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Probably. But I didn’t have room in my head for the prim and proper brunette who hated all criminals, myself included—I’d made sure of that the last time we’d spoken.
“Even if I wanted to take it a little further with Heidi—which I don’t—she has no interest in pursuing any kind of relationship with a criminal.” Except the physical kind of relationship. She’d been more than willing to pursue that avenue. Willing and pliant and so goddamned wet.
Christ, I actually had to shake my head to banish the image.
“I’m done with this conversation, Aurelio.” Because stakeouts and hard-ons were like oil and water—they just didn’t fucking mix.
“Of course,Signor,” he relented, though I had no doubt the reprieve was only temporary.
Half an hour passed in blissful silence—no more unwelcome advice from Aurelio. But too much time was passing. If no one showed, then it could mean Antonio and his cousin, Brando, were full of shit. It didn’t make much sense, though, to tell me all about Bianchi and his whereabouts and then lie about this. And more than that, my gut was telling me we were on the right track.
So, it didn’t surprise me when fifteen minutes later, I heard Vito’s voice speaking into my earpiece.
“We’ve got movement, boss,” he informed me. “East side of the park, moving toward the benches.”
“Hang back,” I instructed. “I want to see what this guy does once he’s got what he came for.”
“Understood, boss.”
Since he was coming from the opposite side of the park from where I was standing, I moved in closer. Close enough to get a look at the guy with a pair of night vision binoculars as he reached down and picked up the scrap of paper from beneath the rock where Brando had left it.
The guy looked at the scrap of paper, pulled out his phone, and typed something before shoving it back into his pocket.
And that’s when the guy turned in my direction.
“Fuck,” I whispered under my breath as Vito’s voice cursed through the earpiece. He was seeing what I was seeing.
“It’s a kid, boss, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. What the hell is it with these assholes using goddamned kids to do their dirty work?” he hissed under his breath.
“Because these assholes think it buys them an extra layer of protection,” I replied. “They think we won’t torture them for intel.” And they weren’t entirely wrong. I don’t think even Aurelio could bring himself to unleash his skills on a child.
Aurelio was chuckling darkly beside me, though, shaking his head. “We won’t torture them, but the thing about adolescents is they’re all talk. It takes about thirty seconds to scare the piss out of them, and after that, the intel pretty much just flows out too.”
True as well. And quite the vivid picture.
But did we follow this kid and hope he led us to the bigger fish? Or pick him up and hope we could scare the fish right out of him?
The kid ripped up the scrap of paper, shoved it into his pocket with the cell phone, then turned to leave, heading in Vito’s direction.
“Stay with him, Vito,” I told him, my decision made. Because the thing about kids was that the grown-ups didn’t often entrust them with a whole lot of intel.
“You got it, boss.”
“Come on, old man,” I said to Aurelio, motioning back the way we’d come. “I want to catch up with Vito and see where this little shit leads us.”
It wasn’t long before we were pulling up behind Vito’s Porsche outside a shitty apartment building.
“There he goes,” Vito said as the kid walked into the building.
I watched, waiting to see a light come on in one of the apartment windows. After a moment, a bulb flickered dimly in one first-floor window.
“All right, let’s take a look,” I said, moving in while keeping an eye out for trouble from all around us.
Up close, I could see through the kid’s half-open blinds that his unit was a bachelor apartment. There wasn’t much furniture in it, and certainly nowhere anyone else could be hiding. The kid was already sprawled out on the ratty brown sofa.
“We’ll wait five, then I’ll go inside,” I said. “Stay here, Vito, and let me know if the kid wakes up.”
Vito nodded, and precisely five minutes later, I took off toward the building’s front door. Though it had no lock, I paused outside it, turning back to face Aurelio who’d remained with me for some reason.
