrolled the date on the Leonardo Marchette file. He wasn’t exactly out of their jurisdiction, since being a part of STB meant they did a little bit of this and a little bit of that. One of the good things about working for STB, the government did not care who made the arrest as long as a perp was taken off the streets.
Harley had the picture from Dante’s phone burned into her mind. After what happened at Alfaro’s, he may have caught wind of them. She was sure he hadn’t picked up on her scent but then again the day wasn’t over. Surely this man knew Dante and that made this mission more dangerous for him—and Hannah.
“What’s up with this guy? Mafia?”
“He’s bad news,” Harley nodded. “Think spoiled son of New York Cosa Nostra with a borderline sociopath personality,” said Harley with a whistle. The hairs on the back of her neck rose in remembering the grizzly photographs she took. “The twisted kind of bad. I photographed some of his handy work smeared on the road. It was Hannah’s fiancé’s brother.”
