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“Go get dressed,” Rafe tells me, “I’ll see when we can take off for Costa Rica.”
I can’t make my way back to my bedroom fast enough. Adrenaline is pumping through me all over again at the news that my brother is in a hospital. I throw on the clothes I had on me when I was first kidnapped and wait anxiously for Rafe to come. Minutes pass. I pace my room. All I can think about is Peter. How badly is he hurt? What kind of gunfight was he in? Rafe didn’t mention Peter getting shot, so I hope that’s the case. And what happened to Peter’s girlfriend, Gigi?
After an hour has passed, there’s finally a knock at the door. But it turns out to be James, the young server from the pool. He wheels in lunch, but I have no appetite. I ask him if he knows where Rafe is.
“Rafe wanted me to let you know that he’s going to be busy with Alessandro for a while.”
I pale. I do and don’t want to know what that involves.
Time moves agonizingly slowly. When Rafe finally shows up, I pepper him with questions, “So are we able to go see my brother soon? How bad is the concussion? And is Gigi okay?”
“Your brother appears to have suffered some memory loss from the concussion, otherwise he would have been discharged earlier. As for his girlfriend, she was transferred to a hospital in the city of San Jose. She was shot but is in stable condition and expected to recover.”
His words hit me with the force of a mallet. She was shot?
“Are you sure?” I ask. “How do you know this?”
“My guy does good investigative work. He used to be CIA.”
I start to shake. Rafe leads me to the sofa and has me sit down. Going over to the lunch cart that James left behind, he pours me a cup of hot tea, but my hands are shaking too much to hold anything.
Gigi was shot. Oh my God.
“We can leave for my jet in half an hour,” Rafe says. “Are you sure you’re up to this? When your brother improves, I can have him transferred stateside.”
I look at him gratefully even though he’s probably offering for his own reasons, like wanting Peter to cough up the Morelli. “I want to see him as soon as possible,” I say before jumping to my feet. “I don’t have a passport!”
Rafe smiles. “That’s an easy thing to take care of.”
I guess for a hotshot criminal mastermind like Rafe, forging a passport is small potatoes.
He looks over at the lunch. “Have something to eat. I’ll be back in half an hour.”
I pick at the salad with miso-glazed salmon, not because I’m hungry, but because I’m worried there will be consequences if I don’t do as Rafe says.
“Did you have something to eat?” he asks me when he returns.
I nod.
He looks over at the lunch. “You didn’t eat very much.”
“I’m too nervous to have much of an appetite,” I reply.
He doesn’t push it. “My car is ready.”
While we sit in his oversized SUV, with Chung in the front passenger seat, my body can’t stay still and alternates between sitting up straight and leaning back, crossing and uncrossing my legs, turning to look out the window, turning to face front.
I’m sure Rafe notices every fidgety move. He covers my hand with his, surprising me with the empathetic gesture, though a part of me had always suspected he wasn’t one hundred percent cold-blooded gangster.
“Who shot Gigi?” I ask, hoping local law enforcement have the perpetrator in custody.
“A hitman hired by Alessandro.”
I close my eyes. I should have trusted my instincts with Alessandro. “How do you know he was behind it?”
“Your brother and the hitman were in an altercation, fighting for the gun. The hitman was shot and also taken to the hospital in San Jose. My investigator questioned him there. And Alessandro confirmed it.”
“He did?”
