Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(149)

Sean had come to the same conclusion in the living room. They met at the couch. Michael Ranieri was stretched out behind the couch, a hole in his forehead, blood fanned on the wall behind him. Don Gaetano was dead, too. His eyes stared up, blank.

They eased Petrie off of Zia Rosa, brushing the shards of glass off the white leather so they could slide the wounded man to lie full length on the couch cushions. Zia looked fine, underneath him. Wild-eyed, gulping for breath, but not hit. Petrie had taken the bullet for her. Amazingly, it hadn’t gone right through him and into Zia. Maybe it had bounced off one of his ribs.

Kev ripped open Petrie’s shirt and hissed with dismay. Big hole, leaking fast. Sucking sound at each labored breath. The bullet had punctured his lung. He was conscious, eyes open, teeth gritted. Sean was digging into his kit, yanking things out.

“I told you that habit of yours was dangerous,” Kev said. “The curiosity thing.”

Petrie flashed him an eloquent look.

“Zia, call the ambulance for him,” he told her.

Zia grabbed her purse, smeared with Petrie’s blood, and dug for her phone. She gabbled into it, giving shrill orders to the emergency dispatcher. He left her to it, and he and Sean worked over Petrie together.

The first flush of adrenaline was easing down, and under it was grief, fury, frustration. The only people whonown the name and location of the f*cker who held Bruno were all dead.

“Goddamnit,” he exploded. “Just a name, before that bitch started shooting. Just a goddamn name, that was all I asked!”

“Calm down,” Sean said quietly, his hands busy.

“Why? How can I? That’s it!” he snarled. “The last thread I had to grab on to. I have no other trace! None! What the f*ck do I do now?”

“You’ve got her,” Sean said, jerking his chin over his shoulder, toward the bound woman lying in the foyer.

“The bitch is useless, Sean! These f*cking nutcases self-destruct! She’ll rip her own tongue out or explode in my face if I start to lean on her!”

“Having hysterics will not help,” Sean said, taping the bandage into place. “We have her. We’ll use her. We’ll think of something, we’ll improvise. Christ, I hope that ambulance hurries up. I’ve done everything that I can.” He looked around. “Say, where’s your crazy Zia?”

“Oh, f*ck. No.” Kev looked around the ravaged room. No Zia. “I’ll go track her down.”

He sprinted through the first floor. Formal dining room, enormous kitchen, breakfast nook. Teak-paneled personal office. Huge game room, with pool and Ping-Pong tables. Swimming pool behind the house. No Zia Rosa.

Back through the foyer. He leaped over the bound female shooter, who panted motionless on the floor, and sped up the curving staircase.

He found Zia in the master bedroom, which was white and gold and pink, full of baroque swirling like the frosting on a cake. A room fit for a Hollywood diva of the thirties. Zia sat on the end of the pillow-strewn white satin bed, clutching an inlaid jewelry box on her lap. She stared up at Kev, eyes wide and stricken behind her glasses. Tears streamed down, mixing with the blood spattered on her face.

Terrified hope jolted through him. “Oh, God, Zia. You found it?”

Zia Rosa looked lost. “We played together with this jewelry box when we were little, Tittina and me.” Her voice was almost childlike. “We played with it. With our dolls.”

Kev sank to his knees in front of her. He took the jewelry box from her and opened it. It was heaped with gold chains, rings, brooches.

He dumped them out onto the bed in a tangled, glittering pile, and shook the empty box. Something shifted inside. His heart thudded.

“There’s something in here.” He felt for the sliding panel. Sure enough, it slid open. But Bruno had the key.

“Nonna taught us to sew together,” Zia went on. “How to make the blessed animal cookies, for Natale. We were best friends back then, Tittina and me. And now . . . Dio. Poverina.”

He grabbed her hands. “I’m sorry. But we just can’t do this now.”

Zia Rosa ignored him. “That picture of Magda that I have in my wallet? Just like Tittina, when she was little. Just like the little girl at the baby store. The one with that bitch nurse.”

“Zia, we have to hurry—”

“I shoulda known about those two, but they were so nice, you know? Her husband, too! He even come running back to give me my phone after it fell in the baby’s stroller! Aw, so sweet of him, I thought, to go to all that trouble, eh? Who’d have thought they was both killers? With those beautiful bimbi? Nobody woulda thought that!”

Kev went rd as the picture shifted in his mind. New shapes, new possibilities, new scenarios. “Wait. Zia, those people at the baby store . . . they handled your phone? When you weren’t watching?”

She blinked as she tried to remember. “I suppose they did. It dropped in the stroller. He found it and ran it back to me in the parking lot. Ouch! Kev! Don’t squeeze so hard!”

He let go of her hands, his heart thudding. “Sorry, Zia. Where’s your phone right now?”

“Downstairs, in my purse, on the couch,” she said. “Why? You need to call somebody? What’s wrong with yours?”

“They loaded software on your phone, Zia. Or a tracking device, or God knows what.” His voice shook with excitement. “That’s how they’ve been following us, catching us. With your phone!”