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Like I’ve committed a crime.
Like I’ve helped to save a boy’s life.
Like the man I’d been sleeping with has suddenly turned to stone.
“I don’t know,” I said when no answer seemed to summarize the mass of emotions roiling inside me.
She nodded. “That sounds about right.”
“Does it? Nothing about this feels right.”
“When we get to the Lucianos, I can stay to keep an eye on him,” she offered. “You don’t have to get any more involved than you already are.”
I’d helped them abscond with a patient; I’d stolen narcotics from the hospital. “I think my walking away now would be of little consequence.”
I looked down at the boy, slack-jawed in sleep, then back to Raven.
“Was he really in danger?” I asked, still baffled that someone could not only shoot the child but then come back to finish the job.
“Si,” Raven replied without hesitation.
I turned to look at Grayson Thomas once more, the fuzz-like hair across his jaw, the heavy spattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks. According to his chart, he was fourteen years old, not sixteen. Just a boy, barely an adolescent.
“I’ll stay with him,” I said, fighting the strange urge to brush the messy mop of hair off his forehead. Raven nodded and settled back comfortably against the wall.
I couldn’t have said how much time had passed when the truck came to a stop and the vibrations beneath me ceased. According to Raven, we’d reached the Lucianos’ estate, a place to which I’d never expected to return.
If time had stood still in the truck, then it raced by in a flash now.
The rear door of the truck opened and two men appeared, taking hold of the boy’s gurney and whisking him out of the truck and into the massive estate. A hand appeared to help me out, but it wasn’t Amadeo’s hand; it was Vito’s. He helped me down, then offered his assistance to Raven who waved him off and jumped down the few feet to the ground, grinning at him a bit like a precocious child. I had a feeling there was a history between these two.
My gaze flitted toward the house. I’d tried to run from here not long ago, and some part of me felt the same potent urge now, but I stood awkwardly still, my gaze going back and forth between Raven and Vito until Amadeo appeared from around the side of the truck.
He wore the same expressionless mask, but when he looked right at me, there was something very troubled in his eyes.
“I have business to tend to, Heidi; go with Raven,” he said, motioning toward the house.
With that, he turned away, effectively putting an end to the conversation.
I watched as he shook hands with Nico Costa, then motioned for Vito to follow him back to his own car, parked behind the cargo truck.
A hand touched my shoulder from behind, and I spun around.
“Come on,” Raven said, motioning toward the door where the two men had gone inside with my patient. “Let’s get the kid settled.” She looked over at Amadeo and Vito, her lips set in a grim line. “I have a feeling they’re going to be a while.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Amadeo
“He’s still unconscious, boss,” Vito said as he reached into the trunk of my car and heaved out the asshole we’d stashed in there.
“Bene.Get him inside,per favore.Aurelio will be here shortly.”
Vito nodded and shifted the guy over his shoulder.
“Tell Giovanni to have Antonio Verdi meet me in the basement. I want to see if he recognizes thiscodardo.”
“You got it, boss,” he said, then headed inside with the asshole draped over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. As he went, I breathed out a sigh and shook my head. Two more minutes, and the kid would have been dead. Raven and I walking in when we did had to have been pure fucking dumb luck.
