The Fall(43)

Unless you took a really serious look.

Which is exactly what I did.

Those nuns sure don’t take the Ten Commandments seriously if they are f*cking and lying. Here, have a side of hypocrisy with your holy wine.

That shit had gotten enough of my mental space. So I left the upturned table, and the Reader’s Digest version of my childhood history on the floor, and stalked out of the room.

It had taken me two hours longer than I wanted to get back, needing to make sure I wasn’t tailed after my visit with Brendon’s drugged-up ex-wife. The last thing I needed was to draw the * who was looking for Sofia a map and lead them to my doorstep. Not to mention I hated entertaining.

So, with my mood fluctuating somewhere between gonna-kick-someone’s-ass and punch-my-fist-through-a-wall, I sat my ass down at my computer and looked to see if my band of hacker brothers had turned up anything new.

The minute I logged on, my screen lit up like a Christmas tree. Ten or so messages pinged, urgently vying for my attention worse than a hooker in Streeterville.

Fuck.

Me.

Bounty had gone up.

Sofia’s head on a platter was worth a cool one point five million dollars. And an extra five hundred thousand would be kicked in for any evidence recovered that tied anyone to anything.

The instructions were clear. No capture. Shoot to kill and get it done ASAP. Any other subtext wasn’t necessary; she was a dead woman walking.

And in addition to that wonderful piece of information, there was a message in my inbox, which in itself was a surprise.

The people who usually employed my services didn’t like trails, especially one that could be tracked by the FBI. But there it was, sitting in my inbox just the same.

No name identifying the sender.

My firewall and three virus scans protected me against most garden-variety hackers, so it was either a professional or government. My finger hovered over the enter key, wondering if reading it was going to open up the apocalypse on my CPU. Curiosity was what made my finger actually hit the key.

The message had one line.

Meet me on the steps of Alder Planetarium. Five p.m.

There were very few men who had the resources—and the money—to encrypt a message like that and guts to meet at a public place. One of them was Sofia’s father, and the other was Franco Santini.

And while it was it was still unclear as to who was bankrolling the bounty, he was most likely.

Franco was Jimmy’s biggest rival, with an ego the size of Canada and balls to match. He loved baseball, sex and violence. Not necessarily in that order, but none of them held a candle to how much he loved money.

He was old school, a numbers man—extortion, embezzlement, bearer bonds—you know, the classics. And I was almost positive there were things on Sofia’s little USB drive that would see the IRS so far up that dipshit’s ass he would start shitting out suits. And those kinds of consecutive sentences—on federal offenses—would make a murder charge seem like a holiday.

So he’d either heard whispers about what I’d been doing to pass the time the last few days, or he was going to hire me to track her down. Sure, I could ignore the email, pretend I didn’t get it. I mean, there was no way to know exactly which cocksucker had sent it, so pleading ignorance was also on the table. But that wasn’t going to happen. For the same reason I’d gone to see that piece of shit Brendon and delivered his alimony.

Appearances.

And assuming I was correct and it was Franco, refusing to meet him would send up a red flag. Men like him didn’t like the word no, so I guess I had a date at five.

“Sofia,” I called out, hoping like hell she hadn’t locked herself in the bathroom. “Get out here now.”

Nothing.

Silence.

I swear if she’d slit her wrists in the f*cking shower or something, I was going to save her life just so I could kill her again myself.

My ass flew out of my seat as I moved to the door where the bedroom was. My hand twisted the handle and threw open the door.

She didn’t move, her eyes stayed shut as she sat on the floor completely still, with her legs crossed and her back against the wall.

“What the f*ck are you doing?” I watched as she slowly opened her eyes. They hadn’t been red like I’d expected but her chest was moving fast like she was trying to rein it in.

“Does it matter?” Her feet moved from under her as she stood, her hands brushing the dust from her ass. “I still have free will over my body and mind, and what I do with it.”

On second thought, I didn’t want to know. Because if she mentioned f*cking meditation or praying there was a strong possibility of me doing to the bed what I’d done before to the table.

“We need to talk.” I moved closer, my feet lining up right in front of her, and to her credit she didn’t cower.

Her shoulders straightened as she took a breath. “Are you here to apologize?”

“Did you hit your head between now and the last time I saw you?” What the f*ck did I have to be sorry for? “I don’t apologize to anyone, especially not someone who went through my shit.”

“But it’s okay for you to do it to other people?” she baited, like I was bound to a same set of standards these other morons were.

“I never said I was ethical. And I’m not here to argue.”

“So what are you here for?”