Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(18)

He sat back down on the seat, silently jubilant. “What about my dad?” he asked. “Aren’t you sorry about him, too?”

Her mouth curved. “What for? Fuck him. He provided the best of himself and disappeared before he could do any more damage. We’ve already established that men are dogs and pigs, right?”

“Most men,” he said. He rolled his hand around beneath hers until he could clasp her hand from below. The contact was giving his palm a gazillion little mini-orgasms. “The day-shift guy will be here in about twenty-five minutes,” he said. “Want to go out, take a walk? I’ll tell you more about the awful, horrifying truth about men. Stuff you’ll never learn in Cosmo. You could write a book. If you’re interested.”

“Strangely enough,” she said. “I think I am.”





5


Lily feigned not to see the smile he blazed at her before he went off about his business. Razzle-dazzle. The man was dangerous, but for none of the reasons she’d expected. She’d been through hell the last few weeks, but who’d think it to look at her? Giggling. Simpering. Fluttering, for God’s sake. She must be suffering from hormonally induced brain damage to be acting this way. Hey, what’s mortal danger next to a superlative piece of man meat, right?

Not that she could characterize Bruno Ranieri as meat. Far from it. He was special. He blew her mind, or what little was left of it, after the stress of the last six weeks. And she’d thought writing papers for cheating students had been stressful. Try life as a penniless fugitive.

Her first thought, during that dazed subway ride to nowhere, had been to go to the police, but something blocked her. A sense of looming danger, pervasive as a bad smell. The bad guys had been following her, listening to her. They’d known she was going to Nina’s for dinner. And Nina’s address. They’d murdered Howard and covered it up so easily.

No. No police. She was on her own. She scooped up more rice pudding, and her eyes dropped to the red scar curved across her forearm. She adjusted her arm to hide the wound. She probably should have worn long sleeves, but he didn’t have many wardrobe options.

She was lucky she hadn’t gotten tetanus. She’d bought gauze and disinfectant, and mopped up in a Starbucks bathroom, keenly aware of how much emergency rooms cost after all of Howard’s near suicides. It would cost hundreds of bucks to get her cut stitched. Plus, anyone who could terrify Howie into silence, murder him the same day he broke that silence, and then put out an instant contract on her had the resources to watch emergency rooms. And cop shops.

Besides, what could cops do? Give her an armed guard? Send her to a safe house? Please. She was of no use to anyone. She wasn’t poised to testify against a big mob boss. She’d end up filling out a report, and then she’d go home alone, and sit there, shivering. Waiting for the door to rattle, the window to shatter. Until it did.

So she’d stopped at a bank, taken as big a cash advance as her credit card would allow, bought a floppy hat, sunglasses, an oversized jacket. Caught a night bus for Philly at the Port Authority. She remembered the address of a women’s shelter there, a relic from those nights when Nina used to rope her into volunteering to man the hotline.

Her cut and bruises corroborated her story about a jealous boyfriend attacking her with a knife. It got her a place to sleep, an offer of crisis counseling. But she couldn’t tell those people anything, either. No more than she could call Nina. She’d put them in danger, too.

She’d run, as soon as she dared. She’d been running ever since.

She ached to call Nina, tell her friend she was safe. But she had to assume that they’d monitor Nina’s snail mail, e-mail, landline, cell.

Besides. She wasn’t safe. So why lie? Why say anything?

She didn’t even know where to begin. She was so small and clueless, and her opponent so huge and mysterious. But Howard had given her a starting place. He’d paid for it with his life, too. So that cryptic clue had to mean something to somebody.

Magda Ranieri and her death were connected to this mess. God alone knew how. Or maybe, just maybe, her son Bruno knew.

Bruno walked by, flashed another mind-melting smile. She smiled back before she could stop herself. Hard to get, she reminded herself.

She’d done what research she could. Magda Ranieri had been murdered in 1993, in Newark, New Jersey. Her obit had stated that she was survived by her mother, Giuseppina Ranieri, and her son, Bruno Ranieri. No further mention of her murderer being found or prosecuted. No speculation as to why she’d been killed. That was as much as Lily had been able to glean from the library newspaper archives.

But Bruno might have a clue. He was supposed to “lock it,” whatever “it” could conceivably be. So he must know what “it” was. And by association, who “they” were. What “they” wanted. Right?

Her search ended here, in Tony’s Diner, where she ran up against a wall with a splat. Because asking Bruno if he had a clue was not a simple matter. In fact, it was flat out unthinkable. She pictured it.

Nice to meet you, Bruno! I’ve been stalking you for a while now. Someone is trying to kill me, and I think this is somehow related to the most traumatic event of your entire childhood, so would you please tell all the details of your mother’s brutal murder to a complete stranger?

Right. Talk about a conversation stopper.