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“You’re pissing me off,” Archer inserts before I can unholster my weapon. “Banks is here because I called him. And we had Vallejo’s casket exhumed already. The body inside does not belong to a sixty-something-year-old gangster.”
“Alright. Well…” Felix selects a cigarette and closes the cardboard packaging with slow, deliberate movements. “So the dude faked his death five years ago. He’s been underground ever since, until this week.” He looks to Rory, as though for confirmation. “Right?”
“Seems that way. And please don’t smoke in here.”
Stunned, Felix looks down at his unlit cigarette, then back up to the woman who would dare challenge him. “What?”
“My mother died of cancer about…” She leans in her seat to check the clock on the far wall. “I don’t know. A few hours ago. The cancer she had was not caused by tobacco. However, call me overly cautious.” She flashes a savage smile that is a hundred percent a warning. “I do not wish to witness that kind of death ever again. Put the cigarettes away, or I’ll leave this room. Your choice, Mr. Malone.”
“Mr. Malone.” He looks to Archer and smirks. “She called me Mr. Malone.”
“Great.” He pushes up from his chair, stalks toward his brother, and snatches the offending smokes away, crushing the lot in his fist. “Use your contacts, Lix. Find us Vallejo. Then we can make a move and neutralize the guns pointing toward the girl.”
* * *
“Have you heard anything yet?” Violet Fuller cries on the other end of the line, her tears enough to make my gut ache, and the hitching of her breath makes my heart stutter. The longer this case goes on and the more leaks we have in our investigation, the messier this all gets. “Gord’s face is all over the news now, Drake. His old service records. His funeral.” She sobs, albeit, quietly. “They’re like vultures and want to revisit everything I’ve worked really hard to shield Tilly from the past five years.”
“I’m working on it.” I stalk through Malone’s mansion and check everything is locked. Every window is secure. Every door is impenetrable. Every single entry and exit point is covered. “I swear, Vi, I’m working really hard to put this one away.”
“Have you figured out what’s going on?” she sniffles. “How could this have happened after five years of peace?”
“I don’t know.” I start upstairs but slow to glance through the window at the second-story landing. The window overlooks the front of the house and reveals the grounds filled with lush gardens and thick trees, non-coincidentally shielding the home from anyone who might arrive unannounced. The Malones know what it is to have enemies, just as they’re aware of a man’s desire to protect their private space. The gardens look pretty, but it would be foolish to think of them only as something beautiful to look at.
A bit like Aurora, I think.
“Drake?” Violet continues to cry. “Anything?”
“The detectives are working to find him.” Turning away from the window and starting along the hall, I lower my voice. “They’re pulling strings on all their contacts,”like the fucking mafia, “and hope to smoke him out soon. He’s just a man, Vi. A human being as vulnerable as the rest of us. He’s hiding right now, and hehadthe upper hand for as long as we thought him dead. That gave him the benefit of setting up a box to hide in, but that’s all ending soon. There are too many of us looking now. Too many with connections in a world he can no longer hide in.”
“What about the cops who ran the case before?” she croaks. “You can’t just say a man is dead, and sign paperwork and have it be a lie. What happens to them?”
“Iwas the cop who ran it before,” I murmur. “And others on my team. It wasn’t us who were dirty on this one, Vi. The medical examiner was bought off, which is how another man’s body was placed in Vallejo’s box.”
“So what happens tohim?” she demands impatiently. “Will he get in trouble?”
“He’s already dead,” I sigh, slowing as I come closer to Rory’s room. I don’t want her to hear me. I don’t want her to know I’m close yet. So I turn again and head back to the top of the stairs. “He was murdered in his home a couple of years ago. Another loose end tied up.”
“I just…” She breaks down as I cut her off at every angle. “I don’t understand why he faked his death, killed anyone who knew differently, lived five years in peace, and now he’s back and noisy as hell. He’s on the hourly news, Drake!”
“I don’t know either.” Taking a seat at the top of the stairs, I scrub my free hand across my face and give myself a one-minute limit. That’s it, before I’m hanging up and going to Rory. “We’re doing our best to figure it out, okay? Violet?” I press when she doesn’t respond. “I promise.”
Her breath hitches with anguish. “Okay.”
“Keep Tilly close, alright?” I slide my hand up through my hair. “I doubt you’re in danger. You’re not a loose end, and he’s had five years to hunt you down in secret if he wanted to. But maybe you could pack up anyway and head to your sister’s for a bit until we tie this up?”
“You want us to leave our home?” she rasps. “The one safe and consistent place my daughter has ever known. You want me to uproot her for god knows how long and wait for you to close a case we thought was over half a decade ago?”
I exhale a frustrated breath and drop my elbows to my knees. I let my head dangle and my eyes close. “Just tell her you’re going on vacation to Aunty Gene’s. Tilly doesn’t have to know any different.”
“He’s on the news!” she barks viciously. “We can’t turn around without seeing Vallejo on our screens. And when it’s not his face they’re showing, it’s Gord’s. Or other men who died fighting that war. It’s prime time news now, Drake. And it’s sending me insane.”
“So maybe go to the lake house.”
I jump in fright when gentle hands touch my shoulders, and spin with my fist cocked when I feel breath on the side of my face. But I stop and stare into Rory’s kaleidoscope eyes. The blue, and gold, and brown, and green, all sparkling in the low light as the day ends and night fights to swallow us up.
Her long, brown hair dangles over her shoulders and onto mine, and though she should be afraid—of the men hunting her, and of the fist I so easily could have slammed against her face—she brings a hand up instead and wraps her palm around it.
She defuses the threat, pressing a gentle kiss to my knuckles instead.
