Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(98)

Her face paled. She swallowed, blinking as her eyes flickered to the side, narrowing in concentration. “He said . . . he has to lock it.”

“He has the locket,” Bruno repeated softly.

Her eyes went wide. She pressed her hands to her mouth. “Oh, God, Bruno. Oh, od. Magda had a locket? And she gave it to you?”

He nodded.

“Well? Where is it?” she burst out. “Who has it?”

He shook his head. “It’s gone,” he said.

She looked around, frantically, as if the locket should be lying around in plain view. “What do you mean, gone? You mean lost? Stolen?”

“Both, in a sense,” he said.

Zia took over for him. “That filthy figlio di puttana Rudy, he took it,” she informed Lily. “That day they came to the diner and attacked Bruno. Three big guys, against one twelve-year-old boy who just lost his mamma. Teste di cazzo.”

Lily turned to him, her eyes wide. “Good God. How did you—”

“Kev,” Bruno said. “Kev beat the living shit out of all three of them. In about thirty seconds. Bam, pow, and it was over.”

Lily glanced over at Kev. He gazed back, impassive. “What about Rudy, then?” she asked. “What happened to him?”

Kev got up, snagged two unoccupied chairs from the other end of the table, and hauled them over to Bruno and Lily’s side. He took the frosting-smeared knife from Zia Rosa’s hands and placed it on the bar. He positioned the chair behind her. “Sit, Zia,” he said.

The others were starting to gather around, too. Kev pulled up the other chair, seated himself opposite them.

“What happened then was that we loaded the thugs into the back of Tony’s old pickup and covered them with a tarp,” Kev said. “Then we hosed blood into the gutter while Tony drove away with them.”

“And with the locket,” Lily repeated, as if desperately hoping to be contradicted.

No such luck. “And the locket,” Bruno echoed. “Rudy put it in the pocket of his jeans. Tony didn’t know. Kev had no clue. I was in shock.”

“Were they, um, alive?” Lily asked, delicately.

“They were when we loaded them up,” Kev said. “More or less.”

“Wishing they weren’t,” Bruno commented. “Rudy had a fork sticking out of his crotch.

Every man in the room recoiled instinctively.

“I doubt they lived out the day,” Kev said quietly. “Knowing Tony.”

Zia snorted in disgust. “After attacking Bruno? Not a chance.”

Bruno felt lightheaded. “Zia, do you have any idea where Tony took them? I knew better than to ask.”

Zia Rosa shook her head. “You know how Tony was. If anyone got in trouble, he wanted to take the rap. Plus, I was a woman.” She rolled her eyes. “He figured, three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. He took those guys out into the woods somewhere, put ’em down like dogs, and put ’em in a hole. And we ain’t never gonna know where.”

“He left around six A.M.,” Kev said. “He got back late in the evening. We don’t know which direction he went, or how far he drove.”

Davy harrumphed. “That’s a lot of woods.”

They all pondered gloomily how much woods.

“He might have put them on his property,” Bruno said. “That way, he’d have been more or less sure not to be seen or stumbled over.”

“True,” Kev said. “But that’s still a hundred and forty acres of rough ground lots of it steep mountain slope. A lot to dig up, without any assurance that they’re actually there.”

Bruno sagged. “Shit, shit, shit,” he hissed. “One little clue, and bam, the door slams shut in my face. I wish I hadn’t even thought of the goddamn locket. It’s worse now than it was before.”

“Not for me, it isn’t,” Lily said.

He looked up. Lily’s eyes were glowing. “This way, I know I’m not crazy,” she said. “And you all know I’m not lying, too. That’s worth a whole lot to me, Bruno. You can’t imagine how much.”

He swallowed, bumping over the knot of old grief. “I was already convinced,” he told her.

Her smile made his heart skip. “I know you were,” she said. “Thank you. But even so, proof is nice to have. It makes me feel, I don’t know. Less like it’s all my fault somehow.”

“I never thought that,” he insisted.

Their hands caught, twined. Clung. Wonder unfurled inside him.

Rachel’s curly head suddenly ducked under his arm and popped up between them. She held up her plastic necklace. “You lost your locket? You could have my locket if you want,” she offered.

The lump in Bruno’s throat swelled so big, he was speechless. Something about Rachel’s big, worried eyes behind her glasses in her innocent bit of a face, it just turned his screws that last brutal turn.

He grabbed the little girl, hugged her, and hid his hot face in her cloud of dark hair, struggling with all his strength not to totally lose it.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he said thickly. “You keep your locket. It looks better on you than it would on me. Turn around. I’ll put it back on you.” He clasped the trinket around Rachel’s neck, dropped a kiss on top of her fuzzy head, and tried not to think about that last, tight hug before Mamma shoved him up onto the steps of the bus.