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“Be safe, Greta,” Vito said and kissed me on the top of the head.
He never called me nicknames. That was probably because when he’d called me “trottolina”—a little spinning top—when I was eleven years old, I’d started calling him the same name right back. I don’t think that impressed him.
Vito and Paolo had just pulled out of the lot when my phone rang. Gabe’s phone number flashed across the screen.
“Everything okay?” I asked the moment I answered because things had a tendency to not be okay pretty quickly these days.
“Everything’s fine. I thought you could use a little good news for a change.”
Yeah, that would be a nice change. “What’s up?”
“I just wanted to let you know that I talked to Nacio, and he offered to do a little digging from his end. He’s going to see if he can find out anything about where Domínguez might be stashing his prisoners.”
I blinked, like maybe I’d tuned into the wrong channel, because good news really was something that came along seldom. When I opened my eyes, though, it still looked like the same channel.
“Grazie, amico. That is good news.”
I didn’t envy whoever Nacio found to interrogate, though. Javier Domínguez didn’t have anything on what that man could do when he got creative.
“All right, I’ll let you get on with it,amica.Have a good time with Brute.”
“You do realize this is business,si?”
Gabe laughed. “And since when did you ever mind mixing business with pleasure?”
Well, true. In my opinion, it never hurt to slip in some pleasure wherever you could.
For now, though… “Ciao, Gabe.”
I hung up the phone as Brute rounded up his crew.
“All right, you know the drill, boys. No packing in the truck. The rest of you—one gun, that’s it. Don’t want to give anyone reason to go searching things we don’t want searched.”
He turned to me as Paolo and Vito pulled out of the parking lot. “Two prospects will ride a few miles ahead the whole way. They’ll act as scouts and let us know if they spot trouble. We’ve got plenty of alternative routes mapped out along the way, just in case.”
“Perfetto,” I admitted a little grudgingly.
I was still pissed, but there was no denying Brute had his operation locked down well. I couldn’t think of a thing I would have done differently. Impressive.
Chapter Eight
Brute
The ceiling of my motel room hadn’t moved. Not once in the past two hours I’d been staring up at it. It hadn’t done any tricks either, and yet, here I was, staring up at the fucking thing.
Sleep just wasn’t coming.
I heaved a sigh, swung my legs off the ridiculously small bed—double-size bed, my ass—and grabbed the pack of smokes off the night table.
The plan was to have a couple smokes on the step outside the motel, but when I got out there, Greta was sitting on her step a few doors over, her long legs stretched out in front of her, staring up at the stars.
I lit up a smoke and sauntered toward her.
“Can’t sleep, darling?” I asked, sitting down next to her.
She turned her head enough to glare up at me. “Just restless, I guess.”
I chuckled. “Crossing five states in one day will do that to you.”
