Deep (Pagano Family #4)(18)

He broke away and kissed her nose. “Come on, Beverly. We have a long ride before I can do what I want to do to you.”

And that right there was easily the sexiest sentence in the English language, as far as Bev could imagine. She scooted out of the booth, smoothing her dress as she stood, and then Nick’s hand was on hers, on her ass, and he laced fingers with her and led her through the club. Brian stayed close, leading the way.

Stepping out into the late night, Bev felt a little bit like a celebrity. Though it was eleven o’clock, there was still a long line of people trying to get in. The bouncer—a different guy—stood up from his stool and nodded at Nick, and the effect was almost as if he were bowing.

She couldn’t help but smile brightly at everybody. Maybe she was acting like a nerd, but she was happy and excited and a little drunk, and she loved everybody.

Brian led them down the block a bit toward a huge, black SUV with blacked-out windows and black wheels. As they approached, the guy she’d seen at Nick’s door the night before, every bit as big as Romeo, maybe even bigger, got out of the driver’s side and walked around the front of the truck. He opened the passenger door.

And then he twitched—Bev only saw it because she had just noticed for the first time that he had gold tips on his black hair, which seemed an oddly fussy style choice for a man who looked liked he’d been hewn from rock with a dull chisel.

But he twitched, and then he spun around with surprising speed and grace and yelled “DOWN! GET DOWN!”

Nick knocked her to the sidewalk and landed on top of her, and Brian landed on top of him, and Bev was pretty sure the impacts had broken something inside her, but she didn’t have time to finish that thought before Nick’s arms were around her head and the air was full of noise and hot with fire.

The SUV had exploded.





5



“Fucking hell! Nick, you okay?”

Brian’s strained voice came as if it were passing through thick layers of gauze. His hands were on Nick’s shoulders, trying to pull him up and over. Nick shook him off.

“I’m okay.” He shifted off the woman under him and brushed her hair from her face. Her cheek was badly scraped, and she looked pained and terrified. “Are you hurt?”

It took her a second or two of mute staring before she answered. “My…chest. It hurts to breathe.”

Intending to have Brian call for help for her, Nick looked over his shoulder, not letting his mind take in more than the most immediate problems yet. But Brian was lying prone on the sidewalk. He seemed to have fallen as soon as Nick had said he was okay.

A piece of the Navigator was embedded in his back. “Fuck! Brian!”

“I’m okay, Nick. It’s just my shoulder. Hurts like a mother, but I’m okay.”

Now, Nick saw, too, that the back of his friend’s leather jacket was smoking. “Are you burned?”

Brian shook his head. “Singed. I’m okay, boss. I’m okay.”

He didn’t look okay, but Nick nodded. As he turned back to Beverly, he saw a big, black Italian shoe just past her head, a socked foot and ankle still inside it. Jimmy. Dammit. Ah, dammit.

He turned to the wreckage, finally hearing, still heavily muffled, the shouts and screams and weeping around him. Other small parts of Jimmy, many of them flaming, were scattered about—a hand with his diamond pinky ring twinkling in the light of the fire consuming it, another foot with more leg attached—but Nick figured most of him had been vaporized by the impact of the bomb. The blast radius looked to be controlled—only fifteen feet or so—but several people were down, probably hit by shrapnel from the Navigator. Jimmy seemed to be the only death, at least so far. Fuck. He had a wife and four kids.

Nick didn’t know how they’d managed it, with Jimmy on the Navigator all night, but he knew who. This was the sequel to his father’s funeral. He was going to peel Alvin Church’s skin off in a single sheet and turn it into a goddamn coat.

He’d had his attention off Beverly for only a couple of seconds. Now she shifted under him, and he felt her moan sharply—he felt it rather than heard it. “Easy, bella. Don’t move yet.”

There was a weird flashing light all around. He couldn’t make sense of it. Like a strobe without a predictable pattern.

Chi-Chi and Matty ran up then, and Chi-Chi dropped to his knees at Nick’s head. “Oh f*ck, boss! Oh f*ck! What the f*ck!”

Chi-Chi wasn’t the brightest bulb in their box, but he was all in and followed directions well. Sirens began to overwhelm the sounds of trauma. Nick estimated that less than a minute, definitely no more than two, had passed since the explosion. “Shut up, Chi, and listen. If you’re carrying dirty, dump it now.” Though a few soldiers in the family had felony records, none of his crew did, and all had concealed carry permits. The Pagano Brothers kept a tight seal on their relationship with law enforcement. The right people were paid in the right way, always, and the Paganos kept a clean profile.

They used unregistered weapons for their wet and dirty work, however, and Chi-Chi had had some dirty work to do earlier in the day.

“Just my clean piece, boss. You need help up?” Chi-Chi reached his hand out, but Nick shook his head. He didn’t want to leave Beverly lying alone on the sidewalk.

“You and Matty—look sharp. Get a read on who’s around here, especially at the edges. And what the f*ck is that—shit.” It had taken his rattled brain a minute to understand it, but now he did. The strobing light—flashes from smart phone cameras. People everywhere were taking ghoulish pictures. Probably video, too. And now the red and blue swirling lights from police and ambulance took it over. There was no point in trying to get control of all those damn cameras. Footage was probably online already.